[scottLobster]

Does your plant-based diet include bread/carbs, and did you stick with the keto diet for more than a few days?

Usually when people feel like crap (initially) on keto it's their bodies switching over from primarily burning sugar to primarily burning fat, but it subsides after a few hours/days depending on the person/diet (look up "keto flu").

Note that keto does not necessarily include meat. You'd get the same effect eating nothing but raw vegetables for a week.

[cageface]

I eat complex carbs like brown rice. I avoid refined carbs. I did keto for two weeks and finally had to stop because I felt worse and hated what I was eating. To be clear I was eating the kind of keto diet I usually see people endorse which is very heavy in animal fat and protein.

In contrast I’ve been purely plant based for three weeks now and I’ve noticed dramatic improvements in my mood and energy levels. I’ve lost a bit of weight and I really enjoy what I’m eating. The numbness and swelling I’ve struggled with for over a year as a result of surgery for a broken leg has also massively improved, which I didn’t expect.

[scottLobster]

Yeah that would be the difference. I'm not really technically "keto" at this point given my cheat days, right now I'm doing a 16/8 daily fast, but my typical diet is about 2/3 fruits and vegetables 1/3 meat, and I've never felt better. By contrast I once tried eating something like 90% meat for weeks and also felt like crap (although I did lose weight). The lack of fiber was particularly palpable. :P

My personal theory is a lot of prescribed keto diets have lax regulations on meat, so everyone who goes for them immediately maxes out the tastiest item available. The meat, assuming it's high quality/minimally processed isn't a problem directly, but eating more meat means you're eating fewer vegetables/fruit/nuts to balance things out.

I'd still say meat is more than a luxury in moderate doses. Zinc/B-Vitamins/Omega-3s and a lot of other good stuff is very hard to find naturally in non-meat form, and given the lack of regulation in the supplement industry I'd rather get such things through food.

[invisible]

I've switched to a diet that is mostly plant based with small portions of meat occasionally and low carb intake. I don't agree that "plant based" is the reason you feel better but I do think not eating huge quantities of meat and carbohydrates/sugar causes your body to be a little more accommodating.

[cageface]

The link between consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol with cardiovascular disease is extremely well established so I don't think it's a coincidence that I feel this much better after cutting them out of my diet.

[DiThi]

The link is not well established at all, esp. considering the studies of the last decade or two.

https://lifeforbusypeople.com/2016/08/24/why-anti-fat-is-com...

Industrial meat is not exactly good, though, it has all kinds of issues but the fat and cholesterol aren't a problem.

[cageface]

Fat and cholesterol are very much a problem, despite what a lot of vested interests would like you to believe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmKv1m2SVio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBtfzd43t8o

[DiThi]

The vast majority of the studies mentioned in those videos are old, where most researchers could get away with hacking the P values [0]. A lot of studies done in the last decade contradict the older ones (the article I linked earlier is full of sources). Also correlation is not causation. In how many of those studies controlled the amount of carbs? Because the combination is very important [1]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42QuXLucH3Q

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14831224

Edit: Looking at the last link of your first video, it acknowledges low carb diets are beneficial short and medium term, but there's very little literature for long term. It concludes low carbs are bad long term... but you must see the table on page 13 to see how they reached that conclusion. The "low carb score" group still had a crazily high 37-42% of carbs (compared to LCHF diets which are usually 5% carbs), it had more smokers and all of them had trans fats (very dangerous but can be easily avoided altogether).

[invisible]

I'm fairly sure that "diets" are not scientifically proven in any way. I just said I disagreed with you on your conclusions (which are anecdotal). I was suggesting that over-consumption of anything (but especially things that are harder to digest, process, store) MAY cause your body to feel like shit.