ISSN = International society of sports nutrition position
“When compared to a diet higher in carbohydrates and lower in fat, a ketogenic diet may cause greater losses in body weight, fat mass, and fat-free mass, but may also heighten losses of lean tissue. However, this is likely due to differences in calorie and protein intake, as well as shifts in fluid balance.“
I liked keto (I was mainly the carnivore version) because I don’t really like eating a lot or often but in the end it didn’t like me. My lipids were trash, I couldn’t manage to increase my fitness despite really trying and after a few years I started gaining visceral fat!!! The transitioning process was definitely rough for me but I’m so glad I stuck it out. My lipids are much improved and my visceral fat is back down according to my smart scale fwiw. I feel better too. I believe rapa helped me make the switch because I can tolerate a wider variety of foods now. On one of your podcasts a speaker recommended adding 850g (iirc) of various plants each day and I’ve started doing that over the last couple of months and really find it health promoting! Thanks Joseph
@blsm I agree that plants have a lot to offer. I have become convinced that a healthy gut is one of the major pillars of health. Avoiding permeable gut barrier (inflammation), getting SCFA from bugs (immune health), good bugs crowding out bad bugs, fast bowel transit (can’t be doing any good in there), etc
My program involves eating 40 different plants each week: fiber, diversity of phytonutrients, filling meals, an excuse to use lots of spices.
The hard part is leaving room for my protein on my resistance training adaption days. It’s easy to over eat, and then start adding visceral fat. I’ve had to cut back on oatmeal and berries, which I am addicted to.
I agree wholeheartedly. Since noticeably improving my gut microbiome my vitamin D levels have shot up dramatically in my latest test. I’ve had to supplement that for around a decade just to keep an acceptable level but now I’m thinking I must be absorbing way more from food so I definitely don’t need to supplement anymore during the summer and will be interesting to see if I need it through next winter.
Furthermore, with a healthy gut I’m probably absorbing much more of all the other vitamins and minerals so the daily b12 I’m cutting back to twice a week, halving my daily magnesium and halving my vitK intake.
@RPS Thats great! I think that is a perfect outcome, and I think that people in general should target that approach to health improvement. You’ve probably improved your health in many ways beyond vitamin and mineral absorption.
I am getting ready for a podcast on iron. One of the things practitioners say is don’t just take iron supplements when you have low iron (or think you do). They say find out why you have low iron and solve that first. Low iron can be from colon cancer or an ulcer or some other issue that needs immediate attention.
Simply adding iron (or whatever supplement) might be no better than putting a bandaid over the bullet hole.
It is a complicated issue, because a LCHF+HP (High Protein) diet is self-defeating because certain amino acids can enter the Krebs cycle after deamination, and can “feed” gluconeogenesis but some can also feed ketogenesis.
From what I gather concisely and with some simplification, is that the main bad actor is frequent glucose dependent stimulation of insulin release and IGF translation at the gene level, followed by the downregulation of the insulin receptors, thereby setting up a bad positive feedback loop of higher glucose required to enter cells, more downregulation of the insulin receptor number and sensitivity and then insulin resistance / metabolic syndrome / type II diabetes along with all the other hormonal effects (IGF ----> cancer, etc) so it is not just the total 24 hour carb intake, but the frequency of carb intake.
When you wake up in the morning, your liver is happily providing fat derived ketone bodies along with small amounts of glucose to keep up with body’s energy requirements, while fat tissue is happily providing fat to the liver for processing. It takes a small amount of carb intake at that time to enzymatically switch the liver from burning fat and making glucose, while providing keto derived from fat to the body to making fat from excess glucose and sending it to fat cells for storage, and the switch is insulin. The liver gets insulin from the pancreas in a direct line from the pancreatic vein, so it sees much higher levels of the hormone than occur systemically. Then it takes a 4-6 hours to rest back to its fasting metabolic state. But not if it gets another carb/insulin signal.
I became aware of Mattson’s work in 2005 and have followed his prolific research career since then (982 peer reviewed papers to date) and changed my dietary habits soon thereafter, Very simply, I rarely eat breakfast or if I do, as close to no carbs as possible, no between meals snacks, avoiding carbs in midday meal, and I eat whatever I want at dinner. And I will skip meals if I am not hungry. It’s not really a diet per se, and I do not event think about it anymore. I owe this man a huge debt of gratitude for sharing his knowledge and positively impacting my health over the past couple of decades. Meanwhile, my doctor continues to be amazed at my lipid profile and my HgA1c of 4.1%.
You might have also lost adipose tissue, which soaks up Vit D and inactivates it. Obesity (BMI) is inversely proportional to Vit D level in population studies.
I got wrapped up with Mattson and forgot my quibble with the ISSN comments on ketogenic diet because none of the recommendations mention an optimal amount of protein to keep out of a protein deficiency state given a particular CHO:fat ratio. You could increase CHO or increase protein. The former releases insulin, the latter not as much but potentiated in presence of CHO but also activate mTOR.
It makes sense that if you essentially burn some protein into energy, (glucose and also some KA made from AA) you will lose muscle mass unless protein intake increases under conditions of low CHO/High fat.
Restating, glucose can be made by deamination of certain amino acids. If carbs are relatively unavailable, homeostatic mechanisms come into play that shunt a good amount of these AAs into the Krebs cycle which are then used to synthesize glucose. Ergo, a ketogenic diet induces reactions favoring protein to energy, and less protein is available to maintain muscle mass under conditions of exercise.
Rapamycin fans probably already know that relatively higher protein intake increases mTOR activation.
I no longer need any vitamin or mineral pills to meet my nutritional requirements which is a huge win imo. I took a micronutrient class about the same time I listened to your podcast and for the first time in 54 years I’ve figured out how to get everything (per cronometer) from my diet while remaining weight stable.
@blsm Outstanding! I’m essentially there on nutrients but I’m still using a few things like MB but less and less. I just don’t feel the need very often anymore. It’s progress!
Thank you! Me too sir. MB and a few other non vitamin/mineral supplements and longevity meds are all I take now. I feel the vitamins and minerals are more balanced, absorbed and utilized from real food. Many days I’m able to achieve this which really excites me! Hahaha
