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Fat....How low can you go????

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LCChris2016
LCChris2016 Posts: 22 Member
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A couple months ago I read somewhere(sorry can't find it) that you DON'T have to eat a lot of fat on Keto because the fat you DONT eat will be burned by your body using your stored fat. Is this true?? Is there any science to this?? Been Keto 5 months and starting to experiment a little. Thanks

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  • kirkor
    kirkor Posts: 2,530 Member
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    It depends on how much you mean by "a lot", how much fat you have to lose, and how steep your caloric deficit is. Carbs are capped, obviously ... protein should be a target based on weight/fat/activity ... fat fills in the rest of your daily calories to satiety and so as not to create too aggressive a deficit.
  • Sunny_Bunny_
    Sunny_Bunny_ Posts: 7,140 Member
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    It's really just talking about getting any calorie deficit you're aiming for by cutting fat.
    I mean, you can only cut protein so much and carbs can do to zero, of course.
    So yeah. You don't have to eat all your calories. The extra will come from body fat quickly especially in a fat burning system.
  • tcunbeliever
    tcunbeliever Posts: 8,219 Member
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    It won't all be fat though, in a calorie deficit muscle will be metabolized as well.
  • Sunny_Bunny_
    Sunny_Bunny_ Posts: 7,140 Member
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    Not nearly at the same rate as a standard diet though... So I wouldn't worry about it. As long as enough protein is consumed, there's no reason to fear muscle loss with a less aggressive calorie deficit.
  • Gallowmere1984
    Gallowmere1984 Posts: 6,626 Member
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    anglyn1 wrote: »
    I would eat fat to satiety. If I was getting hungry or having cravings then I would considering upping the fat. I think the reason I've been able to stick with low carb this time and never in the past is that before I was too low on fat. It made me miserable to be low carb and low fat.

    This was my own experience as well. Keeping both heavily restricted is a nightmare.
  • Dragonwolf
    Dragonwolf Posts: 5,600 Member
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    LCChris2016 wrote: »
    A couple months ago I read somewhere(sorry can't find it) that you DON'T have to eat a lot of fat on Keto because the fat you DONT eat will be burned by your body using your stored fat. Is this true?? Is there any science to this?? Been Keto 5 months and starting to experiment a little. Thanks

    This stems from the Optimal Ketogenic Living crowd, and in my opinion is just a convoluted way of saying that you're creating a caloric deficit.

    Like @Sunny_Bunny_ said, you can only cut protein and carbs down so far (in the case of carbs, it is to zero, but even going from 20g carbs to 0 is a difference of a whopping 80 calories, and even going from 100 to 0 is all of 400 calories, so you have to be making a pretty drastic cut in carbs for it to be a significant part of your caloric deficit), so the only logical conclusion is that any other calorie reduction is going to have to come from fat.

    They use the chart from the Phinney and Volek book to justify their logic, but if you look at the chart, the "weight loss" section shows a caloric intake of 1400 calories, where the "maintenance" section is 2400 calories. That's 1000 calories that have to come from somewhere.
  • LCChris2016
    LCChris2016 Posts: 22 Member
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    Great info Thank you. I do feel better when I eat more fat also. Sounded good so it was worth a shot :)

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