Ketogenic diet

Sin1981

Hi,
I'm curious about the ketogenic diet, as I'd like to lose some body fat. From googling this topic there seems to be a lot of talk about how, once you go into ketosis after 2/3 days, your body uses up stored FAT, converts to ketones which your brain and other organs use to function. There is also a lot of info about weight loss/Stored fat loss.

what I don't get is how exactly this stored fat can be tapped into for energy - if a person is consuming a high fat diet, surely the fat that is being converted to ketones is fat that is consumed in the diet, and NOT stored fat in adipose tissues? Can someone explain?? Is the keto diet actually using up stored fat preferentially over dietary fat??

and, if calories deficit is required along with keto diet, then what is the point of a low carb diet? a person could eat 100% Carbs, but have a calories deficit in order to lose weight.

any comments appreciated.

Blacktie.

I'm sure this thread won't turn into a massive sh!t storm

Basically you're right. Calories in v calories out is the most important part of losing weight. Some people find that a high fat diet makes that much easier to adhere to.

Also when starting out on a high fat diet since your taking in much less carbs now you'll lose a lot of water weight at the beginning as well so this is extra motivation for people beginning a weight loss journey.

High fat diets tend to be more favourable for less active people. The more active you are the more carbs you'll need to fuel workouts and replenish glucose stores.

Keto isn't some magic metabolic pathway. It's just another tool in the toolbox that may or may not suit certain people. Fat is not the devil but it's also not saviour it's made out to be by the zealots.

ford2600

It seems to be most of the success with Ketogenic diets come with people switching from a pretty horrible, but sadly typical, western diet.

They then focus on the macro difference(high carb to very low carb) in explaining their weight loss whereas in reality it's probably as much to do with
*improved quality of the carbs they do eat, way more veg as against very little and a load of crap convenience carbs
* increase in protein in diet

Both of these are two of the common factors in any diet with a focus on whole foods and quality. The increase in veg (in favour of say cereal based foods) and in particular fibre will lead to increased satiety and a happier gut bacteria (and all the benefits that brings to metabolic health).

In my experience very few people truly eat keto, it's really hard to get right in the western world. Unless you are pissing on keto sticks to check your urine, you are probably having a little too much carbs and certainly too much protein. Unless you are hitting 75-80% fat (depending on activity level) you are probably just on a low carb diet. Don't take my word for it, listen hear to this Aussie
http://www.scienceofultra.com/podcasts/19

Clean up your diet, eat primarily whole foods, learn to cook and shop and you are most of the way there. in time maybe try Intermittent fasting just t improve your metabolic flexibility and to give you the tools to control your food choices better. Try Keto if you like, just make sure you have no cuts on your fingers when you p1ss all over them... and don't be expecting miracles you wouldn't get from any well thought out diet built around whole foods

pumpkin4life

Lol, ****storm time.

All I'll say is that it works/worked extremely well for me in terms of weight loss/muscle gain and my lifting (in combo with CKD or low carb as pointed by the user above) has skyrocketed on it.

Obviously I ain't a doctor but you could do worse to give it a try. Might work well for you.

ford2600

pumpkin4life wrote: »

Lol, ****storm time.

All I'll say is that it works/worked extremely well for me in terms of weight loss/muscle gain and my lifting (in combo with CKD or low carb as pointed by the user above) has skyrocketed on it.

Obviously I ain't a doctor but you could do worse to give it a try. Might work well for you.

I certainly think you'll get a variance across people who do well on a keto diet, it suits some people quite, more Inuit DNA than south sea Islander maybe:)

I would consider doing it if
* I was doing another ultra endurance event and food was hard to get en route or I was chasing the clock
* I went back playing multi day poker events, the even keel you get from diet would be a huge advantage when sleep deprived and up against guys getting by on sugar and caffeine.. Some memory champions use it for competitions.

I would guess with CKD your body doesn't downregulate it's ability to use glycogen which it does if entirely Keto.

If you are going to try it remember not all fats are the same. I'd be inclined to choose fat in the order of diet make up mono, saturated and then poly.

I would treat poly fats as vitamins, get enough for health but don't overuse them and certainly not for cooking/frying.

For cooking choose a saturated fat preferably coconut or lard like beef dripping.
As there is no free C bond they are much less prone to oxidation under heat as against a fat with many (poly) C.

Chris MasterJohn is a great source on all things fat related

livedadream

Sin1981 wrote: »

Hi,
what I don't get is how exactly this stored fat can be tapped into for energy - if a person is consuming a high fat diet, surely the fat that is being converted to ketones is fat that is consumed in the diet, and NOT stored fat in adipose tissues? Can someone explain?? Is the keto diet actually using up stored fat preferentially over dietary fat?? and, if calories deficit is required along with keto diet, then what is the point of a low carb diet? a person could eat 100% Carbs, but have a calories deficit in order to lose weight. any comments appreciated.

but breeeaddd squishy chrispy bready buttery fresh melted cheesy bread.... sorry thats not helpful.

look im all for a good fad diet but good old fashioned eat normal food and exercise more and drink a ****e load of water worked for me so thats the only advise i can give.

someone told me the a while back that the diet im on is called the low human intervention diet in the US lolz. Basically i dont eat processed foods and dont drink anything but water or peppermint tea. (i dont drink my calories basically). my dietitian told me its easy, if i dont understand or cant pronounce the ingredients i cant eat it. also try to keep food as close to how its produced as possible, potatoes fine... crisps (basically fried and flavoured potatoes) baaaddd chicken fine... chicken nuggets badddd

simple but effective, almost 7 stone gone now.

ford2600

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.ie/2016/07/nusi-funded-study-serves-up_6.html?m=1

Discussion on new metabolic ward study comparing keto diet with high carb diet to test Insulin hypothesis.

Some independent but very well regarded researchers did the research on behalf of the Taubes group.

Blacktie.

ford2600 wrote: »

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.ie/2016/07/nusi-funded-study-serves-up_6.html?m=1

Discussion on new metabolic ward study comparing keto diet with high carb diet to test Insulin hypothesis.

Some independent but very well regarded researchers did the research on behalf of the Taubes group.

I did not expect that conclusion when I saw Taubes name mentioned.

ford2600

Blacktie. wrote: »

I did not expect that conclusion when I saw Taubes name mentioned.

Taubes (who seems to be a complete cnut) and Peter Attia set up organization to test their various hypotheses. Attia seems to have rowed back quite a bit since the early days.

In fairness they used pretty heavyweight (no pun intended honest:)) researchers and were never going to be able to interfere.

Gueynet had a pretty interesting (if you are a bit nerdy) online discussion with Ludwig about their various theories for obesity; food reward versus carbs/insulin.

will56

Interesting write up from Precision Nutrition on the Ketogenic Diet

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/ketogenic-diet

Sin1981

so from what I can gather Ketogenic diet might work in certain scenarios (epilepsy, high performance athletes,cancer), but for fat loss, it does NOT work. the body needs a calorie deficit to force the body to lose weight, whether that is water, muscle or fat loss.

Does anyone know the best approach, i.e. diet breakdown, calorie deficit target for someone wanting to lose body fat, and minimise muscle loss?

thanks for all the responses.

Blacktie.

Sin1981 wrote: »

so from what I can gather Ketogenic diet might work in certain scenarios (epilepsy, high performance athletes,cancer), but for fat loss, it does NOT work. the body needs a calorie deficit to force the body to lose weight, whether that is water, muscle or fat loss.

Does anyone know the best approach, i.e. diet breakdown, calorie deficit target for someone wanting to lose body fat, and minimise muscle loss?

thanks for all the responses.

Calorie deficit. Keto can be one method of achieving this.

will56

Sin1981 wrote: »

so from what I can gather Ketogenic diet might work in certain scenarios (epilepsy, high performance athletes,cancer), but for fat loss, it does NOT work. the body needs a calorie deficit to force the body to lose weight, whether that is water, muscle or fat loss.

Does anyone know the best approach, i.e. diet breakdown, calorie deficit target for someone wanting to lose body fat, and minimise muscle loss?

thanks for all the responses.

A helpful infograph from Precision Nutrition, again
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/calorie-control-guide-infographic

j@utis

if you're on facebook, I recommend checking out KETOGAINS facebook group (25,000+members). I guarantee you'll be amazed. I'm planning to go keto myself but not yet, maybe next year some time. I just love my veggies too much
and to disappoint - yeah, you still need calorie deficit to loose weight on keto but many people experience reduced appetite when carbs are minimal therefore it's easier to adhere to. I'm one of them: if I have 400kcal for breakfast in form of eggs, rashers, avocado etc, I can go 5-6hours without food but if I get the same amount of calories from porridge, jam and banana - I'm hungry in less than two hours.

Alf Veedersane

Sin1981 wrote: »

so from what I can gather Ketogenic diet might work in certain scenarios (epilepsy, high performance athletes,cancer), but for fat loss, it does NOT work.

It's not saying it doesn't work. It's saying it doesn't work better for fat loss than the baseline high-carb diet. For both diets, the deficit was the same.

There was a slightly better energy expenditure on the ketogenic diet but it was so small that it was only just about detectable with state of the art equipment.

In short, it's the caloric deficit that results in fat loss....not the composition of the diet.

j@utis

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

...
There was a slightly better energy expenditure on the ketogenic diet but it was so small that it was only just about detectable with state of the art equipment.
...

AFAIR it was about 50kcal more per day.

Alf Veedersane

j@utis wrote: »

AFAIR it was about 50kcal more per day.

About that but that was at the end of the study. The trend of energy expenditure over and above the baseline was downwards across the 4 weeks on the ketogenic diet.

j@utis

I've read something about that study but not much. I just was surprised that the study was so short when full adaptation to state of ketosis might take up to 3 weeks.

Mellor

Sin1981 wrote: »

Hi,
once you go into ketosis after 2/3 days, your body uses up stored FAT, converts to ketones which your brain and other organs use to function. There is also a lot of info about weight loss/Stored fat loss.

That's the jist of it.

what I don't get is how exactly this stored fat can be tapped into for energy - if a person is consuming a high fat diet, surely the fat that is being converted to ketones is fat that is consumed in the diet, and NOT stored fat in adipose tissues? Can someone explain?? Is the keto diet actually using up stored fat preferentially over dietary fat??

It won't bias stored fat over dietry fat. You'll still need a deficit. Once you are in deficit, your body is in a "fat burining mode" and fires into store fat without interuption.

and, if calories deficit is required along with keto diet, then what is the point of a low carb diet? a person could eat 100% Carbs, but have a calories deficit in order to lose weight.

A person could, but would they is a different question.

By that logic what is the point of any weight loss diet. A person can eat what ever they want and just stop eating they they are at their target.

The real world doesn't work like that. A casual look at the average person proves that.

Sin1981 wrote: »

so from what I can gather Ketogenic diet might work in certain scenarios (epilepsy, high performance athletes,cancer), but for fat loss, it does NOT work. the body needs a calorie deficit to force the body to lose weight, whether that is water, muscle or fat loss.

That's a odd way to look it it. But that logic, no diet works.

Keto helps create a deficit by removing carbs a significant energy source in a normal diet.

Does anyone know the best approach, i.e. diet breakdown, calorie deficit target for someone wanting to lose body fat, and minimise muscle loss?

500 cals per day deficit is usually wheeled out. But the actual max or optimum numbers depends on body condition.

Adequate protein (2g/kg) in conjunction with resistance training will help minimize muscle loss.