To keto or not to keto?
I’ve already expressed my own experience with very low-carb diets, many times. Simply put: I can’t stand them and I lose very little weight on them, and what’s more they make me feel ill. If you say to me “but oh, you can eat all the bacon you want!” I respond by pointing out that I already eat all the bacon I want, and it’s about four servings a year.
If that.
But people swear by low-carb and in particular keto diets. I do believe that for some reason the diet works for some people. Fine, have fun. But for the rest of us it’s a sort of torment, and an unrewarding one at that.
So here’s an article about research on the diet. It seems pretty spot-on to me.
My summary version is this: diet is a very individual thing, and different people respond differently to the same diet. And for most people with a tendency to gain weight, losing it long-term (or even short-term, for some) is very very difficult, no matter what they do.
Bon appetit!
I started doing Intermittent Fasting and Low(er) Carb in September of 2016. By April of 2017 I’d lost 50 lbs. (Lower Carb = I stopped eating snacks between meals and no more dessert after dinner, but I didn’t avoid pasta or bread or anything like that).
While I wanted to lose about 40 more I also started slacking off becuz I felt I’d done so well with it. I kept up the Intermittent Fasting time periods, but I would snack between meals during the “eating window” and would often have a bowl of ice cream after dinner. and the weight crept back on. Not up to my former maximum, but up about 15-20 lbs from the lowest I’d gotten to either.
A few months ago I got quite sick and couldn’t really eat for about 4 days, which took me down about 10 lbs, but since then I’ve put another 20 back on.
Meaning…. I’ve been doing it quite casually for about 2.5 years now, and while I’m down 20 from my highest weight ever, I’m still about 70 higher than my goal weight either.
I started being stricter with myself about a couple of weeks ago and I’m down 4 from where I started. I guess we’ll see if I do better on this stretch.
I’ve had great results with a low-carb diet-I dropped 65 lbs and have kept it off for 18 years- but I don’t believe that it is a panacea. I think different people have different metabolic characteristics, and for me, carbs never satisfied hunger and protein and fat do. So I can feel perfectly satisfied on a 500 calorie high-protein meal, but eating 2000 calories of carbs leaves me hungrier than I was before I started. That is the reason that I was able to lose the weight-there was really no sacrifice involved in cutting the calories.
i don’t diet, but if you gave my eating a name it would be low carb, high meat and veggies… 0% clogged… over 50… take no medications other than situational (aspirin:headache etc) always been life active.. though the few dead periods have taken their toll. before getting married walking 20 miles in a day two days in a row with 20lbs of camera junk on me… all kinds of stuff over time from fighting in full armor, roller skating around a lake 5 miles every other day. bit of free climbing up in the ‘gunks’ (swanagunks). city and forest hiking… volcano climbing…
every reason for lots of people to dislike me out of hand… and more..
pkudude99:
It always sort of makes me smile when I read things like “no more dessert after dinner,” because I already eat dessert very rarely, and that’s been the situation for decades. Probably since I was a small child. And I love dessert.
Of course, I’m not trying to lose 50 pounds. I’m trying to lose 10 or 15, which is different I guess. I already don’t eat very much, so there’s not that much to cut back on. And I can’t fast for longer than about 12 hours because if I don’t eat then I have a tendency to get migraines.
People are indeed very different.
I have been doing an almost totally organic diet with only small amounts of processed foods, and I have lost about 14 pounds and have tremendous energy. Older male that is 6’1”, looking to lose another 5 pounds to 175. Check out a book called the Whole Body Cure.
I agree that different bodies have different needs, and one solution does not fit all.
I don’t think the theory is, as this author claims, that when you are in ketosis your body burns more calories. As I understand it, the theory is that the body uses carbohydrate intake differently from fat and protein. Calories in, calories out is not how this works, in the theory.
I’ve been following a low-carb or keto diet for fourteen months now. I lost 30 pounds in six months, and have been able to maintain that weight without effort and without hunger. I have not experienced “keto flu,” and my carbohydrate cravings have dissipated to the extent that when something is available, I don’t really want it. My blood work, last summer, five months into this, showed a much improved A1C, excellent cholesterol numbers, and excellent triglycerides. I don’t take any keto supplements, don’t drink bulletproof coffee, or buy anything to eat I can’t get at my local supermarket. I don’t test for ketosis and have no idea how many calories I consume. I was pre-diabetic, and so in my case, insulin resistance was clearly a problem.
I notice that the diet comparisons in the article show the patients eating all day, with snacks in between meals. Because I have a high-fat evening meal, I find it’s very comfortable for me to have nothing but water and coffee with cream in the mornings, eating my first meal at noon, and another meal at about 6. I am just finishing now with berries and cream at 7 p.m. Just a couple of days ago I read an article about how this 16:8 eating pattern (sixteen hours without food, all eating in eight hours) may prevent breast cancer in post-menopausal women.
Perhaps it is the pattern of eating all day which causes most of the trouble.
Neo:
People definitely are different. I can still count on one hand the number of headaches I’ve had in my entire life, so I don’t have to worry about that, at least….
I have done 48-hour fasts from time to time, and I as always fine with them and didn’t feel like i needed to eat everything in sight at the end of them, I just really stopped keeping up the “fewer calories from eating a bit less and stop it with the sugar already!” thing, and that’s when i stopped losing the weight. I didn’t put it back on quickly, but it still came back, slowly but surely.
Can’t say this type of diet’s for everyone, and it’s not a panacea for me either, but I’ve seen some success with it, so that’s why I’m willing to give it another go now and see if I can’t break down below that 200 lb barrier and maybe even a bit lower. I’d love to see 160 again someday. I miss those teenage days when I could eat everything in sight and not go above 150. . .
I am glad me and mrs parker can eat whatever we desire withou weight issues. That said we eat a mostly vegetarian diet, with meat once or twice a week. We do eat eggs for breakfast often and cheese instead of dessert in the evening. She makes ravioli to die for. Everybody has a different metabolism, fortunately our children and grandchildren inherited our metabolism.
No matter what diet you’re on, if you think you can NOT feel hungry you’ll never lose weight. I ballooned up to 218 lbs. in grad school and then went on a no carb 1200 calorie diet with modest running and swimming daily. I quickly lost nearly fifty pounds. The next summer I climbed the Grand Teton and have kept the weight off. The secret, at least for me, is like a story about G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate fame. At a party it is said that Liddy was trying to impress a sweet young thing by holding the palm of his hand over a burning candle. When his flesh started to burn and smoke she asked, “What’s the trick?” He said, “The trick is not minding it.” That’s the secret! Not minding that you’re hungry. In fact, if your not feeling hungry you won’t lose weight. Period. For me, it really is calories in, calories burned. Fewer in and more being used to burn for energy. You will lose weight as long as “You don’t mind it.”
I did low carb about 6 years ago and lost 40 pounds. Then I gained it all back and thensome and haven’t been able to duplicate the success from the past.
Keto has worked for me: Male, age 64. 5’11”. Generally good health, somewhat sedentary. Went from 236lbs to 196lbs in 8 months (which is 5 lbs per month) on a “lazy” keto diet (eliminated a LOT of carbs; did not add much in the way of fats). I feel GREAT, not lugging an extra 40 lbs of fat 7/24. Blood work for a yearly check-up showed a trace of ketones.
Essentially no bread, pasta, potatoes, or fruits that high in sugar. It helped a lot that my wife went on the same diet with me….able to maintain diet discipline!We’re always looking a food labels for the Carb content. There are plenty of good alternatives to high carb foods if you are willing to do the research.
Positive side effects: Rarely have hunger pangs. No mid-afternoon drowsiness. My digestion is more regular. And, surprisingly, my gums/teeth are in great shape at my dental appointments : minimal plaque, good gum tissue, no bleeding while being cleaned. I was wearing 36 inch waist pants, now wearing 34 inch waist pants (that I had stored away quite a few years ago) and the 34 inch pants are starting to be a bit loose.
My goal is to get to 180 and level off there. 3 years ago I would have never thought that I could even get below 200; now, 180 seems very attainable.
Artfldgr – “volcano climbing” —
Okay, now you’ve got me interested..
The ultimate low carb diet.
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/blog/2018/02/story-angus-barbieri-went-382-days-without-eating/
…Whether ’tis nobler in the gut to suffer
The pangs and rumbles of outrageous diet,
Or to take Pills against a Sea of blubber,
And by their popping end it: to fry, to baste
No more; and by “no carbs”, to say we end
The heart-burn, and the thousand natural pounds
That Flesh is prone to? ‘Tis a d’minuation
Devoutly to be wished….
What works for me is returning to eating the way I did as a kid when Mom was in charge of the kitchen. Three meals a day, a small snack after school, kitchen closes when dinner is over. Meals are meat and veggies, a slice of bread or a roll with dinner and a modest dessert. Oh, and go outside and play!
Eat at the dinner table instead of in front of the TV. I tend to graze if I don’t watch it. The tv is the devil for that.
I lost 35 lbs several years ago on the Sugarbusters diet, which is basically a low carb diet. I was on it for 18 months. I’ve since put most of it back on.
As the diet progressed, I realized that I was eating a lot less. That was the reason I was losing the weight, not that I was following any particular regime. Why I was eating less is somewhat of a mystery, but I think it was more a case of behavioral modifications than anything else. I just systematically changed my eating habits a little at a time. Plus I started and maintained my diet at the supermarket. I just stopped buying the stuff that made me fat. If it wasn’t there, I couldn’t eat it.
My goal was to change one thing about how I ate each week. So when I went out for lunch, I had one slice of pizza instead of two. I was surprised to find that I wasn’t hungry. Then I started having sugar free pudding for a snack instead of ice cream. You get the picture.
18 months and many little changes = 35 lbs and about 3 inches off my waist. Behavior modification.
Now that I’m retired the weight has crept up because I’m less active and fell back to my old eating habits.
Last week I decided enough was enough and decided to go back to my old plan.
Wish me luck.
I’m an 83 year old male, 6’2. Over the past couple of years I’ve gone from about 230 to around 190. I stopped eating between meals and stopped eating when no longer hungry as opposed to feeling full. When I reach around 180, I’ll go back to buying a pack of chocolate chip cookies for dessert.
The “keto” diet in the article Neo linked doesn’t resemble mine too much. Besides mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks, which my sources don’t recommend, it doesn’t have my large noontime salad, which provides a lot more fiber than those keto subjects were eating.
Neo, I don’t know what to do about the extra ten to fifteen pounds you and I would each like to get rid of. If you’re already using portion control (not eating too much), and not consuming sugar, you’re doing what you can. You could try, if you haven’t already, switching out all “low fat” products in your diet for full-fat equivalents. Some people find they can’t tolerate that. In my case, I could begin “dieting,” that is, going hungry. Now in my seventies, I have elected to accept good health and looking pretty good rather than attempting to reach a lower weight which might not even be all that good for me at this age. I’m “normal” weight, towards the higher end of that bracket, and there it is.
Three things work. Less food of any kind, walking a few miles a day and falling or being wildly in love.
Communism – the domestication of man requires one size fits all leggo people and women in the lead… dont think bulls will be allowed to exist in great numbers?
Rule of thumb: if you exercise, almost any sensible diet will be fine. If you don’t exercise, no diet will work beyond the first weeks.
Actually, Yann, I exercise regularly (walking, Pilates, lifting weights). Before I went on keto, I spent a month exercising my eyeballs out on purpose, thinking I would lose weight. I didn’t lose an once. I backed off to a more reasonable exercise schedule of 3-4 sessions a week and started eating keto, and the weight came off.
My observation shows that men can more easily exercise to lose weight. For women, especially older women, it doesn’t always work that way.
Yann:
Depends what you mean by exercise. Unless you’re a lumberjack or running 10 miles a day training for a marathon, exercise doesn’t much help to lose weight, although exercise is basically good for you.
Kate:
Actually, it’s easier for men to lose weight, period. They are larger and can eat more in general, have a different body fat composition, different hormonal influences, etc.
Wives and husbands who go on the same diet together often discover this.
Neo:
Here out west they (lumberjacks) are called “loggers” not to be confused with “mud loggers” or “data loggers” (not people). Logging is extremely dangerous work.
I’ve recently given up the bread, pasta, rice, potatoes … and chips! wahhh.
But I’m probably still eating fruit too high in sugar for real “keto”. We’ll see about getting rid of the beer belly (10-15 lbs). But doing less exercise means much less efficiency in any weight loss.
Kate:
I’m sort of where you are—but I’d still like to lose a little weight. I just think I’d look better and feel better. But I’m already hungry enough, and I will not starve myself, which is what it would take.
But I have no low-fat items to swap out, except a little bit of low-fat yogurt I sometimes eat. Otherwise, the fats in my diet are mainly either the fat in the meat I eat (not a lot of meat, but I certainly eat it) and olive oil.
Neo: Alas, I have no other ideas to offer. Like you, I’ve decided that starving myself isn’t a good idea, and besides, weight that came off from doing that would just go back on once I started eating normally.
And yes, my husband can lose weight much more readily than I can.
It has been my experience that proteins and fats satisfy hunger. Carbs cause hunger. The fewer carbs you eat and the more proteins and fats you eat the less hunger you feel. If you try to not eat except when you’re hungry and you reduce the amount of hunger you feel you’ll gradually lose weight with no big diets and no starving yourself.
An easy way to apply this is just to reduce the number of white foods; bread, potatoes, rice and such, and when hungry, first go to eggs, meat, cheese, nuts, dark green veggies and such. No extremes is easier to stick with long term. Of course exercise helps as it magnifies the good effects and reduces the bad.
Kate:
Yes, it would be a lifelong sentence to starving oneself. Not a pleasant prospect.
Even when I was young I had trouble losing weight, by the way. But not as much trouble as now. It’s also complicated by the fact that I take medication that slows down your metabolism. That makes it extra-hard.
I suppose I should give up. But among other things, it’s a lifelong habit. And the funny thing is that fortunately I’ve never been especially heavy. Just heavier than I would like. And of course I’m heavier now than when I was younger.
Back during my dance years, of course, I was very thin. But that was NOT from exercise, that was from constant near-starvation.
Here’s something from Wikipedia,
This implies that the severe condition is mostly a diabetic thing, but in the past I’ve read that people taking the then called Atkin’s diet to extremes got in trouble too.
Neo’s article says,
They then give a hypothesis as to why this might be true, but I suspect the primary reason is that your body is dealing with an elevated toxin load in order to avoid ketoacidosis. Just an non-expert’s opinion. Some people respond well to these diets and others feel lousy.
_____
I used to run a little and try to bicycle a lot, time permitting. I never could tolerate the pounding of a longer run and only made it up to 10K on a few occasions. Cycling is much lower impact and can readily be done for extended periods, if you are into it. (And actually cycling is infinitely more entertaining compared to sitting on a stationary machine.) Ages ago, the cycling community called it “doing LSD” or Long Slow Distance.
You can burn thousands, not hundreds of calories. Though at my age, I’m back to about 1 thousand tops.
Reducing your meal size, to me was like quitting smoking many years ago. You suffer in the beginning but it tapers off over time and the suffering is replaced with a feeling of self satisfaction as you reap the benefits.
TommyJay:
They give reasons why the 400-600 thing might be true, but experiments show that it’s not true.
In addition, did you read the link about why the old adages about how many calories you burn with exercise also don’t work out as originally thought? If you didn’t see it, here it is again.
TommyJay, according to my keto sources (who are physicians), ketoacidosis is a serious condition which can affect Type I diabetics. Ketosis, the body burning fat instead of glucose, is a different thing. Non-Type I people do not progress from ketosis into ketoacidiosis. Type II diabetics who take insulin should check with their physicians and carefully monitor their blood sugar to avoid taking too much insulin as they lose weight and improve their insulin resistance. Type I diabetics should attempt keto only under close medical supervision.
I gained 50 lbs about 15 yrs ago when I transitioned from an active job (where I had to be at work by 0600 & didn’t always eat breakfast hence intermittent fasting) to a more sedentary job. I did WW online and lost my weight and have kept it off except for ~5lbs. The thought of keto let alone trying it makes me want to puke. I found out on WW that I could eat many more points if I ate whole, minimally processed foods. ..I also walk 6-8 miles/day. A Mediterranean type diet and moving seems to work for me and a lot of others. I still fast periodically and rarely snack. That’s another diet trend that wears me out – 6 mini meals/day. No thank you 🙂
Neo, exercise burns calories.
That doesn’t mean that the exercise itself burns calories. Actually, that’s quite a small portion. What burns calories is the consequences of exercising: human body is designed to use the minimum energy required. If you’re fit, your body is burning more calories during the whole day to keep it. Actually, after going to gym, one of the moments you’re burning more calories is when you sleep, no kidding (that’s why it’s recommended to sleep well when you’re doing workouts).
It’s not the calories you burn exercising, but the additional calories you burn during the day when you’re fit what makes a difference.
Yann:
Of course exercise burns calories. But in and of itself it doesn’t often lead to weight loss in the real world. Read the article I linked for some of the explanations.
Oh, c’mon, neo. I’ve read a couple of articles like that before. They’re strawmen-killers.
For example, in the article you linked, it talks about how inefficient is running several days per week. Well… duh, if you check any resource about exercising, you’ll read that just running is a very BAD idea. Anaerobic exercise (like running) doesn’t build muscle, actually, it can destroy muscle (muscle tissue can be burnt faster than fat), and building some muscle is a key element when it comes to weight loss. Besides that, the set of muscles you exercise is a very small one. Not to say repetitive exercises (like just running) are injury-prone.
You wanna lose weight? Exercise the whole body, build some muscle (not too much if you’re a woman, but a minimum), combine anaerobic and aerobic. Change rhythm (if you run, sprint and stop, and sprint and stop, rinse and repeat). Choose wisely. If you wanna do just one thing, swimming is a very good combination. Running isn’t.
Exercise works. But if you wanna use only a few hours a week, you need to do it wisely. Make some research. It’s not just about doing, it’s what you do and how you do it.
Yann:
My experience dovetails with the article, as do my observations. I’m sure it works for some people, but so does almost everything.
My observation is that I never lost an ounce of weight just from exercising, and I’ve done plenty of exercising in my life, exercising of all types. One example is that when I was a dancer I was exercising a great great deal. Didn’t matter. Some dancers are naturally thin but some are not. But a great many of them—and I was one of these—have to starve themselves to be thin.
It is true in particular for women, by the way. And the older one gets the more true it is.
Until, sometimes when people are old, they lose weight from muscle wasting and a generalized loss of the ability to take nourishment from food. That’s a big big problem in the very elderly. But that’s a different story.
Well, I have no experience in dancing, so I don’t really know what kind of exercise you did, but it sounds more like stretching.
My experience is that exercise works, but not every exercise works. It worked for me when I used to do workouts and it worked when I swam every day. That’s what any fitness guide says. Pure aerobic (like running or walking) never worked except when I used to hike (and that was like 10-12 hours in a row walking up and down the mountains).
Yann:
Ever heard of interval training for runners? Probably not. Good thing that all that hiking was not aerobic exercise. You prefer to swim. Great for you. Your experience is called anecdotal. To imply that serious ballet training/practice is “stretching” is a hoot. It seems that they have to work awful hard to make is seem effortless in performance.
om; Yann:
That’s pretty funny. Stretching. What a hoot. You are correct that you know nothing about ballet.
Actually, of course, there is stretching in ballet. But it’s a small part of it, although a vital one. Ballet is actually extremely strenuous if you do it at any sort of level other than beginner. Here’s one of many articles about it.
Neo, fair enough about dancing.
However, being strenuous is not the same that being efficient for losing weight. People use to correlate ‘I’m very tired’ with ‘This is gonna make me lose weight’. And it’s not that simple. Being strenuous means that probably you burnt quite a few calories exercising. But the calories that you burn while you exercise don’t make such a great difference. Actually, that’s what the article you linked several comments before said, and it was right about that.
What makes a difference is that you make your body burn more calories in your daily routines, or when you sleep, or when you sit in the coach. I’m not kidding. The more fit/muscled you are, the more calories you need to do the very same tasks. That’s why humans use to lose muscle when they don’t exercise: if you don’t require that power, muscles waste calories. If you were hunting or gathering your own food, you’d like your body to waste the bare minimum, because that way you will require less food to survive.
Actually, when you’re exercising to lose weight, you’re going against nature: you’re telling your body to build muscles and a fitness state aimed to burn as much calories as possible just standing still. Your body, that evolved in a world where food was scarce, opposes that.
Probably, that’s why running is not very good to lose weight: running was a very common task in prehistory, so it’s logical that human body has evolved to be very efficient in that task: and that means not wasting calories, ergo not losing weight. It makes sense that swimming is better to lose weight, since this task was quite unusual back then, and that means that human body didn’t evolve to be efficient at it.
(As a disclaimer: I’m realizing that it’s a bit more complicated than the rule of thumb I said before. My bad)