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Weight loss comes from having a calorie deficit, not from keto. You can gain weight on keto if you eat more calories. You can achieve the same weight loss by ju

• jonfw 6y ago
  This is well understood by now. The issue is that most people aren't actually going to track their calories- they eat when they're hungry. If you adjust your diet- you can satiate your appetite on a lower number of calories. The idea is that meats, vegetables, and fats help you meet your nutritional goals on a fewer amount of calories when compared to carbs- because carbs are empty calories.
  • abtom 6y ago
    Agreed that satiation is a major aspect. How satiating a food is, is not simply about carbs/proteins/fats. Most carb rich foods people eat today are high in sugar and low in fiber. That causes people to overeat. You can also overeat with high fat foods because fat is much more energy dense. You can just as easy have a bad keto diet as you can have a bad high carb diet. Replacing processed carbs with processed meat will not do any good. It's a group 1 carcinogen and will also lead to high cholesterol level causing heart disease. My point is that carbs aren't the enemy. Neither is fat. Eating unprocessed/low processed food should be the goal.
    • amanaplanacanal 6y ago
      The evidence that high cholesterol “causes” heart disease isn’t very good. There appears to be an association, but that’s really all we can say.
      • jonfw 6y ago
        in my experience- the more I learn about nutrition, the more I realize that we're just talking about everybody's best guess. Hard facts are scarce in this space.
  • AnonC 6y ago
    > The idea is that meats, vegetables, and fats help you meet your nutritional goals on a fewer amount of calories when compared to carbs- because carbs are empty calories. A minor correction: carbs are not necessarily empty calories. If you consider only sugary soda, then yes. There’s no one verb either. There are simple carbs, complex carbs, etc. The best kind of carbs are from whole foods (not refined where fiber and other nutrients are removed).
    • keymone 6y ago
      When keto person says “carbs” they actually mean “simple carbs”. Fiber is absolutely ok on keto.
• s1t5 6y ago
  > You can achieve the same weight loss by just eating fewer total calories, without cutting carbs as well. Achieve weight loss - yes, achieve the same weight loss - no. If you primarily want to lose fat rather than muscle, your insulin metabolism becomes an important variable.
  • abtom 6y ago
    This is a popular myth. There is simply no evidence to back to this claim. On the other hand there is a lot of evidence that preserving/increasing lean mass (non fat mass) depends only on protein and not fats/carbs. Check this article which summarizes multiple studies in this area - https://www.menshealth.com/health/a25924744/keto-diet-carbs-muscle-exercise/ https://www.menshealth.com/health/a25924744/keto-diet-carbs-...
• deleted 6y ago
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• cableshaft 6y ago
  It's usually a lot harder to eat too many calories on Keto, though. I know I was struggling to get enough calories for my meals from restaurants when I was eating keto. I was getting double meat and a side salad everywhere I went just to get my meal up to like 700 calories, and paying a lot more than I did off the diet. Like at Panda Express for example, I'd have to get a 3-entree instead of a 2-entree, get greens instead of rice for 45 calories, grilled teriyaki chicken for 300 calories, mushroom chicken for 220 calories, and broccoli beef for 150 calories, for a total of 715 calories, and even that was just enough carbs it could knock me out of keto, at 36 grams of carbs, so I usually tried to do some form of exercise after that meal. Meanwhile at Panda Express just getting chow mein, before you even start with entrees, is 510 calories, and fried rice is 520 calories. Then they'd probably get Orange Chicken, at 480 calories, and Beijing Beef at 470 calories, and the 2-entree meal is 1,460 calories, or 2x the calories that I consumed with my 3-entree. (Those 3 things are in the top 4 most popular dishes at Panda Express according to fan rankings: https://www.ranker.com/list/best-panda-express-menu-items/ranker-food https://www.ranker.com/list/best-panda-express-menu-items/ra..., if they got #3, Honey Walnut Shrimp, it'd be 100 calories less) The amount of carbs included with just about every possible meal at most places is a substantial source of calories, and you don't get a discount for telling them to leave it off (not that I expect them to do so, but a few more keto friendly options that I don't have to substitute would be nice).
• switch007 6y ago
  Keto is the only thing that helped me lose weight through the focus on eating satiating food and not eating empty calories. The fact you replace bland carbs and sugar with awesome-tasting things like meat, cream, cheese etc is a win and makes the diet seem quite positive.
• dalore 6y ago
  "Eat less, move more" is the advice professionals have been giving for years. This advice doesn't work though. Yes you have to do those things but telling people to do that in of itself is useless. There are strong biological/environmental factors at play working against that very advice. Having obesity isn't just some decision that people wake up and decide on. The main advantage of the low-carb diet is that it may cause you to want to eat less. Even without counting calories, overweight people tend to eat fewer calories on low carb. Sugar and starch may increase your hunger, while avoiding them may decrease your appetite to a more manageable level. If your body wants to have an appropriate number of calories, you don’t need to bother counting them. Thus, calories count, but you don’t need to count them.
  • shlant 6y ago
    > This advice doesn't work though It does work in the vast majority of cases. "biological/environmental factors" that may make this harder are the exception, not the norm > The main advantage of the low-carb diet is that it may cause you to want to eat less But this isn't unique to low-carb diets. You can also swap out a portion of your food for vegetables and get similar satiety while eating less calories. Eating slower can also help you eat less. The point is, an extremely restrictive diet is not necessary to achieve the same results.
    • amanaplanacanal 6y ago
      The advice doesn’t work. If it worked, why do we still have an obesity epidemic? Are there still people who haven’t heard this message?
      • shlant 6y ago
        > If it worked, why do we still have an obesity epidemic not everyone follows the advice? It takes a LOT of effort and discipline? Food is a powerful vice and coping mechanism. Addiction of any kind is not an easy thing to overcome especially when that addiction is so normalized. > Are there still people who haven’t heard this message? I think in most first-world countries no, but there is a massive difference between hearing something, understanding something and successfully implementing something
• PudgePacket 6y ago
  Yes yes calorie in calorie out blah blah. Most people can't maintain a caloric deficit for an extended duration. Countless studies have shown that. The point is people who are overweight tend to lose weight when eating ad libitum on a ketogenic diet, whereas people on a standard diet generally gain weight (see western populations).
  • tlow 6y ago
    >Most people can't maintain a caloric deficit 1. Do you have an evidence or is this just an assumption based upon your perceived "feeling"? 2. Why?
    • PudgePacket 6y ago
      1. People on western diets. This isn't some hidden mystery.. it's in plain view. Plenty of studies done, or just ask _any_ doctor that sees patients, or any of your friends/family who have tried diets. Or search pubmed for diet adherence. 2. Because their base metabolic rate reduces over time to match their new reduced caloric intake.
      • tlow 6y ago
        So no evidence, you just have an unsupported opinion. Cool.
  • treis 6y ago
    If you cut out cookies, cake, pretzels, chips, and virtually all other junk food of course you will lose weight. IMHO, the keto folks are missing the actual cause here. You're not losing weight because you eat your burger without a bun. It's because you don't eat a pile of fries.
• calpaterson 6y ago
  I think the keto part is operative. You can lose weight on calorie restricted diets but a) to do so is pure suffering and b) the hormonal explanation of body fat accumulation (ie insulin/glucagon cycle) seems to have a lot more predictive power than the calorie accounting theory, which just seems total bunk to me.
• himinlomax 6y ago
  Sorry, but your statement is as true as it's pointless. Consider: healthy people who are injected a small dose of insulin experience tiredness (reduced energy use) and increased hunger. Contrary to eating fats, eating carbs triggers the release of insulin. Young, healthy people who have a properly working endocrine system handle eating carbs fine. But for those who don't, it's a different story. Just like those test subjects, their body limits energy consumption and experiences constant hunger. So yeah, they don't burn enough calories and eat too much of them, but the saying so is pointless if not insulting; the question that needs addressing is why.
  • abtom 6y ago
    I'm not trying to say keto isn't helpful. If it works for you that's great, go for it. It may even be better than other diets in certain scenarios as you have mentioned. However prescribing it as the default solution isn't right. If you're gaining weight the default solution is to reduce total calorie intake. Most of the benefits people see on keto can just as easily be had by simply avoiding processed junk foods. Demonizing carbs is counterproductive as it causes people to needlessly exclude nutritious foods like fruits from their diet. Yes, you will feel hungry on a low calorie diet initially. Keto will also give you the "keto flu" in the first week. Later on your body adapts to it (in both diets). The insulin release and hunger is your body's primary mechanism developed over hundreds of thousands of years. If you're advocating bypassing that in favour of something else, you better have a very good reason to do so.
• 49para 6y ago
  The benefit of low carb is the reduction in your body's production of Insulin. Insulin resistance after decades of high carb diets, regardless of the # of calories consumed, is the source of all metabolic disease. Low carb is going to reverse this, a simple reduction in calories won't. The low carb diet also has access to your entirety of fat stores. Insulin resistance will result in a huge amount of insulin in your blood stream. Insulin prevents fat from being removed from your fat storage so a reduction in calories, while it does show a short term (i.e.6 week) reduction in body weight, it also reduces your BMR which is why people regain the weight lost. Once the alpha cells in your pancrease are insulin resistant, they will be producing glucagon causing elevated blood sugar compounding the problem. tl/dr; - Insulin resistance is the source of all metabolic disease. Reduce it via a low carb/fasting lifestyle.
• StacyC 6y ago
  The only thing I can say about calories is that after seven years on keto and feeling great, I have never given any thought to my calorie intake. My weight remains stable as do my energy levels, so I can only assume that (1) I am getting exactly the right amount of calories from my diet, or (2) calories are an irrelevant metric.