Comment by yurishimo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yurishimo | Hacker News Reader

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> 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.

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