Effects of a Year in Ketosis [video]
quantifiedself.com
quantifiedself.com
1) It was far easier than I thought it would be (some fatigue 5-6 days in, but that was quickly gone)
2) I have less meals (usually 2 meals, I am totally fine with that)
3) I have no cravings (the famous midnight snack is no more)
4) No side effects so far, not even constipation which I read some people have.
5) It requires creativity in the kitchen (or else you'll be sick of eating the same things again and again).
I supplement with Calcium-Magnesium-Zink and Multi-Vitamins.
For me personally it is easier to loose weight on a ketogenic diet than with a carbohydrate-rich diet. Especially due to no cravings, that probably due to more stable blood sugar. That being said you can loose weight with any diet of course.
Interestingly Ketosis is nothing "new", it has been used for a very long time in younger patients with regular seizures, as ketosis reduces the amount of seizures significantly[1]. A lot of interesting research will follow in the near future. For example whether a ketogenic diet reduces the risk of some form of cancers (it might "starve cancer cells"), if there are significant long-term side effects, et cetera...
[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD001903...
https://www.pcrm.org/health/cancer-resources/diet-cancer/typ...
http://www.health.harvard.edu/family_health_guide/red-meat-a...
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0309174014...
Some form of anarcho-primitivism that comes from working so closely with the most advanced tech?
Ironically, I eat a high cholesterol diet because I believe I'm not a so-called hyper-responder. But also because my doctor says "keep doing what you're doing" every time I get a lipid panel.
Hydration is extremely important in any diet, but this particular diet on me seems to especially need it. I get extremely lethargic if I don't get enough water. I also find I have to force feed myself. To have enough energy and therefore willpower to avoid carb-loaded food, I generally have to eat 50% more than I feel like I "want" when first sitting down to a meal. I find myself getting bored with the food before I'm done.
But it works for me. If I play by the rules, it's the only diet I've been able to see results and thus stick to.
I've been lazy lately and eating a lot of deli meat, so I need to reduce my sodium. Otherwise, I eat a lot of ribeye steaks, porkloin steaks, chicken thighs, eggs (often fried over easy and served on top of the steaks), peppers, onions, broccoli, spinach, romaine. Small amounts of cheese, beans, and tomatoes. Lots of spices.
And that's about it. Probably most of the weight loss is the fact I'm not drinking beer or eating cheeseburgers all the time. An ounce of lean protein is only about half the calories of an ounce of bread. Does one feel different than the other in the stomach? I think I'm probably de facto calorie reducing. But whatever. I don't care what the mechanism is. Leave that to the researchers. I just care that my knees don't hurt as bad and I have more energy.
Cheeseburgers are okay! Just hold the bun and the ketchup. One of my favorite keto meals is a double cheeseburger with bacon, mustard, extra mayo, lettuce, and onions from Five Guys or In-N-Out.
I keep steaks in the fridge at home. Four minutes a side is a lot faster, less effort, and tastes better than driving down and pulling apart a Five Guys burger.
I've lost 30 pounds while baking as a hobby and reducing meat intake to accommodate a family member; my carb consumption is way up. This is in part because I know what I'm eating, in carbohydrate form, and am conscious of the quality and quantity.
I'm not necessarily recommending that as a diet plan for anyone; I'm presenting it as a counter to the keto diet items that show now.
In fact, it's even sillier than that since extreme bursts of energy (which most of us call exercise) are demonstrably very good for your health.
If by "extrema" you meant "excessive things", then your point is tautological.
How are the food groups defined? Why isn't ethanol included as a food group? Do you consider fiber in its own group?
Taking "balanced" portions from a set of groups makes the context in which the groups are defined very important.
What are the food groups? What's the right proportion? Does it vary with age/ethnicity/nurture?
These are precisely the questions being examined, so telling people to eat a balanced diet without telling them what that actually is, doesn't help.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Atkins_diet
EDIT: for those downvoting. Look at the "Expert opinions" section, it has the details that others have given about the referenced site.
I think the presenter who has an MD and a PhD from the WashU School of Medicine and a BA in Biology from Princeton (Of course I don’t think that having a diploma (or three) from a University makes what you say any more or any less true[0]) is arguing against the lipid hypothesis[1] and for the sugar hypothesis[2]: that sugar is actually the cause of all those ill effects.
There doesn't seem to be a consensus, though in the past the consensus seemed to be for the lipid hypothesis though that appears to be rapidly breaking down.
[0] Lots of people without degrees of any sort are saying the same thing, they’re all just as right/wrong
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid_hypothesis
[2] https://proteinpower.com/drmike/2006/01/05/the-sugar-hypothe...
The problem is that it's very hard to conduct proper studies analysing this. 'Observational studies' are useless, because if I take a randomized group of meat-eaters versus vegans, of course the latter group will be significantly more healthy. Vegans are most likely more concerned about their health in general which means less smoking, less alcohol being consumed, healthier sleep, they buy higher quality food in general, due to lack of choice when out in public they cook more themselves (they won't stop at a fast food restaurant), et cetera ... and then there is the Placebo effect, which is very powerful and should not be under-estimated.
The scientific data is not as clear as one might think, and "nutritionists" in general are pseudo-scientists at their best since you can find a study for anything. If not with humans, then with mice, or maybe just some study with some cells. The same with internet sites by the way. And Atkins strictly speaking is not the same as the traditional Ketogenic Diet. Regarding books about nutrition for example, I happen to agree with this reviewer of "The China Study" (not the original one, you'll see) http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3UR35AKTEYW43/ref...
If anyone wants to find serious information about nutrition, you should search for meta-studies, for example by the Cochrane Collaboration, and then you should read the abstract very carefully and not insert your wishful thinking into it.
I will not be able to convince you. Nutrition for many is such an integral part of who they are, that it is similar to criticising someone's religion and they are deep believers. If it works for you, I congratulate you (and I mean that, honestly). Nor do I want a debate in which everyone cites studies left and right that he has found on the internet, and then it is my job to go through dozens of them to find out exactly what they are saying and assess their methodological quality. I don't have the time right now, nor the motivation.
Let me just say: Science is hard, studying nutrition is very hard and especially regarding nutrition, there are so many things to think of and to take into account. And nutrition is also an individual thing, I doubt there is a one-size fits all. I was not the one speaking of truths where in reality we should be more careful about such claims.
Based on what? Your gut feeling?
>getting cancer from tofu
There aren't case studies of people getting cancer from anything. There are studies of large population behavioral patterns and comparisons of cancer rates between patterns. So to check the tofu thing, you need people that consistently eat tofu compared to people that behave the same in other regards except for the tofu. That's very difficult because someone who eats tofu is generally going to have a significantly different diet from someone who doesn't.
(if anyone more knowledgeable can correct me, by all means do so, because I don't even know if this is true)
Supposedly, 1/3 of the population are hyper-responsive to dietary cholesterol - as in, consuming it raises their blood cholesterol. The other 2/3 can eat a high animal fat diet and see little to no change in blood cholesterol.
If true, those numbers are probably enough to clinically prove that a high fat diet is, in general, bad, while simultaneously giving millions of people the ability to go keto and say, "see, it's healthy, doctors don't know what they're talking about!"
The problem is that most people don't know if they're hyper-responders so promoting a high fat diet as healthy for everyone is irresponsible.
I'm just talking about cholesterol here. Avoiding red meat and eating plant fiber seem to provide benefits besides just lowering cholesterol.
Because bacon is delicious.
Mmmmmmmmm.
Because it really isn't. The dietary recommendations we get from the USDA are soiled with non-scientific politics (see: http://goo.gl/bjk0Ik). Moreover, the state of nutritional epidemiology is absolutely abysmal -- even worse than social psychology -- so you have to be very careful about which papers you take seriously. The fact that it's still possible to publish studies relying on BMI is a disgrace, as is the fact that they're still applying linear models to body-mass/mortality curves, which are known to be U-shaped.
Moreover, if you were to go on pubmed instead of pro-vegan sites, you'd find plenty of papers that raise serious questions as to the link between various types of fat and CHD (not to mention glycemic load and all that other jazz). Here's a good starting point: http://goo.gl/ObRJAx
Assuming you're serious about health, rather than being vegan for reasons pertaining to animal rights, I encourage you to read both of these papers. In all seriousness, though, I doubt any of this will change your mind, as I strongly suspect you're vegan for other reasons.
The second paper you've linked, the systematic review, is actually mostly in favor of a vegan diet. How does that raise questions about consuming animal fat and CHD?
The second paper draws distinctions between several forms of fat hilighting the weak evidentiary link between most fats and CHD. Trans fats are an obvious exception. I posted it in response to the claim that low-fat diets are almost certainly healthier. At the very least, that paper reveals that eating meat isn't incompatible with longevity and good health, contrary to claims you've been making all over this comments section.
But since you asked, here's what 5s on sci-hub revealed, clicking literally on the first two links without looking:
- http://goo.gl/tWB3LA // Maternal vegan diet causing a serious infantile neurological disorder due to vitamin B12 deficiency
- http://search.proquest.com.sci-hub.io/docview/197420736?pq-o... // yeah, ok, it's raw-vegan, but the B12 issue applies to all vegans (as noted in the refs of paper 1), especially since many can't seem to distinguish between B12 contents and bioavailable B12 ...
To be clear, my claim isn't that vegan diets are unhealthy. Rather, it's that we don't really know much due to the poor state of nutritional epidemiology, and that there's at least some evidence showing that veganism is really hard to get right.
Also, the B12 boogeyman? Just take a weekly supplement and be fine.
The point wasn't to do a systematic review of the literature, but rather to counter your argument whereby those skeptical of the lipid hypothesis are equivalent to climate change deniers.
If you're actually interested in this stuff, I invite you to cultivate a genuine interest in the matter and use this nifty little link to get to all the paywalled papers your heart desires: http://sci-hub.io/
Further, I'd be happy to share what I think good guidelines are for separating wheat from chaff in nutritional epidemiology studies.
>Also, the B12 boogeyman? Just take a weekly supplement and be fine.
I mean no disrespect, but I find this answer to be as comical as it is widespread. In one fell swoop, you've (A) implied that vegan diets are not balanced (B) ignored the body of literature surrounding the (possible) toxicity of artificial vitamins (C) undermined your sustainability argument. Moreover, B12 is but one example; I again invite you to make liberal use of sci-hub, pubmed and google scholar.
Or just eat a couple spoonfuls of nutritional yeast every day.
And no one ever died or had their brains explode from being on the South Beach Diet.
B12 deficiency manifests itself as acute and irreversible nervous system damage. It's a fair question - do you notice when you don't get enough B12?
You can say the same thing for magnesium deficiency - it causes permanent damage over time. Furthermore, 75% of the population is deficient in it, and it's nearly impossible to detect and diagnose a deficiency. Your body doesn't tell you "hey, time to eat some magnesium" the way it tells you to eat food. Chances are you (yes, you) are deficient in magnesium, unless you take a supplement.
Yes, B12 deficiency is serious, but there are other equally important vitamins and minerals that even non-vegetarians are deficient in, whose symptoms are difficult to detect, and require supplementation to fix.
Vegetarian diets don't have the monopoly on required supplementation.