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Comment by beloch | Hacker News Reader

According to his graph, he lost almost a pound a day for a full month. He didn't just cut out the sweets. He effectively went on a starvation diet!

That is not safe.

He is not to be congratulated, he is to be ushered into a doctor's office so some sense can be talked into him before he does himself permanent damage. When you go on a starvation diet your body breaks down muscle as well as fat, and some of that muscle is rather important not to lose. Heart damage is just one major risk of starvation diets.

Additionally, when you throw the yo-yo that hard it is going to be exceedingly difficult to keep it from coming right back up. My money's on him being back at 230 or higher within a year.

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He didn't go on a starvation diet; he went on a ketogenic diet. While there are still risks associated with this kind of weight loss, its rapidity can be attributed to a few things:

1. As water retention is significantly diminished while in ketosis. 10-15 pounds of initial loss can be sometimes be attributed to water weight coming off.

2. As jacques_chester put it below, "Gluconeogenesis is difficult and wasteful. Lipolysis is by comparison a doddle." The standard benchmarks around rate-of-loss are simply inaccurate for this metabolism.

Just as a point of reference, I've been on an MD-supervised ketogenic diet for roughly 7 months now. My blood pressure is perfect (down from stage-2 hypertension levels) and my weightloss has been phenomenal: http://i.imgur.com/nghqf.png

This most certainly wasn't a starvation diet. I didn't starve myself at any point. I'm not at all convinced my body has broken down any muscle. I'm not in any danger whatsoever.

It sounds exactly like a starvation diet; you can't lose 1 lb/day without losing massive amounts of muscle.

You haven't noticed the muscle loss yet b/c the body prioritizes the breakdown of unused/minimally used muscles. But if you keep this up much longer it will start to effect your ability to perform basic feats of strength.

That rate of weight loss you appear to be achieving also causes massive stress on the cardiovascular system.

You need to talk to a doctor, b/c you may be causing long-lasting, serious damage to your body.

> It sounds exactly like a starvation diet; you can't lose 1 lb/day without losing massive amounts of muscle.

Yes. Yes you can.

Gluconeogenesis is difficult and wasteful. Lipolysis is by comparison a doddle. The body will gleefully favour liberating energy from fat stores for a long time before turning to lean tissue.

The idea of "starvation mode" comes from the Minnesota Starvation Study, where subjects had their intake reduced by 25-50% for six months. They were so completely starved that they exhausted their fat stores and broke down lean tissue for energy.

Don't take my word for it. Certainly don't take the internet's word for it. Just go see your doctor.

If we're seeing medical professionals, a registered dietitian would be the right person to see.

That said, I'll bet folding money that his blood panel has improved.

How exactly is eating no sugar or fruit a starvation diet? You're way off on this one.

Assuming you aren't a nutritional expert (or doctor or biologist), did you bother to do _any_ research? I'm no expect, so I looked up "starvation diet". It brought me to the main wiki pain on dieting. This is what it says about "Very low-calorie diets":

"They subject the body to starvation and produce an average weekly weight loss of 3.3–5.5 lb."

If 5.5lb a week is the result of starvation, what might 7lbs/week be? It continues by cautioning about the dangers of such diets.

Just because you eat, doesn't mean you can't starve. Consider protein poisoning (aka, rabbit starvation).

Biochemically speaking, ketosis is starvation. Once you exhaust your livers supply of glycogen (within 24 hrs usually) you begin the metabolic changes to gear up to burn muscle for ketogenesis. This involves secretion of enzymes that will break muscles down.

I would presume, however, that when adequate (or some) caloric intake is maintained, esp in the form of amino acids, that this liberation of aa's from muscle is somewhat inhibited

Ketogenesis is actually one of the metabolic pathways involved with the breakdown of fats.

You may be thinking of gluconeogenesis.

You are right. Brainfart. thanks

You've overegged the case.

http://examine.com/faq/how-do-i-stay-out-of-starvation-mode....

Really?

The posted link contains all of 3 studies. One of those studies involves a single individual and the other study is a meta-study which contains no actual data at all.

("Meta-study" is a fancy scientific word meaning "find studies that fit our thesis and massage the data as necesary until it says what we want." Did you know that meta-studies suggest that most hackers (actually, any male who has not lived with a sexual partner prior to the age of 24) are 70% likely to be sex offenders? Did you know that this study is the landmark study that nearly every state uses to justify indefinite commitment of sex offenders?)

And your peer-reviewed sources are ...?

The benefits of fasting are well documented.

http://www.ajcn.org/content/81/1/69.short

http://www.ajcn.org/content/90/5/1138.short

http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v35/n5/full/ijo2010171a.ht...

Nice try, Monsanto representative.

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