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Ketogenic Diets and Chronic Disease: Benefits vs. Risks

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Re: Ketogenic Diets and Chronic Disease: Benefits vs. Risks

#61

Having tried all these diets, a low protein and low fat vegan diet had the most dramatic weight loss without crazy cravings. Keto was good but the huge amount of protein meant I built/kept a bunch of muscle and muscle tissue taxes your system. In retrospect a high protein low fat/cal diet is a recipe for intense cravings and extremely difficult weight loss.

If you were eating a large amount of protein it’s likely the diet you were following was probably not putting you into ketosis. It’s a common mistake (made it myself initially). The problem is that if your fat/protein ratios are off your body will convert the protein to glucose (via Gluconeogenesis) for energy and you generally will not achieve ketosis and become fat adapted.

Re: Ketogenic Diets and Chronic Disease: Benefits vs. Risks

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why wouldn't ancient people have eaten wheat berries, boiling (like in a stew) seems like the easiest way to prepare wheat or other grain like barley. You can probably boil a cup of them and eat them and be fine. But you can find the answer to the question by eating 1000 calories of wheat berries and seeing what happens. It's going to be difficult to digest since we don't have a ruminant digestive tract. Making bre…

Why would I eat 1000 calories of any food? I wouldn't eat 14 slices of bread or 1.5 lbs of chicken breasts either. But I do eat normal quantities of boiled grains pretty regularly in stews or on a salad.

It's likely that the ancient people you mentioned were physical laborers. They would need the calories.

Re: Ketogenic Diets and Chronic Disease: Benefits vs. Risks

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I eat 1000 calories of any food? I wouldn't eat 14 slices of bread or 1.5 lbs of chicken breasts either. But I do eat normal quantities of boiled grains pretty regularly in stews or on a salad.

It's likely that the ancient people you mentioned were physical laborers. They would need the calories.

But you don't think they had more than one food source? And if they really did subsist mostly on boiled grains, wouldn't their body get used to it?

Re: Ketogenic Diets and Chronic Disease: Benefits vs. Risks

#64
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are different, and due to individual needs and desired outcomes, one size fits all dieting isn’t the best thing. I have type 2 diabetes. For the first 7 years after my diagnosis I stuck to the ADA diet I was told to follow and to use insulin to manage my blood glucose. My insulin requirements increased every year…10-15%. My weight stayed the same, trying to lose was difficult to maintain for a long period, and…

Well, 2 things - you are very much an outlier and general advice usually don't work in such a case. Great you found what works for you. It might not be transferable success to any other human being out there, at least not with some side effects you may not be experiencing. Second point - you confirm OP's claim if I understood correctly - people go from one extreme (with having 170 pounds to lose that's some extreme o…

Keto worked for the two people I know who tried it, one of whom had been trying other weight loss diets for 10 years without success

Re: Ketogenic Diets and Chronic Disease: Benefits vs. Risks

#65
post #22

The big problem I have with the Keto diet is twofold: 1. People rarely compare it directly to something like a "Real Food" diet - they go from a lot of processed crap to mostly non processed stuff on the outside of the grocery store and then see huge benefits. But I suspect if they just switched to a Real Food diet in the first place they would see most of the same benefits. 2. It completely leaves out almost all leg…

People are different, and due to individual needs and desired outcomes, one size fits all dieting isn’t the best thing. I have type 2 diabetes. For the first 7 years after my diagnosis I stuck to the ADA diet I was told to follow and to use insulin to manage my blood glucose. My insulin requirements increased every year…10-15%. My weight stayed the same, trying to lose was difficult to maintain for a long period, and…

How much protein do you consume, and do your doctors do anything to monitor your kidneys?

given your diabetes dx seems like one area to monitor.

Re: Ketogenic Diets and Chronic Disease: Benefits vs. Risks

#66
post #9

Something about this article is just fishy to me. "Very-low-carbohydrate diets may lack vitamins, minerals, fiber, and phytochemicals found in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains (6–8). " How many vitamins are in non-fortified grains? "However, findings from a recent trial by Hall et al. suggest that a low-fat vegan diet (10% energy from fat) may be more effective than a ketogenic diet in suppressing appetite (27).…

Normalise vitamin content to calories and you will find that full grains are a great source of many vitamins.

Anecdote: Back when I tried a whole foods vegan diet I found that my main problem was eating enough calories. I simply had to eat a lot more food.

Re: Ketogenic Diets and Chronic Disease: Benefits vs. Risks

#67

The big problem I have with the Keto diet is twofold: 1. People rarely compare it directly to something like a "Real Food" diet - they go from a lot of processed crap to mostly non processed stuff on the outside of the grocery store and then see huge benefits. But I suspect if they just switched to a Real Food diet in the first place they would see most of the same benefits. 2. It completely leaves out almost all leg…

Lemme throw in my experience on this:

I am 6'0" and used to weigh 340 pounds. I now do not and hit 168 at my skinniest. I switched to Paleo because Keto did _not_ at the time feature a "real food" aspect (as in, chugging Canola oil was fine because oil is fat; this is dangerously nonsensical from a nutritional and oxidizing fat perspective).

After I went strictly Paleo, lost most of the weight, I needed to improve my fat loss a little more, and starting trading healthy carbs for healthy fats. Thus, I took up Paleo Keto, and often do days on 20-30g of carbs.

I absolutely agree with everything here because if I had done Keto first, it would have been a failure, and I could have even injured myself due to how early Keto was obsessed with macro counting, but not obsessed with where their macros came from.

The modern scientific diet movement is basically something on the Paleo Keto spectrum, the benefits of inexpensive foods with low or no processing that are full of nutrients combined with the benefits of a low carb/high fat diet with sufficient protein.

Also, given my Keto-leaning Paleo diet, I actually eat a surprisingly large number of sweet potatoes. You know why? FDA says they're basically pure carbs, but if you actually look into the science, its mostly "slow carbs", can be cooked in ways that produce ridiculous amounts of RS (and if you don't do that, still have an amazing amount of it), and are low in enough in certain fructans that people on a FODMAP diet can either eat them (as they do not personally react to them at all) or eat small amounts of them (like a half of a medium sized sweet potato) for a serving and not react.

Re: Ketogenic Diets and Chronic Disease: Benefits vs. Risks

#68
post #24
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then the whole claim that keto was a diet of ancient people before the agricalture looked more like a fantasy. Modern hunter-gatherets in Africa get at least 50% percent of their calories from starchy vegetables and honey with latter supplying at least 10% of calories. This became apparent after scientists measured it rather than guessing based on earlier observations.

Modern hunter-gatherers in AFRICA. Do you think the Inuit, or hunter-gatherers in northern Europe or Asia were getting 50% of their calories from non-animal sources? You know the answer is absolutely not. I don't want to get into an annoying, repetitive ideological flame war here. What I can tell you is that depending on the climate and the length of the winters, as well as the soil, tribes had vastly different diet…

Ancestors of Inuits came to polar regions less then 10 thousand years ago. Yet even during this short from evolutionary perspective time frame they got a mutation that inhibited ketosis.

Even outside the polar regions to places where fruits and vegetables where not available or were very limited people came relatively recently. For example, in Mongolia it happened about 20 thousands years ago. Moreover, human population there in any substantial numbers appeared less than 10K years after domestication of animals and access to their milk. In Mongolia people living in traditional ways drink a lot of fermented horse and camel milk getting enough calories from carbohydrates to avoid a permanent keto state.

So a permanent keto state from evolutionary perspective was never sustainable.

Re: Ketogenic Diets and Chronic Disease: Benefits vs. Risks

#69
post #22

The big problem I have with the Keto diet is twofold: 1. People rarely compare it directly to something like a "Real Food" diet - they go from a lot of processed crap to mostly non processed stuff on the outside of the grocery store and then see huge benefits. But I suspect if they just switched to a Real Food diet in the first place they would see most of the same benefits. 2. It completely leaves out almost all leg…

People are different, and due to individual needs and desired outcomes, one size fits all dieting isn’t the best thing. I have type 2 diabetes. For the first 7 years after my diagnosis I stuck to the ADA diet I was told to follow and to use insulin to manage my blood glucose. My insulin requirements increased every year…10-15%. My weight stayed the same, trying to lose was difficult to maintain for a long period, and…

Good for you! Glad to hear you found something that works!

Re: Ketogenic Diets and Chronic Disease: Benefits vs. Risks

#70
I lost 75 Lbs thanks to cutting sugar and a ketonic diet.

I’m down to my ideal weight, but going back on the diet after a break, because I find that it works for me.

Considering that it was physicians who started the whole fat panic of the 70ies, and have been ignoring sugar for all these years, AND considering their ties to Big Pharma, I’m going to trust my own experience.

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