Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?
blogs.scientificamerican.com
blogs.scientificamerican.com
There are downsides though. It's not cheap, it's restrictive and it requires you to build a fairly sizeable knowledge base in order to successfully maintain the diet and your own health. For instance your body consumes more water in order to burn fat stores which leads to the body burning through electrolytes more rapidly. It is very common to supplement electrolytes every day. It is common to drink broth while on Keto in order to cover the daily salt intake requirements of Keto, ~5000-7000mg every day on top of normal dietary salt intake. Failure to cover the daily electrolyte requirement will lead to muscle cramps and more severe symptoms brought on by electrolyte deficiency in the body. Prior to supplementing magnesium I experienced leg cramps and quickly realized what was going on.
However there are significant health benefits. Weight loss, improved mental clarity and better energy levels throughout the day, as well as less need for frequent meals are positive effects that a lot of people experience on Keto. It is also a useful tool for reversing lifestyle diseases such as diabetes type 2 and pre-diabetes.
When it comes to the stuff you "have to give up" while on Keto it's mostly a case of strict moderation rather than completely cutting things out. The things you do try to cut out though like bread, sugar, potatoes, pasta, corn-syrup etc have good alternatives available in most grocery stores. You can bake bread out of almond flour, make pasta out of almond flour (or have someone make it for you), replace potatoes with sweet potatoes and so on.
If you're thinking that keto sounds like it's too much hassle please leave me a reply and I'll gladly talk about whatever you're unsure about.
In the sidebar on the right there are two very useful sections labeled "useful links" and "related subs". I personally recommend the ketoscience, ketogains and ketorecipes subreddits depending on your goals. I guess I can't leave out ketoxx either if you're a girl.
In addition to that I recommend reading anything written by Dom D'Agostino who is widely considered the #1 authority on the ketogenic diet. Also read Mark Sisson's books. And finally I recommend Joe Rogan Podcast Ep. 752 - Mark Sisson. Rogan can be somewhat of a pothead/hippie but if you can look past that his guests are often very informative.
https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307474259
then, as others have said, reddit.com/r/keto is good for "how to"
See: http://www.jbc.org/content/135/1/157.full.pdf
TL;DR Apple cider vinegar will decrease the glycemic index of food by interfering with carbohydrate digestion.
I rarely eat foods that are primarily carbohydrate based since that defeats the purpose of going keto, but if I do I try to find alternatives (sweet potato replacement for regular potatoes) and even then I severely restrict the amount that I eat. Sweet potatoes have important nutrients in them like beta-carotene, vitamin A, manganese and copper. It is as far as I'm aware always preferable to get vitamins and minerals directly from your diet rather than supplementation.
See http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Low-Carb-Potato-Salad---paleo_-... for an example of a keto friendly sweet potato salad.
For me at least it's important to get creative with what I eat. Staying Keto is a long term goal for me and while I started off doing Keto as a means to lose weight the immediate health benefits convinced me to stay Keto for the foreseeable future. While it's possible to do keto off nothing but cheese, bacon, avocadoes, eggs and low-carb greens such as spinach and broccoli it can get boring.
As long as my body stays in ketosis and I'm covering my body's nutritional needs I believe strict moderation rather than completely cutting all carbs is an acceptable way to diet. While it is completely possible to eliminate all carbs from your diet it is not requisite for staying in ketosis, though you of course do not have much margin for error before you knock yourself out of ketosis. Good news is it's much easier to get back into ketosis if you overshoot your daily carb allowance compared to the initial adaption period where you have to be very strict in order to adapt your body to keto.
For people who are dealing with insulin resistant type health conditions like diabetes type 1, 2 or even pre-diabetes there might be entirely different dietary requirements and a very strict emphasis on eliminating all carbs may be appropriate. When it comes to carefully managing health conditions with potentially severe health ramifications that's something which requires cooperation with a physician.
For most people, as long as you stay beneath the protein and carb limit you're completely fine.
I have no affiliation with them and don't drink it often but I can tell you that it tastes awesome.
A regular Ensure looks to have around 15g of sugars per serving, so it would not be conducive to a keto-type diet. For similar convenience there is a product called Ketochow - https://www.thebairs.net/ which I've found quite tasty.
Most likely. The amount of calories burnt by exercising is surprisingly low. Unless you really do a lot of it simply eating a bit less may be easier, esp. because you get hungry after exercising which easily leads to more intake than you have burned before.
I used to suffer from depression and anxiety. Meds didn't really help and I changed my lifestyle around. It helped. I do agree with you, exercise as well as diet is incredibly important if you want to feel normal.
Moral is, diet responsibly and pay for the metabolic panels when dieting.
The butter in the coffee supplies fat for fuel / energy, suppresses appetite, and does not contribute to weight gain or more specifically an increase in adipose fat tissue.
Simply cutting all calories is futile. Your body needs energy to sustain itself. The point of keto diet is replacing carbs with a significant increase in fat (~70% give or take) as a percentage of calories consumed.
But it is crucial to actually consume a lot of fat, not just try to cut overall calories.
Edit: I get the point that it stops hunger, but my point still stands, and the parent posters still doesn't make a great deal of sense.
The reason you put butter in your coffee instead of a spoonful of say, sugar, is that fat takes a long time to digest and even a fairly small amount of it (a table spoon of butter in your coffee) takes a while to digest. During that time period your hunger sensation is suppressed.
Coffee also promotes weight loss because it speeds up your metabolism. The idea behind buttered coffee is fairly simple. Put enough fat in your coffee so that you don't get hungry and eat a meal and you help extend your natural faste - and your morning coffee helps speed up your metabolism.
http://paleonick.com/articles/Bullet-Proof-Coffee
There are good reasons for drinking buttered coffee even if you're deliberately trying to avoid weight loss i.e you are following a net neutral or net positive caloric intake diet. When you're fasting your body isn't spending energy digesting food which means less of your body's immediately available resources aren't spent digesting food.
Even if you're getting calories from your coffee it doesn't impact your weight loss because you're still eating less calories than your body needs to maintain the weight.
https://authoritynutrition.com/3-reasons-why-bulletproof-cof...
I guess it might seem specifically OK for people on Keto diets only, but still, it seems worrisome longterm.
This is completely dependent on other factors. Weight loss is dependent on a hell of a lot of things in tandem. It is mathematically strictly better to say, drink only black coffee or sugar-free energy drinks in the morning. Caffeine is an appetite suppressant. The difference is that most people don't have the personal willpower to stick to the fasting without a few calories to help them along.
Weight loss in general is precisely mathematical in pacing and it will absolutely make you lose weight faster if you consume less calories.
You are ignoring an important factor: If you don't have enough calories the body will switch to starvation mode, you'll have low energy, be cold, etc.
The net result is that, unless you are actually starving (which is bad for you), you'll actually lose less weight that way!
This is a myth which has been proved to be absolutely false. You are simply wrong if you are basing any conclusions at all of of this.
I'm perfectly willing to be shown that I'm wrong, but I'll need more than just a sentence from you saying so.
You said "proved" - can you show me the proof?
Probably the best and most researched article on this.
Bullet point 4 here: http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debun... has an article reference.
Basically, you can certainly go into starvation mode, but not in any reasonable amount of time. Skipping meals or even fasting for a whole day will not cause "starvation mode". Prolonged calorie restriction can affect hormones like Leptin and affect energy expenditure.
Gary Taubes was the person who I learned from the most, many years ago about high fat, low carb diet, and I have been following his advice ever since, to great success.
He has MANY videos on the internet, here is a recent one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA4a5fjMR74
His book "Why we get fat" is also a great, clearly written explanation of all this, and I highly advise you to look into the subject, with an open mind. You may be surprised.
The other Keto adage is "calories count, but don't count calories". Meaning, if you eat a high fat diet, you naturally will feel full.
I kinda want to try and start again, it definitely had some benefits, as long as I managed to get enough calories and vegetables/nutrients (sorry I'm one of those persons that needs to take care they eat enough).
The big problem, however, is that in the mean time I've greatly reduced the amount of animal products from my diet--for environmental and ethical reasons, not health. And I'm not really sure how to do both.
I would need to spend a lot of money on almonds and other foods that may not seem that expensive until you need to consume them in bulk to replace the cheap, cheap carbs :) Being nearly-vegetarian is very cheap.
And even though I could probably hack the costs (or figure out something clever to do so), I'm not at all sure if it's even possible to live on a healthy keto diet while keeping my environmental impact footprint to a reasonable size that I can consider myself a responsible inhabitant of this planet. I don't think I can bring myself to eat very large amounts of meat again, even if they're organic certifiably happy cows. Tempeh has slightly more proteins anyway :p (also tastier than tofu, which is not a very high bar, I know)
Let me know if you make any headway! /r/veganketo helps.
p.s. I recently found that dumpster diving asian supermarkets I can get infinite supply of still-fresh packaged tofu, that has sure been helping!
I tried it years ago, but found it to be more of a pain than it's worth (I seem to have better luck with intense exercise 3x per week and avoiding sugar). And it seems like tons of meat and cheese is actually bad long term, in the sense it clogs your arteries or increases cancer risk.
Atkins did not look like he was in good shape inside when he died.
It strikes me as a body hack that bypasses a lot of bodily processes evolution may have counted on as we developed. But it seems like we know a fair amount about the chemistry and processes involved, so I'm curious.
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009...
This is an inaccurate conclusion based on old studies where the subjects underwent a high-carbohydrate high-fat diet. Recent studies on ketogenic diets (low-carbohydrate, medium-protein, high-fat intake) shows that dietary fats and dietary cholesterol barely make any sort of impact on the subject's cholesterol. Rather it is dietary carbohydrates and genetics which are the primary contributor to raised cholesterol and arterial blockage. When it comes to arterial blockage, studies have found that there is no significant correlation between high dietary fat intake and cardiovascular disease.
>or increases cancer risk
Keto is primarily a high-fat diet, not a high-protein or high-carb diet. Studies have showed that a sugar found in red meats called Neu5Gc is primarily correlated with inflammation in the body and the development of certain cancers.
If you're on keto you're less likely to develop cardiovascular disease, and while there is not enough data yet to draw a scientific conclusion preliminary research indicates that individuals who follow keto are at less risk of developing cancer due to restricting sugar intake.
See: https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/search?q=cancer&restric...
All of these posts link to multiple, verified studies which go into details about what I just said.
Cholesterol numbers are nowhere near the end of story, they're just markers. Rat and mice studies are useless for this purpose.
Please correct me if I am wrong. Preferably with published larger studies. In humans.
>Rather it is dietary carbohydrates and genetics which are the primary contributor to raised cholesterol and arterial blockage. So what about APOE4 individuals, which compose at least 20% of the population, who will see massively spiking LDL with higher saturated fat intake?
Yes, it's based on genetics, but also intrinsically tied to dietary (saturated) fat intake.
2. He did have a heart attack based from a genetic predisposition. His cardiologist said his condition was impeccable, considerint his diet.
The paradox is that keto diets, in the short term, seem to have a lot of great health benefits, yet all the blue zone diets are carb rich. My gut feeling is that for most people, the optimal diet in terms of health would be primarily high carb diet (with an emphasis on fermented foods and legumes), with occasional periods of keto dieting.
Intermittent fasting would be something that I imagine that most humans experienced wherever they lived however, and rat studies seem promising.
Yes, though all of them ate animal products and highly valued various animal fats.
That being said, we can find evidence of people eating all-meat diets in every corner of the globe, and often times if there were more agricultural people nearby, the carnivores were healthier and stronger (such as the Masai vs. the Kikuyu, the Sami vs. southern agricultural Swedes, etc.). Just because people were healthy eating one type of food does not mean they could have been even healthier eating another food if they had access to it.
Owsley "The Bear" Stanley, the famous LSD manufacturer and Grateful Dead sound engineer, lived very healthily on an all-meat diet for over 50 years. (Note: he did have cancer, though likely due to HPV and years of secondhand cigarette smoke and firsthand marijuana smoke, and his diet probably helped him survive it, and he had a heart attack, but that was likely due to complications from his youth that became noticeable after putting on 30 pounds of muscle weightlifting in his 50s.) He posted all about it on a forum years ago. It's a very interesting read: http://activenocarber.myfreeforum.org/ftopic22-0-0-asc-.php
Traditional Inuit also eat an all-meat diet with lots of fat. See Weston Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html#ch5), as well as the writings of Vilhjalmur Stefansson (http://highsteaks.com/carnivores-creed/vilhjalmur-stefansson... ).
The Plains Indians, as well. See "Guts and Grease: The Diet of the Native Americans" (http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/guts-and-grease-th...) and this talk by Stephen Phinney, "The Aboriginal Argument" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayf4R-y_RYo). Phinney himself has been on a very low carb, ketogenic diet for, I believe, two decades.
Some argue the Inuit were not ketogenic (http://freetheanimal.com/2014/03/reiterate-elevated-ketone.h...), but they tend to overestimate how long glycogen remains in muscles after death, as well as mistaking a lack of elevated ketones as meaning they weren't ketogenic (it's actually because they just use ketone bodies more effectively, which is why urine tests for ketosis only work during keto-adaptation). Dr. Michael Eades had a good article on this: https://proteinpower.com/drmike/2014/04/18/beware-confirmati...
Anyway, there's a lot more out there, but that'll get you started. I tend to believe an all-meat, ketogenic diet is the natural human diet, and I've had great success on it for the past year.
Other sites of note: http://www.ketotic.org/ http://www.empiri.ca/ https://zerocarbzen.com/ (There used to be an interview on this one with a family that has eaten nothing but ribeyes for the past 18 years. The whole family had tremendous health, and it even helped the mother overcome lyme disease. I thought it was fake the first time I read it. They unfortunately had to take it down because they were getting angry mail from angry vegans.)
Now, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my evolutionary history. My immediate ancestors are from central Asia / mideast but really don't know about anyone beyond great-grandparents. Observing myself, I seem to thrive in dry weather and feel horrible in humid weather (regardless of temp; winter moisture doesn't feel good either). This has led me to believe my "genetic preference" is for dry climates and possibly the foods found in arid places, which would probably be animals that feed on dry grasses and such.
I love fruits and vegetables, I have grown up eating lots of them, and salad everyday. However, I am open to skepticism, as right now in the last few days I've stayed home and eaten nothing but very fresh, healthy vegetables and fruit all day and yet still could not prevent this cold / congestion from taking root. I could not imagine eating zero vegetables for the rest of my life, though, it sounds ridiculous.
I'm fed up with generally being a low energy person, with chronic nasal congestion (inflammation, not mucous) maybe I will give this a shot. I don't need to lose weight, but I do want mental clarity and energy. I'm quite healthy "by the numbers," but a recent finding of almost deficient levels of Vit D and B12 leads me to believe that I require a high meat diet.
As for grass-fed vs. grain-fed, most of the arguments seem to center around omega-3, omega-6 ratios. The difference between grass-fed and grain-fed are negligible when you compare them to chicken and pork, let alone nuts and vegetable oils. If I could afford grass-fed beef, I'd eat it, but I think grain-fed beef is fine, especially in the United States. If anything, it has more marbling, so yum! For what it's worth, the Bear argued there was little difference nutritionally and that it had more to do with texture and flavor.
Why do you count this separately from "not overeating"? The important thing is to be calorie-negative to lose weight.
I've been on Keto for about two years now, and plan to eat this way for the rest of my life. I've gone from 235 to 180. Going from 245 to 235 took forever on a "normal" low fat diet.
My A1C and cholesterol have greatly improved.
You want to lose weight, don't eat anything in a box, buy fresh whole food, plenty of veggies and fruits, and meat, cut out sugar, and it'll happen automatically. We're fat because of processed foods that have far too many calories in far too small a bulk that makes overeating so easy you don't even know you're doing it.
Its possible to get most of your calories from carbohydrates, protein, or fat. The question is what is the right balance for optimum health? How much does this value change across different people (and possibly at different stages of life)? If you have epilepsy then a ketogenic diet might well be best. How about for other people?
What macronutient profile is "balanced"? What do you even base it on? Should it be 33% of each? Should we eat protein and fat in just a little in excess of what we need (to get the essential fatty acids and amino acids) and get the rest from carbohydrates? I don't think we have clear answers to those questions yet. Although, I think we have ruled out some diets as unhealthy (e.g. eating a lot of refined carbohydrates can cause diabetes). Since eating too many refined carbohydrates is bad does that rule them out as a primary calorie source? Probably not, but we need more research.
Personal Note: I've eaten a low carb, high fat, moderate protein diet for about 4 years. All my blood markers (cholesterol, triglycerides, etc) have improved significantly over that time period. Additionally, I used to get incredibly hungry all the time and feel bad if a meal was delayed. Now I can go much longer without eating and still feel well.
> I've eaten a low carb, high fat, moderate protein diet for about 4 years. All my blood markers (cholesterol, triglycerides, etc) have improved significantly over that time period.
That's like saying I've been smoking for 4 years and I don't have cancer so smoking must not have any long term adverse effects; bad logic and insufficient sample size.
Yes, you actually have to be able to define what range of mixes counts as "balanced" before you can label anything as outside of that range. (And, moreover, if you want to credibly assign significance to that label, you probably also need to be able to provide evidence that your definition of "balanced" corresponds to a range outside of which there are serious negative consequences.)
No, you don't; for example, eliminating one is not balanced now matter what numbers you assign to balance.
Absolutely every thread on fat, sugar is filled with huge amounts of anecdotal evidence that is entirely worthless and delusional.
Fat people comment that they've lost weight by planning their diets more carefully (what a luck that it was keto), what a surprise.
I'm aware that being overweight is a huge issue in developed world and that most people easily lose weights on restrictive diets but it's all a fad.
Everyone picks a diet. If you just randomly eat anything thats available to you, in the developed world, you are most likely significantly overweight and at very high risk of diabetes. With rare exceptions, most fad diets will leave you better off than with no guidance whatsoever. Sometimes pointing someone in the wrong direction is better than them walking off a cliff.
Diet science is definitely progressing and getting better. We knew the basics, like what happened when you didn't get enough vitamin C, but the rest of the details are finally getting fleshed out and accepted by mainstream science.
That said, people following the ketogenic diet need to be doing it correctly and under a doctor's supervision. If you half ass it you can end up just eating a shitload of bad fats and miss nutrients while not actually being in ketosis. That will not lead to a good outcome.
> but the rest of the details are finally getting fleshed out and accepted by mainstream science.
Uh, no, mainstream science is the only one doing the fleshing out; you're implication that they're behind and only now accepting what diet science already knows is anti-intellectual bunk. If it isn't mainstream science, it isn't science.
You can't do both.
good thing that the physical reaction isn't equivalent despite the fact that calorical intake of that sugar is the same.
it's a huge shame not to consume fiber, or berries, or other fruits.
fruits were made by plants to prolong the life of the consumer, it's absolutely impossible to overdose on bananas if you aren't deliberately consuming huge amounts and aren't prepared to sit for hours on the bathroom.
Sugars generally digest faster than starches but this is not always true. Oranges (as in the whole fruit with its structure and fiber intact) raise blood glucose more slowly than potatoes, even though oranges are mostly sugar and potatoes are mostly starch.
This also means that slowly eaten sugar is healthier than quickly devoured complex carbs (if dental health is ignored). E.g. eating 50g carbs worth of candy steadily over 4 hours will result in stabler blood glucose than devouring 50g carbs worth of rice in 5 mins.
To the original point, if you consume fruit you're not really cutting out "sugar". The OP probably means added sugar.
Yes you can, because unless you're being obtuse, I'm obviously talking about processed white sugar, not fructose found in real food.
I don't know what a normal low fat diet is, but the overruling factor in weight loss/gain is the ratio of work (exercise) to energy input (calories).
Caloric source matters, your body does different things with different sources.
Your metabolism will be reduced by reducing calories in. They are not independent variables.
I don't think you are off, but the key is not weight loss/gain...the key is healthy weight loss/gain and that has everything to do with what you consume.
I want to see the same person:
'immobile
'sitting most of the time, with short commutes and shopping trips
'intensely exercising 1 hr a day
'actively working out throughout the day
The point isn't that exercise _can't_ work, it's that aiming for dietary changes has a higher average ROI than exercise.
No one has argued that there is a lower than average ROI (you get paid for not eating?) from exercise.
But it's more complicated than that. Genetics cause one's predisposition as to how responsive a person is to cardio; see the University of Bath study and/or Michael Mosley's "The Truth About Exercise".
I'm replying mainly to raise the point that, in my experience, there are people who can moderate successfully, and there are people that it is better to abstain completely. I fall into the latter. I will fall off the wagon if I don't abstain from the "forbidden fruits."
My wife on the other hand is very capable of moderation. I simply am not, and I suspect I'm not alone.
So it's good to know why type of person you are in this regard.
The best way I've found to combat this is to not buy bad snack items.
[1] - All you need is one teaspoon a day. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ENSA93S/ref=oh_aui_sear...
I'll also check out IF.
One thing I LOVE about IF is that my cravings have naturally leaned me in these directions. 1) I've been drinking more Gatorade because I craved it. 2) I've added salt, mayo, cheese to my sandwiches to 'make it taste better' even though prior to this diet, I'd have a fairly bland sandwich (no mayo, salt, cheese). 3) I also tend to crave high fatty/protein foods. Like burgers. (I don't tend to crave bad foods for me, Nutella might be bad...but it's keto-friendly. And I only eat it in moderation.)
I also added magnesium to my diet due to my nerves becoming unsettled.
It's remarkable. The things you suggest, my body has pushed me in the direction of your suggestions. One thing I noticed, is that I crave more Gatorade and now I know why. At first, I thought it was one of those 'unhealthy' cravings that pop up from time to time but...I think you're right, that my body needs it to aid in burning fat.
[1] - I know this is about a Keto diet. But IF (Intermittent Fasting) showed a lot of promise after I did a bunch of research on it and it's fairly similar to Keto but without restrictions. It's more convenient for my lifestyle (it exercises my willpower on fast days/times, quicker meals, condensed feeding times).
Namely, in my research, IF showed similar benefits as Keto but without the added hassle of changing the entire diet and learning a new menu. It also simplified mealtimes.
I do a hybrid of two different IF diets. 1) Saturday through Wednesday, I eat 'normally' without going overboard with foods. Also during this five day stretch, I only eat between 10am-3pm, so I'll be fasting from 3pm to 10am (19 hours every day). I'll eat ~3000 calories in that 5 hour window. 2) Thursday and Friday I eat only ~700 calories. I don't 'count', I just estimate one meal and it's eaten between 10am-3pm.
Heck, even Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) used IF to get ripped. http://www.vox.com/2014/12/22/7403247/wolverine-diet-hugh-ja...
P.S. I'm 29. Lost 30 lbs (in 2-3 months). I have 40 lbs more to go. I might get there by the new year. I hope the info is helpful as it has been for me.
Not gonna lie, the lure of Keto was the promise that it's easy to stick with in terms of how your body reacts to it. I just get so much more hungry when I'm off Keto even if my caloric intake is the same.
But...I had to upvote you because it made me laugh. I like the idea that my 'diet' isn't the "healthiest" way to lose weight but it sure is ENJOYABLE and that's 95% of the battle, imho.
If you have any significant stores of body fat (15-18% body fat is the ideal for males, ~18-20% for females) your body is expending those fat stores in order to supply itself with the energy it needs. This makes it easier to stay calorie-deficient while on keto. During the past 7 months I've easily stayed calorie-deficient 80% of the time or more. I never go hungry, I eat whenever I'm hungry, I eat until I'm full and when I tally up the calories that usually puts me at or below 1500 daily calories.
Now this was the weirdest part of keto for me: When I'm doing intermittent fasting regularly I experience the most significant cognitive improvements.
All previous diets for me failed because I always felt like I couldn't think and do my job and needed to flood my system with calories in order to keep going... on keto I haven't had that feeling even once.
Why sweet potatoes, they have more carbs than regular potatoes.
How do you achieve an adequate fiber intake?
Sweet potatoes have important nutrients. I do not eat significant amounts of sweet potatoes, and only eat them for the nutrients. A typical meal with sweet potatoes in them has far less than 100 grams of sweet potatoes in total. There's also things you can do to interfere with carbohydrate metabolization such as ingesting apple cider vinegar which contains acetic acid. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/comments/53kejq/acetic_...
I eat greens with fiber as well as psyllium seed husks. Broccoli and avocados are staples in my everyday diet.
A better alternative is cauliflower. It can be used in most of the same places as potatoes, but is an acquired taste for some.
Edit: There are 27g of carbs in a sweet potato. That's more than my entire daily allowance on Keto.
Why stop? Bread is delicious and it make social eating event difficult / less engaging. You can take a meal off from the diet and be fine, but it's a slippery slope of will power.
I was watching that Michael Pollan series and he was talking about his theory that industrial bread was the problem and everyone would be fine if we went back to sourdough. Well this feels like one of those things that sounds good but has no substance, but clearly at this point I'm willing to try anything. There's a little bakery on my way home and they're open late. I've had half a loaf of sourdough bread in two and a half days and other than burping more, I feel no worse than I did last week.
What I wonder every time someone posts about ketosis is just how bad are sugars and starches for us, and how did we get this far without figuring it out?
There's also more and more rhetoric now about the microbial gut biome and the various stuff that we eat nowadays (antibiotics in meat, artificial sweeteners) changes whatever balance we might have had, once upon a time... you get the idea. The more I read, the more it seems like my "sometimes this makes me sick and sometimes it doesn't" experience with food, wheat in particular, is due to something more complicated. Possibly the sprue stage is a symptom rather than its own disease?
My partner has a similar condition (not celiac, not gluten sensitive, but 'something in bread' sensitive) and she found that sourdough from locally made starter was way easier on her system than anything from bakeries or the store.
(Source: We've been experimenting with breadmaking at home, so I've learned more than I ever expected to about bread over the past year.)
I don't have a strong opinion about the origin of the starter. It will definitely influence the flavor of the bread but other than that I don't think the origin is important. More important is the rise times. A longer rise is more likely to convert more sugars and also more likely to give indicators of a bad batch.
I said bakery, but there are commercial bakeries around and I meant a baker bakery (a boulangerie, if you will). The place I went to is the sort where you walk in, the bread is on wooden racks and they give it to you in a paper bag. I figured there are maybe three places I can think of that are more likely to be doing 'real' sourdough and they're all in the other direction.
Bread taste sooo good when you haven't eaten in a long time, it really is addictive.
Nugget grocery stores has in their steamtables mini pizzas that use a cauliflower crust.
I'm ethnically Indian, and grew up with white rice as by far the dominant carb in my diet. To this day, I'm not particularly fond of bread (though I like crusty, soft-crumbed bread like french baguettes from time to time). However, if I go more than a week without a rice based dish, I crave it on a visceral level.
I've just started a ketogenic low calorie diet, and mentally I feel great. I did go to bed early yesterday but I haven't needed a nap in a few days.
The mental part is a big deal for me. I haven't felt actually "awake" for a long time. Always this haze of sleepiness hanging over me.
I am working with my doctor on the diet. I'm basically using a vegetable protein powder for most of my meals, supplementing with some eggs, greens, and lean meat (mostly turkey at this point). And a multivitamin.
I've been successful before, but the hardest part is the first couple days of transitioning to ketosis. Many times I simply couldn't power through the initial cravings of the first few days. This time I did, and I'm going to ride this train as far as it will take me.
The second hardest thing is after. I'm actually planning to stay on a keto diet after, with the appropriate amount of calories for maintaining rather than losing weight. And eating whole foods instead of the powder (although I imagine it will still be my breakfast because it's so convenient).
edit: forgot to mention too that I make the protein shakes with almond milk which has a few grams of fat per serving as well.
They are large green olives from Napa Valley. I'm not that knowledgable about olives so I can't say more than that.
I eat mostly what's allowed on "Atkins 2.0, stage 1", plus some small stuff that's not like watermelon). Scientifically the calorie intake is more important than the what (for losing weight), but this diet helped me reduce that too.
>Why stop? Bread is delicious and it make social eating event difficult / less engaging. You can take a meal off from the diet and be fine, but it's a slippery slope of will power.
Can try with some extra rules, like "only on weekends", "only when having dinner at friends house" and also limit it to specific "light" items, not full-on refined-sugary/starchy stuff.
This has been the assumption but there's reason to believe it might be more complicated than that. Gary Taubes addresses the subject here:
My doctor says all evidence of pre-diabetes is gone. I used to get ear infections or bronchitis a few times a year. None since starting. She (my Dr.) says that is likely from the fact that keto dieters have less internal inflammation, though we have not measured that.
your basically saying you follow a low carb diet but drink alcohol and that is you main source of crabs right?
Liquor has 0 carbs unless it's infused with something.
alcohol and that is you main source of crabs right?
https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/hv0wu/bacon_booze_the...
In fact alcohol tends to have a greater effect on you when in ketosis so you even save some money when out drinking.
http://www.dimpflmeierbakery.com/product/10-pack-carb-smart-...
A great bakery with so many different varieties of breads. Most of it still warm when you buy it.
For reference, a general recipe (without any sweetener, but use stevia or something if you want):
- 3 eggs
- 3 Tablespoons cream cheese
- ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
But I get the social thing. I have been moderate carb (50-150g/day) and gluten free for around 7 years now. Things have certainly gotten easier with the social aspect, but so many things are breaded.
http://www.healthfulpursuit.com/2014/08/flaxseed-focaccia-br...
as far as pizza crust goes, there are myriad alternatives for that as well.
e.g. FTO, PPARG, APOA5, FABP2, and APOE.
Essentially, not everyone processes fat the same way, and for some, especially those with APOE4/4, a high fat diet may actually be deleterious to health.
People with the right genes will have great success with ketogenic diets... but convincing their friends to join in might not have the outcome they expect.
Apoe status appears to control the absorption rates of LDL cholesterol (tiny balls of fat).
Individuals with apoe4, appear to have really low LDL cholesterol absorption rates between cells, and high blood-LDL cholesterol concentrations.
Having done a bit of research on optimal dieting, its pretty inconclusive.
This study shows negative consequences resulting from high fat diets for apoe4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27656136
It does feel that we as a species, being omnivore, can do just fine on all sorts of different diets, and maybe the reason these testimonials come up for all sorts of different diets, is that it's the staying away from sugar / processed food, the working out, caloric restriction, weight loss and consequent improvement in quality of sleep that cause the improvements, as opposed to the food specifics.
Going from eating fast food, not working out and sleeping badly, to eating less caloric whole foods, working out and sleeping well would make anybody feel so much better and lose weight, regardless of what type of whole foods they pick.
If this is the case, then it opens the opportunity to pick your diet more based on say environmental impact or ethical reasons, as opposed to say feeling that your veggie diet is not as good as your friends' paleo diet because you have been veggie for 10 years and your friend just went paleo and so they are in the "omg I feel so much better" phase.
Wish it was possible to do a double blind study on diet and its effects but unfortunately for obvious reasons that's not possible. On the other hand it is quite possible to quantify your diet's environmental impact / footprint, which makes minimizing it reasonably feasible.
My take currently is that there is, as you suspect, benefit just in the experimental process. Novelty and change compel attention, which causes subtle improvements. But I think I also experience food-specific effects. I have no idea if those foods work the same way for others, but I could also believe that the profusion of diets that work is partly due to as-yet unrecognized differences between people.
I tried the standard advice (Canada Food Pyramid + exercise). I felt miserable (tired, irritable, hungry) and couldn't sleep well.
Keto has been the exact opposite. I feel great all the time. I sleep better. I no longer get daily nosebleeds. For the first 6+ months, I didn't exercise at all.
When I started the ketogenic diet, I felt much better, stopped exercising, and started losing a lot more weight rapidly.
I don't think it's simply lifestyle change, the diet specifically targets ketosis (which we are in naturally after 8 hours of not eating, i.e. Sleep) and maintaining the state to prolong the effects of ketosis (maybe indefinitely).
What makes you stop though is social eating, especially if it's pizza and beer :)
I also wonder if it's possible to work out while doing keto. Since muscles use glycogen to work, and the keto diet is intentionally low in glycogen, does that make weight training and cardio harder? Especially the former, since you're limited in how much protein you can eat, and strength training benefits from having ~150g of protein per day.
http://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2015/Oxy...
Dominic is also a super-strong guy and deadlifts like 600+ pounds while in ketosis. It's a fascinating 2 hour podcast. I don't think you'll be able to listen to it without wanting to be in ketosis.
Personally, I'm not a huge by-the-book cooker. For my keto/very-low-carb diet, I just focus on certain foods that are in line with the target macros. That means lots of:
- 80/20 hamburger meat
- Fatty steak cuts (e.g. ribeye)
- Fatty fish (e.g. salmon)
- Fatty chicken cuts (e.g. legs/thigh/dark meat)
- Most pork (except lean cuts like loin) e.g. pulled pork, bacon, belly
- Avocados
- Macadamia nuts
- Eggs (particularly yokes)
- All coconut products (e.g. oil, milk, unsweetened flakes)
- Green, leafy veggies that are low in carbs (e.g. kale)
- Green veggies that are high in fiber relative to carbs (e.g. Brussels sprouts, broccoli)
Spices are all good, so a lot of my meals turn out like meaty stir fry-type dishes without the starch and with a focus on adding fats (e.g. coconut oil, olive oil) if needed.
However, you don't have to be fancy. I usually just eat meat and low carb veggies for dinner. For instance, baking a bone-in chicken breast and heating up frozen veggies (lots of great mixes available) or doing a stir fry with chicken or beef and low carb veggies again (don't use packaged stir fry sauce, however since they are mostly sugar).
I also recommend the `Tim Ferriss - Dom D’Agostino on Fasting, Ketosis, and the End of Cancer` podcast, and as you will see, being a bodybuilder on keto does not seems to be an issue. Not for him also.
There is another podcast with him `Dom D’Agostino — The Power of the Ketogenic Diet` but I haven't got the chance to listen to it yet.
From what I've seen, your diet should be ~60-70% fat, 5% or less carbs, and ~25-35% protein. Definitely not 95% fat.
> I had several instances where my dinner in a pinch was melted down cheese and half-n-half. Your diet basically becomes cheese and avocados with some, but not too much, salmon or chicken
What about vegetables? I ate a lot of salads when I did keto. I also ate a lot of fattier meats, such as cured italian meats and ground beef. No reason to eat super lean protein when fat is most of your calories; buy the cheap fatty stuff and enjoy it. Also, eggs? I was having an omelette every morning.
> I also wonder if it's possible to work out while doing keto
It's very possible: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22835211 but I doubt it would be if you're not eating any protein...
As for vegetables, I missed carrots and peas too much. Mustard greens and broccoli are apparently okay, though. I could always just make salads out of baby spinach and arugula, but I suck at making salad dressings.
The rule for veggies is to avoid starch and stick to dark leafy greens.
My go-to easy dish would be a "taco salad", where I'd cook some ground beef and serve it with cheese, salsa, sour cream over lettuce. There's also lots of dishes possible with kale and spinach.
> take advantage of cheap fatty meats
Fish included! No reason to worry about eating "too much" salmon. Cook it with butter sauce and it should fit your macro-nutrient ratios perfectly.
> I prolly fucked the diet up
As another comment said, it's no wonder you felt sick. Also, the "keto flu" is a known phenomenon while your body adapts and flushes all the water out of your system. Drink a lot of electrolytes (chicken broth is a good source) and you'll feel better.
If you're serious about your diet, you should really take 5 minutes and figure out exactly what your body need. Each person is going to be a bit different, but in general (but slightly more specific than the last 'in general') you should be eating less than 20-50g of 'net' carbs, you should eat at least 1-2g/kg of lean body mass, and you should eat as much fat as it takes you to not be hungry. There are calculators that will walk you through all this, http://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/ is one that I've used before, it's more targeted at weight loss, but it's only one that I've found that makes an effort to cite the calculations it does.
As for working out, yes it's definitely possible. I've been lifting since December and making great progress. There are also occasionally stories of endurance athletes that swear by a ketogenic diet. My understanding of why it can be beneficial is that it basically removes your dependence on glycogen, when runners 'hit the wall' it's their body running out of glycogen their body then has to transition to running on fat. Keto-adapted runners are just running on fat from the beginning so they don't hit the wall and are more used to burning fat for energy.
I'm not a runner so I don't have personal experience in any of that, but in my lifting I do find that I have to take it a bit slower than I expect others have to. When you're keto you lose a bit of the 'bursty' power that people with glycogen reserves have.
I don't claim to be an expert on any of this, but I do continue with it. I've been mostly ketogenic since May of 2013, and I've had many improvements in things like mood, hair, skin, and sleep and I definitely notice a change in those things when I decide that the social aspects of eating are more important than my diet.
If it's really more of an upper limit on carbs ~20-50g, a minimum of protein, and the rest is fat, then I guess that's fine. When I tried it, I was very strict on the carbs such that I couldn't go over 20g. In fact, that calculator says I shouldn't be eating above 25g, and also says this:
> It is important to get enough protein to maintain your muscles, but not too much or it will kick you out of ketosis.
Which confuses me. I've since moved away from keto to a mostly-protein diet with some carbs here and there via veg and bread, and it's worked alright with lifting. Does that mean that keto diets are different for weightlifters than for non-weightlifters?
Have you ever tried eating that much protein? It's very challenging. Protein fills you up super quickly and keeps you full, and, psychologically-speaking, that's one reason why the keto diet works well when other diets fail.
Because of that you'll find a bunch of different 'right' answers. You have to kinda sift through everything and figure out what seems reasonable and see what actually works for you. There's a lot of that out there and that means that what is currently true can shift back and forth a bit.
It used to be 'generally known' that too much protein was bad and would kick you out of ketosis. But there was a new study released that seems to indicate that it has more to do with it being too high of a proportion rather than too much absolute quantity.
Unfortunately I don't have access to the journal databases anymore, so I can't find the links.
> Does that mean that keto diets are different for weightlifters than for non-weightlifters?
The definition of 'ketogenic' isn't changing based on what you do outside of diet, 'ketogenic' simply means that you body is producing a ketones and your body is using them for energy, it's more that some people will use other energy sources with specific timing to enhance their athletic performance. There's something called TKD, targeted ketogenic diet, (which think is named a bit backward) which is mostly used by weightlifters and powerlifters to increase short term performance by eating small amounts of carbs just before a workout.
TBH, I don't fully understand the effects of that so I haven't started doing it myself. I assume there must be benefits to staying ketogenic during my workout so I condition my body to always be used to using fat as a fuel source, but I don't have any data to prove that is actually beneficial. It also helps that I'm more focused on weight loss, baseline of strength, and general health rather than powerlifting or and goals for the super lean and large muscle look.
Maybe I'll take on a macro setup that's closer to keto, but I'm not going to move too far out of my comfort zone.
This can seem obvious, but the error crops up all the time in serious ways. E.g. women voting and joining the workforce was seen as unnatural, therefore wrong. People market all sorts of quack remedies as natural, and therefore good.
It goes the other way, too. Slavery was seen as right, and people decided it was therefore natural. (See the various declarations of secession of the US states for examples.) Violence is seen as wrong, so people decide it must be unnatural, ignoring our long history as predators, the amount of education we give children about not hitting, and our societal structures for limiting violence.
Is and ought: two entirely separate things.
There definitely seems to be a trend in diet right now to search for the "natural" cure to all our ills. The Paleolitic Diet is probably the best example of this because it is explicitly named as being based on the past. There is an unfounded belief that primitive people were healthier, stronger and better in many ways. However, I don't know of any evidence to support those claims and most of the arguments don't hold together if you don't assume the correlation of natural and good.
I'm really curious what causes such as fixation in our modern culture on the "natural" as being healthy and good.
There's also an odd opposite assumption that anything that is "unnatural" is probably "bad". GMOs are a good example of this. Anything derived through selective breeding is good, but as soon as you directly modify the genes it's bad, despite more rigorous testing.
But the vast majority of food "innovations" in wealthy countries like the US are not engineered to improve health. Mostly the goal is to save money or improve taste, and these goals can make a diet less healthy.
Organic farming permits organic pesticides, half of which are cancerous as well and may have worse environmental impacts [0]. The organic label doesn't guarantee that you're getting more ethical/better/safer products - and it is worth a lot of money.
[0] https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~lhom/organictext.html
Funny, when I first saw your comment it was collecting negative votes, so I came in to lend it some support. Now it's on top!
Copper sulfate is one of the most common organic pesticides that I am aware of. It's certainly nothing to gorge on. However, when handled safely, it may be preferable to directly engineering a pesticide into the plant.
On the organic farms I tended, there was very minimal use of pesticides or herbicides. The inherent diversity of the farm allowed the temporary discontinuation (rather than synthetic maintenance) of problematic plants, and either experimentation with others, or the continuation of what was presently working. For weed control we relied on hay and profuse weeding by hand, some of the weeds being edible (amaranth) and providing snacks during the process, at least for me ;) Personally, I prefer this method to glyphosate.
The term "natural" may not be synonymous with "healthy and safe", but it does functionally delimit e.g. Roundup from acetic acid.
For a while I've said that "robotic fast food joints" are one of the touchstones I'm using to say that robotics has really arrived. I've been considering adding "robotic weeders" to my list. How much would our agriculture change if instead of pesticides, we physically weeded everything?
The robot may not even need to "remove things by their roots", which would be quite complicated; if it can sweep by reliably every two or three days just trimming everything that isn't desired crop would probably do fine.
Bushy plants low to the ground might take more work, but given the way corn grows it seems like we could robotically weed corn pretty effectively.
You need to supplement yourself with fiber if you want to try the ketogenic diet.
How long did you stay on this diet?
I am on high protein diet (proteins in grams ~= my weight in pounds) and I take a fiber supplement to make sure I am Ok on the bathroom side of the things. I noticed I need to take more fiber (27-30 grams, which is above recommended 25 grams) comparing to the days when I do not eat a lot of proteins.
I wonder how much fiber one needs to take when on ketogenic diet.
Most people never heavily use ketones, so it takes the body some time to re-build the machinery to do so.
Acetone is one of the byproducts of keto metabolism, and, unlike other byproducts which are expelled in the urine, acetone is breathed out, resulting in the slightly-sweet-smelling "keto breath".
Just stay away from traditional corn syrup sauces.
Edit: sorry, just saw you mentioned meal too.
- take 2 salmon fillets, crush whole garlic and spread over the top; put for 10 minutes into air fryer. Put a few drops of olive oil on top of garlic texture
- take frozen vegetables (it's up to you what you like), put them for 3 minutes to air fryer
- take frozen "frutti di mare" and frozen spinach, put them for 10 minutes to air fryer
This should be a balanced ketogenic meal, very tasty with lots of fiber as well and added benefit of garlic compounds fighting imbalances caused by sugar-based diets (fungus, candida etc). I lost 20 pounds in the past three months (took a lot of sports as well) giving me a nice sixpack. I used those urine strips to monitor if I indeed had ketones in my blood or not.
Your net carbs is 1g. You always subtract out the fiber from the carbs. There's a long explanation for why you do this, I'll leave it to you to find.
Best comment i've read on HN.
This seems more like a negative side effect of your version of the ketogenic diet, not a negative side effect of the ketogenic diet itself.
However, if you feel you were still taking in enough fiber, perhaps you weren't taking in enough water? Not drinking enough water while eating/supplementing high fiber will result in some constipation as well.
I'm gearing up for keto induction myself in the next month (the social things are the hardest for me to deal with, so require a lot of planning to make it feasible), but I'd love to hear (or be pointed to) stories on this topic, especially for knowledge workers / intellectual-types.
Unfortunately, a keto diet isn't really an option for me (vegetarian, and allergic to many vegetarian protein sources).
I wonder what the underlying science behind it is.
Unfortunately, everything I could think to Google just returned a bunch of grandiose pseudoscience.
IMO, warrior is like intermittent fasting. This is just me personally but I often use coffee to quiet down any feelings of hunger. Though for the most part once you get over the initial discomfort associated with diet change I don't even get hungry until evening hours.
With all of these, supplementing with vitamins is key. I don't think my body misses the calories but it probably does miss some vitamins so I would recommend taking a multivitamin even if every other day.
The first time it happened to me during one of my faste days it felt as though I had taken a powerful stimulant.
But every time it surprises me as I end up able to stay focused for hours without interruption. It does not produce any kind of magic cognitive power but the simple fact that there is no preemptive signal going on my brain telling me to stop whatever I'm doing to eat something makes me really productive.
Out of ketosis I can get a similar effect by drinking some brands of energetic beverages but it only works for a limited amount of time and don't stack up very well: if I drink too much caffeine I end up anxious.
I started all this by asking a friend of mine who's a personal trainer what's the best way of loosing 15 kilos (because I was fat) and he prescribed me a keto diet. Lost all 15 in three months and no, haven't gotten them back.
EDIT: on the flip side, my wife's menstrual cycles got completely messed up and her periods started to hurt a whole lot more, so she stopped it.
I started keto over a year ago after struggling with weight my whole life. I have always been heavy for my height. Anyways, two years ago I was in a motorcycle accident and the doctors told me that having plaque in my arteries significantly increased the damage (I had internal bleeding requiring surgery). So I decided to fix my shit. Started working out a couple times a week, but the weight didn't go down for six months, when I found keto.
I won't get into the benefits, unless anyone has specific questions. I just came here to say this:
Once in ketosis, I started learning to enjoy hunger. Enjoying hunger made weight loss work without much conscious effort. I have lost 50 pounds in a year, then maintained the lower weight for another year.
Also it's possible that your carbs weren't low enough (the diet is extremely restrictive, generally you want less than 10-20g carbs which is most / all from leafy vegetables) and you may have been stuck in glycolysis/ ketosis transition which makes you feel weak.
The reason keto works so well is that it completely suppresses your appetite and you end up eating at a deficit naturally.
I'm not for fads, and I don't even believe claims that "caloric intake doesn't matter" if you only eat protein/fat etc.
That said, I've found that their Atkins 2.0 four-stage plan makes sense, and incorporates most of what modern studies say.
It's also not the caricature "steak and eggs" diet that some people believe Atkins or ketogenic diets are. They have some strict whitelist of food for the stage 1 (2 weeks, which you can extend to lose weight faster), but the other 3 stages gradually add back carbs into your diet, and you are even encouraged to add them "at your own personal balance", so you end up with a final balanced diet you can keep following forever that's not about ketosis anymore but health and sustaining your weight.
They do promote some of their own branded snacks etc, but you can ignore those, and they have tons of information on their site to do the diet on your own.
As I wrote in another comment, following it for 3 weeks, immediately after trying a couple of others for the last months to no effect. Not only I lost 10 pounds and counting, but am less sleepy and lethargic during afternoons at work, can wake up better, and have more energy. Those could also mean that I was gluten intorelant (never bothered to check, but I did ate tons of breads) and staying off bread made me better. Or maybe it's that I cut sugar completely which is also part of stage 1 (except for fruits and sweeteners).
I also don't care to eat anymore -- before I looked forward to every meal of the day (or snacked like crazy between).
I suffer from bi-polar disorder and have been swinging back and forth between a "traditional" (IE eat too much of everything) and a keto diet. My wife has made comments that she can tell when I am on keto by my mental stability but I've never read anything to back that up until now.
My only problem with keto is cheating. If I cheat once then I crave anything with carbs in it. I don't usually have those cravings after about the first week of ketosis.
First time I tried keto everything was fantastic except I missed the electrolyte requirement and ended up with heart palpitations along with muscle cramps and overall crappy feeling once enough time passed and I unwittingly ignored the electrolytes.
Talking to doctors proved to be worthless because most of them haven't even heard of keto nor understand why anyone would do that.
Does anyone have advice or reading materials in regard to this aspect of keto?
PS I am a completely healthy male of 27 years old and active lifestyle. I'm pretty positive there's nothing wrong with me physiologically.
When I experimented with keto, two products were essential to my ability to do so; coconut oil and butter. It infuriates me that some in positions of influence and power (but not of productivity!) would dare usurp people's dietary choices based on the careless assumption that saturated fat is bad. Although such propositions have so far been unsuccessful, I doubt the mischief has ended. Where is the Charlton Heston of fat!?
I support any form of ethical research, but not the hasty imposition of its ostensible results onto the masses. At least not in the case of personal decision in regard to diet.
As noted in the above link, ghee has been used for thousands of years. Health advantages have been attributed to it. There is controversy and that is fine. Let people make their own decisions. Certainly groups of people having nothing to do with the production, distribution and consumption of ghee have little claim to profit, although they may freely wail to their content about how much they resent it.
Here are the USDA's macronutrients dietary reference intake guidelines, with notes on adverse effects of excessive consumption: https://fnic.nal.usda.gov/sites/fnic.nal.usda.gov/files/uplo...
Recently, I've been following the zero carb movement, which advocates only eating animal products (meat, fish, fat, cheese, cream, egg) and drinking water. I'm looking forward to exclusively eat beef and drink water for an entire month.
I won't experience any benefit by just increasing fat calories and decreasing carbs?
Example:
Eat meat, it's essential!
Don't eat meat, it will sky rocket your cholesterol!
Buy organic, it is much healthier!
Organic is over-priced and isn't proven to be healthier, don't buy into it!
Fruit is so healthy, you should eat plenty of it!
Fructose is bad for you, don't eat too much fruit!
Every piece of information you end up reading, there is another piece of information somewhere out there that completely conflicts it. What even is FACT anymore?
All these studies looking at people overall to figure out the effect of some food on "the average person" is IMO misguided. We need to study links between foods and an individual's body state, be it their gut ecosystem, ethnic/genetic indicators, in combination with the rest of their diet, and such things.