Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?

[Jakob]

Flour isn't necessarily any more refined than just being ground up. And that's not what we've been discussing, is it? Cutting out refined sugar & refined starch isn't the same as a ketogenic diet.

Its because of the high glycomic index of modern grains, that it's considered bad on low carb diets. Cutting out refined sugar & starch is more like a paleo diet.

[RichForrest]

There was a documentary on the BBC a few months back which you can find on YouTube "The men who made us fat".
I find when eating those foods I get what he describes and feel hungry in a lot shorter time than I do when eating unprocessed food.
By the "feeling hungry" I just get the empty feeling. Probably not really hungry but just a blood sugar drop that my body wants more sugar.

[L CC]

I think one key is the assumption that one has to eat as soon as one feels hungry. If I feel hungry half way between meals, I'll eat only if I feel that the hunger will become distracting. I think that slight hunger means "I can eat", not "I should eat".
Well, unless you're riding an audax, or the like. 

Today we did our first ketogenic audax. Calorie consumption: 1400kcal. 204k, 10hr 50 (inc stops) 20+mph winds and gusts over 30mph. And most importantly: I'm not hungry.

Assuming that people eat as soon as they're even slightly hungry and that's what makes them fat is making out they're weak willed and lazy. Thanks. So we all fail at our calorie counting diets because we just can't resist the food. Where strong willed people like yourself stay slight because you don't eat between meals.
 
Or is it in fact that your hunger is less than mine? Or that I can't handle the swings of low blood sugar? That our metabolisms work differently, and just as I have different hair and eye colour than you, you can go longer between meals than I can when I'm running off glucose.

ETA: sorry, that's really defensive. But really, smug thin people lecturing to the fatties is almost as bad as the childless telling you how to raise your children...

[Bledlow]

I think one key is the assumption that one has to eat as soon as one feels hungry. If I feel hungry half way between meals, I'll eat only if I feel that the hunger will become distracting. I think that slight hunger means "I can eat", not "I should eat".
Well, unless you're riding an audax, or the like. 

Assuming that people eat as soon as they're even slightly hungry and that's what makes them fat is making out they're weak willed and lazy. Thanks.

Stop inventing attitudes & attributing them to me! This isn't (at least on my part) either personal, or about you!

I have never said, implied, meant, or thought, that this is about being weak-willed & lazy. Please try to remember it. To me, anyone who does truly long distance (i.e. more than the 200 km which are the longest I've done) rides can't be either.


BTW, if you want smug thin people lecturing fatties, look at some of the people proclaiming the benefits of high-fat low-carbohydrate diets.

[hubner]

Maybe people in the comfy West with its unlimited supply of food should get used to feeling very slightly hungry, all the time.

It seems to me humans actually need very little food to survive, in relation to the amount you can eat before feeling "full". When you have unlimited rich energy dense food, a sedentary life style; the result is overweight people.

In fact I'd say it's natural (in the evolutionary sense) to be fat when you can eat as much as you want. Basically, fat people eat too much!

[Chris S]

I have two main goals from this exercise.

1. Lose body fat (I'm currently at about 20%, I'd like to get down to 10% if possible).
2. Take advantage of the "keto-adaptation" that authors Volek & Phinney talk of in their books.

The first seems to be happening, but it's early days - and let's make no mistake, although I'm more open-minded, if not downright skeptical of the Calories In/Out paradigm,  I'm still eating to a calorie deficit.

The second also seems to be happening, in that we were able to ride a 200k audax on Sunday, with no more food than on a normal day, without any issues of bonking or hunger. It seems to me this is very very useful for long distance cycling, and the moderate pace of such lends itself perfectly to this - there's little Zone 5 work if you stay out of the mountains.

[clarion]

The main principles of this diet seem to be to reduce calorie intake, increase (or maintain) activity, and reduce processed food consumption.

Curiously close to vegan and vegetarian principles. 

[Chris S]

The main principles of this diet seem to be to reduce calorie intake, increase (or maintain) activity, and reduce processed food consumption.

Curiously close to vegan and vegetarian principles. 

(Hides 24oz steak)

Erm... yes, absolutely 

[Glover Fan]

ETA: sorry, that's really defensive. But really, smug thin people lecturing to the fatties is almost as bad as the childless telling you how to raise your children...

With respect, I commented and I was borderline obese once. I'm not anymore and I didn't try any fad diets. I ate the same foods less often, in smaller portions and increased exercise.

It's a simple and well accepted mechanism.

We all know why people gain weight, I gained half a stone in the three months before Christmas. I lost my willpower.

It's insensitive to sit here and preach if you have never had weight issues, but a lot of us have and know how difficult it is to lose weight. It's demoralising to realise that it's a constant battle against the thing we all love most; food. But it's more of a mental battle than anything some scientist of the moment comes up with regarding diets. IMO.

[CrinklyLion]

...the same foods less often, in smaller portions and increased exercise.

It's a simple and well accepted mechanism.

We all know why people gain weight, I gained half a stone in the three months before Christmas. I lost my willpower.

...

But I think the point that boabacca may have been making, if she'll forgive me for putting words in her mouth (now that I no longer fill her gob with caik), is that for _her_ that mechanism didn't work.  It wasn't a failing of willpower, and she is consuming the same amount of calories now as when she was not experimenting with the ketogenic diet but with, in _her_ case, less hunger and more weight loss.

[redshift]

There was a documentary on the BBC a few months back which you can find on YouTube "The men who made us fat".
I find when eating those foods I get what he describes and feel hungry in a lot shorter time than I do when eating unprocessed food.
By the "feeling hungry" I just get the empty feeling. Probably not really hungry but just a blood sugar drop that my body wants more sugar.

The series made mention of John Yudkin's book "Pure, white and deadly" which at the time would have set me back about £250 for a copy, as it's something of a forgotten classic.*

I see Penguin have reprinted it, so now you can get it for less than a tenner.  I bet that's put a crimp in the secondhand market...


* Or suppressed, depending on your level of conspiracy awareness.

[rideron]

Quote: Michael Pollen - 1. Eat real food.  2. Not too much.  3. Mostly plants.

[mrcharly-YHT]

ETA: sorry, that's really defensive. But really, smug thin people lecturing to the fatties is almost as bad as the childless telling you how to raise your children...

With respect, I commented and I was borderline obese once.

Is that by the BMI scale? Load of bollocks is that scale. According to it I am overweight now and was borderline obese when I did the easter arrow last year. People who meet me generally say I'm skinny.

.... she is consuming the same amount of calories now as when she was not experimenting with the ketogenic diet but with, in _her_ case, less hunger and more weight loss.

This is probably the last word that needs saying on the subject.

[SteveC]

To add a bit of anecdata to the 'processed food' part of this thread...

I find that home made bread is much more satisfying and keeps me not-hungry for far longer than shop bought, however good.
We make pretty well all our own bread.  Some years ago, I discovered that it is possible to part-bake and freeze pizza bases, which makes a huge difference to the practicality of having home made pizza. Before that, our standard Friday evening just-come-in-from-Tesco dinner was pizza.  Tesco deep pan pizzas.  Two, different flavours, half of each for each of us.  Yes, that's a lot of pizza, but we would still end up with crisps later on!  So, first week of new pizzas, I prepare and cook two, one each, as before.  We get half way through and MrsC says, "do you think this would keep for tomorrow's lunch?"  So the next week I make one pizza between us.  It's still too much.  So for the next batch of pizzas we use the same quantity of flour for six bases instead of four.  Now part of this might be that our bread isn't as light and puffed up as commercial stuff, but I think there's more going on than just that. 

[Andrew]

As I understand it, the 'evolutionary perspective' (all very vogue at one point in many subjects, is it still?) underpins low carbing, and obviously paleo. In short, it suggests our digestive systems cannot handle modern processed foods and it's giving rise to all manner of disease (diabetes etc).

I guess if we employ the same paradigm we could say that in x thousands of years, we might actually evolve to eat the Big Mac (if doctors would stop treating related disease that is). Except maybe by the time, McDonalds will be long gone and replaced by lord knows what.

[hellymedic]

Study in this week's BMJ suggests low-carb diet may be associated with higher risk of cardiovascular disease in Swedish women.
Sorry, paywall. http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e4026

[L CC]

Is that the same study as this one, linked to by oranj a couple of weeks ago?

Low carb/high protein. We've all become terrified of fat, LCHF (low carb High fat) is better for you, and is mostly the change between the first Atkins book and the second.

I wonder what the correlation in that same group of women would have been between BMI and cardiovascular disease?

To be honest, I don't care on a population-wide scale if it's better for you or not. I think people are too different for blanket suggestions to work for everyone. Given that both my grandfathers died (aged less than 65) of cardiovascular disease, and both my grandmothers died (aged 55 & 75) with alzheimers and my dad's on statins & betablockers, I'm probably doomed anyway.

[hellymedic]

Yes, sorry.
You're quite right about differences between groups and indiviuals...

[Andrew]

"Still no evidence that the Swedes are killing themselves with low-carb diets"

http://www.drbriffa.com/2013/01/26/still-no-evidence-that-the-swedes-are-killing-themselves-with-low-carb-diets/

I was well aware of the study at the time, but chose not to write about it because, as I explain below, I believe it really is a rubbish piece of ‘research’ which tells us essentially nothing about the impact of low carbohydrate diets on health

[campagman]

This is a good video about Paleo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U36XJaETbh8&feature=youtu.be

[Jakob]

This is a good video about Paleo.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/U36XJaETbh8&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/U36XJaETbh8&rel=1</a>

Yeah. Except..Asian diets usually rely very heavily on white rice, one of the big no-no's in the Paleo diet, yet they have traditionally been slim?
Bread and white potatoes were also common with our (European) ancestors and how healthy were those ancestors anyway?. Slim does not automatically equals healthy. Further our ancestors were much more likely to be physical active (less automation) and as such didn't *need* to work-out.

I do like (and mostly believe in) the paleo diet, but some of the preaching is bullshit.

[hellymedic]

<pedant> Weren't potatoes brought to Europe from America  only 400 years ago?
Our caveman ancestors would never have eaten them!

[clarion]

Don't muddy the evangelism with facts!

[Jakob]

<pedant> Weren't potatoes brought to Europe from America  only 400 years ago?
Our caveman ancestors would never have eaten them!

If you watch the video, it's clear that he's also comparing to only a few generations back.

[Andrew]

Further our ancestors were much more likely to be physical active (less automation) and as such didn't *need* to work-out.

I think this is an important factor. Our lifestyles today (particularly western) are comparatively sedentary. I don't feel we need to work-out at all, just be more generally active.  The Paleo (et al) diet acknowledges that.
 

I do like (and mostly believe in) the paleo diet, but some of the preaching is bullshit.

Same here. Sadly there are those that go just a little too far in all walks of life.

I'm racking my brains here (and it hurts!) but isn't there some 'xyz paradox theory' that addresses the question 'why are' the Chinese/Italians not fat when they eat so much rice/pasta'?