I have (mostly) managed my weight ok with a fairly unbalanced diet that is probably too heavy on carbs. As I get older, it seems my strategy is becoming less and less successful.
So I guess the ketogenic diet is the diet du jour. I am pretty sure that I could not follow the plan very closely because, although not a vegetarian, I don’t really care for meat or seafood in general. Eggs, cheese and vegetables are all a-ok.
Strictly from a weight loss perspective, is there any benefit to be derived from increasing the relative proportion of fats in your diet? My extremely limited understanding of ketosis would suggest that the answer is no, but…
I posted this in IMHO because it seems like all diet topics quickly veer off into that territory anyway.
I try and live a low carb lifestyle but have never subscribed to keto. Low carb basically helps me to limit fast food, desserts, and stupid calories like candy or doughnuts. It also allows me to splurge a bit on meat and fats without feeling guilty. I’ve also had to up the amount of vegetables and fiber I eat to compensate and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
There is no half-assed keto. You either get yourself into ketosis or you don’t. Getting there means absolutely no going over the extremely low carb limit.
Having said that, even going moderately low carb might curb your appetite by getting rid of the insulin spikes that refined carbs cause.
I’ve got a friend who’s doing keto and it’s working for her. My boyfriend has also been advised to cut so-called white carbs, which has parallels & also similar recipe collections. I’ll be interested in what y’all have to say about it.
For data, my friend sez:
I went full vegan [ a while ago ]for 5 month, lost 20 lbs, then gained 40… stupid carbs. So for the last year and a half, I’ve been doing keto (low carb, high fat), basically opposite of vegan lol…meats, cheeses, veggies are pretty much my whole diet…80 lbs down so far
So there ya go.
This is no knock on you or keto but something I’ve always wondered about. You get yourself on ketosis and can prove it by peeing on a strip. Except, you eat a ton of fat per day. What fat are you burning, belly or eaten? I’d think if you get yourself into ketosis and not eat the extra fat you’d at least know you were burning fat reserves.
It’s a good question, and I don’t know the answer, but I’ve lost about 55 pounds and I’m not hungry all the time, so I’m not sure it matters. I don’t eat a ton of fat however, just more than I used to when I was trying to be “careful”.
Yeah, That’s where I’m at. I love cauliflower fried rice and don’t feel bad about extra bacon. I love mashed dikon radish and don’t feel bad about the extra butter. I’m just trying not to eat coconut oil, avacado, bacon grease sandwiches.
Does anyone have any recommendations for books or other resources on how to do this? My doctors have suggested I try this type of diet to see if it helps with my chronic migraine. It’s also sometimes used for epilepsy.
I think if you want to do the full keto thing, you really need to keep the net carbs under 20-30. Otherwise it can be pretty easy to just start adding more calories to your diet, which isn’t going to work.
That’s not to say that you can’t get good benefits from just lowering carb consumption (something more like a paleo diet), but for fast fat loss, it seems like Keto really works. The keto flu thing is real, though, if you’re coming from a high carb diet. You might very well feel like complete crap for the first week. If your current diet is high in carbs, I think it might make sense to try to bring that down to 50ish carbs a day for a bit before you try super-low carb, just to ease into it a bit.
Sister and I have been doing low carb for two years. I am way stricter than she is about cutting carbs. She eats limited fruit. I have lost about 50 pounds and she 25-30.
I hesitate to jump into these threads because I hate this particular debate. I will only say that anecdotally, what has worked best for me is squeezing as much fat into my diet as possible. It controls hunger extremely well and makes keeping to the diet much easier than calorie restriction. The main thing to be avoided is spiking insulin. I recommend reading some stuff by Dr. Robert Lustig, or catch his you tube vids. He explains the science of it all very well.
This is always a contentious issue, but I, for one, am not going to argue with my own success.
This is exactly what I’m doing and it works for me as well. I don’t have a lot to lose which makes the shedding of the weight somewhat slow. I no longer consider it a “diet.” It’s just how I choose to eat. My boss keeps a basket of mini chocolates at her desk available for staff, and leaves it the community cabinet when she’s not here. I realized after about a year (way too long) that I was probably eating a couple of full size candy bars per day by taking a chocolate here and there. That, and other dumb choices I made in the last couple of years, made me put on close to 15lbs. Now I’m working on taking it off.
I’m not sure if keto is the way to go unless it’s for a medical reason. Carbs probably aren’t why your diet is less successful as you age. Aging is why. You have to reduce calories a bit to account for decrease base metabolism.
I do calorie counting for my diet and skew heavy in protein and don’t stress too much about fat or carb as long as I’m in the calorie range I want to be.
ETA. One exception about carb and fat, I tend to skew heavier on carbs relative to fats on exercise days. Weight lifting low on carbs sucks for me.
MyFitnessPal forums have a lot of keto threads with recipes and such. I’m curious if the keto helps with the migraine if you have success staying on the keto diet for a few months would you mind sharing the result positive or negative? Someone I know has horrid migraines and nothing has worked for her. But I’m not sure if she’s tried keto.