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Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#41

Post by wpietri »

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #27

what I wonder every time I hear people be very enthusiastic about how their diet improves their quality of life, is if it's just a case that eating good food and working out (which a lot of people do when starting a new diet) is the trigger to feel better as opposed to the vegan / raw food / ketogenic / paleo / high-carb specifics, not to mention the obvious placebo effect of starting something new that supposedly wi…

I definitely get this concern. I personally can't do blinded studies, or even controlled ones, but I've been very happy trying different things. That is, I try not to see a change as a permanent change, just something to try for a while. E.g., lately I've been doing the paleo-ish thing Whole30, but alternating a month or two of that with time eating whatever.

My take currently is that there is, as you suspect, benefit just in the experimental process. Novelty and change compel attention, which causes subtle improvements. But I think I also experience food-specific effects. I have no idea if those foods work the same way for others, but I could also believe that the profusion of diets that work is partly due to as-yet unrecognized differences between people.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#42

Post by tzaman »

akgoel wrote: post #25
tzaman wrote: post #7

I do keto once a year for about 3 months, and truth be told I feel like a superman. I feel more energetic, loose a ton of fat (ironically with increased fat intake), get more stuff done and overall feel better. The only reason is stop doing it is because I'm a sucker for sweets :) I started all this by asking a friend of mine who's a personal trainer what's the best way of loosing 15 kilos (because I was fat) and he…

I did keto for 4 months at the beginning of this year, and I did lose 40 pounds, and generally felt great. But then I started getting more active and picked up tennis. I found that after 30 minutes, I was completely out of energy. It wasn't that I was tired, it was that I literally felt like I was out of fuel. Taking a swig of Gatorade immediately picked up my game, and so I had to introduce carbs back into my diet j…

That's quite the contrary to my experience. I combined the diet with a daily 5km morning run, and I had no problems with it, not only was I not exhausted, I was powered up. But maybe that's just placebo :)

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#43

Post by DigitalJack »

jlturner wrote: post #11

I'm on my third ketogenic diet stint, and I can attest to how fantastic it is. I'm narcoleptic and I experience nearly no symptoms on the diet, my fiancée is epileptic and is transitioning off her meds to the ketogenic diet (with the supervision of her nutritionist and neurologist), and a former employee uses it to keep her benign tumor from spreading (actually! And she's totally normal, again with doctors). All of u…

I could have written this post. While I am not technically narcoleptic, this whole year I haven't been able to do with out an afternoon nap (where nap == 3 hours, sometimes more).

I've just started a ketogenic low calorie diet, and mentally I feel great. I did go to bed early yesterday but I haven't needed a nap in a few days.

The mental part is a big deal for me. I haven't felt actually "awake" for a long time. Always this haze of sleepiness hanging over me.

I am working with my doctor on the diet. I'm basically using a vegetable protein powder for most of my meals, supplementing with some eggs, greens, and lean meat (mostly turkey at this point). And a multivitamin.

I've been successful before, but the hardest part is the first couple days of transitioning to ketosis. Many times I simply couldn't power through the initial cravings of the first few days. This time I did, and I'm going to ride this train as far as it will take me.

The second hardest thing is after. I'm actually planning to stay on a keto diet after, with the appropriate amount of calories for maintaining rather than losing weight. And eating whole foods instead of the powder (although I imagine it will still be my breakfast because it's so convenient).

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#44

Post by nibs »

hinkley wrote: post #22
jlturner wrote: post #11

I'm on my third ketogenic diet stint, and I can attest to how fantastic it is. I'm narcoleptic and I experience nearly no symptoms on the diet, my fiancée is epileptic and is transitioning off her meds to the ketogenic diet (with the supervision of her nutritionist and neurologist), and a former employee uses it to keep her benign tumor from spreading (actually! And she's totally normal, again with doctors). All of u…

I appear to be one of those weirdos who reacts to something in bread but not celiac. I was watching that Michael Pollan series and he was talking about his theory that industrial bread was the problem and everyone would be fine if we went back to sourdough. Well this feels like one of those things that sounds good but has no substance, but clearly at this point I'm willing to try anything. There's a little bakery on…

I am the same. I did a 23andme and found I had the highest risk gene for Celiac (HLA-DQ2.5). If you have that gene, you get an inflammatory response to gliadin (one of the proteins in gluten and mimicked by proteins in other things) regardless of whether you develop the enteropathy of your intestines that is required for a Celiac diagnoses. Certain parts of Europe never ate bread until globalized food and did not evolve to digest triticea family plants. Eliminating these foods from my diet made me calmer than I have been in my entire life within a week. I find that flour is much worse than baked bread, and baked bread is much worse than sourdough. And this is reflected in the amount of unmetabolized gliadin in each of them. I tried reintroducing enough times to just give up and accept it. And I continue to feel better as time passes - so far no diminishing returns.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#45

Post by circlefavshape »

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #27

what I wonder every time I hear people be very enthusiastic about how their diet improves their quality of life, is if it's just a case that eating good food and working out (which a lot of people do when starting a new diet) is the trigger to feel better as opposed to the vegan / raw food / ketogenic / paleo / high-carb specifics, not to mention the obvious placebo effect of starting something new that supposedly wi…

I was wondering about this too. Many of the comments on this thread are "I felt great on keto and lost X lb/kg". Could you be feeling better just because you lost weight? if you have no weight to lose is there anything to gain?

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#46

Post by DigitalJack »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #13
artellectual wrote: post #2

Actually, I've tried the ketogenic diet. It's great, however it does have negative side effects. That is the lack of fiber. This can lead to hemorrhoids. Which can be extremely painful. Everything was great, I burned a lot of baby fat, but it was painful in the toilet, there was bleeding involved. You need to supplement yourself with fiber if you want to try the ketogenic diet.

Flax seeds and meal are low carb and high fiber. I put them in my smoothie every morning and am an olympic-class pooper.

I would recommend ground flax seeds. They pretty much go straight through otherwise.

Edit: sorry, just saw you mentioned meal too.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#47

Post by jlturner »

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #27

what I wonder every time I hear people be very enthusiastic about how their diet improves their quality of life, is if it's just a case that eating good food and working out (which a lot of people do when starting a new diet) is the trigger to feel better as opposed to the vegan / raw food / ketogenic / paleo / high-carb specifics, not to mention the obvious placebo effect of starting something new that supposedly wi…

My first experience with it came after 6 months of regular diet and exercise (daily). I was losing a little weight steadily, and exercising gave me more energy.

When I started the ketogenic diet, I felt much better, stopped exercising, and started losing a lot more weight rapidly.

I don't think it's simply lifestyle change, the diet specifically targets ketosis (which we are in naturally after 8 hours of not eating, i.e. Sleep) and maintaining the state to prolong the effects of ketosis (maybe indefinitely).

What makes you stop though is social eating, especially if it's pizza and beer :)

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#48

Post by dblosser0556 »

wnevets wrote: post #40
jlturner wrote: post #11

I'm on my third ketogenic diet stint, and I can attest to how fantastic it is. I'm narcoleptic and I experience nearly no symptoms on the diet, my fiancée is epileptic and is transitioning off her meds to the ketogenic diet (with the supervision of her nutritionist and neurologist), and a former employee uses it to keep her benign tumor from spreading (actually! And she's totally normal, again with doctors). All of u…

>Bread is delicious Bread taste sooo good when you haven't eaten in a long time, it really is addictive.

Maybe bread with real butter?

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#49

Post by rpazyaquian »

azdle wrote: post #34
rpazyaquian wrote: post #10

The main problem I have with ketogenic diets is that it's actually quite difficult and sometimes expensive to eat a 90-95% fat diet. I tried it for a while, and since I couldn't have carbs OR too much protein, I had several instances where my dinner in a pinch was melted down cheese and half-n-half. Your diet basically becomes cheese and avocados with some, but not too much, salmon or chicken. I'm not arguing that it…

Not sure where you got the 90-95% fat, but I've never seen anyone suggest that you should be eating anywhere near that much from fat. If you were actually trying to get that high I can understand why you'd feel like it's a "sick person diet". From what I've seen, the traditional advice for 'macros' is that you should be eating 65/30/5 for fat/protein/carbs. However people often misinterpret that to mean that that's a…

I could have sworn that there was an upper limit on the amount of protein you can eat on keto. Something like, more than ~150g would mean that the protein starts getting used for energy instead of fat, which ruins the keto. Maybe that was misinformation. Does that mean that I can eat mostly stuff like steak, chicken, and eggs, then?

If it's really more of an upper limit on carbs ~20-50g, a minimum of protein, and the rest is fat, then I guess that's fine. When I tried it, I was very strict on the carbs such that I couldn't go over 20g. In fact, that calculator says I shouldn't be eating above 25g, and also says this:

> It is important to get enough protein to maintain your muscles, but not too much or it will kick you out of ketosis.

Which confuses me. I've since moved away from keto to a mostly-protein diet with some carbs here and there via veg and bread, and it's worked alright with lifting. Does that mean that keto diets are different for weightlifters than for non-weightlifters?

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#50

Post by jlturner »

wnevets wrote: post #40
jlturner wrote: post #11

I'm on my third ketogenic diet stint, and I can attest to how fantastic it is. I'm narcoleptic and I experience nearly no symptoms on the diet, my fiancée is epileptic and is transitioning off her meds to the ketogenic diet (with the supervision of her nutritionist and neurologist), and a former employee uses it to keep her benign tumor from spreading (actually! And she's totally normal, again with doctors). All of u…

>Bread is delicious Bread taste sooo good when you haven't eaten in a long time, it really is addictive.

Really is, sucks too cause I love baking bread and making pizzas :P
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