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Comment by Almondsetat | Hacker News Reader

People have shit diets (and they don't realize it) so when they finally decide to stick with a famous one they get results. Every popular diet tells you to eat less and eat natural, keto amongst them.

Unless you have allergies: no, it'a not keto, no, it's not Atkins, no, it's not veganism: it's not eating crap.

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This is the real answer. Keto, Paleo, intermittent fasting... all these things work exactly the same way: by limiting your calorie intake. When the population approaches an obesity rate of 40% (not overweight, clinical obesity!), anything you try will help to counteract the highly processed, far too calorie dense food we get on every corner. People swear on their own diet approach because of some biochemical aspect, but the only relevant difference between these diets is that most people find some easier to stick to than others. Minding your calories is far better for your mind and body in the long term than anything else.

> all these things work exactly the same way: by limiting your calorie intake.

While this is broadly true, I think it's also important to convey that the hormones involved also play a huge role. There are plenty of people who stay in a calorie deficit* and still gain weight because they spike insulin with a snack or a meal every two hours.

Keto works so well because it doesn't spike insulin as much, on top of the greater satiety signals sent by popular foods associated with the diet. Eventually you feel more full for longer and the insulin spike is further reduced from the omission of calories entirely.

*: By constantly spiking insulin, the body will down regulate your metabolism since it can no longer access stored fat deposits for energy. If your BMR is lowered, then technically you are burning less calories than you are eating. Assuming a person stops spiking their insulin, their BMR will rise back to "normal" levels when the body realizes that it has access to stored fat again.

But then aren't they by definition not at a calorie deficit?

Correct, if your BMR lowers drastically due to sustained increased insulin levels, then you're not at a deficit. However, most doctors are not trained to know that this is what is happening. Every BMR calculator will tell you that you are burning X number of calories, but the only way to verify that is with an expensive lab test that is generally reserved for athletes or extremely ill individuals. So instead, the doctor assumes that the patient must be lying about their calorie intake.

There are "symptoms" for a lowered BMR, feeling cold being chief among them as lowering blood circulation is an easy way for the body to slow down. Mental fog is can be another sign as our brain is the most calorically demanding organ in our entire body.

This model of hormonal driven weight loss/gain is fairly new and just now being studied at scale. Hopefully as time passes, doctors will become better educated and can advise their patients on how best to structure their diet to make their bodies work for them instead of against them.

I highly recommend watching some lectures by Dr Jason Fung about the issue in depth. There are a few on YouTube that are 45+ minutes in length and describe the situation more thoroughly. The TL;DW though is this: if insulin levels are high, the body cannot release stored fat. Eating raises insulin. If you eat all the time, your body will always have high insulin levels and cannot release stored fat for energy and thus will look for other ways to equalize the calories in/out equation.

The fastest way to lose weight, is to simply not eat. It sounds so simple and obvious, yet we've lost sight of the plot in our modern world.

You’ll eventually lower your caloric intake on a keto diet the same way most people over consume calories in a carb heavy diet. It’s just a side effect of decreased food cravings and the obstacles inherent to the diet. You get sick of avacado and coconut oil pretty quickly if it’s all you get to eat. Calorie counting is a fiction mostly.

> Calorie counting is a fiction mostly.

it works, but in short bursts.

maybe if you've got enough money for a professional cook and meal planner a la hollywood types or billionaires.

i could do it for ~3 months while cutting during my bodybuilding days, for example. no way i could do it for the next 50 years of my life.

Body can start to decompose your protein tissues even if fat is there. So, eating your functional cells - muscles for example. It can also turn off less important functions like thermoregulation, impulse/mood control, slows the heartbeat, your activity levels, etc.

And then you have rising rates of eating disorders due to all the messaging being all about restricting calories which creates fear of food which puts people in a real acute danger.

The most prevalent eating disorder is still (unintentional) overeating. Not eating 2000+ extra calories of fast food every day has never put anyone in danger.

That wont kill you the way anorexia easily can. And fun fact: being slightly overweight is associated with best health results. The malnutrition from eating disorder really really sux and damages the body big time.

> Not eating 2000+ extra calories of fast food every day has never put anyone in danger.

Adolescents need 2500 or more daily, depending on gender activity level etc.

anorexia is a problem for a trivially small portion of the population.

being slightly overweight might be fine, but most of the population isn't "slightly" overweight, they're clinically obese and are fat as fuck. As in, like 60% or more of the population is full-on overweight. the rest of the world is catching up quickly, too.

You can be obese and anorectic (it is called atypical anorexia). Simply said, if you are obese, you can starve yourself and cause serious issues without loosing all that weight first.

Plus, anorexia is not the only eating disorder there is.

Anorexia prevalence in females ranges from 0.3%-1.5% and for males range from 0.1%-0.5%. And it is raising. It happens to be the most deadly mental issue there is. Male mortality is higher, cause people associate it with women. That is not "trivially small".

I was talking about extra calories above your maintenance level. Which is basically one large Mcdonalds meal these days.

I actually checked local McDonald's meal nutrition information. It had around the dinner amount of calories with reasonable split between sacharids, proteins and fats.

It would not be healthy every day, but it was not even approaching whole day amount of calories.

It was not far off any other restaurant food calories content.

That’s being awfully dismissive about what keto is, it’s not just a diet, it’s an actual state you maintain your body in which is why it’s being looked into for helping people out.

Keto has nothing to do with eating less, in fact you can eat all you want as long as is the appropriate foods.

My understanding is that good diet program means that you don't actually want to eat more. Where as what is modern diet seems to do exact opposite off.

The "appripriate" foods fill you up. It's all a psychological trick.

I'd have to agree with this.

A lot of anecdotes about people switching to keto and feeling better, but not giving the context of what kind of food they were eating beforehand.

As I'm sure many of us know, a lot of software engineers (to be fair, this applies to most people as well) have very bad diets; buying fast food lunch every day, eating free snacks, etc.

Really wish people would stop invalidating others because of their own god damn protection.

I haven't eaten fast food in decades. Cutting gluten changed my life. Go on everyone, tell me how I'm a fraud.

what irks me about dismissing people's experience is that is so unscientific.

The response should not be "surely they had crap diets" or "it's just placebo/it's just psychosomatic", it should be "uhm, I wonder why this is happening, let's investigate.

which is the whole point of the article, after all

When people describe their diets they have enormous biases and subjective considerations.

So yes, people's experiences told by themselves are unscientific

> it's not eating crap.

Add "and regularly exercising" to the formula. Our bodies are not made to be sitting all day.

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