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Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

blogs.scientificamerican.com

141–150 of 319 posts

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#141

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…

One great feature of keto in my experience is that if you're truly rocking ketosis, cheating oftentimes feels absolutely awful. It's just the first few weeks that's somewhat hard really.

Yes, the automatic negative reinforcement of feeling gross is helpful

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#142

Nutritional information is laughably conflicting. Example: Eat meat, it's essential! Don't eat meat, it will sky rocket your cholesterol! Buy organic, it is much healthier! Organic is over-priced and isn't proven to be healthier, don't buy into it! Fruit is so healthy, you should eat plenty of it! Fructose is bad for you, don't eat too much fruit! Every piece of information you end up reading, there is another piece…

There's also the fact that bodies are different, and have developed differently and gotten used to processing things in different quantities and different ways.

All these studies looking at people overall to figure out the effect of some food on "the average person" is IMO misguided. We need to study links between foods and an individual's body state, be it their gut ecosystem, ethnic/genetic indicators, in combination with the rest of their diet, and such things.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#143
post #62

I've been doing Keto since Feb 25 2016. My primary goal when switching over was weight loss, which turned out to be easy. I'm 25, male and was experiencing growing health complications related to obesity. I've lost well over 60 lbs since making the switch despite the fact that I maintain a primarily sedentary lifestyle though I now work out weekly as well as take bi-daily walks. There are downsides though. It's not c…

Has there been any more research into the long term health effects of Keto? I tried it years ago, but found it to be more of a pain than it's worth (I seem to have better luck with intense exercise 3x per week and avoiding sugar). And it seems like tons of meat and cheese is actually bad long term, in the sense it clogs your arteries or increases cancer risk. Atkins did not look like he was in good shape inside when…

1. Atkins died from slipping and falling on ice, not a heart attack.

2. He did have a heart attack based from a genetic predisposition. His cardiologist said his condition was impeccable, considerint his diet.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#144
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not aiming this at you but just people in general, but I'm pretty sure one could lose weight in a much healthier way by just eating a balanced diet (eating REAL food, not processed junk), not overeating, cutting out as much added sugar as possible (under 30g a day is recommended) and getting a little light exercise regularly. Sorry but I hate these fad diets.

Keto isn't a fad diet at all, if a fad diet is one that you do for a while to drop weight quickly. I've been on Keto for about two years now, and plan to eat this way for the rest of my life. I've gone from 235 to 180. Going from 245 to 235 took forever on a "normal" low fat diet. My A1C and cholesterol have greatly improved.

There is at least one person in these comments extolling the virtues of keto viz a viz quick weight loss without exercise.

I don't know what a normal low fat diet is, but the overruling factor in weight loss/gain is the ratio of work (exercise) to energy input (calories).

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#145
For those talking about ketogenic diets in general, try Atkins 2.0.

I'm not for fads, and I don't even believe claims that "caloric intake doesn't matter" if you only eat protein/fat etc.

That said, I've found that their Atkins 2.0 four-stage plan makes sense, and incorporates most of what modern studies say.

It's also not the caricature "steak and eggs" diet that some people believe Atkins or ketogenic diets are. They have some strict whitelist of food for the stage 1 (2 weeks, which you can extend to lose weight faster), but the other 3 stages gradually add back carbs into your diet, and you are even encouraged to add them "at your own personal balance", so you end up with a final balanced diet you can keep following forever that's not about ketosis anymore but health and sustaining your weight.

They do promote some of their own branded snacks etc, but you can ignore those, and they have tons of information on their site to do the diet on your own.

As I wrote in another comment, following it for 3 weeks, immediately after trying a couple of others for the last months to no effect. Not only I lost 10 pounds and counting, but am less sleepy and lethargic during afternoons at work, can wake up better, and have more energy. Those could also mean that I was gluten intorelant (never bothered to check, but I did ate tons of breads) and staying off bread made me better. Or maybe it's that I cut sugar completely which is also part of stage 1 (except for fruits and sweeteners).

I also don't care to eat anymore -- before I looked forward to every meal of the day (or snacked like crazy between).

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#146
post #91
post #62

I've been doing Keto since Feb 25 2016. My primary goal when switching over was weight loss, which turned out to be easy. I'm 25, male and was experiencing growing health complications related to obesity. I've lost well over 60 lbs since making the switch despite the fact that I maintain a primarily sedentary lifestyle though I now work out weekly as well as take bi-daily walks. There are downsides though. It's not c…

I also lost a bunch of weight on keto after several failed attempts at simply cutting calories. 235 lbs to about 185 and it all happened pretty rapidly (about half a year) considering I barely exercised. Lots of salads, chicken breasts, eggs & bacon, lettuce wraps, and quest bars. Regular coffee though, never was a fan of throwing butter in there. I mean I did do light cardio on and off, but I think it was mostly the…

What is the logic behind putting butter in your coffee? If your goal is to lose weight, wouldn't not eating that butter still be better than eating it?

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#147
post #62

I've been doing Keto since Feb 25 2016. My primary goal when switching over was weight loss, which turned out to be easy. I'm 25, male and was experiencing growing health complications related to obesity. I've lost well over 60 lbs since making the switch despite the fact that I maintain a primarily sedentary lifestyle though I now work out weekly as well as take bi-daily walks. There are downsides though. It's not c…

I don't disagree with what you've said, with maybe the exception of the amount of salt... That's a lot. I'll periodically eat a pickle or have some garlic stuffed olives and that works for me. People should probably supplementing magnesium regardless, but in tablet form it can cause diarrhea.

I'm replying mainly to raise the point that, in my experience, there are people who can moderate successfully, and there are people that it is better to abstain completely. I fall into the latter. I will fall off the wagon if I don't abstain from the "forbidden fruits."

My wife on the other hand is very capable of moderation. I simply am not, and I suspect I'm not alone.

So it's good to know why type of person you are in this regard.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#148
post #124

If certain crazed bureaucracies have their way, it may become burdensome to benefit from ketosis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_tax#Denmark When I experimented with keto, two products were essential to my ability to do so; coconut oil and butter. It infuriates me that some in positions of influence and power (but not of productivity!) would dare usurp people's dietary choices based on the careless assumption that…

The 'assumption' about saturated fat is not careless. Increasing saturated fat intake increases total plasma and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22131700

I support any form of ethical research, but not the hasty imposition of its ostensible results onto the masses. At least not in the case of personal decision in regard to diet.

As noted in the above link, ghee has been used for thousands of years. Health advantages have been attributed to it. There is controversy and that is fine. Let people make their own decisions. Certainly groups of people having nothing to do with the production, distribution and consumption of ghee have little claim to profit, although they may freely wail to their content about how much they resent it.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#149
post #62

I've been doing Keto since Feb 25 2016. My primary goal when switching over was weight loss, which turned out to be easy. I'm 25, male and was experiencing growing health complications related to obesity. I've lost well over 60 lbs since making the switch despite the fact that I maintain a primarily sedentary lifestyle though I now work out weekly as well as take bi-daily walks. There are downsides though. It's not c…

Has there been any more research into the long term health effects of Keto? I tried it years ago, but found it to be more of a pain than it's worth (I seem to have better luck with intense exercise 3x per week and avoiding sugar). And it seems like tons of meat and cheese is actually bad long term, in the sense it clogs your arteries or increases cancer risk. Atkins did not look like he was in good shape inside when…

Some epileptics do keto long term, so I imagine there must be information out there. Rather than searching for it in the context of weightloss, searching in the context of epilepsy might give better and more studied results.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#150

Since we're discussing this, I wanted to ask a question in regard to electrolytes. First time I tried keto everything was fantastic except I missed the electrolyte requirement and ended up with heart palpitations along with muscle cramps and overall crappy feeling once enough time passed and I unwittingly ignored the electrolytes. Talking to doctors proved to be worthless because most of them haven't even heard of ke…

There are some great resources on the keto subreddit (reddit.com/r/keto). I personally had similar issues when I first started keto - several times a week i found i had to be conscious of my electrolyte intake and would supplement with broth and often almond milk (potassium). However 6 months in I've found it's less of an issue, even at lower electrolyte intake, but I'm not sure why. I never found the need to hit the super high recommendations on /r/keto though - I found that 4,000 - 5,000 mg per day was more than enough, and I'd get heart palpitations and muscle cramps generally under 2,500 / day. You'll see a lot of people on /r/keto saying you _have_ to hit 7k+ a day, and people who drink salted water all day - personally, I think that's overkill.
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