[garrettdc]

I've seen keto work great for a lot of people. Generally, they have been those that tended to overeat on carbs and junk foods like chips, soda, pizza, etc.

The mechanism at the end of the day is still caloric restriction that leads to weight loss. Keto is just a means to that end.

[bad_user]

Yes and no, calories aren’t equal.

E.g. insulin levels affects digestion, food high in sugars stimulates insulin secretion, which in turn leads to more fat being stored.

Foods made of refined carbohydrates can give you diabetes and yes, you can eat more calories on a Keto diet, versus a high carbs diet. I know because I tried both, with strict measurements and daily notes.

That said, I don’t think keto diets are healthy. Our body is made to eat vegetables. And we need carbs and sugars too — except that when they come from fruits and vegetables, you also get fibers, which diminishes insulin secretion, plus you get needed nutrients not found in white bread or cheesecake, so again, we’re talking of calories that aren’t equal.

[jzoch]

I had the opposite experience. I measured calories everyday and for some time would still eat garbage but lose exactly what I calculated according to my TDEE (adjusted over time based on actual results not some calculator) and when I switched to eating healthful foods experienced exactly the same weight loss with the caveat that it was SO MUCH EASIER. I was hungry less often and felt good rather than terrible with headaches. All in all, a calorie is a calorie is true enough that whether or not its a bad calorie wont significantly affect your weight loss but will make the process much easier and you'll end up healthier as a result of eating well.

[eloff]

A calorie is a calorie is just too simplistic. I used to hold that viewpoint, but I think now reality is more nuanced.

1) A ketogenic diet is wasteful by nature, you excrete some percent of the calories you consume.

2) It completely ignores the effects of hormones. You need insulin to store fat and build muscle. A diet that triggers more insulin may result in storing more fat. This does not violate the first law of thermodynamics - this energy will either be burned from your fat stores, or compensated for by reducing your metabolism. I expect in reality a combination of both.

[garrettdc]

I've seen some studies on this, but I (personally) haven't run across many that show a significant difference in isocaloric diets where carbohydrates are replaced calorie for calorie with fats.

If it is swapped with a mix of protein and carbs, then you have some confounding variables of the thermic effect of the protein to account for.

From what I have seen, keto diets work due to two things: 1) Reduced caloric intake due to chopping out carbs - a major swath of foods 2) Increased adherence due to stabilizing blood sugar levels and thereby increasing satiety (the whole "stay full longer" thing)

If you have other studies that have been shown significant in an isocaloric state, I'd love to see them. I just haven't run across any that have shown good control around these areas. I personally like keto (and bacon) so I'm always looking for another excuse to do it, but I don't think that there is a ton of evidence for it doing any hormonal magic in healthy populations at the moment.

[bad_user]

It's not only simplistic. It's reductionist, the mentality that promoted margarine over butter and sweetened foods over fatty foods since 1960, yielding generations of diabetic, obese people with heart problems and increased rates of cancer, to the point that we're considering it an epidemic.

Nutritionists have promoted so many falsehoods based on faulty studies, forever damaging the image of the healthcare industry, that people now feel justified in ignoring sound medical advice and embracing alt-truth (e.g. anti-vaxers).

[eloff]

alt-truth, that made me chuckle. I should `#define alttruth false` and then replace all instances of false with alttruth for an April 1st commit.

But I understand that mentality. I see myself as a very logical person compared to the general population, yet when my doctor tells me I need to lower my cholesterol, I ignore her. What does she know? What they taught her in Medical school, and I don't trust that at all. She doesn't have the time in our rushed 10 minute appointments to debate me on the subject, or even give me a recommended reading list.

I feel the need to do my own research on the subject by reading medical papers but I haven't had the energy or inclination yet. From what I have bumped into over the years, it seems your basic HDL and LDL numbers don't say much about risk of heart disease or stroke.

[kmm]

I don't see how insulin leading to fat storage changes anything about the caloric balance. Insulin promotes fat storage because it's a signal glucose is available in the blood, and the body prefers glucose over fat. So much so that making new fat is pretty rare, your fat stores are usually made directly from your diet. But if you replaced those sugars with the same calories worth of fat, you'd just burn that fat, and at the end of the day, exactly the same amount of fat will have been stored.

That's like saying that calling `fsync` will make your files bigger because it promotes data storage. It might store some data earlier, but the end balance is the same.

[tacon]

While calories in vs calories out always holds, that doesn't explain the entire system. It is like saying Bill Gates is rich because he makes a lot of money. Well, duh. A theory of weight balance in humans needs to account for the sudden weight gain when hormones change as we age, in women especially. If something changes homeostatis, the fact that we can still restrict calories by fighting the new urge to eat is not much comfort.

[megaman22]

The great thing about a keto diet is you can eat vastly fewer calories, without being hungry. A couple of eggs and a few slices of bacon will set me up for the entire day, such that I forget to even think about eating until after I get home from work. A bowl of cereal or a plate of pancakes with the same number of raw calories will have me murderously hungry by 10 AM.

[KerrickStaley]

One issue with keto weight loss is that some of the lost weight is water weight—the keto diet reduces your body's ability to store water.

So keto may reduce your weight, but it's not actually reducing your fat stores, it's just reducing the amount of water in your body.

[nategri]

This is strictly a first week "problem." Having lost 22+ pounds since February on a (renewed) low carbohydrate diet, I can assure you not all of that was water weight. Previously I lost over a hundred pounds by eating this way and have managed to keep it off for years. It took a series of very large lifestyle changes to get me a little off track---something I'm now correcting.

[goda90]

But if weight is still being lost over weeks, that can't just be water reduction, or else there would be no water left to lose pretty quickly.

[netman21]

Right. 50 pounds down here. It took 6 months but I have stayed keto and kept it off four more months since starting. Losing 6 pounds the first week was obviously water weight but wow, that is the way to start a diet.

I saw one good description of what is going on: You don't ever lose fat cells just the amount of fat each one stores. When you enter ketosis your cells give up some of the water they were using as place holders for the fat they are waiting to store. Thus the periodic "whoosh" that ketorers report. Every few weeks you notice you have to pee a lot and you lose a few pounds.