I can confirm that from my own experience. I lost 20kg in 6 months. Yes I restricted my calorie intake. But how I did that? By controlling my appetite with avoiding carbs especially sugar. Ketogenic diet is powerful tool for restricting calorie intake.
Concur. I didn't restrict my calorie intake, and lost 40lbs eating 65% fat, 30% protein and 5% carb. As soon as I add in sugar or other carbohydrates in any capacity, I gain weight and eat much more. On a ketogenic diet I rarely even think about food - I am rarely hungry.
But this is giving away the farm; if the way to eat healthy is a high-fat diet that cuts out the empty carbs (and especially sugar), and then you just naturally eat a healthy amount of food after that without any sort of bizarre calorie counting, that's not proof that "it's all just calories", it proves the exact opposite, that the calorie type matters a lot and conventional nutritional wisdom up to this point on what constitutes a healthy diet is dead wrong.
Which it is. But I find it bizarre that people will fall back to this defense, or, at least, I find it bizarre how many people still think this is some sort of defense, when it is in fact the exact, total, polar opposite of the position they think they are defending.
>that's not proof that "it's all just calories", it proves the exact opposite
At this point we are just arguing semantics. If you eat fewer calories, regardless of how you accomplish it, you will lose weight. Yes, it is easier to lose weight with healthy diet.
The whole line about "it's just calories" is precisely that it does not matter what you eat, it's all just calories. If you agree that it does matter what you eat, it is a fundamentally different position, and it means that, like I said, you are no longer defending the conventional wisdom, you are stipulating the correctness of the attackers, while still confusing yourself into the idea that the original position that you have now stipulated is inaccurate is still somehow true.
You can lose weight focusing solely on calories. It is easier to keep your calories in check while eating wholesome foods for numerous reasons, but at the end of the day, the gain/loss is governed by calories.
I can one up everyone. I lost weight on an almost all-fruit diet. And also weight on an almost all-meat diet. What they had in common was simple foods that satiated me and did not impel me to overeat.
I've been part of diet communities with keto dieters for awhile and I have met people who have gained weight on keto. These people seem to not be as satiated from things like bacon as more successful keto dieters.
I eat a more diverse diet now. I stay away from foods that cause me to overeat like fries.
Lustig is primarily concerned with fructose (and sucrose, which quickly metabolizes into a 50-50 mix of fructose and glucose).
Carbs in general (ones that metabolize mostly into glucose) have been widely available for a long time. They are also processed in a more "normal" way than fructose.
It might still be a good idea to reduce carbs, but I'm skeptical that the ketogenic diet is healthy.
Ketogenic diets are indeed not healthy over prolonged periods and should be limited in time. They're very effective though, so if you wanna do it just seek advice from a nutritionist and keep being supervised.
It's like putting the body in emergency mode, something you don't want to do for several weeks at a time.
Unfortunately, dieting will not change anything unless you really change your lifestyle and eating habits forever.
Any diet is a failure if it's just something you do for some time, just to get back to the old habits once you shaved off some pounds. Because of that, keto diets are not a good solution, since people get the wrong assumption about dieting ("I can eat like an animal and then do some keto to get fit again") and they're very likely to induce some sort of weight cycling (the so called yo-yo effect).
Therefore keto should be used with caution, by people who do that with knowledge and with the help of a professional.
Sticking to healthier eating habits over time is much more difficult and you need a very, very strong commitment. At some point in time, though, there's a switch that finally clicks and everything becomes more easy. Exercise should be a big part of this journey.
In the end it's much more rewarding and you'll discover a whole range of benefits. Weight loss will be just an insignificant detail, then.
For one thing: kidney stone are a very common issue when ketosis is sustained for a long period.
That means that you always have ketonic bodies in your blood (checkable with a quick urine self-test), which may not be the case for many diets that are just low-carb and not strictly "keto".
Why skeptical? It has been used for quite a while to treat children with epilepsy. If you're trying to lose weight, it makes sense to avoid things that are uniquely fattening (starches, sugars, etc). Ask anyone that was around before the low-fat fad of the 80's and 90's how you would lose weight - eat less bread, sugar, candy, cake, potatoes, etc.
I've been doing Keto for 5 weeks now, it's an improvement and very easy to follow. Restricting calories is definitely a good way to approach weight loss. I'm so far happy with all the results.
As long as you get the right amount of calories and nutrients, keto can be healthy long-term, as can veganism. People should chose the diet that works for them. The diet they like enough to follow.
For me, keto naturally reduces calories. I'm not the kind of person to overeat bacon or butter. I like them, but I won't overeat them. Whereas when I was vegan I found myself overeating a variety of things.
