Ketogenic Diet anyone?

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  • stevencloser
    stevencloser Posts: 8,911 Member
    shell1005 wrote: »
    lodro wrote: »
    If carbs aren't considered essential (or are to be laughably considered poison), and I agree that as adults we don't need them because we can synthesize needed glycogen from other macronutrients (but who's to say that this is a desirable state, I don't know where this notion comes from in the first place)... I just have one quick question...

    Can anyone explain away the macro-composition of human breast milk?

    Are you consuming human breast milk now?

    No, the question is, if carbs are so bad for us, why is the milk we produce for our offspring not carb-free?

    Babies are doubling in weight every few months. If you want to do the same, eat a high carb diet just like they do.

    Animals are fatted before slaughter by eating a high carb diet. If you want to get fat, do what they do.

    Bears eat high carb fruits to excess in the fall, to put on a thick layer of fat for winter. etc etc..

    Carbohydrates put your body into "winter is coming, lets bulk up" mode. It's an environmentally driven adaptation that most mammals have. In times of feast, when fruit are in season, our body bulks up with high energy density fat to survive the oncoming famine.

    Nobody has told our genes that those of us eating carby foods all year round don't have a famine coming.

    The science for eating low carb is there, and more than that, if you think about how humans, as mammals, worked outside of the last eyeblink of history where we had farms and houses and doritos, it doesn't even require science and reams and reams of nerdly studies. It's pretty damned self evident.

    If you choose not to live as your body is expecting, that's fine. You're body's not expecting 8 hour desk jobs, or bungee jumping either. Those things are our choices and the reality of modern life. I just don't understand why it seems that eating like a human is so bafflingly rage inducing to folks.

    Because a baby going from 3 to 6 kilos in a few months is the same as a grownass person going from 70 to 140, right?

    No, let me use smaller words. The carbs are there in breast milk because babies bulk up quick, and carbs let them jack up their weight quickly. We, as adults, don't need to put on so much weight. That's the answer to the question of "if carbs are bad, why are they in breast milk". They are there because babies nutritional needs are vastly different to yours or mine. Carbs aren't bad, but they can let a human put of a lot of weight quickly.

    Phew. At least you aren't saying they are poison. That is the moment when I bring up breast milk since I doubt humans would create a substance to feed their offspring that is poisonous.

    I don't think carbs are bad. In fact I know they aren't. I also don't think a low carb way of eating is bad. In fact I know it isn't. However, I keep coming back to the carbs can let a human put on weight quickly. While that may be true, what is always true is an excess of calories makes a human put on weight quickly.

    I just addressed this, probably while you were responding. Calorie excess puts on weight. 100% true. No argument. You are right. Its basic physics and you are correct.

    However, I can't eat high carb and stop before I go over on calories. I can eat low carb high fat and feel satiated, full, satisfied, and happy and not go over, because I reach this point after a smaller amount of food.

    Caloric restriction on a moderate to high carb diet makes me crabby and constantly with a gnawing in the pit of my stomach, and I can only willpower my way through that for so long.

    For example, I can eat a whole family sized bag of potato chips in an evening. No problem.

    However if I considered eating the same amount (by weight, calories, however you want to do it) in cheese, whipping cream, fatty meats, butter, or any combination of above, I would probably be satisfied half way through, and more than a little sick if I forced myself to eat the whole thing.

    Chips have about just as much fat as carbs.
  • _Terrapin_
    _Terrapin_ Posts: 4,301 Member
    My husband and I did keto for two months before I joined MFP and our experience wasn't overall so positive.

    Here is what I liked and dislike about it.

    Positives:
    - Great satiety
    - You lose a lot of weight at first (even though it's water weight) and it's encouraging.
    - Forces you to get creative with food and get out of the pasta and rice type of dishes

    Negatives
    -Irregular period
    -Dehydration and constant need to consume a lot of salt
    -constipation
    -I was feeling constantly cold
    -It takes two days to get back into ketosis after a cheat
    -Hard to be invited over for a meal at friends
    -Unrealistic long term for me. I love lattes and pastries too much.

    Anyway, if it works for you and you do not feel deprived, than go for it. I still eat pretty moderate carbs on weekdays, mostly because I can have a bigger volume of food with vegetables.

    I find that counting calories is much easier.

    One of the many problems people face is what they think they're doing to go back in to ketosis versus what Dr Phinney would say they need to do. He has done numerous studies on nutritional ketosis and he said subjects average 7-14 days to get back to this state once they have a 'cheat or eat too many carbs' (not his terms but the layMFP terms thrown around), not 2 days as you mention above. Below is an interview conducted in 2011 where he describes the state and what takes place when you go above the carb intake recommended. Time 4:45 through 5:15 for those who want to find it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkdFkPxxDG8

    He was, at that time of the interview, in year 6 of nutritional ketosis and has maintained this for almost 10 years to date. I think too few people measure their ketones accurately and too may use urine sticks instead of a blood tester. Just MHO.
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
    shell1005 wrote: »
    lodro wrote: »
    If carbs aren't considered essential (or are to be laughably considered poison), and I agree that as adults we don't need them because we can synthesize needed glycogen from other macronutrients (but who's to say that this is a desirable state, I don't know where this notion comes from in the first place)... I just have one quick question...

    Can anyone explain away the macro-composition of human breast milk?

    Are you consuming human breast milk now?

    No, the question is, if carbs are so bad for us, why is the milk we produce for our offspring not carb-free?

    Babies are doubling in weight every few months. If you want to do the same, eat a high carb diet just like they do.

    Animals are fatted before slaughter by eating a high carb diet. If you want to get fat, do what they do.

    Bears eat high carb fruits to excess in the fall, to put on a thick layer of fat for winter. etc etc..

    Carbohydrates put your body into "winter is coming, lets bulk up" mode. It's an environmentally driven adaptation that most mammals have. In times of feast, when fruit are in season, our body bulks up with high energy density fat to survive the oncoming famine.

    Nobody has told our genes that those of us eating carby foods all year round don't have a famine coming.

    The science for eating low carb is there, and more than that, if you think about how humans, as mammals, worked outside of the last eyeblink of history where we had farms and houses and doritos, it doesn't even require science and reams and reams of nerdly studies. It's pretty damned self evident.

    If you choose not to live as your body is expecting, that's fine. You're body's not expecting 8 hour desk jobs, or bungee jumping either. Those things are our choices and the reality of modern life. I just don't understand why it seems that eating like a human is so bafflingly rage inducing to folks.

    Because a baby going from 3 to 6 kilos in a few months is the same as a grownass person going from 70 to 140, right?

    No, let me use smaller words. The carbs are there in breast milk because babies bulk up quick, and carbs let them jack up their weight quickly. We, as adults, don't need to put on so much weight. That's the answer to the question of "if carbs are bad, why are they in breast milk". They are there because babies nutritional needs are vastly different to yours or mine. Carbs aren't bad, but they can let a human put of a lot of weight quickly.

    Phew. At least you aren't saying they are poison. That is the moment when I bring up breast milk since I doubt humans would create a substance to feed their offspring that is poisonous.

    I don't think carbs are bad. In fact I know they aren't. I also don't think a low carb way of eating is bad. In fact I know it isn't. However, I keep coming back to the carbs can let a human put on weight quickly. While that may be true, what is always true is an excess of calories makes a human put on weight quickly.

    I just addressed this, probably while you were responding. Calorie excess puts on weight. 100% true. No argument. You are right. Its basic physics and you are correct.

    However, I can't eat high carb and stop before I go over on calories. I can eat low carb high fat and feel satiated, full, satisfied, and happy and not go over, because I reach this point after a smaller amount of food.

    Caloric restriction on a moderate to high carb diet makes me crabby and constantly with a gnawing in the pit of my stomach, and I can only willpower my way through that for so long.

    For example, I can eat a whole family sized bag of potato chips in an evening. No problem.

    However if I considered eating the same amount (by weight, calories, however you want to do it) in cheese, whipping cream, fatty meats, butter, or any combination of above, I would probably be satisfied half way through, and more than a little sick if I forced myself to eat the whole thing.

    But would it be wise to generalize this? I have been known to eat an entire block of cheese in one setting and ask for more before I started dieting, while half a cup of oatmeal fills me up for hours. Would it be wise to project my own experience and generalize it for everyone too? The only change I needed to make to my diet to drop from 300+ pounds to nearly 200 is to reduce the amount of fat I used to consume, because it was HUGE. Mainly in olive oil, nuts and cheese.

    Keto works for you and that's great, but that's just a personal experience, not the law of the lands.
  • Sean_TheITGuy
    Sean_TheITGuy Posts: 67 Member

    Calorie restriction, or expenditure increase, or a combination of both, would keep us healthy. However many people find it very hard to control the calories they take in because they're always hungry. This is a side effect of our modern wheat, corn and potato based diet. You can leave healthily on high carbs, but most people find it hard to not overeat this way. That's the reason I go LCHF. I can eat until I'm satisfied, and I'm still at a sensible level of caloric intake. If someone is a lucky one who can eat bread and pasta and stuff and stop before overeating, awesome. I'm not, and I have a feeling many of the LCHFers are similar.

    I'm pretty sure I didn't generalize. Everything after this message I couched in terms of how it helps Me. It's not true for everyone, but I'm also not an aberration.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    yarwell wrote: »
    "Animals before slaughter", cows are ruminants, they can digest plant fiber. They get a lot more calories out of grass and other carb foods than humans.

    Humans don't hibernate, there is no "winter is coming" mode.

    "Winter is coming" is relevant if you're in a northerly (or southerly) climate where nothing grows for 6 months and the ambient temperature falls increasing your heat loss and/or requiring more work to keep warm (procuring fuel for the fire etc).

    My introduction to nutrition was on a farm - animal feeds are labelled up with protein and oil content (good) and ash content (bad). That's it. As a kid I wondered what "the rest" was. No mention of calories either ;-)

    Winter is coming matters to bears, not to me. I live in Northern Canada, and I can tell you I don't need an extra spare tire to survive. You just put on a coat. And nothing grows here in the winter, but lots seems to grow at the supermarket. Nutritional availability doesn't change based on climate for people in North America. And procuring more fuel for the fire consists of turning up the thermostat for many, if not most, people. Even getting wood for the fire means walking to the shed and carrying in some pre cut and split wood. 10,000 , 1000, or even 100 years ago, putting on fat for winter made sense. Today, not so much.

    This massive, rapid change in our available food, coupled with the brick wall of sedentary lifestyles we've hit is the reason we're seeing obesity, diabetes and heart disease skyrocket. Like a hamster, removed from it's natural environment, put in a cage and fed a seed mix, we are put in offices and schools, where we can't hunt, run, travel, fight, and gather. If our diet was as controlled as the hamsters, we'd be ok. But it's not.

    To this point, I largely agree with you. The reason we are fat, societally, is easily available food, food that is always around, and largely sedentary lifestyles. As creatures that have basically evolved with scarcity being the issue, not abundance, this is something we need to learn to deal with, at least for many of us.
    Calorie restriction, or expenditure increase, or a combination of both, would keep us healthy.

    Agree with this too.
    However many people find it very hard to control the calories they take in because they're always hungry. This is a side effect of our modern wheat, corn and potato based diet. You can leave healthily on high carbs, but most people find it hard to not overeat this way.

    Nope, I don't agree with this. It might be true for a small percentage, but I seriously doubt that if you ate a carb based diet similar to the one my great grandparents did, or which is common in more traditional carb-based cultures (including based on potatoes, wheat, or corn, or perhaps rice) that you would be hungry or overeat. People in North America today are overeating on low fiber processed, hyperpalatable foods, for the most part (and most of it includes lots of fat too). And the hunger (if one experiences it--I don't think I got fat based on hunger, or else why was it pretty easy to cut calories when I did?), is more psychological--humans normally see food and want to eat it, which makes total sense given the environments we evolved in.

    Also, throughout human history there are cultural norms, as well as scarcity, that governed when we ate. The current situation where people not only have food available at all times but think we can and should be eating constantly is what's weird. I personally find that the macros I eat don't matter, but that barring a significant change in activity I tend to be hungry when I am used to eating and not when I am not used to eating. When I started this I cut out snacking and missed eating at non meal times at first -- for maybe a week. Then I adjusted.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member

    Calorie restriction, or expenditure increase, or a combination of both, would keep us healthy. However many people find it very hard to control the calories they take in because they're always hungry. This is a side effect of our modern wheat, corn and potato based diet. You can leave healthily on high carbs, but most people find it hard to not overeat this way. That's the reason I go LCHF. I can eat until I'm satisfied, and I'm still at a sensible level of caloric intake. If someone is a lucky one who can eat bread and pasta and stuff and stop before overeating, awesome. I'm not, and I have a feeling many of the LCHFers are similar.

    I'm pretty sure I didn't generalize. Everything after this message I couched in terms of how it helps Me. It's not true for everyone, but I'm also not an aberration.

    You've been generalizing because you are making claims about "many people" and in particular blaming macro breakdowns for obesity when it seems to be independent of that and more related to other factors if you look across societies. You are also claiming that humans gain weight when they eat more carbs in general and someone (not sure if it was you) claimed that humans are not suited to eat 50% carbs.

  • Sean_TheITGuy
    Sean_TheITGuy Posts: 67 Member
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    Also, throughout human history there are cultural norms, as well as scarcity, that governed when we ate. The current situation where people not only have food available at all times but think we can and should be eating constantly is what's weird. I personally find that the macros I eat don't matter, but that barring a significant change in activity I tend to be hungry when I am used to eating and not when I am not used to eating. When I started this I cut out snacking and missed eating at non meal times at first -- for maybe a week. Then I adjusted.

    You're right. I guess I was speaking in broader generalities than the diet you or I eat, but my point was similar to yours, I just phrased it poorly. If we (as a society) could eat what your grandparents ate, and do the work your grandparents did, we'd have far fewer obese, diabetic, and heart unhealthy people. In today's food environment, the easy access to ultrarefined foods, and the lingering fear of fat from the 70s and 80s food pyramid fiasco leads us to a lower fat, sugary diet full of processed and refined flours. Sugar and carbs trigger a biological response in mammals to eat more. Releasing dopamine and other happy drugs in our head, very similar to a response to heroin or other opiates.

    This leads to a cycle of overeating and binging on those foods.

    If everything was hand made and a little rougher around the edges like your grandpa's diet, it wouldn't be nearly as pronounced an effect. But consider also that 100 years ago or less, candy was a treat you looked forward to all year long. Something you got a bit of on Christmas.

    When I was a kid, my allowance went mostly to cheap and, I realize as an adult, disgusting sugary junk that kept me coming back, leading to my childhood obesity. I don't blame carbs, I blame myself (and maybe my parents?), but the easy access to those hyper palatable refined foods you mentioned is one of the main reasons we have these problems today.

    Also, I bet if you could make a MFP log for a daily diet for someone from 1925, they'd have a much lower carb, higher fiber, and higher fat diet than someone eating a typical NA diet today.

    I'm not a keto crazy person, but a reduction of the refined sugars and carbs in our diet can only make sense, and those calories will have to be made up somewhere, and fat is an important part of our diet and mental wellbeing.
  • Acg67
    Acg67 Posts: 12,142 Member
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    Also, throughout human history there are cultural norms, as well as scarcity, that governed when we ate. The current situation where people not only have food available at all times but think we can and should be eating constantly is what's weird. I personally find that the macros I eat don't matter, but that barring a significant change in activity I tend to be hungry when I am used to eating and not when I am not used to eating. When I started this I cut out snacking and missed eating at non meal times at first -- for maybe a week. Then I adjusted.

    You're right. I guess I was speaking in broader generalities than the diet you or I eat, but my point was similar to yours, I just phrased it poorly. If we (as a society) could eat what your grandparents ate, and do the work your grandparents did, we'd have far fewer obese, diabetic, and heart unhealthy people. In today's food environment, the easy access to ultrarefined foods, and the lingering fear of fat from the 70s and 80s food pyramid fiasco leads us to a lower fat, sugary diet full of processed and refined flours. Sugar and carbs trigger a biological response in mammals to eat more. Releasing dopamine and other happy drugs in our head, very similar to a response to heroin or other opiates.

    This leads to a cycle of overeating and binging on those foods.

    If everything was hand made and a little rougher around the edges like your grandpa's diet, it wouldn't be nearly as pronounced an effect. But consider also that 100 years ago or less, candy was a treat you looked forward to all year long. Something you got a bit of on Christmas.

    When I was a kid, my allowance went mostly to cheap and, I realize as an adult, disgusting sugary junk that kept me coming back, leading to my childhood obesity. I don't blame carbs, I blame myself (and maybe my parents?), but the easy access to those hyper palatable refined foods you mentioned is one of the main reasons we have these problems today.

    Also, I bet if you could make a MFP log for a daily diet for someone from 1925, they'd have a much lower carb, higher fiber, and higher fat diet than someone eating a typical NA diet today.

    I'm not a keto crazy person, but a reduction of the refined sugars and carbs in our diet can only make sense, and those calories will have to be made up somewhere, and fat is an important part of our diet and mental wellbeing.


    http://www.ers.usda.gov/datafiles/Food_Availabily_Per_Capita_Data_System/Nutrient_Availability/nutrients.xls