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by astrange 4724 days ago
Most of your changes could be explained just by calories. Beer is quite high calorie since it has so many carbs, and eating nuts satiates you faster so you end up eating less.

Alcohol itself doesn't affect weight much, though IIRC fat isn't metabolized well together with it. But it can improve your lifespan: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9481115
2 comments
brianbreslin 4724 days ago
Not really. Assume he cut out 300 calories a day of beer. So a pound of fat is 3600 calories roughly. By just cutting out beer he would need 12 days to lose 1 lb. not the rate he was losing which was 1/3lb per day. Many studies have shown pure caloric deficits do not lead to rapid weight loss.
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mullingitover 4724 days ago
I figured the same thing--I definitely didn't feel like I was cutting calories in any way. I took up drinking lots of whole milk, eating bacon, and at my desk I'd eat a whole 12-ounce coffee cup full of mixed nuts (still do, in fact) each day at work. I didn't even cut carbs, I ate pizza and pasta pretty regularly. The only thing I did was aggressively eliminate refined sugars and beer from my diet.

I'm curious if gut fauna could be a factor.

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brianbreslin 4724 days ago
Fat is pure energy so you were entering ketosis through the bacon and whole milk etc. nuts are High in fiber as well, so you may have also helped flush out the stuff faster? Pasta and bread I think have less insulin effect than sugars and alcohols so maybe that's all your body needed to avoid fat hoarding.
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jawilson2 4724 days ago
It is hard to say based on the limited info he posted, but you only enter ketosis if you consume under 20-50 g of carbs per day. A single slice of bread, one yogurt, a bowl of cereal, or even a few carrots can take you out of it. You can't really accidentally get into ketosis without very deliberately avoiding carbs.
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zurn 4724 days ago
Blaming carbs is not a "just calories" explanation, rather the opposite.
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astrange 4724 days ago
I suppose you're suggesting the same calories+alcohol in some other form (shochu and lean meat?) would be better. Maybe so, but I don't know if there's any studies on that.
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