Discouraged

Can’t wait until this fad is over.

I think people get enamored by keto because of the initial effects. There are a couple major things that cause your body to retain water, one of them is the storage of glycogen. Glycogen is used as a storage molecule for carbohydrates, it is the way the body processes and stores glucose, and is stored in your liver and muscle tissue. It is typically what your muscles will catabolize for energy if you use them which is why carbo-loading before a marathon might be a good idea. The thing is glycogen requires a lot of water to solubilize. For every gram of glycogen about 4 grams of water goes along with it. If you use up the glycogen the water returns to circulation and is eventually removed as excess through urination. Glycogen storage is a balance, if you use your muscles you use up glycogen...if you eat carbs you store glycogen.

So what does all of this means. It means if you go on an excessively low carbohydrate diet you will deplete your glycogen stores eventually to zero. While this is happening you are shedding a lot of water and thus you are shedding a lot of weight. This isn't actually fat loss, this isn't actually something that matters...its loss of water weight. The ultimate result of this is in the first week of going on a ketogenic diet the pounds just seem to fly off of you. If you lose two pounds of stores glycogen you'd lose 8 pounds of stored water and you'd end up losing 10 pounds (but not of fat). As a side note while you are burning through your glycogen stores your body is consuming carbohydrates even though you aren't eating carbohydrates so you won't actually go ketogenic...just a thought given your question.

There are a lot of fad diets that operate on this principle (same with diets that do this by reducing sodium intake and increasing water consumption which has the same effect for a different reason). People get super enthused when they try one of these methods and for the first time ever they seem to be losing like a pound every day, its nuts. But that of course stops when they depelete their glycogen stores (or run very low on sodium) yet they stick with the diet (they just wonder whats wrong and why they stopped losing weight so fast). The insidious thing is if they dare to drop the keto and eat carbs then weight floods back as their glycogen stores rebuild and with that they retain a lot more water and gain weight. This will scare people into going immediately back onto the keto diet.

There is nothing magical about keto. You will lose weight quickly at first because you deplete your glycogen stores (which isn't great for your energy or ability to do muscle work by the way). After that its just buisness as usual in terms of weight loss where it relates to calorie intake versus expenditure to lose fat.

2snakeswoman wrote: »

Wow Aaron, good info; thanks.

The explanation I gave about glycogen is likely also why a lot of people think carbohydrates make them fat or bloated. They notice that if they eat a big bowl of pasta the next day they are like 2 pounds heavier. That doesn't make sense in terms of what they understand (if anything) about calories so they assume that it isn't just about calories and that carbohydrates make them fat faster. So then they hop on the "Carbs are bad" train and never get off.

Carbohydrates aren't bad, they are your main go-to energy source and if you are training or using your muscles with any frequency you are going to want carbs. Carbs just happen to require more water to utilize and so if you eat more carbs you will probably retain more water and "gain" weight temporarily. But so what.