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Comment by slazaro | Hacker News Reader

> Does this exist for non-diabetic patients? I recently had weight gain for the first time of my life after reaching 30yrs of age and always being underweight. I've been meaning to look into some diet-based approaches that would be supported by science, but Googling it has always been a deluge of pseudo-science.

The Keto diet(s) are pretty popular for weight loss and general health too. The subreddit [1] is pretty active and has lots of people vouching for it. I don't know how scientifically sound or safe it is, because I haven't researched it, but you might find some answers there.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/keto

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I'd recommend /r/science for a more scholarly view instead of the r/keto subreddit which seems almost cult-like in its worship of the keto diet.

Did you mean to recommend /r/ketoscience/ ?

It's a great sub. The keto diet helped me lose about 30 pounds this year, and I was only fully committed to it about 20% of the time.

I have to be picky here. If only 20% of your overall diet this year was keto, then really whatever you were doing the other 80% of the time is 80% (in other words, way more) responsible.

The other 80% is probably just what they were doing before they started the 20% of keto. I don't think that's what made the change.

If that were so, then I would've expected them to say "helped me lose X pounds in ~2 months".

I do strict Keto the first 6 days of the month, which is where I was getting the 20% from.

The rest of the time, I do my normal diet of mostly fast food, too much candy, and no exercise. I might drink a little more water than I used to in this period, but no major changes.

Sorry if there was a better way to phrase this.

You're fine. I don't think it was actually that hard to figure out what you meant. :)

just for the sake of warning, keto shows lots of results, but taps into a body mechanism that yields some form of withdrawal syndrom (keto flu IIRC)

Ketosis is the medical condition. It occurs when your body metabolizes fat for energy instead of glucose.

.. which initially lasts days to a few weeks but the length can be shortened by fasting or supplementing with MCT oil or beta hydroxy buterate

And taking some extra salt and water per day. 2 cups of broth does it for me. No more keto flu.

Note that keto flu only occurs when your body is switching from carbs to fat, but disappears when your body is keto-adapted.

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