2 weeks in ketosis, all I can say by now (and this only applies to me of course):
1) It was far easier than I thought it would be (some fatigue 5-6 days in, but that was quickly gone)
2) I have less meals (usually 2 meals, I am totally fine with that)
3) I have no cravings (the famous midnight snack is no more)
4) No side effects so far, not even constipation which I read some people have.
5) It requires creativity in the kitchen (or else you'll be sick of eating the same things again and again).
I supplement with Calcium-Magnesium-Zink and Multi-Vitamins.
For me personally it is easier to loose weight on a ketogenic diet than with a carbohydrate-rich diet. Especially due to no cravings, that probably due to more stable blood sugar. That being said you can loose weight with any diet of course.
Interestingly Ketosis is nothing "new", it has been used for a very long time in younger patients with regular seizures, as ketosis reduces the amount of seizures significantly[1]. A lot of interesting research will follow in the near future. For example whether a ketogenic diet reduces the risk of some form of cancers (it might "starve cancer cells"), if there are significant long-term side effects, et cetera...
Go easy on the red meat; research is starting to show it can cause colon cancer in certain quantities. Use whey or soy protein for some (not all) of your protein macros.
I hardly eat any red meat. It's expensive, and there just isn't enough fat in it. Pork, fowl, and fish are more than enough options for hitting a protein target.
Ah, I forgot about eggs. Not sure how though; I eat at least one every day. They're so versatile, and they literally have all of the nutrients required to build a functional chicken. Nutrient density is an underrated metric.
Or, get your omega-3 from plant sources like flax and chia seed, and avoid eating fat-soluble industrial pollutants, like mercury and lead, found in fish.
I did a couple of months and quite liked it. Couple of downsides/notes.
1. I do a lot of sport (sprints/track & Field) and it's no good for the dynamic sports as I found out. Energy from fat explosive events because the free fatty acids can’t produce ATP quickly enough. Carbohydrate metabolism occurs faster that fat metabolism, refilling ATP stores quicker, and improving short range (10-60 seconds) recovery better than Fats. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-06/uosc-fts06021...
2. You're thirsty a lot - just keep your fluids up.
3. Your partner may not appreciate your acetone breath
4. Eat too many nuts and you'll probably get an itchy bum!
Can I say: people seem surprisingly emotionaly invested in arguments for or against certain diets.
I expected more presentation of data and less ad hominen from HN on a subject that as far as I knew wasn't the most contentious our society was facing.
I was thinking the same thing. What confuses me though is how we've had numerous large threads of decent discussion on Soylent, the adult equivalent of baby formula. When it's a discussion about actual food, suddenly everyone's in full battle dress.
Casual observation, but hackers seem to gravitate toward vegetarian and caveman diets more so than the general population, which is probably why this thread is so frothy.
I think because the body becomes something to hack, they're often already adventurous eaters, and smart people sometimes fall into the trap of believing their intelligence applies equally well to areas outside their expertise (ex: the physician who thinks they can pick stocks, or the programmer who thinks they know more about cholesterol than a cardiologist.)
Given the supposedly authoritative but completely wrong advice that's been dished out over the years by 'experts' on the subject of fats and cholesterol, they might well do. Cardiologists deal with disorders of the heart; their primary expertise is unlikely to in be the biochemistry of the sterols though of course there will be notable exceptions.
I don't believe that people who aren't medical researchers can argue against the prevailing theory of dietary cholesterol any more than a layperson can go head to head with climate scientists and argue against global warming.
Ironically, I eat a high cholesterol diet because I believe I'm not a so-called hyper-responder. But also because my doctor says "keep doing what you're doing" every time I get a lipid panel.
Well, isn't it really their data that are going up against each other and not the people themselves or their credentials? The guy from the video has a PhD in Medicine and an MD but people without degrees are making the same arguments.
I'm currently a month into a ketogenic diet. I've lost 10 lbs so far (moving average, not spot measure). I had done it once before, 5 years ago, for a length of 3 months, where I lost 30 lbs, but then I gained it back over the course of two years after getting married.
Hydration is extremely important in any diet, but this particular diet on me seems to especially need it. I get extremely lethargic if I don't get enough water. I also find I have to force feed myself. To have enough energy and therefore willpower to avoid carb-loaded food, I generally have to eat 50% more than I feel like I "want" when first sitting down to a meal. I find myself getting bored with the food before I'm done.
But it works for me. If I play by the rules, it's the only diet I've been able to see results and thus stick to.
I've been lazy lately and eating a lot of deli meat, so I need to reduce my sodium. Otherwise, I eat a lot of ribeye steaks, porkloin steaks, chicken thighs, eggs (often fried over easy and served on top of the steaks), peppers, onions, broccoli, spinach, romaine. Small amounts of cheese, beans, and tomatoes. Lots of spices.
And that's about it. Probably most of the weight loss is the fact I'm not drinking beer or eating cheeseburgers all the time. An ounce of lean protein is only about half the calories of an ounce of bread. Does one feel different than the other in the stomach? I think I'm probably de facto calorie reducing. But whatever. I don't care what the mechanism is. Leave that to the researchers. I just care that my knees don't hurt as bad and I have more energy.
Cheeseburgers are okay! Just hold the bun and the ketchup. One of my favorite keto meals is a double cheeseburger with bacon, mustard, extra mayo, lettuce, and onions from Five Guys or In-N-Out.
Why go through the bother of deconstructing a meal to receive what is ultimately a low-quality piece of meat? I love me a burger, but let's face it, grinding beef is a means to save tough meat. And these chefs who are making burgers out of Wagu should be considered a criminals.
I keep steaks in the fridge at home. Four minutes a side is a lot faster, less effort, and tastes better than driving down and pulling apart a Five Guys burger.
From what I've seen, it doesn't seem that carbohydrates are necessarily bad; it's that they are so calorically dense that cutting them out and replacing with something else less intense (like lean meat or relatively healthy fats) makes a difference.
I've lost 30 pounds while baking as a hobby and reducing meat intake to accommodate a family member; my carb consumption is way up. This is in part because I know what I'm eating, in carbohydrate form, and am conscious of the quality and quantity.
I'm not necessarily recommending that as a diet plan for anyone; I'm presenting it as a counter to the keto diet items that show now.
The whole question is determining what "normal" (and thus "extreme") actually is, so statements like "extrema are not good for your health" are just plain silly in this context.
In fact, it's even sillier than that since extreme bursts of energy (which most of us call exercise) are demonstrably very good for your health.
If by "extrema" you meant "excessive things", then your point is tautological.
Basing your diet off of adages isn't good for your health either. Ketosis doesn't work well for everyone or in every situation but rejecting it on the basis of 'balance' without any evidence of harm is just lazy.
One problem with extrma is it's hard to stick with them. I saw some study somewhere that the people who did best long term at keeping weight off had fairly balanced diets. The Atkins guys seem to say its great at first and the fall off the diet in less than a year.
This presentation conveniently forgot to mention the ill effects, like cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer, resulting as a consequence of getting "80% of your calories from fat" and just how unsustainable this way of eating is. I much prefer a high-carb, low-fat vegan diet which has many more benefits and is overall healthier, more sustainable. It's strange people still go for low-carb, ketogenic diets given how much research shows its harms (for example, http://atkinsexposed.org/). It's also puzzling why one would not prefer the only diet clinically proven to reverse heart disease, the top cause of death in the US.
We know far less about nutrition than we think we do. So if you know about risks and are careful about it, as far as I am concerned, there is nothing wrong with trying out various things. Regarding meat though, a lot of it is panic.
The problem is that it's very hard to conduct proper studies analysing this. 'Observational studies' are useless, because if I take a randomized group of meat-eaters versus vegans, of course the latter group will be significantly more healthy. Vegans are most likely more concerned about their health in general which means less smoking, less alcohol being consumed, healthier sleep, they buy higher quality food in general, due to lack of choice when out in public they cook more themselves (they won't stop at a fast food restaurant), et cetera ... and then there is the Placebo effect, which is very powerful and should not be under-estimated.
The scientific data is not as clear as one might think, and "nutritionists" in general are pseudo-scientists at their best since you can find a study for anything. If not with humans, then with mice, or maybe just some study with some cells. The same with internet sites by the way. And Atkins strictly speaking is not the same as the traditional Ketogenic Diet. Regarding books about nutrition for example, I happen to agree with this reviewer of "The China Study" (not the original one, you'll see) http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3UR35AKTEYW43/ref...
If anyone wants to find serious information about nutrition, you should search for meta-studies, for example by the Cochrane Collaboration, and then you should read the abstract very carefully and not insert your wishful thinking into it.
There is a lot of damning evidence against eating animals and their products, yet none seems present against eating whole food, high-carb vegan. This much seems perfectly clear from scientific literature and has been for decades. The review you agree with has no citations, lacks credibility and makes dubious claims, like "Researchers still have trouble proving high cholesterol is associated with heart disease" which are patently false.
Well, I understand why the reviewer did not feel the need to make a scientific rebuttal out of a book review. It was not the reviewer who convinced me by the way, I had a look at this book myself. And the claims made compared to the studies cited to support those claims, it's fraudulent, I can't put it any other way.
I will not be able to convince you. Nutrition for many is such an integral part of who they are, that it is similar to criticising someone's religion and they are deep believers. If it works for you, I congratulate you (and I mean that, honestly). Nor do I want a debate in which everyone cites studies left and right that he has found on the internet, and then it is my job to go through dozens of them to find out exactly what they are saying and assess their methodological quality. I don't have the time right now, nor the motivation.
Let me just say:
Science is hard, studying nutrition is very hard and especially regarding nutrition, there are so many things to think of and to take into account. And nutrition is also an individual thing, I doubt there is a one-size fits all. I was not the one speaking of truths where in reality we should be more careful about such claims.
You can't deny the fact certain foods, like processed meat, surely have a causal relationship to cancer, probably also heart disease and diabetes. As I've said before, the evidence against animal products and processed food in general is damning, but I've yet to find a single case study of someone getting fat off eating fruit, getting cancer from tofu, or becoming diabetic from eating too many vegetables.
>You can't deny the fact certain foods, like processed meat, surely have a causal relationship to cancer, probably also heart disease and diabetes
Based on what? Your gut feeling?
>getting cancer from tofu
There aren't case studies of people getting cancer from anything. There are studies of large population behavioral patterns and comparisons of cancer rates between patterns. So to check the tofu thing, you need people that consistently eat tofu compared to people that behave the same in other regards except for the tofu. That's very difficult because someone who eats tofu is generally going to have a significantly different diet from someone who doesn't.
The only evidence you provide is from a site that has clear biases against a diet which has a heavy non-vegan component. See the the Talk section of the Atkins page on wikipedia (search for the referenced website):
Sorry, what should I be looking at on there? If you want evidence for eating high-carb vegan over low-carb keto, read dietary guidelines from any non-profit nutritional or health authority. They all uniformly and strongly advise people away from animal products and on to low-fat starchy vegetables and fruit.
(if anyone more knowledgeable can correct me, by all means do so, because I don't even know if this is true)
Supposedly, 1/3 of the population are hyper-responsive to dietary cholesterol - as in, consuming it raises their blood cholesterol. The other 2/3 can eat a high animal fat diet and see little to no change in blood cholesterol.
If true, those numbers are probably enough to clinically prove that a high fat diet is, in general, bad, while simultaneously giving millions of people the ability to go keto and say, "see, it's healthy, doctors don't know what they're talking about!"
The problem is that most people don't know if they're hyper-responders so promoting a high fat diet as healthy for everyone is irresponsible.
I'm just talking about cholesterol here. Avoiding red meat and eating plant fiber seem to provide benefits besides just lowering cholesterol.
Please don't link to websites with a clear agenda against Atkins. A search of pubmed will reveal the positive effects of Atkins and similar diets on weight-loss, regulating insulin levels, energy levels, etc.
Both of those studies are too small and too short. The second article even says, "questions remain about long-term effects and mechanisms," so it doesn't address my original concerns. Short-term decreases in blood sugar, cholesterol, and triglycerides are a result of suppression of appetite, followed by semi-starvation, which are the underlying mechanisms of a ketogenic diet, and are not sustainable in the long-term.
And Lustig gets thoroughly demolished here by Alan Aragon, a guy known for very scientific approaches to stuff like this. Lustig is known for cherry-picking the stufies that support his arguments and dismissing those that don't.
I read through that and it seems far from any sort of 'demolishing'.
The one broad point is that fructose is unhealthy in a general sense and that -absorbing- lots of it had many adverse health effects. I say absorbing because there are two sides - too much fructose and not enough fiber.
1. First he says Japanese people do add fructose outside of fruit to their diets. Both sides of this generalization don't really matter in the face of the actual numbers and shades of grey and as a whole this is a small part of the overall point.
2. He talks about factors leading to a more sedentary lifestyle. Is this really a rebuttal? Is he saying that the enormous rise in obesity is causes by this? If it is a contributing factor, does it take away from the main point? Does a rise of two worker households even mean a more sedentary lifestyle (even for the children)? It seems like a lot of words used on something that at most could be pointed to to say that the effects of fructose aren't quite as extreme, but it seems to me that there is a loose correlation between what he lists, decreases physical activity, and then the health data at core of the argument.
3. Then he seems to think that citing a study using 150 grams of sugar (which is the about the equivalent of a pitcher) is not worth looking at because it is too much. Is it not common to use exaggerated doses in studies to be able to exaggerate effects? How is anything contradicted by this?
Overall I expected a lot more from your description, but that page doesn't just lack a smoking gun, it is tiny arguments over points that are almost inconsequential to the main theme.
So then that begs the question of what you would attribute to the enormous increase in obesity and what you would peg as the causation of the correlation between increased fructose consumption and obesity.
That video appears to be talking about epidemiology. That is fine if you are interested in the broader public health concerns, however it cannot possibly give actionable advice to an individual.
Can it not? Stop eating so much fructose and eat more fiber so you don't absorb as much of what you do eat. Can that guarantee the same results for every single person? I would guess not. It is a good indicator of the first thing to try to be healthier and lose weight? Seems like pretty overwhelming evidence to me and in fact mirrors my own experience with intentionally losing and gaining weight.
Most of the time this type of dismissal is more due to someone not wanting to face the idea of giving up sugar, which I can understand.
>It's also puzzling why one would not prefer the only diet clinically proven to reverse heart disease, the top cause of death in the US.
Because it really isn't. The dietary recommendations we get from the USDA are soiled with non-scientific politics (see: http://goo.gl/bjk0Ik). Moreover, the state of nutritional epidemiology is absolutely abysmal -- even worse than social psychology -- so you have to be very careful about which papers you take seriously. The fact that it's still possible to publish studies relying on BMI is a disgrace, as is the fact that they're still applying linear models to body-mass/mortality curves, which are known to be U-shaped.
Moreover, if you were to go on pubmed instead of pro-vegan sites, you'd find plenty of papers that raise serious questions as to the link between various types of fat and CHD (not to mention glycemic load and all that other jazz). Here's a good starting point: http://goo.gl/ObRJAx
Assuming you're serious about health, rather than being vegan for reasons pertaining to animal rights, I encourage you to read both of these papers. In all seriousness, though, I doubt any of this will change your mind, as I strongly suspect you're vegan for other reasons.
The second paper you've linked, the systematic review, is actually mostly in favor of a vegan diet. How does that raise questions about consuming animal fat and CHD?
We can criticize Taubes for his low-carb advocacy, but that article is only indirectly related to low-carb diets: it's about how the USDA standards were determined. Moreover, a rebuttal from a site called "plant positive" hardly stacks up against a peer-reviewed source... just saying...
The second paper draws distinctions between several forms of fat hilighting the weak evidentiary link between most fats and CHD. Trans fats are an obvious exception. I posted it in response to the claim that low-fat diets are almost certainly healthier. At the very least, that paper reveals that eating meat isn't incompatible with longevity and good health, contrary to claims you've been making all over this comments section.
But since you asked, here's what 5s on sci-hub revealed, clicking literally on the first two links without looking:
- http://goo.gl/tWB3LA // Maternal vegan diet causing a serious infantile neurological disorder
due to vitamin B12 deficiency
- http://search.proquest.com.sci-hub.io/docview/197420736?pq-o... // yeah, ok, it's raw-vegan, but the B12 issue applies to all vegans (as noted in the refs of paper 1), especially since many can't seem to distinguish between B12 contents and bioavailable B12 ...
To be clear, my claim isn't that vegan diets are unhealthy. Rather, it's that we don't really know much due to the poor state of nutritional epidemiology, and that there's at least some evidence showing that veganism is really hard to get right.
The paper doesn't categorize low-fat vegan diets. The closest to it was recognized though: "only a Mediterranean dietary pattern was related to CHD in RCTs." (assuming saturated fat from meat was replaced with MUFAs or PUFAs).
Also, the B12 boogeyman? Just take a weekly supplement and be fine.
The point wasn't to do a systematic review of the literature, but rather to counter your argument whereby those skeptical of the lipid hypothesis are equivalent to climate change deniers.
If you're actually interested in this stuff, I invite you to cultivate a genuine interest in the matter and use this nifty little link to get to all the paywalled papers your heart desires: http://sci-hub.io/
Further, I'd be happy to share what I think good guidelines are for separating wheat from chaff in nutritional epidemiology studies.
>Also, the B12 boogeyman? Just take a weekly supplement and be fine.
I mean no disrespect, but I find this answer to be as comical as it is widespread. In one fell swoop, you've (A) implied that vegan diets are not balanced (B) ignored the body of literature surrounding the (possible) toxicity of artificial vitamins (C) undermined your sustainability argument. Moreover, B12 is but one example; I again invite you to make liberal use of sci-hub, pubmed and google scholar.
>So now vegans are purportedly dying by the millions from B12 vitamin toxicity?
That's a very, very strange interpretation of what I wrote.
On the purely academic point, it's even more ridiculous in that one doesn't have to die from a bad diet in order for it to be unhealthy. Your comment is both a red-herring and a straw-man at the same time!
>The level to which someone will go to justify their addiction to animal foods is truly remarkable.
As I suspected, it's really not about health, is it?
## Edit, re your comment below:
I see the misunderstanding. You skipped the part where I said those where the first two results of a search that took me 5 seconds. You can find other examples pertaining to deficiencies in lean body mass, vitamin D, and (IIRC) testosterone in men. The cortisol literature also gives very mixed results, so while I suspect the causes are actually not related to veganism per se, I seriously question the purported protective effects thereupon.
Again, I've given you all the tools to learn about this on your own, but you'd apparently rather quote "plant positive" than cultivate an interest in science.
Studies suggest vitamin D deficiency can cause brain and nerve damage.
You can say the same thing for magnesium deficiency - it causes permanent damage over time. Furthermore, 75% of the population is deficient in it, and it's nearly impossible to detect and diagnose a deficiency. Your body doesn't tell you "hey, time to eat some magnesium" the way it tells you to eat food. Chances are you (yes, you) are deficient in magnesium, unless you take a supplement.
Yes, B12 deficiency is serious, but there are other equally important vitamins and minerals that even non-vegetarians are deficient in, whose symptoms are difficult to detect, and require supplementation to fix.
Vegetarian diets don't have the monopoly on required supplementation.
I don't think it forgot to mention them. I think it's arguing against them.
I think the presenter who has an MD and a PhD from the WashU School of Medicine and a BA in Biology from Princeton (Of course I don’t think that having a diploma (or three) from a University makes what you say any more or any less true[0]) is arguing against the lipid hypothesis[1] and for the sugar hypothesis[2]: that sugar is actually the cause of all those ill effects.
There doesn't seem to be a consensus, though in the past the consensus seemed to be for the lipid hypothesis though that appears to be rapidly breaking down.
[0] Lots of people without degrees of any sort are saying the same thing, they’re all just as right/wrong
Is laughter the right response? Perhaps they have several decades of counter-evidence or question the soundness of the research done supporting the lipid hypothesis? I feel like curiosity is always appropriate.
> Perhaps they have several decades of counter-evidence
They don't. At best, they are armed with a few dozen recent, biased, cherry-picked publications with illogical conclusions, which I'm happy to pick apart if anyone can actually cite them.
The downvotes only affirm my point - people would rather be in denial than search, find and read the research for themselves, and admit they had been fooled.
1) It was far easier than I thought it would be (some fatigue 5-6 days in, but that was quickly gone)
2) I have less meals (usually 2 meals, I am totally fine with that)
3) I have no cravings (the famous midnight snack is no more)
4) No side effects so far, not even constipation which I read some people have.
5) It requires creativity in the kitchen (or else you'll be sick of eating the same things again and again).
I supplement with Calcium-Magnesium-Zink and Multi-Vitamins.
For me personally it is easier to loose weight on a ketogenic diet than with a carbohydrate-rich diet. Especially due to no cravings, that probably due to more stable blood sugar. That being said you can loose weight with any diet of course.
Interestingly Ketosis is nothing "new", it has been used for a very long time in younger patients with regular seizures, as ketosis reduces the amount of seizures significantly[1]. A lot of interesting research will follow in the near future. For example whether a ketogenic diet reduces the risk of some form of cancers (it might "starve cancer cells"), if there are significant long-term side effects, et cetera...
[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD001903...