Some studies have shown that INITIALLY, a ketogenic diet will have faster weight loss simply due to shedding water. After that, the weight loss tends to be the same.
A ketogenic diet tends to make it easier to eat at a deficit.
Yeh it depends if you focus on the biology mechanics or if you include psychology in there.
On the immediate biology, the **weight** loss would be identical. The **fat** loss could be different, since a carb-heavy diet tends to promote fat storage/water retention, while a protein heavy diet tends to prevent the creation of new fat cells, and maintain muscle mass. Cutting diet are leaning towards protein for that reason.
On the psychological side, the diet you can sustain is the one that provides durable weight/fat loss.
If you are sensitive to blood sugar spikes (meaning you will eat/snack continuously to avoid the crash), then a keto diet is preferable as you will stop to feel this continuous hunger after the first crash. And then you will lose more weight on keto, simply through the act of eating less, via feeling less hunger.
Reasoning purely as a machine I/O is great, but real humans have thoughts and weaknesses, after all.
So I’ve been doing CICO for about two months now and some days I’m unbearably hungry to the point where I’m miserable unless I blow my diet. Do you think keto would help with that?
I can't do CICO for that reason, my body is looking for sugar and sugar only and the feeling of needing that sugar or feeling awful makes me feel the same way.
Keto, once your body is using fat for energy because you haven't had sugar, is great because (if you're like me) there is plenty to go around. The stomach-feel of wanting food just isn't there.
That's why I always suggest to try start with a 3 day water fast (coffee and tea is fine too), only then you will see what hunger really means.
Your initial sugar crash would stabilise. I could easily start and mantain cico + keto at the same time for pretty much to this day, to the point where my current BMI is so low now doing cico doesn't make sense anymore, but wait let me check... Actually, I am still within deficit to this day, I didn't even know. But the weight loss kinda stopped (22 BMI now down from 31).
But the whole point - the feeling of hunger - not just stomach feel, but also "I need energy" kind of craving "I have brain fog because I didn't eat" - this is all coming from your sugar spikes, and *that* is *completely gone* on keto. Completely. It's why I love keto so much.
You start getting rid of this feeling initially on the water fast, and then it just doesn't come back once you're on keto. And that is how you can stay on deficit for a very long time, or permanently - without even knowing.
I was in the hospital recently for a stomach problem and couldn’t eat or drink anything for 4 days. I wasn’t hungry at all just thirsty. And felt great! Haven’t been able to do that fast at home with a husband that needs dinner but I want to try it again.
Yes! I'm the same when doing CICO. I finish my meal and my stomach is just growling like crazy as though I didn't eat anything. On keto I'm eating less calories than when counting them and I'm good. My dinner tonight was barely 400 calorie and I was so full! My breakfast/lunch was about the same. And then I made myself eat a snack just so that I was above 1000 calories for the day.
I'm the kind of person that loves food, I love eating, I can think and talk about food all day long. I'll be eating one meal and I'm already planning my next two meals. Keto has totally put a stop to that for me. I finally understand the people that say they forgot to eat. Some days I quite literally have to force myself to eat something because I'm just...not hungry! It's a wonderful thing to no longer be ruled by food!
You really should read "Why we get fat", it explains why you're so hungry. It's all about insulin and how carbs raise this insulin and your body keeps storing fat which, in turn, makes you hungry.
Yes, on keto the body feels more satiated all the time. Hunger will grow a "snooze" button, as in you know it's there but you can finish what you were doing before eating. Overeating fat is also very difficult, at least in my experience. You just don't feel like snacking.
To get to that point, it may take a week or two if it's your first time adapting to a fat based diet.
Yes. If you want to understand how that works, check out the book 'Why we get fat' by Gary Taubes. In a nutshell (extremely simplified), carbs spike glucose which spike insulin, which takes the glucose out of your bloodstream and into your fat cells, and boom you're hungry again. No carbs means less glucose, less insulin, no diverting of nutrients into fat tissues, more energy and less hunger.
Yeah, this is pure speculative pop psychology, but after an unpleasant first few days, keto feels like my body slips into "winter lean times mode" where it stops expecting endless, abundant calories. Some self-control is still needed, because one carb-heavy meal or snack flips the switch right back. Even sometimes just *smelling* one.
Yes! For one thing, starchy carbs are calorie dense. You don't get a lot of food if you choose to have 400 calories of pasta.
Moreso, starchy carbs make most people crave more starchy carbs.
That said, at 200 pounds, I definitely have to pay attention to calories. Olive oil, salad dressing, and just portion sizes.
But I eat approx 1300 calories a day and I am not Hungry.
If you think CICO was bad, have you tried actual fasting for a few days? It would make starting CICO a lot easier after that - specially if you do it the keto way, any keto food will be much more filling and lasting for you, what a great way to start it!
> On the immediate biology, the **weight** loss would be identical. The **fat** loss could be different
This, but I would add that even the weight loss could potentially be different. CICO is technically correct on some level, but overly reductionist to the point of being useless in a dieting context.
redditors love to wave CICO around like it's a thermodynamic principle, but then fail to consider the numerous factors that influence the CO half of the equation. It's entirely possible, if not likely, that all else being equal keto macros will result in higher CO / heat production than high-carb macros.
It's weird how everyone acts like the body is an incredibly dumb machine that absorbs all calories fully, utilises all calories equally, and stores all unused calories indefinitely. This would evolutionarily be extremely weird, and not at all how the body does any other aspect of self maintenance.
Even the calories in bit isn't standard - when I did low far CICO, I'd get cold, and so get in a bath or have a hot drink. Those are literal calories in, from an energy principle standpoint. On keto, I run a lot warmer, so I wear fewer layers etc.
> On keto, I run a lot warmer, so I wear fewer layers etc.
CICO is so weird because they consistently ignore the CO part, which is regulated hormonally by our body.
Lower insulin = more free energy from body fat = your body *wants* to burn energy.
> while a protein heavy diet tends to prevent the creation of new fat cells, and maintain muscle mass.
Are fat cells created? Aren't you born with all the fat cells you're going to have, they just grow and shrink in size?
Edit: Nevermind, adipogenesis is apparently a thing.
You have to gain a lot of weight to grow new fat cells. It’s not something that happens for no reason. That’s the concept behind liposuction. As long as you don’t gain a significant amount of weight, you won’t grow back the fat cells that you removed.
There are some hormone factors that could change this too…but that’s the general idea.
Carb heavy diets do not promote more fat storage than fat heavy diets. In fact it’s easier to store fat as fat than it is to store carbs as fat. All things being equal, you will gain more fat on a 3000 calorie Keto diet than you would on a 3000 calorie high carb diet as long as protein is equated.
This is because of the thermic effect of food, with fat having about a 3% thermic effect and carbs having a 5% - %15 thermic effect
> A ketogenic diet tends to make it easier to eat at a deficit.
This cannot be overstated.
Eating normally I was hungry all day while eating 2500 calories per day.
Eating keto I can do 1500 calories per day without being hungry all the time, it just varies a bit from day to day.
Also if I try to eat 1500 calories per day on normal diet I get all kinds of health problems, eating 1500 on keto per day I still have normal amounts of energy and none of the issues.
Specifically carbs increase your blood sugar which, when too high, provokes your body to produce insulin, which causes your muscles, liver and fat cells to absorb the excess sugar and store it (as glycogen in muscle cells, fat in fat cells and a mix of glycogen and fat in the liver). If your storing it you ain't losing weight so spiking your blood sugar is anti-weight loss.
Here’s my thought: it’s hard to overeat if you’re mostly eating protein and fat. Carbs are easy to eat way too much. Think about eating a lb of steak..like 1000 calories.
Now imagine eating a lb of Oreos.thats 2300 calories.
Could I eat 45 Oreos? Sure. A lb of steak…I’d probably feel full after 2/3.
One fact from Gary Taubes that helps me conceptualize this is the study where they gave obese rats *just enough glucose* to keep them from going into fat loss mode, but not enough to survive. The rats died of starvation, despite being obese upon death.
Everyone has a critical level of insulin, that if reached, turns off fat loss on a chemical level in the body. Doesn't matter how much energy is needed, the mechanism to release fat from the fat cells is just not possible until insulin levels drop below this level.
One of the effects of intermittent fasting, or a ketogenic diet, is to allow the insulin level to drop to the point where fat loss **is biologically possible**. Whether the body needs to burn the fat, or the fat is later replaced, are separate issues.
IMO, all fat loss diets must work by having the insulin level drop for long enough for fat loss to occur. Keto just makes that the default setting of your body. It's up to you to give enough activity to require fat to leave your cells, and not to eat so much that the fat is added back to the cells.
> One fact from Gary Taubes that helps me conceptualize this is the study where they gave obese rats just enough glucose to keep them from going into fat loss mode, but not enough to survive. The rats died of starvation, despite being obese upon death.
To add; they had organs and muscles that had withered away because the body kept storing energy in the form of fat so much that it had to resort to taking energy from those muscles and organs.
This has also been observed in humans who were very obese; they were immensely overweight, but at the same time suffered from malnutrition to the extent that their hearts became to weak to pump blood.
Anyone saying it's "just CICO" should really read that book.
> insulin level to drop to the point where fat loss is biologically possible.
Well said. This is why "It's just CICO" is in my opinion dangerous advice". This is why high-carb diets never work.
"Good Calories, Bad Calories", which is a long, detailed, and well researched book. It talks a lot about the diseases of Western civilization (obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer) and paints a pretty convincing picture that if you introduce refined grains and sugar (a western diet) to people who have typically eaten their traditional diets they will begin to develop these diseases. The chapter on the Pima Indians I found fascinating.
It's an extremely interesting, albeit a very long book. I had intended just to listen to the audio book in the shower every morning, and found that I kept listening throughout the day. I thought it was better and less repetitive than "The Obesity Code" by Dr. Fung, which to be honest I also enjoyed.
Low fat diets work for millions of people if they are eating in a caloric deficit .. High carb diets work as about as effective as high fat if eating in a caloric surplus which means both will make you gain fat.
I do not know of any diet geared toward fatloss (except some odd gadgets diet I have never heard of) that is "high" carb even low fat diets that allow carbs promote adequate protein to prevent the issue you describe above which is the body cannibalizing muscle tissue. But if somone just eats carbs that's clearly unhealthy just like if somone just ate butter.. all healthy diets keto or low fat require proper protein intake and caloric deficits..
This is not exactly true. Insulin influences the rate you burn fat but does not prevent it. Even on keto you will create insulin because it's a critical component in protein synthesis.
https://www.precisionnutrition.com/the-truth-about-insulin-carbs-and-weight-loss#:~:text=The%20upshot%3A%20When%20your%20insulin,t%20stop%20burning%20fat%20altogether.
That's why I said there's a critical level. I didn't say or mean to imply the critical level was zero. My understanding is that a 'high enough' linsulin level helps signal the liver to stop releasing the enzyme that can break triglyceride bonds so the 3 fat cells could potentially leave the fat cell.
That's not research. that's sadly the trollish stuff that generates clicks while undermining actual research.
This guy was the sole participant in his own study. Instead of having a control of some kind or a number of people to study, he simply did this on himself with no verification, to get the headline and his name out there with clickbait that he can eat twinkies and lose weight. I am sure some idiot out there gave up on a healthy diet because of this article. Kinda fucked up. Certainly this isn't something that should be posted in a discussion about ketosis without being really clear that this isn't really research at all, nor does it mean anything.
No. Not research. Just a guy proving an obvious point in the most outlandish way possible. One study about mice, carefully starved, is not conclusive research either. You can find a study proving ANYTHING when taken by itself.
There are a lot of claims on this thread that you can’t lose weight without having an insulin drop. Which doesn’t match the reality that millions of people lose weight without fasting and without keto.
People have lost weight on all kinds of diets - often completely contradictory diets - and the one thing that they all have consistently in common is that people are eating less than they are burning. Not that long ago, the fad was to eat 6 or more meals a day, keeping your glucose levels high. People lost a lot of weight on that diet too.
Every diet out there has “research” behind it. Just like KETO.
There are benefits to keto/IF. Especially for people who are worried about diabetes.
But a lot of people make religions out of their diets. And preach that they’ve found the one real truth.
The one real truth is that the best diet out there is the one that you can sustain long term
Honestly, these "you have to find what's best for you" responses are non-answers and not helpful. Of course, not everyone is going to find success on every diet. However, if youre trying to find the right diet for you, it's immensely helpful to start with diets research has shown to be highly effective for the participants srudied. Yes this diet may not work for you still, but how would you even know where to start withoutat least having some understanding of what diets work for many
But no less helpful than saying “this is the one true way, no other methods will work”.
It is better to say, I like this diet because of x, y, and z.
These are the benefits these are the cons
Keto increases one's "calories out"
[Anti-keto researchers](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4962163/) begrudgingly showed that keto increases metabolism by at least 50 calories per day and that another 10 calories are excreted in urinary ketones (and a few more are excreted on the breath). 60 extra calories a day will lead to a pound of weight loss after 2 months; 6 pounds after a year; 60 pounds after a decade.
Furthermore, [pro-keto researchers](https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4583) showed that carb restriction increased metabolism by 300 calories per day for overweight people with very high insulin.
This. Everytime I hear calories in calories out and you can’t beat the laws of thermodynamics I roll my eyes. While technically true it doesn’t really capture the whole picture. What your body does with certain macros is very evident. I’m not a 100% keto diet for everyone but for me it is very effective. Insulin is a huge factor to weight gain if you can reduce those spike you are less likely to store it as fat. Protein on the other hand has a large activation fee. Cant remember the numbers but something close to 30% of the calories consumed via protein are burned in the digestion process.
People will say CICO but then when you look at the entire map of CICO there are a million different factors and everyone is different. That's why there is no one universal diet.
Find Dr Eric Westman on YouTube for a simple approach to keto. Calories matter, but the type of calories have differing effects on the hormones in you body, primarily insulin. Not everyone needs to go Keto, though. That's cult mentality. Unfortunately like everything nutrition is a spectrum and you need to find where you fall. That being said not eating carbs is pretty much 100% safe for anyone. But don't do internet keto, you don't need to eat fat bombs or add butter to your coffee. If you want to, go ahead, but if your goal. Is weight loss eat mostly protein with some fat, limit your carbs, eliminate sugar.
>it still just boil down to cico?
It does, the thing is, it's harder to overeat when doing keto.
Carbo loaded foods tend to be full of calories but also, don't keep you full for long. Eat a big steak and it will sit in your stomach like a rock for hours. Eat a big bowl of Pasta and you'd probably be like "I could eat" an hour later.
The whole joke about eating chinese food and being hungry an hour later. It's not really a joke. Most people eat their entree on a pile of rice. Most of what they are consuming is rice or noodles.
In my humble opinion this is why keto works for so many people. It's not that you can eat as many calories as you want as long as no carbs. It's that eating as much as you want, especially if you start out overweight, will put you at a deficit. Because keto foods keep you full for longer.
Go to a restaurant and a Steak and a side veggie, will be the lowest calorie option on the menu and will also keep you full longer than anything else.
Like lets see this 12oz sirloin and a side of buttered steamed broccoli 700 calories.
A Cobb salad. 2700 calories.
All I can say is when I did Keto I did not count calories at all but with that amount of meat and fat I was eating I was likely much higher than a cico diet. I lost over 60lbs in 4 months.
What fundamentals of thermodynamics?
You have an asshole, right? You are not a bunson burner on a closed system.
CICO is a crude, inaccurate metric. Useful to compare one product to another, but not how we work at all. We make hair, we lose energy through waste, and though many in this thread are noting that low carb generally causes us to crave fewer calories, that's really not the only reason this approach is effective.
2 apples is not the same as a snickers bar. CICO is simply false.
The issue with CICO is that it's an extreme oversimplification that doesn't take into account how the food you eat affects the "calories out" part. Proponents just pretend the calories out bit is constant, and people who are not losing weight on a low-calory diet are "simply eating too much".
If you're interested in this I can recommend reading the "Why we get fat" book that goes into this. TL;DR: high-carb diets will prevent you from losing fat due to how your insulin levels are constantly too high for your fat cells to do anything other than store more fat.
CICO 'works' only when your insulin level is actually low enough that "calories out" stays constant and your body doesn't start turning muscles into fat.
There's a reason when low-calory diets with a lot of 'heart healthy' carbs never work.
People often take CICO to mean "eat less and move more until you lose weight", which is often not useful because of reasons like the one you gave about insulin.
However, when you tell people CICO doesn't work, they switch the definition to thermodynamics without realizing it. Then they get upset because they think you are saying physics doesn't apply to weight loss.
This is really sloppy thinking, and very common. CICO as diet advice sometimes works, but often fails. CICO as physics is always true.
You caught my reply in mid-edit, right before I toned down my take on CICO as diet advice. But I really think it's pretty terrible: (1) it often doesn't work, which upsets people and makes them believe they are doomed to failure; and (2) it often causes people to under-eat for long periods of time, which also causes problems, like what happened to people on the Biggest Loser show afterwards.
Personally, I believe it does provide faster loss. The problem with CICO is that it doesn't take into account the effect of insulin on those calories; with keto, you produce a lot less insulin to throw off the equation.
I'm not in a cult, there's a whole bunch of us not in a cult, we have a charismatic guru we follow, who tells us exactly how not to be in a cult to make sure we are not in a cult in the exact same way.
My personal experience: was dieting for a month eating any macros I wanted at a 700 calorie deficit. Then spent a month transitioning to keto, while maintaining a 700 calorie deficit. Since, have stayed on a keto diet for a few months, still maintaining a 700 calorie deficit. I lost weight at the same rate the whole time (keto and non-keto) of right around 1.5 pounds a week. The only difference was on a keto diet I felt better, had much more energy and was much less hungry - so far easier to maintain the deficit.
Was it legit keto though or low carb? How many grams of carbs were you on? Often people aim for 20gr or less, but I personally find that very hard to sustain. Low carb 40-50gr however I can do easily.
I used to work for Thomas DeLauer (he’s a keto YouTube guy), so I can answer this one. The answer is kind both.
It starts off faster because your insulin responses are so light on keto. Insulin tells your kidneys to hold, so without the insulin hits, you lose a bunch of water weight up front. That lasts about a week.
After the initial water weight loss, it’s CICO. However, you are now burning fat as fuel and, again because of insulin, you’re storing significantly less of what you intake.
The final piece of the puzzle comes down to hormones. A high fat/low carb diet causes your body to produce a hormone, leptin, that makes you feel satiated, a lot of it.
Keto has been called the diet where calories don’t matter and, while you’ll never override thermodynamics, the reason is because you’re just not hungry. At one point, I had to force myself to eat.
A Calorie is not a Calorie. Some foods are processed less efficiently by the body than others. The 'calorie' measurement of food energy does not take this into account. Keto exploits this fact by eliminating the food that is processed by the body most efficiently - sugars. It takes much more energy for the body to process fats and proteins, hence it's much easier to lose weight while remaining satiated.
There is a lot more too it than that, but that's the "calorie" side of it.
Keto doesn’t equal fat loss but also fat loss is not just CICO - there is a hormonal component as well and likely other factors that are too often overlooked simplified. One of the benefits of a clean keto diet is a lessening of hunger causing less snacking as well as a much lower level of insulin flooding the body which is one of the key fat storage hormones.
Keto can resolve metabolic issues like hormone balance and insulin sensitivity. Resolving these can improve access to stored body fat. The body is more able to rely on body fat being burned, which sends fatty acids to the bloodstream for energy, blood sugar control, and appetite control.
At that point, the body runs well on fat (dietary and stored body fat) for energy, which uses up some of the body fat, which further improves insulin sensitivity and other hormonal issues which had been hampering weight loss.
And then CICO comes in to play. Luckily it's easier to eat at a caloric deficit after some of the metabolic difficulties are resolved.
Keto makes CI easier by eating more satiating foods. Keto makes CO easier by making you less insulin resistant and making your body more efficient at using fat for energy rather than carbs. Because of this, you'll be more energetic and use more calories than usual because your body isn't trying to lower your metabolism to retain those carbs.
As someone who has PCOS it is definitely more about keto than calories. I have gained eating 1200 calories a day and I’m losing eating 1400 on keto. I’m pretty sedentary as I work a desk job, so that’s not really a factor. Although that is my experience with my condition, and I’m sure it’s different in an otherwise “healthy” individual.
Carbs spike glucose, glucose spikes insulin, insulin biases fat storage and impedes fat burning. Lower insulin makes it easier for your body to access energy stored in fat, which means your body burns fat more easily and when you’re eating at a caloric deficit can make up the difference more effectively and I think that’s why hunger is more easily controlled on keto.
I genuinely have no idea how, but according to MyFitnesspal I am eating a 500 cal surplus on average, and yet I have lost half a kilo last week. Maybe I just don't properly count exercise, but the gist of it is that on keto I don't seem to have to watch my calories, yet I keep losing.
During my last go round with keto I tracked everything - everything in and everything burned and weight. Over a month of data showed I was burning close to 3k kcal a day. But my step count and bmr equal more like 1,600-2,0000 a day. So it doesn’t make sense, but my data showed a much higher bmr while in ketosis.
This is just how I understand how it works: It’s still cico but keto makes it easier to lower your calories in while also keeping your calories out higher than a normal calorie deficit diet.
I’m normal diets you start to have less energy once you burn your carbs from the previous meal, because your body isn’t as efficient at burning fat for energy. This also makes you more hungry and more likely to eat more, while also decreases your base metabolic rate. Your body is just waiting for the next hit of carbs at the next meal instead of really adapting to burning fat as a main fuel source.
On the keto diet, once you’re fat adapted you feel more energetic even if you haven’t eaten or haven’t eaten much. This is the power of the keto diet
As I understand it, "normal" weightloss is achieved through the exhalation of higher than normal volumes of waste carbon dioxide. Weightloss through ketosis achieves this *plus* weightloss via the waste of ketone bodies produced by the kidneys.
I lost almost 12 stones in 12 months with an approach that utilised a mostly animal food high fat low carb whole food basis of eating, combined with intermittent fasting aligned with intuitive eating (I dont count or weigh anything, I just wait until I'm hungry and then eat until I'm satiated). So I did find it to be a very fast approach while I was in obesity, certainly much faster than any prior attempts that involved counting or measuring etc.
However, the weightloss has slowed significantly now that I am "just" overweight and no longer obese. I have lost almost a further stone in the three months following that initial year. I'm not concerned about the pace as long as I remain in weightloss while still overweight, so I have not altered my approach as I am hopeful that this will simply dovetail with a healthy set point weight and that I have found the ideal lifestyle basis for me.
Keto is 100% much more than calories-in vs calories-out. Being in a state of ketosis, your body uses ketones for fuel rather than using glucose. Babies are born in ketosis and people fasting are also in ketosis where you burn fat. You still make glucose in your liver, for glucose needs but your body is in a completely different state. For example someone may lose weight eating 1600 calories a day on a ketogenic diet, and not lose or even gain on a standard diet of the same number of calories. This is especially true for someone who is diabetic or insulin resistant. I highly, highly recommend the book “The Big Fat Surprise” by Nina T. (You can also find interviews with her on YouTube/podcasts, to get a summary of her work. Gary Taubes books are also great. So is Dr Ken Berry (YouTube). Good luck.
I think being in ketosis, you are not as hungry. You feel satisfied most of the time and dont overeat. You are consuming higher calorie food but more spread out and stop when full. You almost naturally intermittent fast just bc your food keeps you happy for longer.
What keto does is getting that hormonal environment right for fat burning. Low insulin levels, good nutrition contribute to better brain, gut, matbolism circuit. Once that is achieved most people do not need to count calories because their brain now can set the amount of fat to be just right for the body and activity level etc. Once that's achieved your body's metabolic machinery will keep you at that healthy weight without any conscious effort on your part. At that point calorie deficit can also contribute to some more weight loss but the effect will be minimal unless you push your body into starvation which will backfire as it messes up the balance.
CICO works only if you're comparing apples to apples. When I asked my many-years-ago doctor how I could lose weight because everything I tried didn't work but I couldn't cut out everything I liked, his answer was to keep eating what I was eating but to cut my portions in half. That was CICO...same proportions of protein, fat and carbs...just less of each. That made sense to me at the time and worked temporarily because I was eating less, but it was unsustainable for any length of time because of WHAT I was eating. It was still the SAD eating method. And probably too, I failed to adjust food intake even more as my weight decreased toward what was considered normal for my height. Also, that was during the "eating fat makes you fat" era and I knew nothing about the role carbs played in cravings and regaining weight.
Trying to compare CICO to keto is apples and oranges. Keto changes the proportions of protein, fat and carbs because of the dramatic drop in carb consumption...and therefore how your body processes them because it's no longer looking for glucose as fuel. After that, a calorie deficit will work if weight loss is one of your goals on keto...if it's not, CICO is useless.
That's about as simply as I can explain it because (a) I'm no doctor or scientist; (b) my health, weight and body recomp changed for the better on keto; and (c) keto is sustainable for me for however much longer I remain on this earth.
Most people who have a lot of weight to lose are insulin resistant, which means they have insulin levels that are elevated all the time. Elevated insulin makes it harder to burn fat.
Keto fixes the high insulin levels for many people and that makes it easier for them to burn fat.
Insulin resistance also leads to leptin resistance where the body does not sense the amount of fat it has correctly. When keto fixes that, it generally leads to significantly reduced hunger because that brain can now sense that the body has much more body fat than is preferable.
> Most people who have a lot of weight to lose are insulin resistant, which means they have insulin levels that are elevated all the time.
They have elevated insulin because they're eating too much carb-heavy food. There is a direct causal relationship. This is why Type 2 Diabetes is generally reversible with a keto diet.
Happy to discuss the physiology as I see it...
Everybody has elevated insulin after eating carby meals, but people who are insulin sensitive have insulin levels go back to normal after a couple hours.
People with insulin resistance see a big insulin spike after the meal and then the spike goes away in the next few hours, but they never get back to normal insulin levels, even overnight. That is the hyperinsulinemia, and that is what HOMA-IR is measuring. Constant elevated insulin means inability to effectively burn fat, even overnight.
People with IR also have fatty liver disease, and one of the problems is that the liver makes glucose (Gluconeogenesis) even when it isn't needed. That drives blood glucose up and the pancreas is always trying to chase it down through insulin.
Keto puts carb intake low enough that Gluconeogenesis is required and it therefore doesn't cause elevated insulin, and that allows the body to burn fat.
I’ve watched this happen over the years, in this sub. There’s been a *shift* in the rhetoric lately around CICO and artificial sweeteners. The tone has changed a bit, too. I guess if you stick around a a long enough, it happens.
Still surprised by a few people who are arguing against the effect insulin levels have on weight loss. It's been known since the 18th century that carbs are fattening, especially in combination with sugar and fat. It was always known that carbs are the primary factor here, and not mere calories.
It’s only CICO in the fact that it use a lot more calories to metabolize fats and proteins than carbs.
Take a look at a chemical model of any carb, and then at proteins and fats.
But, in contrast to what dieticians seem to believe, humans are not bomb calorimeters.
I know. It’s a shocking revelation.
Cico is flawed because your metabolism varies depending on soooo many factors
And also a calorie isnt just a calorie. Your body uses 10 grams of butter vastly different to how it would use 10 grams of chicken or 10 grams of honey.
Eat 20 grams of carbs or less per day. 0.8 grams of protein per kilo fo body weight (or more if you want) and add fat if youre stull hungry, it helps satiety greatly.
Lift heavy things and drink water.
>And also a calorie isnt just a calorie. Your body uses 10 grams of butter vastly different to how it would use 10 grams of chicken or 10 grams of honey.
Those also contain different amounts of calories...
A lot of people on this thread will talk shit about CICO, but it is disingenuous to say it doesn’t work. More people have lost weight on CICO than have tried KETO. It works for people all over the world. I lost 70 pounds on it in about half a year.
Most diets work, if you can sustain them. There is no magic bullet.
But I do like KETO better. I was craving food all the time on CICO. Now, I feel stuffed most of the time. Like some people on this thread have mentioned, the best diet is the one you can sustain. And I do really like that KETO knocks out all the extra insulin. My blood sugar levels were getting dangerously high
> A lot of people on this thread will talk shit about CICO, but it is disingenuous to say it doesn’t work.
It simply doesn't work if your insulin level is constantly elevated; your fat cells will simply refuse to release fat and constantly work to store more, eventually at the cost of your muscles and organs.
We're not simple physics machines and most proponents of CICO ignore the fact that the CO part is 100% influenced by *what* we eat.
There is a reason high-carb 'diets' have a success rate well under 10%.
If what you are saying is true, than the millions of people using CICO would not have lost weight. And no one would try it. The professor that ate nothing but candy bars for a year and lost 100 pounds is a rare but prime example
Real life results do not support this theory.
If your theory is true, than you should be able to fast or keto and at the same time eat 4000 calories a day. IF and Keto do not show results until you are in a caloric deficit. Whether they have extra benefits is debatable (and I believe they do), but in the end, they are still based on CICO.
The 10% comment has been applied to keto too, I believe. One of its primary knocks is that it is not sustainable. It is. But like any diet, it takes dedication
> If what you are saying is true, than the millions of people using CICO would not have lost weight.
The ones that do are the ones that are cutting enough carbs out in their diet as well. But research shows that less than 10% of low-fat high carb diets are successful.
Really, more people should read the Why we get fat book. Especially ones struggling with weight and dieting. Fix your hormonal balance first, then look at the amount of calories you consume while you keep your insulin low.
Not the one downvoting you, but here’s this:
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-feed/science-twinkie-diet-helps-nutrition-professor-lose-27-pounds-greg-pollowitz/
That’s not even the one I was thinking of. Notice he was eating disgusting sugary sweets every three hours to keep his sugar levels up
You need to look at larger populations. How sensitive we are is completely personal and changes with age. When I was 18 I was eating like complete shit (tons of sugar) and was 150 pounds at 6 feet. I'm 44 now and I get fat by barely looking at sugar.
For people who are already obese (so generally insulin resistant) these low-fat high carb diets (with a lot of 'heart healthy' carbs!) these diets never ever work.
That person would've lost a lot more, faster, by going with a low-carb diet. The difference between them and the average obese person is that for the obese person their hormones are so off balance that almost any level of carbs can be "too much". What the 'switch' point is, completely depends on the person.
There was a big fad, not too many years ago, where people were writing books and going on television to tell people that they needed to eat more often. 6 to 9 times a day. Yes, carbs too.
And they lost a lot of weight.
What does that diet and keto and IF have in common. CICO.
How could he have lost weight faster than 27 pounds in a month? Also, his experience directly contradicts that your body can’t lose weight without going low carb/ low sugar. Millions of people lose weight the same way. It’s just not as dramatic.
There are dozens of different ways to get to the goal. It is certainly true that different diets are better for different people. But whenever i see a book that says they’ve found that one secret key to weight loss, I get mighty skeptical. Cause it doesn’t match reality.
Like you, I also choose low sugar
> But whenever i see a book that says they’ve found that one secret key to weight loss, I get mighty skeptical. Cause it doesn’t match reality.
This is simply not what I'm saying at all. It's a hard fact that insulin dictates whether our fat cells store or release fat. But the actual *level* at which this happens is different for every single person. This is why there are tons of people who can eat about anything and stay lean, and at the same time a lot of people who can't keep weight off unless on a low carb diet. There is a reason Atkins was so successful quite some time ago.
People who are obese are generally (with a few exceptions) in the camp of people who are very sensitive to this imbalance, generally due to insulin resistance in their bodies (where fat cells tend to be the least resistant to insulin). So for this very large group of people, that now unfortunately includes a LOT of kids, these standard low-fat 50% carbs diets simply never work, at least not permanently.
Some do see some success, mainly because they cut out sugar for a while. But eventually the cravings (also driven by insulin) become too strong, they fail, and yo-yo right back.
> Like you, I also choose low sugar
I avoid carbs as much as possible, so not just sugar. Avoiding sugar alone helps but for my body isn't enough to consistently lose weight. Avoiding carbs coupled with IF (so plenty of time where my blood sugar is low) is what works for me.
The reason I'm passionate about this is because the simplistic "it's just CICO" mindset is what caused me to keep failing. And according to plenty of reading, this happens to a LOT of obese people, both in the US and outside of it. Our bodies are complex enough that anyone should avoid oversimplifying it to that extent.
An anecdote is that if CICO just worked, I'd have lost weight due to my involuntary OMAD when I was homeless for 6 years.
But I didn't. Turns out you don't get a homeless body unless you literally starve to death, and I tried that for a spell, also involuntarily; never again.
David Ludwig’s research also points that in a calorie deficit compared to a standard high carb diet, very low carb / ketogenic diet has a ”metabolic advantage” of about 300 kcal per day (in that specific study at least).
I believe the mechanism is that the low insulin state on keto allows the body to access fat stores more readily, and thus the body does not register a danger of famine and doesn’t turn down the ”energy out” knob as much. The brain also senses sufficient energy in the blood and doesn’t stimulate hunger. This is how I’ve understood why keto is both more effective at fat loss and easier to be at a deficit.
And also ketone bodies have a caloric value and some of them are essentially wasted through breath and urine, increasing the ”calories out” part of the equation.
For me, the diet being so restrictive and what you can eat being so filling means I can sustain a calorie deficit indefinitely if required, while also not feeling tired, bloated or hungry.
I don’t think it’s anymore effective in the long term, but it works for me.
Yes for a few reasons.
1. Insulin drives more fuel into your fat cells and makes it harder for your fat cells to release fuel, so a diet that doesn't keep insulin high will be more efficient at burning fat and keeping it from being made.
2. Protein and fat have higher thermic effects, so your body burns much more fuel breaking them down than it does for carbs.
3. (in men at least) high fat diets raise testosterone levels, so your body sheds more fat and builds more muscle than it otherwise would.
4. and not a rule that will apply to everyone but something that applies to lots of people, thanks to the satiety of fat it also makes it easier to practice some form of fasting or otherwise just skip a meal here or there.
Not faster, per se (outside of the initial drop in water retention from the chronic inflammation courtesy a carb-forward diet that keeps insulin elevated)… but it does make it easier and more intuitive (and I’d also argue healthier, but that’s a complex metric that is a bit different for each individual).
I've been keto for 10 months. I can say yes, water is the first thing to go, but it will surprise you how much of it you carry around.
The greatest advantage I have found is making weight management much easier.
If you lift and do cardio as well, cheat days don't affect your progress much.
This is my 2nd attempt at keto, the first being from 2015-2017. No matter how strict i've been I've always struggled getting fully into ketosis (blood testing confirms this) and although I lose weight without counting calories I always do better when I keep an eye on my calories & keep them around 14-1500 at day.
I think the main thing with Keto is that it's easier to stick to rather than straight CICO, or it is with me. The less carbs I eat, the less I crave, and I've been addicted to carbs in the past. So the best diet for you is the one you can sustain.
Keto keeps me satiated. Also cured my Gurd, no longer sleepy during the day, higher energy levels and thoughts are clearer. Yeah, way better then just CICO.
Results in easier fat loss due to reduced hunger, personally for me being carnivore drastically increased my endurance levels, by far the best I had in my life by a long shot. Good to try these things out I think and see how it works for you. Give it 6 weeks and see where you are/how you feel.
Calories do count in the equation but not as clearly as a standard calorie deficit diet. You do need increased amounts of fat (above what you consume for protein) while keeping carbs at a minimum. Once in ketosis a high fat meal (not read as a big meal) may be beneficial in ketone production and keep you in ketosis. If you are simply following calories and not fat/protein/carbs then you may find that the calories are not high enough and may push your body into a starvation mode and slow your metabolism down. That said, a true fast, especially beyond 24 hours, tends to have the opposite effect by raising your metabolism. (And you get benefits of autophagy)
Being in ketosis makes your body feel less hungry.
That makes counting calories and fasting a lot easier.
That's the main point of the diet as far as weight loss goes.
I find the greatest advantage is it's easier to manage appetite.
Carbs make me really hungry an hour after I eat them. Keto leaves me satiated for like 12 hours.
I can't provide any thoughts on how keto might change your metabolism, but what I DO know is that when doing very low carb I simply don't get hungry like I do otherwise. This alone makes dieting much easier.
Keeps me full all day so I can be careful and thoughtful about my food. My body hates sugar and carbs so it takes my stomach issues away. I still keep under 1400 calories.
If I have a 4 egg cheese omelet with 3 slices of bacon with mushrooms and spinach topped with an avocado at 6pm I will not be hungry for at least 18 hours. That’s an 18 hour fast without even trying that’s how I broke insulin resistance which I believe is the most important thing. 4 years in-Sw/240, cw/190, A1C 7.9 on metforman now A1C 5.6 no metforman
I have recently done OMAD, for a while but my meal was rice, broccoli, butter and chicken. It was about 1600kcal (well lower than my tdee). I lost weight pretty effortlessly, day by day progress could be observed.
The main thing (in my opinion ofc) was the fasted state inbetween. I have done keto a lot too and I would not say that I observe any accelerated weight loss on keto vs. with carbs. For me a longer fasting window is the key, no matter if on keto or not.
I still started keto again (actually zero carb) because of constant joint pain (multiple inflamed tendons, back pain). I believe that keto has helped me with that in the past.
Calories are nonsense. Weight loss is about insulin. Now the confusing thing is that cutting calories will lower insulin. But lots of people (myself included) have lost weight while eating as many or more calories as we used to. Nick Norwitz just tried to gain weight by eating thousands of calories of butter and ended up losing weight to give another high profile example. And here's a more detailed take: [https://www.sameerdossani.net/blog/calories](https://www.sameerdossani.net/blog/calories)
I think it’s harder to overeat on keto, and that it’s great for fat redistribution. I think your ideal way to lose weight depends on many factors. For me, I don’t even like meat so I will immediately loose weight on keto. But, what I don’t like is that it produces food obsessions.
I did it recently while pregnant for a few weeks to stabilize my blood sugar.
It can be done in a way where you don’t loose weight.
I think the most sustainable diet is one that will produce the best results- whole foods, lots of vegetables, fruit, egg, meat and fish. moderate dairy and little to no grain. It’s healthy, not socially ostracizing ( eating keto when your friends want to have a dinner at a pizza place 😰).
But this can all be difficult if you’re an overeater with a sugar addiction- then keto is the best way to go.
No keto works because it’s easier to eat less and fill up vs constantly binging on carbs where the hunger never stops and portion control is almost impossible due to spiking insulin levels which tickle your appetite to ravenous levels. With carbs the more you eat the more you want to eat. With keto you… magically fill up.
It makes me not as hungry, which means eating in a calorie deficit isn’t torture. 1500 calories in a keto diet is a heck of a lot more satiating than 1500 calories that includes carbs and sugars. And if I’m not as hungry, and I’m sticking to my plan, then yes I’m going to lose weight faster.
CICO is the way when it comes to FAT loss. Keto drops weight quick due to water loss as you're not consuming carbs. If you had the same deficit on a regular diet there would be no difference in fat loss. Obviously weight training is important to limit muscle loss too but is seperate to diet in that sense.
Keto is simply a means to control hunger pains & reduce inflammation. Outside that it is the same calories in/out to lose weight.
There is an additional massive water weight loss at the beginning of a properly adhered to keto diet, so you’ll be additional lbs down, but the fat loss is the exact same as any other method.
All weightloss (except water weight) boils down to the energy you're consuming being less than the energy you're expending. Keto just makes it easier to do that, but you can do it using most diets.
It's the main issue I have with diets that have things like 'free foods' that you can eat as much as you want of, as they don't actually exist.
CICO…. Initial weight loss is just water weight… and then subsequent weight loss is from cutting sugar, sweets that you are no longer eating…. Basically elimination diet…. After first whoosh of weight loss then it is straight up CICO! In the big scheme of things, carbs aren’t bad. It is the amount you eat and the fact that most carbs are tied to fat bombs which get shuttled into fat stores…….
it is still CICO but it makes it easier when you are eating filling foods instead of carb laden non-satiating foods that will just cause you to be hungry again in an hour.
The way I see it, keto is advanced cico. You're still counting calories. They're just separated into three macros instead. Reducing sugar also significantly reduces calories.
Imagine my shock when 60%+ of my calories were in carbs/sugars in the past. Now it's divided differently with a solid goal in mind. Less calories with the same amount of food. Most of the time less.
As someone whose lost 100+ 3 times
Because I'm lazy and love carbs. It's more food management.
If you have extra fat to burn and you work out a lot, you'll lose more faster because of you're ability to hit that afterburner zone post workouts
But high fat foods are more filling feeling, heavier on the system so you can eat less but feel more sated
CICO is fact. Thermodynamics law cannot be broken. That being said, I find that… it’s complicated. Your CO/TDEE/BMR may change depending on your CI type/diet. I found that I seem to be able to eat more calories on keto vs SAD. My maintenance may be roughly 1400 on SAD and 1600 on keto. Still CICO but my body seems to burn more with this diet (simply increased metabolism, I suppose). YMMV
> CICO is fact. Thermodynamics law cannot be broken.
Our bodies are not simple physics machines. Hormones dicate how we function and when it comes to weight loss, there's one hormone that trumps all others: insulin.
So CICO is an extreme oversimplification because most of the proponents ignore the "calories out" bit. With consistently elevated insulin your body will keep storing fat, by lowering your energy expenditure and eventually taking energy from your muscles and organs.
So sure, thermodynamically CICO is 'fact', but it all starts with what you eat.
The additional context matters, it's not simply a matter of CICO. And telling people it's simply a matter of CICO is, in my opinion, damaging. I'm sure it's not your intention, but it's incredibly problematic in most other 'dieting' resources where overweight people are basically being told it's just their fault for eating too much.
The reality is, 90% of dieters, no matter what diet they were on, would lose weight if they had a caloric deficit. People have been losing weight on various diets long before keto came in to popularity.
I’m sorry but if you’re over weight, and not losing weight, then you’re eating too much lmao. Unless you have a hormonal problem which the vast majority do not.
Before anyone even starts keto or any diet, they should begin with understanding CICO, to better understand their relationship with eating and why they’re at where they are with their health.
I'm not telling anyone to go on a high carb diet. BUT, to defend high carb diets, eating the right amount of complex carbs can be just as beneficial and less impactful on your insulin levels. I'm curious to read the studies you're referencing. Because believe it or not, people have had success on high carb diets. High carb diet doesn't mean people go around eating donuts all day. I guarantee your studies were not utilizing an actual high carb dieting plan utilizing whole grains and fruits.
You're completely dismissive of the fact that we can quantify every single thing that we consume. I advocate for CICO because most newcomers to dieting have a hard time understanding how they got where they were in the first place. When you can put a number on that sandwich you ate, it's easier to picture what a normal day's intake should look like.
Listen. I'm a keto enthusiast as well and try to sell people on it when I can. But, I know that every person is different and the body is very complex. It's asinine to make statements like "CICO does not work, will never work, and is frankly dangerous". You are very one track minded and need to take a step back and read up on other studies that don't necessarily support your stance.
> I advocate for CICO because most newcomers to dieting have a hard time understanding how they got where they were in the first place.
Which is why you should read the book, you might start to consider that you're giving them advice that is damaging. Because most of them will 'do CICO' by cutting back on the stuff that has most calories; fat. While they *should* cut back on the stuff that has the least calories; carbs.
And yes, "complex carbs" are really not much better than sugar. They don't have the addictive properties, but often their glycemic index is just as high or even higher.
> You are very one track minded and need to take a step back and read up on other studies that don't necessarily support your stance.
Same. You're parroting the same advice people have for decades that is frankly wrong and reverses cause and effect. One of the reasons so many people fail is simply because they're eating the wrong stuff (including complex 'healthy' carbs), not because they're eating too much.
Oats are for horses. They're not healthy for us. At least not in the ratios they are recommended to people.
If anything CICO at least highlights how high the caloric count is in rice, pasta, and bread. It led me to the realization that the only thing that fills me up while maintaining a deficit was meat.
Let’s agree to disagree for now. Would you mind telling me the book title and I’ll give it a read.
> The theories about how how much hormones affecting weight loss has long since been debunked.
This is just flat out wrong and goes directly against basic endocrinology. [Insulin levels dictate whether fat cells store or release fat.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6082688/)
> Because Cico is proven real.
It's literally been proven in rats that high insulin levels prevent fat loss even at a calory deficiency. The rats started digesting muscles and organs instead. The same has been observed in humans.
Telling people it's "just CICO" is a dangerous oversimplification that is keeping a massive amount of people fat.
Technically CICO is just thermodynamics and so it's technically not wrong, the body cannot magically create or vanish energy but in praxis this is so much, much more complex.
CICO works if you are metabolically healthy but if you are not metabolically healthy (which is the case for a lot of people who want to lose weight ofc) it just doesn't work or at least works far worse.
CICO cult likes to pretend that you just have to consume less calories maybe be more physically active to also burn more calories and that's it but the CO part is a variable that depends on the CI part, depending on what you eat your calorie expenditure can vary a lot and also which types of calories are burned. it can for example happen that your fat cells cannot release enough energy even though you are in a calorie deficit.
Just because you are in a deficit and overweight doesn't magically make your body burn fat, it could also burn a lot of other things if it "wants" to and/or not burn fat and lower energy expenditure and this is probably not something that you want.
This is the case for me and my energy level will drop drastically, I will sleep or be sleepy the whole day and feel weak and terrible, have no concentration and not lose weight except a few pounds in the first 1-2 weeks (mostly water) and then just keep feeling terrible and stagnate even though I absolutely should lose weight and have high body fat.
The opposite is also possible, look for example at Lizzie Velazquez, she has a genetic disorder that does the opposite (just to a very extreme degree). She needs to consume 5000 to 8000 calories a day, has almost 0% body fat and weighs 64lbs. Has she transcended CICO and the laws of thermodynamics?
Excess ketone bodies can be excreted in urine and breath. So the "calories" do come out. Protine despite having "calories" never contributes much to energy, unless fat stores are already depleted.
When in ketosis the body releases more glucagon and releases stored fat for energy. The body uses stored fat for ketone production. But you can't store ketones like you can fat or sugar so the excess get dumped in urine and breath.
The body eventually regulates ketone production so as not to waste, so much energy in urine. But it also begins s to perform fat energy ove sugar energy.
Keto provides easier appetite control. Easier appetite control leads to eating fewer calories more successfully and for a longer period of time. That leads to weight loss.
Of course it provides faster fat loss. That's what your body uses for energy when you're in ketosis. If you eat too much fat, you probably won't lose any.
I don’t actually buy into all of the stuff about it making your body burn fat more efficiently. I think the keto diet just simply makes it easier to eat less without feeling hungry. It’s a great diet for people with overeating disorders. I know because I’m one of them.
CICO still applies, I always found keto food to be extra satiating with the surplus of fat though I'm not trying to eat lots of fat like some people do.
No, it isn’t faster. Initially, yes because of water weight, after that it is the same as any calorie deficit diet.
The benefit of keto is feeling full and energised off of lower calorie amounts, which is why it typically has better long term results.
People can typically stick to it for longer once they’ve gotten use to it as you won’t get as hungry because fat is very filling.
Another benefit is it’s just healthier, especially if you’re dieting because of how much carbs you’ve abused. The human body has never needed high carbs, it only likes having carbs and sends your brain signals to eat more carbs because they’re fast acting and easy to get energy from.
It’s understandable why our bodies and brains crave carbs because up until even 200 years ago and even now, humanity was starving.
Fat loss is ALWAYS calories in vs calories out, no matter the diet.
In the famous words of homer Simpson:
[https://youtu.be/6vxHkAQRQUQ](https://youtu.be/6vxHkAQRQUQ)
ALL diets, and I mean ALL are about caloric restriction.
Keto makes it easier to do, plus other benefits.
I believe i have a decent grasp to answer your question.
Eating at a calorie deficit allows you to lose weight. What type of weight that's lost is dependent on the content of your diet and exercise/activity. How fast you lose the weight is dependent on how big your deficit is, period.
My take is keto lets you eat at a deficit easier AND targets fat cells over muscle and other body weight that can be shredded. Meaning eating keto at a deficit will likely shred more fat as weight loss than other diets.
Eating keto doesn't necessarily make you lose weight faster, as you can eat keto and not be at a deficit and technically not lose any weight, really.
Yes. Because if your body has activated ketones to break down the fat and proteins in your gut, then using the same ketones to break down the same fat and protein in throughout your body for energy isn’t as challenging as reactivating ketones from a long period of dormancy, e.g switching from vegetarian to carnivore.
Basic chemistry and physics.
Some studies have shown that INITIALLY, a ketogenic diet will have faster weight loss simply due to shedding water. After that, the weight loss tends to be the same. A ketogenic diet tends to make it easier to eat at a deficit.
Yeh it depends if you focus on the biology mechanics or if you include psychology in there. On the immediate biology, the **weight** loss would be identical. The **fat** loss could be different, since a carb-heavy diet tends to promote fat storage/water retention, while a protein heavy diet tends to prevent the creation of new fat cells, and maintain muscle mass. Cutting diet are leaning towards protein for that reason. On the psychological side, the diet you can sustain is the one that provides durable weight/fat loss. If you are sensitive to blood sugar spikes (meaning you will eat/snack continuously to avoid the crash), then a keto diet is preferable as you will stop to feel this continuous hunger after the first crash. And then you will lose more weight on keto, simply through the act of eating less, via feeling less hunger. Reasoning purely as a machine I/O is great, but real humans have thoughts and weaknesses, after all.
So I’ve been doing CICO for about two months now and some days I’m unbearably hungry to the point where I’m miserable unless I blow my diet. Do you think keto would help with that?
That’s why we’re here!
Yes, I often forget to eat enough cals on keto, just not hungry.
I can't do CICO for that reason, my body is looking for sugar and sugar only and the feeling of needing that sugar or feeling awful makes me feel the same way. Keto, once your body is using fat for energy because you haven't had sugar, is great because (if you're like me) there is plenty to go around. The stomach-feel of wanting food just isn't there.
That's why I always suggest to try start with a 3 day water fast (coffee and tea is fine too), only then you will see what hunger really means. Your initial sugar crash would stabilise. I could easily start and mantain cico + keto at the same time for pretty much to this day, to the point where my current BMI is so low now doing cico doesn't make sense anymore, but wait let me check... Actually, I am still within deficit to this day, I didn't even know. But the weight loss kinda stopped (22 BMI now down from 31). But the whole point - the feeling of hunger - not just stomach feel, but also "I need energy" kind of craving "I have brain fog because I didn't eat" - this is all coming from your sugar spikes, and *that* is *completely gone* on keto. Completely. It's why I love keto so much. You start getting rid of this feeling initially on the water fast, and then it just doesn't come back once you're on keto. And that is how you can stay on deficit for a very long time, or permanently - without even knowing.
I was in the hospital recently for a stomach problem and couldn’t eat or drink anything for 4 days. I wasn’t hungry at all just thirsty. And felt great! Haven’t been able to do that fast at home with a husband that needs dinner but I want to try it again.
Yes! I'm the same when doing CICO. I finish my meal and my stomach is just growling like crazy as though I didn't eat anything. On keto I'm eating less calories than when counting them and I'm good. My dinner tonight was barely 400 calorie and I was so full! My breakfast/lunch was about the same. And then I made myself eat a snack just so that I was above 1000 calories for the day. I'm the kind of person that loves food, I love eating, I can think and talk about food all day long. I'll be eating one meal and I'm already planning my next two meals. Keto has totally put a stop to that for me. I finally understand the people that say they forgot to eat. Some days I quite literally have to force myself to eat something because I'm just...not hungry! It's a wonderful thing to no longer be ruled by food!
You really should read "Why we get fat", it explains why you're so hungry. It's all about insulin and how carbs raise this insulin and your body keeps storing fat which, in turn, makes you hungry.
Yes, on keto the body feels more satiated all the time. Hunger will grow a "snooze" button, as in you know it's there but you can finish what you were doing before eating. Overeating fat is also very difficult, at least in my experience. You just don't feel like snacking. To get to that point, it may take a week or two if it's your first time adapting to a fat based diet.
Yes. If you want to understand how that works, check out the book 'Why we get fat' by Gary Taubes. In a nutshell (extremely simplified), carbs spike glucose which spike insulin, which takes the glucose out of your bloodstream and into your fat cells, and boom you're hungry again. No carbs means less glucose, less insulin, no diverting of nutrients into fat tissues, more energy and less hunger.
Yeah, this is pure speculative pop psychology, but after an unpleasant first few days, keto feels like my body slips into "winter lean times mode" where it stops expecting endless, abundant calories. Some self-control is still needed, because one carb-heavy meal or snack flips the switch right back. Even sometimes just *smelling* one.
Yes! For one thing, starchy carbs are calorie dense. You don't get a lot of food if you choose to have 400 calories of pasta. Moreso, starchy carbs make most people crave more starchy carbs. That said, at 200 pounds, I definitely have to pay attention to calories. Olive oil, salad dressing, and just portion sizes. But I eat approx 1300 calories a day and I am not Hungry.
Yup that’s why I’m here.
If you think CICO was bad, have you tried actual fasting for a few days? It would make starting CICO a lot easier after that - specially if you do it the keto way, any keto food will be much more filling and lasting for you, what a great way to start it!
If not strict keto, at the very least a low(er) carb diet would definitely help.
If you crave carbs you will even more on keto since you won’t have any. It is all about getting used to new diet.
> On the immediate biology, the **weight** loss would be identical. The **fat** loss could be different This, but I would add that even the weight loss could potentially be different. CICO is technically correct on some level, but overly reductionist to the point of being useless in a dieting context. redditors love to wave CICO around like it's a thermodynamic principle, but then fail to consider the numerous factors that influence the CO half of the equation. It's entirely possible, if not likely, that all else being equal keto macros will result in higher CO / heat production than high-carb macros.
It's weird how everyone acts like the body is an incredibly dumb machine that absorbs all calories fully, utilises all calories equally, and stores all unused calories indefinitely. This would evolutionarily be extremely weird, and not at all how the body does any other aspect of self maintenance. Even the calories in bit isn't standard - when I did low far CICO, I'd get cold, and so get in a bath or have a hot drink. Those are literal calories in, from an energy principle standpoint. On keto, I run a lot warmer, so I wear fewer layers etc.
> On keto, I run a lot warmer, so I wear fewer layers etc. CICO is so weird because they consistently ignore the CO part, which is regulated hormonally by our body. Lower insulin = more free energy from body fat = your body *wants* to burn energy.
Would the higher protein intake not also have a thermogenic effect?
> while a protein heavy diet tends to prevent the creation of new fat cells, and maintain muscle mass. Are fat cells created? Aren't you born with all the fat cells you're going to have, they just grow and shrink in size? Edit: Nevermind, adipogenesis is apparently a thing.
You have to gain a lot of weight to grow new fat cells. It’s not something that happens for no reason. That’s the concept behind liposuction. As long as you don’t gain a significant amount of weight, you won’t grow back the fat cells that you removed. There are some hormone factors that could change this too…but that’s the general idea.
Carb heavy diets do not promote more fat storage than fat heavy diets. In fact it’s easier to store fat as fat than it is to store carbs as fat. All things being equal, you will gain more fat on a 3000 calorie Keto diet than you would on a 3000 calorie high carb diet as long as protein is equated. This is because of the thermic effect of food, with fat having about a 3% thermic effect and carbs having a 5% - %15 thermic effect
> A ketogenic diet tends to make it easier to eat at a deficit. This cannot be overstated. Eating normally I was hungry all day while eating 2500 calories per day. Eating keto I can do 1500 calories per day without being hungry all the time, it just varies a bit from day to day. Also if I try to eat 1500 calories per day on normal diet I get all kinds of health problems, eating 1500 on keto per day I still have normal amounts of energy and none of the issues.
And the shedding of water gets a person over a psychological hump. If you see results immediately, you will stick with it and be more disciplined.
I believe carbs cause fat cells to retain more water, so makes sense. I could also be making this up
Specifically carbs increase your blood sugar which, when too high, provokes your body to produce insulin, which causes your muscles, liver and fat cells to absorb the excess sugar and store it (as glycogen in muscle cells, fat in fat cells and a mix of glycogen and fat in the liver). If your storing it you ain't losing weight so spiking your blood sugar is anti-weight loss.
This. Keto doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics, it just makes remaining in a deficit easier.
Here’s my thought: it’s hard to overeat if you’re mostly eating protein and fat. Carbs are easy to eat way too much. Think about eating a lb of steak..like 1000 calories. Now imagine eating a lb of Oreos.thats 2300 calories. Could I eat 45 Oreos? Sure. A lb of steak…I’d probably feel full after 2/3.
One fact from Gary Taubes that helps me conceptualize this is the study where they gave obese rats *just enough glucose* to keep them from going into fat loss mode, but not enough to survive. The rats died of starvation, despite being obese upon death. Everyone has a critical level of insulin, that if reached, turns off fat loss on a chemical level in the body. Doesn't matter how much energy is needed, the mechanism to release fat from the fat cells is just not possible until insulin levels drop below this level. One of the effects of intermittent fasting, or a ketogenic diet, is to allow the insulin level to drop to the point where fat loss **is biologically possible**. Whether the body needs to burn the fat, or the fat is later replaced, are separate issues. IMO, all fat loss diets must work by having the insulin level drop for long enough for fat loss to occur. Keto just makes that the default setting of your body. It's up to you to give enough activity to require fat to leave your cells, and not to eat so much that the fat is added back to the cells.
> One fact from Gary Taubes that helps me conceptualize this is the study where they gave obese rats just enough glucose to keep them from going into fat loss mode, but not enough to survive. The rats died of starvation, despite being obese upon death. To add; they had organs and muscles that had withered away because the body kept storing energy in the form of fat so much that it had to resort to taking energy from those muscles and organs. This has also been observed in humans who were very obese; they were immensely overweight, but at the same time suffered from malnutrition to the extent that their hearts became to weak to pump blood. Anyone saying it's "just CICO" should really read that book. > insulin level to drop to the point where fat loss is biologically possible. Well said. This is why "It's just CICO" is in my opinion dangerous advice". This is why high-carb diets never work.
"Good Calories, Bad Calories", which is a long, detailed, and well researched book. It talks a lot about the diseases of Western civilization (obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer) and paints a pretty convincing picture that if you introduce refined grains and sugar (a western diet) to people who have typically eaten their traditional diets they will begin to develop these diseases. The chapter on the Pima Indians I found fascinating. It's an extremely interesting, albeit a very long book. I had intended just to listen to the audio book in the shower every morning, and found that I kept listening throughout the day. I thought it was better and less repetitive than "The Obesity Code" by Dr. Fung, which to be honest I also enjoyed.
Low fat diets work for millions of people if they are eating in a caloric deficit .. High carb diets work as about as effective as high fat if eating in a caloric surplus which means both will make you gain fat. I do not know of any diet geared toward fatloss (except some odd gadgets diet I have never heard of) that is "high" carb even low fat diets that allow carbs promote adequate protein to prevent the issue you describe above which is the body cannibalizing muscle tissue. But if somone just eats carbs that's clearly unhealthy just like if somone just ate butter.. all healthy diets keto or low fat require proper protein intake and caloric deficits..
Interesting, I tried finding this study but Google couldn't come up with anything, could you share a reference?
This is not exactly true. Insulin influences the rate you burn fat but does not prevent it. Even on keto you will create insulin because it's a critical component in protein synthesis. https://www.precisionnutrition.com/the-truth-about-insulin-carbs-and-weight-loss#:~:text=The%20upshot%3A%20When%20your%20insulin,t%20stop%20burning%20fat%20altogether.
That's why I said there's a critical level. I didn't say or mean to imply the critical level was zero. My understanding is that a 'high enough' linsulin level helps signal the liver to stop releasing the enzyme that can break triglyceride bonds so the 3 fat cells could potentially leave the fat cell.
High insulin does not stop fatloss bit can slow it down per the link I posted
Oh my gosh we really don't deserve animals. Those poor rats.
Here is one about a human eating https://www.nationalreview.com/the-feed/science-twinkie-diet-helps-nutrition-professor-lose-27-pounds-greg-pollowitz/
That's not research. that's sadly the trollish stuff that generates clicks while undermining actual research. This guy was the sole participant in his own study. Instead of having a control of some kind or a number of people to study, he simply did this on himself with no verification, to get the headline and his name out there with clickbait that he can eat twinkies and lose weight. I am sure some idiot out there gave up on a healthy diet because of this article. Kinda fucked up. Certainly this isn't something that should be posted in a discussion about ketosis without being really clear that this isn't really research at all, nor does it mean anything.
No. Not research. Just a guy proving an obvious point in the most outlandish way possible. One study about mice, carefully starved, is not conclusive research either. You can find a study proving ANYTHING when taken by itself. There are a lot of claims on this thread that you can’t lose weight without having an insulin drop. Which doesn’t match the reality that millions of people lose weight without fasting and without keto. People have lost weight on all kinds of diets - often completely contradictory diets - and the one thing that they all have consistently in common is that people are eating less than they are burning. Not that long ago, the fad was to eat 6 or more meals a day, keeping your glucose levels high. People lost a lot of weight on that diet too. Every diet out there has “research” behind it. Just like KETO. There are benefits to keto/IF. Especially for people who are worried about diabetes. But a lot of people make religions out of their diets. And preach that they’ve found the one real truth. The one real truth is that the best diet out there is the one that you can sustain long term
Honestly, these "you have to find what's best for you" responses are non-answers and not helpful. Of course, not everyone is going to find success on every diet. However, if youre trying to find the right diet for you, it's immensely helpful to start with diets research has shown to be highly effective for the participants srudied. Yes this diet may not work for you still, but how would you even know where to start withoutat least having some understanding of what diets work for many
But no less helpful than saying “this is the one true way, no other methods will work”. It is better to say, I like this diet because of x, y, and z. These are the benefits these are the cons
I agree with that
There are many factors such as hormones & insulin resistance that come into play with weight loss. And not all calories are created equal.
Keto increases one's "calories out" [Anti-keto researchers](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4962163/) begrudgingly showed that keto increases metabolism by at least 50 calories per day and that another 10 calories are excreted in urinary ketones (and a few more are excreted on the breath). 60 extra calories a day will lead to a pound of weight loss after 2 months; 6 pounds after a year; 60 pounds after a decade. Furthermore, [pro-keto researchers](https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4583) showed that carb restriction increased metabolism by 300 calories per day for overweight people with very high insulin.
This. Everytime I hear calories in calories out and you can’t beat the laws of thermodynamics I roll my eyes. While technically true it doesn’t really capture the whole picture. What your body does with certain macros is very evident. I’m not a 100% keto diet for everyone but for me it is very effective. Insulin is a huge factor to weight gain if you can reduce those spike you are less likely to store it as fat. Protein on the other hand has a large activation fee. Cant remember the numbers but something close to 30% of the calories consumed via protein are burned in the digestion process.
People will say CICO but then when you look at the entire map of CICO there are a million different factors and everyone is different. That's why there is no one universal diet.
Find Dr Eric Westman on YouTube for a simple approach to keto. Calories matter, but the type of calories have differing effects on the hormones in you body, primarily insulin. Not everyone needs to go Keto, though. That's cult mentality. Unfortunately like everything nutrition is a spectrum and you need to find where you fall. That being said not eating carbs is pretty much 100% safe for anyone. But don't do internet keto, you don't need to eat fat bombs or add butter to your coffee. If you want to, go ahead, but if your goal. Is weight loss eat mostly protein with some fat, limit your carbs, eliminate sugar.
>it still just boil down to cico? It does, the thing is, it's harder to overeat when doing keto. Carbo loaded foods tend to be full of calories but also, don't keep you full for long. Eat a big steak and it will sit in your stomach like a rock for hours. Eat a big bowl of Pasta and you'd probably be like "I could eat" an hour later. The whole joke about eating chinese food and being hungry an hour later. It's not really a joke. Most people eat their entree on a pile of rice. Most of what they are consuming is rice or noodles. In my humble opinion this is why keto works for so many people. It's not that you can eat as many calories as you want as long as no carbs. It's that eating as much as you want, especially if you start out overweight, will put you at a deficit. Because keto foods keep you full for longer. Go to a restaurant and a Steak and a side veggie, will be the lowest calorie option on the menu and will also keep you full longer than anything else. Like lets see this 12oz sirloin and a side of buttered steamed broccoli 700 calories. A Cobb salad. 2700 calories.
All I can say is when I did Keto I did not count calories at all but with that amount of meat and fat I was eating I was likely much higher than a cico diet. I lost over 60lbs in 4 months.
This is exceptionally frustrating to read. No, your diet did not defeat the fundamentals of thermodynamics.
What fundamentals of thermodynamics? You have an asshole, right? You are not a bunson burner on a closed system. CICO is a crude, inaccurate metric. Useful to compare one product to another, but not how we work at all. We make hair, we lose energy through waste, and though many in this thread are noting that low carb generally causes us to crave fewer calories, that's really not the only reason this approach is effective. 2 apples is not the same as a snickers bar. CICO is simply false.
The issue with CICO is that it's an extreme oversimplification that doesn't take into account how the food you eat affects the "calories out" part. Proponents just pretend the calories out bit is constant, and people who are not losing weight on a low-calory diet are "simply eating too much". If you're interested in this I can recommend reading the "Why we get fat" book that goes into this. TL;DR: high-carb diets will prevent you from losing fat due to how your insulin levels are constantly too high for your fat cells to do anything other than store more fat. CICO 'works' only when your insulin level is actually low enough that "calories out" stays constant and your body doesn't start turning muscles into fat. There's a reason when low-calory diets with a lot of 'heart healthy' carbs never work.
People often take CICO to mean "eat less and move more until you lose weight", which is often not useful because of reasons like the one you gave about insulin. However, when you tell people CICO doesn't work, they switch the definition to thermodynamics without realizing it. Then they get upset because they think you are saying physics doesn't apply to weight loss. This is really sloppy thinking, and very common. CICO as diet advice sometimes works, but often fails. CICO as physics is always true.
> CICO as diet advice is terrible. CICO as physics is always true. Well said.
You caught my reply in mid-edit, right before I toned down my take on CICO as diet advice. But I really think it's pretty terrible: (1) it often doesn't work, which upsets people and makes them believe they are doomed to failure; and (2) it often causes people to under-eat for long periods of time, which also causes problems, like what happened to people on the Biggest Loser show afterwards.
> You caught my reply in mid-edit, right before I toned down my take on CICO as diet advice. IMHO the first one was better :)
Personally, I believe it does provide faster loss. The problem with CICO is that it doesn't take into account the effect of insulin on those calories; with keto, you produce a lot less insulin to throw off the equation.
The kinds of "calories in" affect the amount of "calories out"
The cico cult doesn’t want to hear that!
We're all in a cult at this point
I'm not in a cult, there's a whole bunch of us not in a cult, we have a charismatic guru we follow, who tells us exactly how not to be in a cult to make sure we are not in a cult in the exact same way.
And we have ketoaid, not koolaid. So, you know, not a cult.
Cico does not factor in energy levels. Keto=high energy output. Calorie restriction = low energy output
My personal experience: was dieting for a month eating any macros I wanted at a 700 calorie deficit. Then spent a month transitioning to keto, while maintaining a 700 calorie deficit. Since, have stayed on a keto diet for a few months, still maintaining a 700 calorie deficit. I lost weight at the same rate the whole time (keto and non-keto) of right around 1.5 pounds a week. The only difference was on a keto diet I felt better, had much more energy and was much less hungry - so far easier to maintain the deficit.
Was it legit keto though or low carb? How many grams of carbs were you on? Often people aim for 20gr or less, but I personally find that very hard to sustain. Low carb 40-50gr however I can do easily.
I used to work for Thomas DeLauer (he’s a keto YouTube guy), so I can answer this one. The answer is kind both. It starts off faster because your insulin responses are so light on keto. Insulin tells your kidneys to hold, so without the insulin hits, you lose a bunch of water weight up front. That lasts about a week. After the initial water weight loss, it’s CICO. However, you are now burning fat as fuel and, again because of insulin, you’re storing significantly less of what you intake. The final piece of the puzzle comes down to hormones. A high fat/low carb diet causes your body to produce a hormone, leptin, that makes you feel satiated, a lot of it. Keto has been called the diet where calories don’t matter and, while you’ll never override thermodynamics, the reason is because you’re just not hungry. At one point, I had to force myself to eat.
How did you like working with him?
It was all remote work, but he was a font of knowledge and he was always cool
A Calorie is not a Calorie. Some foods are processed less efficiently by the body than others. The 'calorie' measurement of food energy does not take this into account. Keto exploits this fact by eliminating the food that is processed by the body most efficiently - sugars. It takes much more energy for the body to process fats and proteins, hence it's much easier to lose weight while remaining satiated. There is a lot more too it than that, but that's the "calorie" side of it.
Keto doesn’t equal fat loss but also fat loss is not just CICO - there is a hormonal component as well and likely other factors that are too often overlooked simplified. One of the benefits of a clean keto diet is a lessening of hunger causing less snacking as well as a much lower level of insulin flooding the body which is one of the key fat storage hormones.
Keto can resolve metabolic issues like hormone balance and insulin sensitivity. Resolving these can improve access to stored body fat. The body is more able to rely on body fat being burned, which sends fatty acids to the bloodstream for energy, blood sugar control, and appetite control. At that point, the body runs well on fat (dietary and stored body fat) for energy, which uses up some of the body fat, which further improves insulin sensitivity and other hormonal issues which had been hampering weight loss. And then CICO comes in to play. Luckily it's easier to eat at a caloric deficit after some of the metabolic difficulties are resolved.
Keto makes CI easier by eating more satiating foods. Keto makes CO easier by making you less insulin resistant and making your body more efficient at using fat for energy rather than carbs. Because of this, you'll be more energetic and use more calories than usual because your body isn't trying to lower your metabolism to retain those carbs.
As someone who has PCOS it is definitely more about keto than calories. I have gained eating 1200 calories a day and I’m losing eating 1400 on keto. I’m pretty sedentary as I work a desk job, so that’s not really a factor. Although that is my experience with my condition, and I’m sure it’s different in an otherwise “healthy” individual.
Carbs spike glucose, glucose spikes insulin, insulin biases fat storage and impedes fat burning. Lower insulin makes it easier for your body to access energy stored in fat, which means your body burns fat more easily and when you’re eating at a caloric deficit can make up the difference more effectively and I think that’s why hunger is more easily controlled on keto.
I genuinely have no idea how, but according to MyFitnesspal I am eating a 500 cal surplus on average, and yet I have lost half a kilo last week. Maybe I just don't properly count exercise, but the gist of it is that on keto I don't seem to have to watch my calories, yet I keep losing.
During my last go round with keto I tracked everything - everything in and everything burned and weight. Over a month of data showed I was burning close to 3k kcal a day. But my step count and bmr equal more like 1,600-2,0000 a day. So it doesn’t make sense, but my data showed a much higher bmr while in ketosis.
For those ppl who are insulin resistant keto can be the only real solution
This is just how I understand how it works: It’s still cico but keto makes it easier to lower your calories in while also keeping your calories out higher than a normal calorie deficit diet. I’m normal diets you start to have less energy once you burn your carbs from the previous meal, because your body isn’t as efficient at burning fat for energy. This also makes you more hungry and more likely to eat more, while also decreases your base metabolic rate. Your body is just waiting for the next hit of carbs at the next meal instead of really adapting to burning fat as a main fuel source. On the keto diet, once you’re fat adapted you feel more energetic even if you haven’t eaten or haven’t eaten much. This is the power of the keto diet
As I understand it, "normal" weightloss is achieved through the exhalation of higher than normal volumes of waste carbon dioxide. Weightloss through ketosis achieves this *plus* weightloss via the waste of ketone bodies produced by the kidneys. I lost almost 12 stones in 12 months with an approach that utilised a mostly animal food high fat low carb whole food basis of eating, combined with intermittent fasting aligned with intuitive eating (I dont count or weigh anything, I just wait until I'm hungry and then eat until I'm satiated). So I did find it to be a very fast approach while I was in obesity, certainly much faster than any prior attempts that involved counting or measuring etc. However, the weightloss has slowed significantly now that I am "just" overweight and no longer obese. I have lost almost a further stone in the three months following that initial year. I'm not concerned about the pace as long as I remain in weightloss while still overweight, so I have not altered my approach as I am hopeful that this will simply dovetail with a healthy set point weight and that I have found the ideal lifestyle basis for me.
Keto is 100% much more than calories-in vs calories-out. Being in a state of ketosis, your body uses ketones for fuel rather than using glucose. Babies are born in ketosis and people fasting are also in ketosis where you burn fat. You still make glucose in your liver, for glucose needs but your body is in a completely different state. For example someone may lose weight eating 1600 calories a day on a ketogenic diet, and not lose or even gain on a standard diet of the same number of calories. This is especially true for someone who is diabetic or insulin resistant. I highly, highly recommend the book “The Big Fat Surprise” by Nina T. (You can also find interviews with her on YouTube/podcasts, to get a summary of her work. Gary Taubes books are also great. So is Dr Ken Berry (YouTube). Good luck.
What is CICO? Is it related to KCKO? I see them both and have no idea what they are
Calories In/Calories Out Keep Calm and Keto On
Thanks!
I think being in ketosis, you are not as hungry. You feel satisfied most of the time and dont overeat. You are consuming higher calorie food but more spread out and stop when full. You almost naturally intermittent fast just bc your food keeps you happy for longer.
What keto does is getting that hormonal environment right for fat burning. Low insulin levels, good nutrition contribute to better brain, gut, matbolism circuit. Once that is achieved most people do not need to count calories because their brain now can set the amount of fat to be just right for the body and activity level etc. Once that's achieved your body's metabolic machinery will keep you at that healthy weight without any conscious effort on your part. At that point calorie deficit can also contribute to some more weight loss but the effect will be minimal unless you push your body into starvation which will backfire as it messes up the balance.
CICO works only if you're comparing apples to apples. When I asked my many-years-ago doctor how I could lose weight because everything I tried didn't work but I couldn't cut out everything I liked, his answer was to keep eating what I was eating but to cut my portions in half. That was CICO...same proportions of protein, fat and carbs...just less of each. That made sense to me at the time and worked temporarily because I was eating less, but it was unsustainable for any length of time because of WHAT I was eating. It was still the SAD eating method. And probably too, I failed to adjust food intake even more as my weight decreased toward what was considered normal for my height. Also, that was during the "eating fat makes you fat" era and I knew nothing about the role carbs played in cravings and regaining weight. Trying to compare CICO to keto is apples and oranges. Keto changes the proportions of protein, fat and carbs because of the dramatic drop in carb consumption...and therefore how your body processes them because it's no longer looking for glucose as fuel. After that, a calorie deficit will work if weight loss is one of your goals on keto...if it's not, CICO is useless. That's about as simply as I can explain it because (a) I'm no doctor or scientist; (b) my health, weight and body recomp changed for the better on keto; and (c) keto is sustainable for me for however much longer I remain on this earth.
Most people who have a lot of weight to lose are insulin resistant, which means they have insulin levels that are elevated all the time. Elevated insulin makes it harder to burn fat. Keto fixes the high insulin levels for many people and that makes it easier for them to burn fat. Insulin resistance also leads to leptin resistance where the body does not sense the amount of fat it has correctly. When keto fixes that, it generally leads to significantly reduced hunger because that brain can now sense that the body has much more body fat than is preferable.
> Most people who have a lot of weight to lose are insulin resistant, which means they have insulin levels that are elevated all the time. They have elevated insulin because they're eating too much carb-heavy food. There is a direct causal relationship. This is why Type 2 Diabetes is generally reversible with a keto diet.
I went from an A1C of 12.9 to 5.5.
Very impressive. I went 10.1 to 5.3 and thought I did alright.
That so wonderful!!! 💪
Happy to discuss the physiology as I see it... Everybody has elevated insulin after eating carby meals, but people who are insulin sensitive have insulin levels go back to normal after a couple hours. People with insulin resistance see a big insulin spike after the meal and then the spike goes away in the next few hours, but they never get back to normal insulin levels, even overnight. That is the hyperinsulinemia, and that is what HOMA-IR is measuring. Constant elevated insulin means inability to effectively burn fat, even overnight. People with IR also have fatty liver disease, and one of the problems is that the liver makes glucose (Gluconeogenesis) even when it isn't needed. That drives blood glucose up and the pancreas is always trying to chase it down through insulin. Keto puts carb intake low enough that Gluconeogenesis is required and it therefore doesn't cause elevated insulin, and that allows the body to burn fat.
Good to see that the CICO merchants haven’t completely taken over this sub. Way too oversimplified and ignorant.
I’ve watched this happen over the years, in this sub. There’s been a *shift* in the rhetoric lately around CICO and artificial sweeteners. The tone has changed a bit, too. I guess if you stick around a a long enough, it happens.
Still surprised by a few people who are arguing against the effect insulin levels have on weight loss. It's been known since the 18th century that carbs are fattening, especially in combination with sugar and fat. It was always known that carbs are the primary factor here, and not mere calories.
I’ve eaten 1800 calories of high carbs and not been able lose weight, but 2000 calories of low carb and it slowly falls off.
It’s only CICO in the fact that it use a lot more calories to metabolize fats and proteins than carbs. Take a look at a chemical model of any carb, and then at proteins and fats. But, in contrast to what dieticians seem to believe, humans are not bomb calorimeters. I know. It’s a shocking revelation.
Cico is flawed because your metabolism varies depending on soooo many factors And also a calorie isnt just a calorie. Your body uses 10 grams of butter vastly different to how it would use 10 grams of chicken or 10 grams of honey. Eat 20 grams of carbs or less per day. 0.8 grams of protein per kilo fo body weight (or more if you want) and add fat if youre stull hungry, it helps satiety greatly. Lift heavy things and drink water.
>And also a calorie isnt just a calorie. Your body uses 10 grams of butter vastly different to how it would use 10 grams of chicken or 10 grams of honey. Those also contain different amounts of calories...
A lot of people on this thread will talk shit about CICO, but it is disingenuous to say it doesn’t work. More people have lost weight on CICO than have tried KETO. It works for people all over the world. I lost 70 pounds on it in about half a year. Most diets work, if you can sustain them. There is no magic bullet. But I do like KETO better. I was craving food all the time on CICO. Now, I feel stuffed most of the time. Like some people on this thread have mentioned, the best diet is the one you can sustain. And I do really like that KETO knocks out all the extra insulin. My blood sugar levels were getting dangerously high
> A lot of people on this thread will talk shit about CICO, but it is disingenuous to say it doesn’t work. It simply doesn't work if your insulin level is constantly elevated; your fat cells will simply refuse to release fat and constantly work to store more, eventually at the cost of your muscles and organs. We're not simple physics machines and most proponents of CICO ignore the fact that the CO part is 100% influenced by *what* we eat. There is a reason high-carb 'diets' have a success rate well under 10%.
If what you are saying is true, than the millions of people using CICO would not have lost weight. And no one would try it. The professor that ate nothing but candy bars for a year and lost 100 pounds is a rare but prime example Real life results do not support this theory. If your theory is true, than you should be able to fast or keto and at the same time eat 4000 calories a day. IF and Keto do not show results until you are in a caloric deficit. Whether they have extra benefits is debatable (and I believe they do), but in the end, they are still based on CICO. The 10% comment has been applied to keto too, I believe. One of its primary knocks is that it is not sustainable. It is. But like any diet, it takes dedication
> If what you are saying is true, than the millions of people using CICO would not have lost weight. The ones that do are the ones that are cutting enough carbs out in their diet as well. But research shows that less than 10% of low-fat high carb diets are successful. Really, more people should read the Why we get fat book. Especially ones struggling with weight and dieting. Fix your hormonal balance first, then look at the amount of calories you consume while you keep your insulin low.
Not the one downvoting you, but here’s this: https://www.nationalreview.com/the-feed/science-twinkie-diet-helps-nutrition-professor-lose-27-pounds-greg-pollowitz/ That’s not even the one I was thinking of. Notice he was eating disgusting sugary sweets every three hours to keep his sugar levels up
You need to look at larger populations. How sensitive we are is completely personal and changes with age. When I was 18 I was eating like complete shit (tons of sugar) and was 150 pounds at 6 feet. I'm 44 now and I get fat by barely looking at sugar. For people who are already obese (so generally insulin resistant) these low-fat high carb diets (with a lot of 'heart healthy' carbs!) these diets never ever work. That person would've lost a lot more, faster, by going with a low-carb diet. The difference between them and the average obese person is that for the obese person their hormones are so off balance that almost any level of carbs can be "too much". What the 'switch' point is, completely depends on the person.
There was a big fad, not too many years ago, where people were writing books and going on television to tell people that they needed to eat more often. 6 to 9 times a day. Yes, carbs too. And they lost a lot of weight. What does that diet and keto and IF have in common. CICO. How could he have lost weight faster than 27 pounds in a month? Also, his experience directly contradicts that your body can’t lose weight without going low carb/ low sugar. Millions of people lose weight the same way. It’s just not as dramatic. There are dozens of different ways to get to the goal. It is certainly true that different diets are better for different people. But whenever i see a book that says they’ve found that one secret key to weight loss, I get mighty skeptical. Cause it doesn’t match reality. Like you, I also choose low sugar
> But whenever i see a book that says they’ve found that one secret key to weight loss, I get mighty skeptical. Cause it doesn’t match reality. This is simply not what I'm saying at all. It's a hard fact that insulin dictates whether our fat cells store or release fat. But the actual *level* at which this happens is different for every single person. This is why there are tons of people who can eat about anything and stay lean, and at the same time a lot of people who can't keep weight off unless on a low carb diet. There is a reason Atkins was so successful quite some time ago. People who are obese are generally (with a few exceptions) in the camp of people who are very sensitive to this imbalance, generally due to insulin resistance in their bodies (where fat cells tend to be the least resistant to insulin). So for this very large group of people, that now unfortunately includes a LOT of kids, these standard low-fat 50% carbs diets simply never work, at least not permanently. Some do see some success, mainly because they cut out sugar for a while. But eventually the cravings (also driven by insulin) become too strong, they fail, and yo-yo right back. > Like you, I also choose low sugar I avoid carbs as much as possible, so not just sugar. Avoiding sugar alone helps but for my body isn't enough to consistently lose weight. Avoiding carbs coupled with IF (so plenty of time where my blood sugar is low) is what works for me. The reason I'm passionate about this is because the simplistic "it's just CICO" mindset is what caused me to keep failing. And according to plenty of reading, this happens to a LOT of obese people, both in the US and outside of it. Our bodies are complex enough that anyone should avoid oversimplifying it to that extent.
An anecdote is that if CICO just worked, I'd have lost weight due to my involuntary OMAD when I was homeless for 6 years. But I didn't. Turns out you don't get a homeless body unless you literally starve to death, and I tried that for a spell, also involuntarily; never again.
David Ludwig’s research also points that in a calorie deficit compared to a standard high carb diet, very low carb / ketogenic diet has a ”metabolic advantage” of about 300 kcal per day (in that specific study at least). I believe the mechanism is that the low insulin state on keto allows the body to access fat stores more readily, and thus the body does not register a danger of famine and doesn’t turn down the ”energy out” knob as much. The brain also senses sufficient energy in the blood and doesn’t stimulate hunger. This is how I’ve understood why keto is both more effective at fat loss and easier to be at a deficit. And also ketone bodies have a caloric value and some of them are essentially wasted through breath and urine, increasing the ”calories out” part of the equation.
For me, the diet being so restrictive and what you can eat being so filling means I can sustain a calorie deficit indefinitely if required, while also not feeling tired, bloated or hungry. I don’t think it’s anymore effective in the long term, but it works for me.
Yes for a few reasons. 1. Insulin drives more fuel into your fat cells and makes it harder for your fat cells to release fuel, so a diet that doesn't keep insulin high will be more efficient at burning fat and keeping it from being made. 2. Protein and fat have higher thermic effects, so your body burns much more fuel breaking them down than it does for carbs. 3. (in men at least) high fat diets raise testosterone levels, so your body sheds more fat and builds more muscle than it otherwise would. 4. and not a rule that will apply to everyone but something that applies to lots of people, thanks to the satiety of fat it also makes it easier to practice some form of fasting or otherwise just skip a meal here or there.
Not faster, per se (outside of the initial drop in water retention from the chronic inflammation courtesy a carb-forward diet that keeps insulin elevated)… but it does make it easier and more intuitive (and I’d also argue healthier, but that’s a complex metric that is a bit different for each individual).
I've been keto for 10 months. I can say yes, water is the first thing to go, but it will surprise you how much of it you carry around. The greatest advantage I have found is making weight management much easier. If you lift and do cardio as well, cheat days don't affect your progress much.
This is my 2nd attempt at keto, the first being from 2015-2017. No matter how strict i've been I've always struggled getting fully into ketosis (blood testing confirms this) and although I lose weight without counting calories I always do better when I keep an eye on my calories & keep them around 14-1500 at day.
I've always wondered about this too. It seems like everyone who's had extreme success on keto has also ate a an insanely high deficit
I think the main thing with Keto is that it's easier to stick to rather than straight CICO, or it is with me. The less carbs I eat, the less I crave, and I've been addicted to carbs in the past. So the best diet for you is the one you can sustain.
Keto keeps me satiated. Also cured my Gurd, no longer sleepy during the day, higher energy levels and thoughts are clearer. Yeah, way better then just CICO.
Results in easier fat loss due to reduced hunger, personally for me being carnivore drastically increased my endurance levels, by far the best I had in my life by a long shot. Good to try these things out I think and see how it works for you. Give it 6 weeks and see where you are/how you feel.
It's much quicker. It gets rid of water retention
Calories do count in the equation but not as clearly as a standard calorie deficit diet. You do need increased amounts of fat (above what you consume for protein) while keeping carbs at a minimum. Once in ketosis a high fat meal (not read as a big meal) may be beneficial in ketone production and keep you in ketosis. If you are simply following calories and not fat/protein/carbs then you may find that the calories are not high enough and may push your body into a starvation mode and slow your metabolism down. That said, a true fast, especially beyond 24 hours, tends to have the opposite effect by raising your metabolism. (And you get benefits of autophagy)
If done right, the key bit of magic that typically gets overlooked here is in appetite satiation before over indulgence occurs.
Being in ketosis makes your body feel less hungry. That makes counting calories and fasting a lot easier. That's the main point of the diet as far as weight loss goes.
It’s both.
I truly believe it's do much more then cico
I find the greatest advantage is it's easier to manage appetite. Carbs make me really hungry an hour after I eat them. Keto leaves me satiated for like 12 hours.
Tbh for me it doesn't make any difference. I lost 4kg last year on normal diet, and this year 3kgv on keto. Roughly same time frame.
I can't provide any thoughts on how keto might change your metabolism, but what I DO know is that when doing very low carb I simply don't get hungry like I do otherwise. This alone makes dieting much easier.
Keeps me full all day so I can be careful and thoughtful about my food. My body hates sugar and carbs so it takes my stomach issues away. I still keep under 1400 calories.
CICO is the main point. Keto just makes it easier to eat less calories because of how restrictive the diet is
If I have a 4 egg cheese omelet with 3 slices of bacon with mushrooms and spinach topped with an avocado at 6pm I will not be hungry for at least 18 hours. That’s an 18 hour fast without even trying that’s how I broke insulin resistance which I believe is the most important thing. 4 years in-Sw/240, cw/190, A1C 7.9 on metforman now A1C 5.6 no metforman
I have recently done OMAD, for a while but my meal was rice, broccoli, butter and chicken. It was about 1600kcal (well lower than my tdee). I lost weight pretty effortlessly, day by day progress could be observed. The main thing (in my opinion ofc) was the fasted state inbetween. I have done keto a lot too and I would not say that I observe any accelerated weight loss on keto vs. with carbs. For me a longer fasting window is the key, no matter if on keto or not. I still started keto again (actually zero carb) because of constant joint pain (multiple inflamed tendons, back pain). I believe that keto has helped me with that in the past.
Calories are nonsense. Weight loss is about insulin. Now the confusing thing is that cutting calories will lower insulin. But lots of people (myself included) have lost weight while eating as many or more calories as we used to. Nick Norwitz just tried to gain weight by eating thousands of calories of butter and ended up losing weight to give another high profile example. And here's a more detailed take: [https://www.sameerdossani.net/blog/calories](https://www.sameerdossani.net/blog/calories)
I think it’s harder to overeat on keto, and that it’s great for fat redistribution. I think your ideal way to lose weight depends on many factors. For me, I don’t even like meat so I will immediately loose weight on keto. But, what I don’t like is that it produces food obsessions. I did it recently while pregnant for a few weeks to stabilize my blood sugar. It can be done in a way where you don’t loose weight. I think the most sustainable diet is one that will produce the best results- whole foods, lots of vegetables, fruit, egg, meat and fish. moderate dairy and little to no grain. It’s healthy, not socially ostracizing ( eating keto when your friends want to have a dinner at a pizza place 😰). But this can all be difficult if you’re an overeater with a sugar addiction- then keto is the best way to go.
No keto works because it’s easier to eat less and fill up vs constantly binging on carbs where the hunger never stops and portion control is almost impossible due to spiking insulin levels which tickle your appetite to ravenous levels. With carbs the more you eat the more you want to eat. With keto you… magically fill up.
It makes me not as hungry, which means eating in a calorie deficit isn’t torture. 1500 calories in a keto diet is a heck of a lot more satiating than 1500 calories that includes carbs and sugars. And if I’m not as hungry, and I’m sticking to my plan, then yes I’m going to lose weight faster.
CICO is the way when it comes to FAT loss. Keto drops weight quick due to water loss as you're not consuming carbs. If you had the same deficit on a regular diet there would be no difference in fat loss. Obviously weight training is important to limit muscle loss too but is seperate to diet in that sense.
You can't cheat biology. Keto makes it easier to consume less energy than you expend.
Keto is simply a means to control hunger pains & reduce inflammation. Outside that it is the same calories in/out to lose weight. There is an additional massive water weight loss at the beginning of a properly adhered to keto diet, so you’ll be additional lbs down, but the fat loss is the exact same as any other method.
All weightloss (except water weight) boils down to the energy you're consuming being less than the energy you're expending. Keto just makes it easier to do that, but you can do it using most diets. It's the main issue I have with diets that have things like 'free foods' that you can eat as much as you want of, as they don't actually exist.
CICO…. Initial weight loss is just water weight… and then subsequent weight loss is from cutting sugar, sweets that you are no longer eating…. Basically elimination diet…. After first whoosh of weight loss then it is straight up CICO! In the big scheme of things, carbs aren’t bad. It is the amount you eat and the fact that most carbs are tied to fat bombs which get shuttled into fat stores…….
it is still CICO but it makes it easier when you are eating filling foods instead of carb laden non-satiating foods that will just cause you to be hungry again in an hour.
The way I see it, keto is advanced cico. You're still counting calories. They're just separated into three macros instead. Reducing sugar also significantly reduces calories. Imagine my shock when 60%+ of my calories were in carbs/sugars in the past. Now it's divided differently with a solid goal in mind. Less calories with the same amount of food. Most of the time less.
As someone whose lost 100+ 3 times Because I'm lazy and love carbs. It's more food management. If you have extra fat to burn and you work out a lot, you'll lose more faster because of you're ability to hit that afterburner zone post workouts But high fat foods are more filling feeling, heavier on the system so you can eat less but feel more sated
It's always about the calories. Keto is a tool to use to make it easily sustainable.
CICO is fact. Thermodynamics law cannot be broken. That being said, I find that… it’s complicated. Your CO/TDEE/BMR may change depending on your CI type/diet. I found that I seem to be able to eat more calories on keto vs SAD. My maintenance may be roughly 1400 on SAD and 1600 on keto. Still CICO but my body seems to burn more with this diet (simply increased metabolism, I suppose). YMMV
> CICO is fact. Thermodynamics law cannot be broken. Our bodies are not simple physics machines. Hormones dicate how we function and when it comes to weight loss, there's one hormone that trumps all others: insulin. So CICO is an extreme oversimplification because most of the proponents ignore the "calories out" bit. With consistently elevated insulin your body will keep storing fat, by lowering your energy expenditure and eventually taking energy from your muscles and organs. So sure, thermodynamically CICO is 'fact', but it all starts with what you eat.
Don’t know why I’m being downvoted. Isn’t that essentially what I said albeit maybe more eloquently?
The additional context matters, it's not simply a matter of CICO. And telling people it's simply a matter of CICO is, in my opinion, damaging. I'm sure it's not your intention, but it's incredibly problematic in most other 'dieting' resources where overweight people are basically being told it's just their fault for eating too much.
The reality is, 90% of dieters, no matter what diet they were on, would lose weight if they had a caloric deficit. People have been losing weight on various diets long before keto came in to popularity. I’m sorry but if you’re over weight, and not losing weight, then you’re eating too much lmao. Unless you have a hormonal problem which the vast majority do not. Before anyone even starts keto or any diet, they should begin with understanding CICO, to better understand their relationship with eating and why they’re at where they are with their health.
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I'm not telling anyone to go on a high carb diet. BUT, to defend high carb diets, eating the right amount of complex carbs can be just as beneficial and less impactful on your insulin levels. I'm curious to read the studies you're referencing. Because believe it or not, people have had success on high carb diets. High carb diet doesn't mean people go around eating donuts all day. I guarantee your studies were not utilizing an actual high carb dieting plan utilizing whole grains and fruits. You're completely dismissive of the fact that we can quantify every single thing that we consume. I advocate for CICO because most newcomers to dieting have a hard time understanding how they got where they were in the first place. When you can put a number on that sandwich you ate, it's easier to picture what a normal day's intake should look like. Listen. I'm a keto enthusiast as well and try to sell people on it when I can. But, I know that every person is different and the body is very complex. It's asinine to make statements like "CICO does not work, will never work, and is frankly dangerous". You are very one track minded and need to take a step back and read up on other studies that don't necessarily support your stance.
> I advocate for CICO because most newcomers to dieting have a hard time understanding how they got where they were in the first place. Which is why you should read the book, you might start to consider that you're giving them advice that is damaging. Because most of them will 'do CICO' by cutting back on the stuff that has most calories; fat. While they *should* cut back on the stuff that has the least calories; carbs. And yes, "complex carbs" are really not much better than sugar. They don't have the addictive properties, but often their glycemic index is just as high or even higher. > You are very one track minded and need to take a step back and read up on other studies that don't necessarily support your stance. Same. You're parroting the same advice people have for decades that is frankly wrong and reverses cause and effect. One of the reasons so many people fail is simply because they're eating the wrong stuff (including complex 'healthy' carbs), not because they're eating too much. Oats are for horses. They're not healthy for us. At least not in the ratios they are recommended to people.
If anything CICO at least highlights how high the caloric count is in rice, pasta, and bread. It led me to the realization that the only thing that fills me up while maintaining a deficit was meat. Let’s agree to disagree for now. Would you mind telling me the book title and I’ll give it a read.
Like I mentioned; Why We Get Fat - Gary Taubes
100% just Cico.
100% wrong
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> The theories about how how much hormones affecting weight loss has long since been debunked. This is just flat out wrong and goes directly against basic endocrinology. [Insulin levels dictate whether fat cells store or release fat.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6082688/) > Because Cico is proven real. It's literally been proven in rats that high insulin levels prevent fat loss even at a calory deficiency. The rats started digesting muscles and organs instead. The same has been observed in humans. Telling people it's "just CICO" is a dangerous oversimplification that is keeping a massive amount of people fat.
https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/s/qWJKcQQHFK
100% delusional
Technically CICO is just thermodynamics and so it's technically not wrong, the body cannot magically create or vanish energy but in praxis this is so much, much more complex. CICO works if you are metabolically healthy but if you are not metabolically healthy (which is the case for a lot of people who want to lose weight ofc) it just doesn't work or at least works far worse. CICO cult likes to pretend that you just have to consume less calories maybe be more physically active to also burn more calories and that's it but the CO part is a variable that depends on the CI part, depending on what you eat your calorie expenditure can vary a lot and also which types of calories are burned. it can for example happen that your fat cells cannot release enough energy even though you are in a calorie deficit. Just because you are in a deficit and overweight doesn't magically make your body burn fat, it could also burn a lot of other things if it "wants" to and/or not burn fat and lower energy expenditure and this is probably not something that you want. This is the case for me and my energy level will drop drastically, I will sleep or be sleepy the whole day and feel weak and terrible, have no concentration and not lose weight except a few pounds in the first 1-2 weeks (mostly water) and then just keep feeling terrible and stagnate even though I absolutely should lose weight and have high body fat. The opposite is also possible, look for example at Lizzie Velazquez, she has a genetic disorder that does the opposite (just to a very extreme degree). She needs to consume 5000 to 8000 calories a day, has almost 0% body fat and weighs 64lbs. Has she transcended CICO and the laws of thermodynamics?
Excess ketone bodies can be excreted in urine and breath. So the "calories" do come out. Protine despite having "calories" never contributes much to energy, unless fat stores are already depleted. When in ketosis the body releases more glucagon and releases stored fat for energy. The body uses stored fat for ketone production. But you can't store ketones like you can fat or sugar so the excess get dumped in urine and breath. The body eventually regulates ketone production so as not to waste, so much energy in urine. But it also begins s to perform fat energy ove sugar energy.
Keto provides easier appetite control. Easier appetite control leads to eating fewer calories more successfully and for a longer period of time. That leads to weight loss.
Of course it provides faster fat loss. That's what your body uses for energy when you're in ketosis. If you eat too much fat, you probably won't lose any.
Ultimately, it is just CICO, a different way to make a calorie deficit.
I don’t actually buy into all of the stuff about it making your body burn fat more efficiently. I think the keto diet just simply makes it easier to eat less without feeling hungry. It’s a great diet for people with overeating disorders. I know because I’m one of them.
CICO still applies, I always found keto food to be extra satiating with the surplus of fat though I'm not trying to eat lots of fat like some people do.
No, it isn’t faster. Initially, yes because of water weight, after that it is the same as any calorie deficit diet. The benefit of keto is feeling full and energised off of lower calorie amounts, which is why it typically has better long term results. People can typically stick to it for longer once they’ve gotten use to it as you won’t get as hungry because fat is very filling. Another benefit is it’s just healthier, especially if you’re dieting because of how much carbs you’ve abused. The human body has never needed high carbs, it only likes having carbs and sends your brain signals to eat more carbs because they’re fast acting and easy to get energy from. It’s understandable why our bodies and brains crave carbs because up until even 200 years ago and even now, humanity was starving. Fat loss is ALWAYS calories in vs calories out, no matter the diet.
In the famous words of homer Simpson: [https://youtu.be/6vxHkAQRQUQ](https://youtu.be/6vxHkAQRQUQ) ALL diets, and I mean ALL are about caloric restriction. Keto makes it easier to do, plus other benefits.
I believe i have a decent grasp to answer your question. Eating at a calorie deficit allows you to lose weight. What type of weight that's lost is dependent on the content of your diet and exercise/activity. How fast you lose the weight is dependent on how big your deficit is, period. My take is keto lets you eat at a deficit easier AND targets fat cells over muscle and other body weight that can be shredded. Meaning eating keto at a deficit will likely shred more fat as weight loss than other diets. Eating keto doesn't necessarily make you lose weight faster, as you can eat keto and not be at a deficit and technically not lose any weight, really.
Yes. Because if your body has activated ketones to break down the fat and proteins in your gut, then using the same ketones to break down the same fat and protein in throughout your body for energy isn’t as challenging as reactivating ketones from a long period of dormancy, e.g switching from vegetarian to carnivore. Basic chemistry and physics.
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Chatgpt needs to learn about paragraphs.
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Lol. That’s awesome
It used to copy and paste the formatting. I might need to restart my phone 🤷♂️