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A Part-time Keto Diet?

From the article:

"Fuzzy thinking and mood swings. "The brain needs sugar from healthy carbohydrates to function. Low-carb diets may cause confusion and irritability," McManus says."

That's false. The brain thrives on ketones. The fuzzy thinking and mood swings result from addiction to carbs. Break that and the fuzzy thinking is replaced with clear headedness, and I have no mood swings from lack of carbs when I'm eating LCHF or keto, and fasting. Just the opposite, and that's common for people adapted to burning fat for fuel.
 
Pretty lousy article:

“The keto diet can disrupt your menstrual cycle because it can lower your estrogen levels, as well as affect how your body produces insulin. Insulin is responsible for telling your body to store fat, and if you are not producing enough insulin, or if your body is resistant to insulin, you will not be able to lose weight.”

That’s nonsense. Insulin is responsible for telling your body to store fat. True. And a keto diet is intended to keep insulin levels low which facilitates fat burning. So what is “enough” insulin? Keto unquestionably aids the insulin resistant in losing weight by reducing carbs, reducing insulin levels needed to deal with them, and therefore reducing the time elevated insulin levels are telling your body to STORE FAT rather than burn it. It's been shown in multiple studies.

And what's nearly epidemic now in our high carb culture is PCOS, and keto is a great way to deal with that serious issue, especially for women seeking to become pregnant.

Finally, if you are "insulin resistant" (T2D or pre diabetic) then it means you’re being flooded with insulin but you still can’t clear the glucose. The solution to that is….don’t eat glucose so your body doesn’t have to clear it using insulin, which is why keto works great for insulin resistant people.
 
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What "storage capacity" do you mean? If you're in ketosis, that's your body feeding on your fat, which is in fact the purpose of fat which is to be a 'healthy' fuel source in times of food scarcity. Yes, it's a survival mechanism, but for the huge number of us who are overweight and/or obese, our body eating its storage capacity is a great thing.

I think it really depends on how we're defining the diet. As I said, avoiding excess carbohydrates, especially the simpler kind, is probably a good thing. Excess of anything isn't good.

But I would be very careful about a long-term keto diet (beyond 6 months), and I just wouldn't do it without consulting with a physician first and at regular intervals. There might be some versions of the keto diet out there that would be okay, but I think a lot of people really mess around with biology and don't know what they're doing. They read blogs or watch YouTube and don't realize people are pimping diet fads to make money.

A lot of keto diets recommend high-fat diets, which are going to cause heart and cardiovascular disease if there's excess fat over the long-term. A high-protein, low-healthy carb diet (i.e., low-fiber) is going to stress your renal system. Strict avoidance of carbohydrates almost certainly means avoidance of fiber, which is going to change your gut microbiome. Doing that weakens your immune system and increases the risk of cancer. I don't really think any of these are good outcomes.

Carbs are likely bad for those with T2D because of how they impact glucose and insulin levels. If you're metabolically healthy, then carbs in moderate amounts are fine. And we don't need to eat grains - or really even vegetables. There are no essential carbs. There are essential fats and essential proteins.

I just don't think there's any credible medical science to back this up at all. The benefits of grains, fruits, and vegetables are well-documented. It's true you can overdo it with pretty much anything, but you're much better off overdoing it with fiber than fat or protein.
 
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I would add the caveat that many keto diets are unhealthy. I suppose it is possible that a really good nutritionist and medical doctor who knows what they're doing could implement some aspects of keto that would enable steady weight loss, and then switch to a more balanced and sustainable dietary plan. That I could see.

But what happens in a lot of cases is you have people desperately looking for any way to lose weight and they turn to Dr. Google or Dr. YouTube, without really understanding the full implications of what they're doing if they follow the guidance they read.
 
Well, I love pasta, and Im addicted to pizza, but I do want to try out this keto thing if it helps keep me slim. Since ketosis can take place within an 18 hour period, I was thinking, why not do it for every other day and enjoy carbs in between. Anyone ever tried this?


I did something similar, but not o. A predictable schedule… just a couple cheat days ever week to (they say) trick your metabolism. I combined it with intermittent fasting. Only ate between 12 and 8pm, and it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. You have to eat stuff you love— but it’s more about (for myself) what changes I could live with long term.

I’m now doing the Mediterranean thing, mostly because I love those foods already. You might want to check it out if you love pizza.

I lost a significant amount of weight, and fit in my regular clothes again🥳
 
I did something similar, but not o. A predictable schedule… just a couple cheat days ever week to (they say) trick your metabolism. I combined it with intermittent fasting. Only ate between 12 and 8pm, and it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. You have to eat stuff you love— but it’s more about (for myself) what changes I could live with long term.

I’m now doing the Mediterranean thing, mostly because I love those foods already. You might want to check it out if you love pizza.

I lost a significant amount of weight, and fit in my regular clothes again🥳

If you're referring to the Mediterranean diet, there's a growing body of evidence to support it. For one thing it's a very balanced diet. You get lots of variety, and lots of nutritional variation, which is really how our species survived and evolved.
 
He'd be ok doing just every other day or going 2 - 1. The problem with keto diets, especially in the early days (Atkins) was that everyone, knowing they had to replace carbs with fats, ran out and started eating too much red meat or other unhealth fats.

Replacing carbs with healthy fats is the way to do it. On the non-carb days if he went for fish such as salmon he'd be on the right track.
It must be wild caught. Farm raised is basically really expensive junk food
 
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If you're referring to the Mediterranean diet, there's a growing body of evidence to support it. For one thing it's a very balanced diet. You get lots of variety, and lots of nutritional variation, which is really how our species survived and evolved.
The food is fantastic. I confess I picked it because it “allows” the foods I eat the most often already. I’ve read it’s a big part of why folks in that part of the world have longer life spans. And, ya know, red wine is a definite perk.
 
It must be wild caught. Farm raised is basically really expensive junk food

The basic nutritional benefits are there for both farm-raised and wild-caught salmon. The fish oils are present in both, but both also came with their respective negatives. Wild-caught salmon is increasingly hard to find, and when you do find it, it's often frozen, infused with colors, and otherwise tinkered with. There's also mercury, though probably not a big deal if you eat salmon once in a while. Farm-raised avoids mercury, but it has other contaminants - probably more than wild caught. I'll take my chances and eat salmon once in a while regardless of where I get it from.
 
The food is fantastic. I confess I picked it because it “allows” the foods I eat the most often already. I’ve read it’s a big part of why folks in that part of the world have longer life spans. And, ya know, red wine is a definite perk.

I think it's also the lifestyle that they have. They're probably less sedentary. Mediterranean people generally live a lifestyle that, for the most part, is better for overall physical and psychological wellbeing. They value strong familial and friend relationships, forming strong social connections. They eat together. They work together. They play together. We're isolated by comparison, and we suffer because of it.

As for red wine and alcohol, they tend to drink in moderation and convivially. A glass or two is probably okay, but more than that and alcohol begins to take a serious toll on the body.
 
I think it's also the lifestyle that they have. They're probably less sedentary. Mediterranean people generally live a lifestyle that, for the most part, is better for overall physical and psychological wellbeing. They value strong familial and friend relationships, forming strong social connections. They eat together. They work together. They play together. We're isolated by comparison, and we suffer because of it.

As for red wine and alcohol, they tend to drink in moderation and convivially. A glass or two is probably okay, but more than that and alcohol begins to take a serious toll on the body.
You’re spot on with the culture, and I agree. I knew we Americans were doomed when they had to paint “stop” on the ground by the trains because people are so focused on their phones! Unless you’re in an urban area, seems like there’s no opportunity for those basic, mundane, everyday human interactions. No wonder we’re all on Prozac.

And I just want to say, in my defense, as a Gen X former smoker… and bartender in my glory days… red wine is the G-rated Disney vacation on the scale of “bad for your health.” We’re not perfect, we’re just going for the “less harmful” options 😎
 
I'm on keto and I have had no issues at all. Feel fantastic. Been on it for a minute. Lost weight with it. Then gained back about 30 lbs when I met the guy I'm with, because he's a chef and damn can he cook.

It's easy to eat nothing but protein bars when you have no really good alternatives, but now I have really good alternatives. Gotta get back on keto, though.

I'm on something called Pruvit. It puts your body into ketosis, and it really works. I've used it for a while. It's a little pricey, but I can tell when I'm not using it. My weight loss slows significantly when I don't drink it. It's a powder that you add to water. Tastes like koolaid.

What I'm doing now is doing keto during the week, and slacking off a little on the weekends. He tries to cook low- to no-carb foods during the week, and then we cheat on the weekends.
 
I did something similar, but not o. A predictable schedule… just a couple cheat days ever week to (they say) trick your metabolism. I combined it with intermittent fasting. Only ate between 12 and 8pm, and it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. You have to eat stuff you love— but it’s more about (for myself) what changes I could live with long term.

I’m now doing the Mediterranean thing, mostly because I love those foods already. You might want to check it out if you love pizza.

I lost a significant amount of weight, and fit in my regular clothes again🥳
Oh I mostly eat healthy- my GF is vegan so I eat vegetarian a few times a week. I eat the Med diet a lot too, but I think my main problem was the buffets in the mall near my house and my pizza habit, so lots of carbs which I need to shake off.
 
I think it really depends on how we're defining the diet. As I said, avoiding excess carbohydrates, especially the simpler kind, is probably a good thing. Excess of anything isn't good.

But I would be very careful about a long-term keto diet (beyond 6 months), and I just wouldn't do it without consulting with a physician first and at regular intervals. There might be some versions of the keto diet out there that would be okay, but I think a lot of people really mess around with biology and don't know what they're doing. They read blogs or watch YouTube and don't realize people are pimping diet fads to make money.
Yeah, but a well formulated diet doesn't require anything at all from people hawking products. The only generally recommended supplements are electrolytes - sodium, potassium, magnesium. All you need to do is eat real foods, and avoid starchy carbs, and of course avoid grains (a relatively recent addition to the human diet) and only minimal sugars. That means lots of fat but if you look at our ancestors, they prioritized fatty parts of the animals they killed, as do wild animals. What we eat, the lean meat, was the last thing eaten. Our ancestors of course ate liver, heart, brains, etc.
A lot of keto diets recommend high-fat diets, which are going to cause heart and cardiovascular disease if there's excess fat over the long-term.
There's a growing body of evidence that the real risk to heart and cardiovascular disease are the refined carbs and sugars in the 'western' diet, not the fat.
A high-protein, low-healthy carb diet (i.e., low-fiber) is going to stress your renal system. Strict avoidance of carbohydrates almost certainly means avoidance of fiber, which is going to change your gut microbiome. Doing that weakens your immune system and increases the risk of cancer. I don't really think any of these are good outcomes.
That's not true since you can eat all the salad, broccoli, etc. that you want. You avoid grains with some fiber, but there are plenty of other options.
I just don't think there's any credible medical science to back this up at all. The benefits of grains, fruits, and vegetables are well-documented. It's true you can overdo it with pretty much anything, but you're much better off overdoing it with fiber than fat or protein.
There really are no required carbs. You can survive and thrive on nothing but meat. A number of native people did/do that, and more societies clearly ate meat as their main source of fuel, then veggies and fruit in a very short window of time every year. I'm not arguing that veggies and fruits aren't healthy - they are in moderation. Some people can thrive eating vegan or vegetarian. Bottom line for most of us is if we eat whole, unprocessed food, we're a long way to good health. However, those with T2D or other metabolic problems, essentially anyone seriously overweight, can very likely see all their health markers improve by eating keto or LCHF. Or, alternatively, fasting.

The core problem for almost everyone obese is insulin resistance, that shows up a decade or more before blood sugars go up, and insulin resistance (an excess of insulin, really, all day trying and failing to lower blood glucose) erects barriers to burning fat. That's why people need 6 or 7 'meals' a day - they cannot get to the fat stores for fuel. So they need to do something to lower insulin and keep it there for a large part of every day to allow their body to burn the fat they want to get rid of. Keto does it, as does fasting.
 
A high-protein, low-healthy carb diet (i.e., low-fiber) is going to stress your renal system. Strict avoidance of carbohydrates almost certainly means avoidance of fiber, which is going to change your gut microbiome. Doing that weakens your immune system and increases the risk of cancer. I don't really think any of these are good outcomes.

Many people who eat low-carb are eating broccoli, cauliflower, avocados, squash, blueberries, asparagus, cabbage -- all of those have fiber.

I think the problem comes when people think they can eat just bunless cheeseburgers and bacon everyday all day (dirty keto). A clean keto diet cannot be unhealthy.
 
I think it's also the lifestyle that they have. They're probably less sedentary. Mediterranean people generally live a lifestyle that, for the most part, is better for overall physical and psychological wellbeing. They value strong familial and friend relationships, forming strong social connections. They eat together. They work together. They play together. We're isolated by comparison, and we suffer because of it.

As for red wine and alcohol, they tend to drink in moderation and convivially. A glass or two is probably okay, but more than that and alcohol begins to take a serious toll on the body.
The big advantage of it and really all other diets that appear to work is they eliminate or dramatically reduce the processed food. Keto done right does that, as do the carnivore and paleo diets. So the real lesson is eat whole foods.....

FWIW, the lifestyle stuff is very important and it's why it's risky to pay attention to the vast majority if not all the 'epidemiological' studies that use food questionnaires then draw associations between things like fat and heart disease, or veggies, or soup and long lives. Mediterranean culture, the lack of western processed foods, and the climate are likely huge factors in their long health.
 
Many people who eat low-carb are eating broccoli, cauliflower, avocados, squash, blueberries, asparagus, cabbage -- all of those have fiber.

I think the problem comes when people think they can eat just bunless cheeseburgers and bacon everyday all day (dirty keto). A clean keto diet cannot be unhealthy.

They also have carbs - most foods have some carbs in them. It's the amount and quality of the carbs that matter. You want complex carbs, and you want to avoid the simple carbs. You can of course load up and carbs, which some people do, mistakenly believing that they're going to lose weight because they're avoiding meat and dairy. That's I think partly why carbs get a bad name, though I definitely agree that the carbs you get in processed foods are carbs you'd best consume only once in a while.

Humans are basically omnivores, which is one of the reasons we were able to survive as a species. We adapted to different kinds of diets and have gotten our nutrition by whatever's around, whether it's killing game or pulling tubers out of the ground.
 
They also have carbs - most foods have some carbs in them. It's the amount and quality of the carbs that matter. You want complex carbs, and you want to avoid the simple carbs. You can of course load up and carbs, which some people do, mistakenly believing that they're going to lose weight because they're avoiding meat and dairy. That's I think partly why carbs get a bad name, though I definitely agree that the carbs you get in processed foods are carbs you'd best consume only once in a while.

Humans are basically omnivores, which is one of the reasons we were able to survive as a species. We adapted to different kinds of diets and have gotten our nutrition by whatever's around, whether it's killing game or pulling tubers out of the ground.

I agree. I was just countering your claim that people who eat low-carb aren't getting fiber.
 
The big advantage of it and really all other diets that appear to work is they eliminate or dramatically reduce the processed food. Keto done right does that, as do the carnivore and paleo diets. So the real lesson is eat whole foods.....

FWIW, the lifestyle stuff is very important and it's why it's risky to pay attention to the vast majority if not all the 'epidemiological' studies that use food questionnaires then draw associations between things like fat and heart disease, or veggies, or soup and long lives. Mediterranean culture, the lack of western processed foods, and the climate are likely huge factors in their long health.

I completely agree about eliminating or reducing consumption of processed foods. There's just so much shit in supermarkets nowadays - it's important to know what you're looking for and read labels. I was probably as bad as the next guy when it came to food choices until I got what I suspect was a COVID infection late December last year. I've been basically trying to shape my diet so that it's anti-inflammatory.

I looked into things like keto, too, and there probably are some aspects of it that work. Just my opinion that I'd consult a doc before adhering strictly to any kind of diet, not only to get his/her take on proper nutrition but more so to monitor and observe periodically how your body is responding to it.

Something that's overlooked is that there's really not any one perfect one size fits all diet. We have genetic variations that cause us to respond differently to different kinds of intake. But absent of medical monitoring, we can make educated guesses about what's generally good for us based on what we know about nutritional science.
 
I'm on keto and I have had no issues at all. Feel fantastic. Been on it for a minute. Lost weight with it. Then gained back about 30 lbs when I met the guy I'm with, because he's a chef and damn can he cook.

It's easy to eat nothing but protein bars when you have no really good alternatives, but now I have really good alternatives. Gotta get back on keto, though.

I'm on something called Pruvit. It puts your body into ketosis, and it really works. I've used it for a while. It's a little pricey, but I can tell when I'm not using it. My weight loss slows significantly when I don't drink it. It's a powder that you add to water. Tastes like koolaid.

What I'm doing now is doing keto during the week, and slacking off a little on the weekends. He tries to cook low- to no-carb foods during the week, and then we cheat on the weekends.

A chef in the house? You're so screwed, lol
 
A chef in the house? You're so screwed, lol

Dude. I knoooooooow.

Like this weekend, for Saturday night jam night, he cooked pork chops on the grill (which was keto), squash casserole (which was mostly keto), lima beans with ham (which is NOT keto), and OMGZ jalapeno macaroni and cheese (which holy schniekies was that shit amazeballs but not keto).
 
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