High protein intake: friend or foe? Evidences

What happens if I eat only proteins and get rid of carbs and fat? This is a stupid idea

I don't know that anyone recommends getting rid of carbs and fat. All the people I've seen promoting a very low carb diet encourage people to eat lots of healthy fats and mention that an all lean protein only diet leads to 'rabbit starvation'.

Glad to hear that the kidney thing is bunk.

Thanks for the info Interesting read!

Bump to read later

True, though you reference a study where the subjects are nowhere near producing the work load and volumes of an avid bodybuilder. Twice a week which I am assuming can only be full body workouts with a frequency of 2 per 7 days is hardly considered avid bodybuilding.

To build on this, the money line for people who don't click links: "Whey protein supplementation did not affect exercise training-induced responses in body composition and indices of metabolic syndrome in middle-aged overweight and obese adults who maintained body weight."

Study had nothing to do with bodybuilders, or even athletic adults trying to gain muscle mass.

Can you please explain more as to why you are against the ketogenic diet approach, and why ketosis is a "risk" for those who don't already present with underlying complications (such as pancreatic exhaustion/T1 diabetes)? Also, what role, if any, do you feel that hormones play in fat accumulation/oxidation?

Thanks for your interesting contribution in the matter.
Ketogenic diet has been proposed for a long time. It works in terms of weight loss, but it comes at a price. High price in my opinion:

1) You are more likely to lose weight than fat on a ketogenic diet, compared to a complete diet.

Didnt read the rest...point one is blatantly false. On ketogenic diets vs higher carb diets, body composition is improved and muscle loss reduced compared to carb diets. This has been shown in numerous bodybuilding examples, some of them even using the same individual.

You have tons of other false points in your first post along with some good info as well.

Note that she said "weight" not "muscle." It seems like she's being intentionally misleading. Ketogenic diets yield a much larger loss of water weight than other diets due to glycogen depletion.

Simply fascinating!

If I'm reading this correctly, as I drop for 450# to about half that, I would do well to eat 1-1.5 g/kg and work out as well as I am able given my health to preserve as much of my muscle mass as possible. (Cardio? Lifting? Combo?)

Once I'm done losing, I should aim for 250-500 calories above TDEE including eating back all calories on workout days if I want to bulk up. (Emphasis on lifting, I'm assuming. Would a cardio workout count as a "rest day" from lifting?)

Thanks for taking the time to respond with some interesting points. See below.

Thanks for your interesting contribution in the matter.
Ketogenic diet has been proposed for a long time. It works in terms of weight loss, but it comes at a price. High price in my opinion:

1) You are more likely to lose weight than fat on a ketogenic diet, compared to a complete diet.
2) You are more likely to regain your weight when you start again introducing carbs in your diet (this has to do with insuline and cortisol, explained later)

The second study you quoted below, "Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance" JAMA. 2012;307(24):2627-2634, found that the resting energy expenditure and TEE decreased the most in a low-fat diet and least in a high-fat (though questionable as to whether it was actually ketogenic at those ratios). That would seem to push towards the opposite conclusion, that long-termn weight stability can be maintained while on a ketogenic diet.

For the purposes of "diet", I'm referring to "the way I eat", not "the way I eat right now, and will eventually change", to be clear.

3) You are weaker on a ketogenic diet when doing cardiovascular or endurance. For non-athletes, however, it may be difficult to notice the difference.

If taken from this: “Blood ketones are directly related to fatigue and perceived effort during exercise in overweight adults adhering to low-carbohydrate diets for weight loss: A pilot study.” J Am Diet Assoc 107: 1792-1796 (2007), there is one major issue with the way the study was set up. It was 2 weeks long. Energy levels on ketogenic diets do not normalize for 2-4 weeks, Phinney et al, Metabolism, 32:769 1983 is a study directly showing the effects of a ketogenic diet on endurance bicyclists which appears to refute the conclusion in this study.

4) Ketogenic diet causes low insulin, which some say is of help to prevent insulin resistance. They forget to specify that a healthy normocaloric diet does not expose you to the amount of glucose from refined carbs that is the true responsible of pandemy of insuline resistance in our planet. So you prevent something that you should avoid in the first place.

Hey, look - common ground.

5) At the same time, instead, ketogenic diet causes an increase of cortisol. This triggers the same side effects as a prolonged steroid therapy, which you have already heard of: fat accumulation, immunity depression, loss of memory, skin weakness, early aging.

If I recall correctly, the cortisol is a triggering mechanism for gluconeogenesis, which you need to occur when you enter a hypoglycemic state. This is generally brought upon by heavy weightlifting or other stressful, energy-needy activities of the sort that a non-athelete is unlikely to encounter. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

6) Cholesterol levels may increase by around 30% and with it the risk of high cholesterolemy.

An increase in overall LDL may occur, but looking deeper at it through specified LDL testing (VAP, etc.) shows that the makeup of the LDL changes, even while overall LDL Increases, to favor the large, fluffy particles as opposed to small, dense LDL. Also, for this to be a concern, one would have to positively associate cholesterol levels to mortality, which is an extremely tenuous link at this point for everything other than the highest ranges.

7 ) Acidosis increases bone demineralisation.

WIthin the realm of nutritional ketosis, ketones generally stay in the 0.5-5.0 mmol concentration range (and generally in the lower end of that spectrum). In diabetic ketoacidosis, the levels are 2 times and higher than that.

8) Excess calcium in the urine (hypercalciuria) occurs due to increased bone demineralisation with acidosis. The pH of the urine changes from neutral to slightly acidic, which can put stress on the kidneys and potentially raise the risk of developing kidney stones.

See above.

9) You are not developing a healthy eating habit. You are not learning about nutritional informations of your food. Instead, you are tagging some food as "bad" and other food as "good". That means that in the real world you will always have a food obsession and this makes very difficult for a sustained diet.

On the contrary, if one believes that a ketogenic diet is healthy (and, for what it's worth, I find the state of nutritional science to be very poor over the last 50 years, so throwing studies back and forth is doable but somewhat unproductive, I think), then one is very easily developing a healthy eating habit. I have spent more learning about nutrition and establishing baselines as a method of n=1 testing before undertaking this diet than any other things that I've tried. I do believe processed carbs are "bad" - and, if they are, there's no problem labeling them as such.

In conclusion, ketogenic diet represents an emergency mechanism the body has to survive when he's lacking nutrients. In my opinion, nobody should undertake such a treatment without strict supervision of an expert. It is NOT the adequate diet to follow on your own.

For what it's worth, I keep my doctor in the loop with my dietary habits -- he eats ketogenically, as well.

It all comes to a risk / benefit estimation , as usual in evidence based medicine. Does a healthy person really need to go into ketosis and undertake these risks to lose weight?

I struggle to define an overweight/obese person as "healthy". Obesity correlates to almost every disease state known to man. Does an otherwise healthy person (who is not trying to lose weight) have to go ketogenic? Maybe not -- there are some people who seem to tolerate carbohydrates better than the rest of us, for sure.

Let's not forget that ketogenic diet has been developed not for weight loss, but for treating epilepsy.

Actually, the diet was pretty well established long before it was being used as a treatment for epilepsy. The Inuit have been eating that way for a long time, and among public understanding goes back to the 1860's and William Banting (as far as carbohydrate restriction is concerned).

If you really want to try it, I highly suggest you to consult your physician before undertaking such diet restrictions.

More common ground.

I can cite more tomorrow (I don't have access to med journals easily here) at work if you'd like. Either way, thanks for taking the time to respond to this.

She calculated my actual protein requirement as well below that and told me that the excess protein was getting turned into fat.

Protein does not turn into fat. If dropping protein intake also led to a subsequent reduction in calories, then this would be the cause of your weight loss.

Protein can be converted to glucose which can be converted to fat.

I am inclined to agree with you on the second part of your response, but absent more information it's tough to make a determination.

your glycogen stores have to be full in order for protein to turn into fat.

there are some amino acids that are soley ketogenic.


overall this is very unlikely to happen though

Bump! Very interesting. Thank you!