Effect of Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet versus High-Carb, Low-Fat Diet

I don't think it's sustainable to do a keto diet if you live and partake in society. You might encounter many scenarios where food options are carb heavy, and in this case, keto is not an option whereas caloric restriction is.

But after getting much more interested in nutrition over the last few years, I now think he is someone to avoid. He is basically outside of the scientific mainstream, and continually says things that are just not supported by actual studies. And there have been many studies on this.

Weight is a product of calories in vs out, both in the trivial sense (conservation of energy), but also in the sense that if you control the amount of calories you eat, and keep it below your calories out, you will lose weight. It's true that calculating your actual calories out is basically impossible, but you can estimate it, and then just reduce more calories if you're not losing weight.

This has been proven multiple times in real experiments with real subjects. This is agreed on by basically everyone who's actually in the field. There is also ample anecdotal evidence that this is true (every athlete, bodybuilder, etc that wants to gain or lose weight can do so basically at will, on a set schedule they plan months in advance. It's almost precise and very scientific.)

Having a higher cardiovascular capacity increases the number of potential calories you can burn per hour.

Weight loss strategies that don't include exercise can work, but it is silly to do so. Exercise improves longevity, mental health, and expedites weight loss. All things equal, if you add a 5 mile walk to your daily regiment, you will lose weight faster.

This is so wrong. Humans have come up with calories as a measurement of how the body burns fuel. Food is the fuel and burning that fuel is spending calories. You can reduce the calories consumed and/or increase movement to burn more. A quick google indicates 1 mile walking is about 100 calories burned for a 180lb person. So walking 5mi is burning roughly 500 calories and if done daily, this would mean 3500 per week which is roughly 1lb of loss. If you replace that 500cal loss per day with 500cal of ice cream then yeah you’re not going to lose weight. So if someone decided to just eat all the same stuff they currently eat but go walk 5mi day they would likely lose weight.

Calculating weight loss is mathematically very simple and software devs should be familiar with feedback loops. The simple formula is track calories, weigh yourself, adjust calories for loss, weigh self. Daily tracking works. The LoseIt app does this for you and adjusts calorie budget when you lose weight (less weight means lower budget).

"The percentage of the population who can afford the least-cost diet adhering to food-based dietary guidelines (henceforth ‘a nutritious diet’) increases from 15% (at the median) in countries with rural and informal food systems to nearly 100% in countries with industrial and consolidated food systems (Fig. 1). We estimate that nearly all residents of industrialized countries and a median of 82% in countries with an emerging and diversifying food system are able to afford a nutritious diet"

Besides, the question is relative to what? What percent of your income is worth spending on healthy food? Put a number on it and then we'll talk.

The anecdotes abound about the positive impacts. Dismiss them in favor of scientific studies at your own peril.

My own anecdote: I lost 90 lbs and started lifting and it's done wonders for various aspects of my life. I recognize that my experience may not apply to everyone but it also seems reasonable given our evolutionary history that regular movement would have benefits.

Just be aware of whats in your food. I don't look for specific ingredients just learn what the makeup of your food is and decide if you should be eating that. Awareness is 80% of the battle.

Boiled/roasted potatoes are really satiating for their calories. But most people associate potatoes with a lot of fat, like french fries or mashed potatoes which make them very high calorie.

Deep frying anything I think should be a special occasion, you shouldn't be having deep fried food every day or even week, it adds a lot of useless calories. Stir frying is healthier

Seed oils (modern oils like canola, invented in 1974) are suspicious. There is a lot of conspiracy theories out there and not a lot of data, but I try to stay away from it. After all we've been using olive oil for thousands of years, no need to stop.

Think candy, chips, soda, bread, cured meats and things in bags. Low in nutrition, high in calories.

A chopped apricot or a smoked salmon are in a literal sense processed food, but nobody is referring to that kind of processes. Rather, they're referring to the processes that turn an apricot into a Sachertorte, or a salmon into spreadable salmon-flavoured cheese. Dehydrating, extensive cooking, adding massive amounts of salt/sugar/fats - processes that destroy vitamins and other nutritionally important characteristics and mix the original food with large quantities of unhealthy ingredients.

"Typical junk food," on the other hand, usually contains a lot more calories (and sugar/carbs and fat), sprinkled with various things that make them super-appealing. It's not impossible, but not incredibly appealing to overeat rice. Overeating a bag of Doritos on the other hand is very easy.

Imho i think this also plays into the misinformation in the space. It's hard to prove anything and I find I mostly wait for a good meta analysis before putting my eggs in that basket

Been finding just eating lower-carb (not as low as keto, and some days where there have been carb binges) and focusing more on whole foods and not eating high-fat foods and my triglycerides and cholesterol numbers are back to normal levels, and I'm back to losing weight again, albeit a lot slower (down 25 lbs this year).

I know another guy who lost 107lbs off Keto (he was my initial inspiration to try it, in fact) and he eventually went off it and he had regained about half of that when I saw him last (according to him).

I'm sure there are people who have been able to keep the weight off, but it was difficult for me.

For the first while I found that using coconut oil or olive oil was a trivial way of adding just pure fat to my daily numbers. Both of them are relatively cheap (though high cal) and can be added to any heated drink like coffee or tea with minimal impact on for flavor. Over time, this just became unnecessary, but it was helpful early on as it was trivial to prep a small container with n grams of oil every morning.

There are also nutrient bars that are explicitly higher on fat and protein and lower on carbs for this very purpose, e.g. 'good fats' bars.

Unlike what others report, while I felt generally good and had energy for day to day things, I simply could not ever work up enough energy for more rigorous cardio or weightlifting, compared to when I'm on a normal/carb-rich diet.