The other key advantage about IF is that it gives gut flora a “non-feeding” period where they can divide and perform other cellular actions rather than processing food all the time.
Had my annual physical today. My blood lipid profile was better than it’s ever been. HDL up, triglycerides and LDL down. Only been doing keto since 1/1 but I’ve made an effort to include a lot of omega 3 and monounsaturated to go along with my butter and bacon.
The best time to use the keto diet was in the 1700s before science knew much about nutrition.
Go on, don’t leave us in suspense. What does ‘science’ tell us about nutrition? And does it feature cornflakes?
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I like keto, and my lipids never took much of a hit, but my keto isnt like most standard american eating (bacon, salami, steaks, chicken thighs).
its mostly lean meats with avocado, olives, and a few nuts. Some grass fed beef and salmon thrown in. And once again its only for a 3-4 weeks, and protein is much higher than standard keto. somewhere between 55-60% fat/40-45% protein and enough veggies to make a turd not hurt
i dont think that there is a diet better than another… choose the one that is easier to do with your lifestyle !
Maybe you should go with intermitent fasting because at 30% Bodyfat like @T3hPwnisher said maybe your eating habits are not optimal. Since you won’t be able to eat whenever you want, you will diminish poor choice.
You can look at the warriors diet on t-nation.
Keto look nice, i like the principle but i know that it would piss me off in the long term run because sometimes i like to eat carbs and load the things up ! to be in the ketosis and to stay there to get the benefits from keto its 7 days a week and 24 hours everyday you can’t really cheat and eat what you want ! im not ready for that and i dont think its necessery
I’m about 35-40% protein also focusing on omega 3s and avocado, fish oil, flax oil, chia seeds, coconut, etc. My butter and bacon comment was just a joke although I do BP coffee. That said i eat chicken thighs like it’s my job and cook steak every week. Aside from workout experimentation my carbs are from veggies only for the most part with the occasional store bought dressing contributing a few.
I don’t agree with everything Joachim Bartoll comes out with but check out this recent blog on carbs. Nuff said:
"Anyone who at least has glanced at nutritional science should know that carbohydrates are non-essential. It’s simply an alternative energy source. As humans, we are designed to function at peak efficiency without them.
Unfortunately, the misconception that carbohydrates are our ‘preferred’ fuel has been so ingrained in most of us, that we believe it to be a universal truth – even among dieticians and nutritional professionals.
The reason this misconception gained momentum, and has been accepted as truth, is because some early observations about the way the body handles each macronutrient when all three of them are available after a meal. When all three macronutrients are available, the first thing to get metabolized are carbohydrates. From that, early pioneers in nutritional science made a pretty big leap in logic; they assumed that since the body burned glucose first, it must prefer carbohydrates over the other macronutrients.
To understand this simple mechanic of metabolic priority, we only have to look at alcohol. A lot of scientists within the nutritional field actually call alcohol the fourth macronutrient, as it is metabolized differently from carbohydrates, protein, or fats.
If you provide the body with all four substances at once (alcohol, carbohydrates, protein and fat), it will metabolize the alcohol first, then the carbohydrates, and then the fat and protein. So, does this mean that our body prefers alcohol as an energy source? Of course not. Our body metabolize alcohol first because it has to handle the most toxic substance to limit the potential damage.
So, the next question is, does our body metabolize carbohydrates before protein and fat because it’s preferred or because it’s harmful? Well, considering that fats and protein are essential, while carbohydrates are not, the answer should be pretty obvious.
And if we look further, at how our body metabolizes carbohydrates, we see that this process produces toxic oxygen radicals which must be decomposed immediately, as they would otherwise cause damage to cells. To lessen the impact of these free radicals, our need for antioxidants increases. And as you know from my post about antioxidants, meeting the need without other negative side-effects can be close to impossible.
Another problem with carbohydrates are the production of triglycerides, especially from fructose. Not to mention that high blood sugar/glucose levels damages arterial tissue and blood vessels, which is why our body obsessively try to control the amount of glucose it allows in our blood. Actually, in a healthy human, only one tenth of one percent of the carbohydrates we can store as glycogen are allowed in the bloodstream at one time. Compare that to the huge amounts of fats and amino acids in your blood and you should clearly see that carbohydrates are not our body’s preferred fuel source, but instead a potential poison that has to be carefully handled.
This is why our body has to prioritize any excessive amount of glucose in the blood before it can return to its normal metabolism. Glucose must be kept low because it is harmful.
And for the carb-shills and any gullible carb-lover, the glucose that our body actually need on a daily basis (including our brain, that actually prefers ketones), are provided by gluconeogenesis – a natural metabolic process that generate glucose from metabolizing fats/lipids and amino acids. When your body is healthy and functions as intended, you will always have enough glucose from gluconeogenesis even if you exercise and do heavy labor all day. And even better, as fat-adapted, you have access to enormous amounts of fuel to keep you going for way longer than anyone on a carbohydrate metabolism. Claiming that you need carbohydrates for energy or to function is simply one of the most ignorant statements one can do.
Just because we have the ability to metabolize carbohydrates for extra energy as a function of survival when we can’t acquire enough animal foods, does not mean that it is good and healthy – especially not long term. Consuming a little bit of carbohydrates a couple of times a week is not a big deal if your dietary foundation is based on quality animal foods. However, consuming carbohydrates daily – and especially several times a day and/or together with toxic vegetable oils – is a sure recipe for premature aging, metabolic and cardiovascular disorders, many modern diseases, and a reduced lifespan."
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oh no, i’m not saying butter and bacon are bad, its just when your typical co worker goes keto, they live off cheese and hot wings lol.
i do like country style boneless ribs slow cooked
Thanks for this. It echoes what the scientists I’ve been following have to say on the matter. I say thank you because I didn’t know about him and I’m enjoying checking out his blog. Some of his ideas are certainly a bit out there, but in general I’m digging his material.
Awesome eye opening post. Thanks !
No, no need to go that far.
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At the risk of thread hijacking: why does it take several weeks to become fat adapted? Bartoll is, as far as I’m aware, anti-vegetable, anti-carb, and pro-carnivore and pro-keto. If we function better on such a diet, then why would it take the body so long (2-4 weeks) for one to feel good on such a diet?
Probably depends on how carb heavy your diet was. Endocrine function. Gut biome adaptation. Type of training.
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“Fat adapted” and “Keto adapted” aren’t the same thing. Muscles switch over from carbs to fat and vice versa in less than a week when carb intake gets down around 25% maintenance cals.
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These terms are frequently interchanged. I believe what people mean by keto adaptation is the body’s ability to ‘learn’ to be metabolically flexible again and prefer fats to carbs as an energy source. This is different to simple fat adaptation, which is the plain fact of being in nutritional ketosis. The former probably takes weeks. The latter, days.
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That’s not what I’m talking about. The glucose dependent tissues-primarily the brain-use about 25% of daily resting metabolic rate in glucose per day in a diet with ample carbs. For a 2400 calorie diet that would be about 150 grams of carbs to run the cells that don’t oxidize fat for fuel. Muscles will tend to load with glycogen and run on a higher resting rate of glucose on a high carb diet, as high as 30% and will use 70%-90% glucose at increased workloads.
When carbs are replaced with fat, muscles replace some glycogen with fatty acids, and they make fewer glucose burning enzymes and more fat burning enzymes (insulin itself signals the synthesis of glucose burning enzymes). On a carb/fat isocaloric diet glucose burning is lower and fat burning is higher and fatty acid storage in muscles is increased. When carbs get down close to that 25% level, it needs to be almost all saved for the glucose dependent tissues unless ketone levels become significant, so muscles will trend toward almost 100% fat burning at rest and will also use more fat at increased workloads than on a high carb level. At about 25% carbs, the muscles are burning the maximum amount of fat possible at all workloads while the brain still has enough glucose to function without ramping up gluconeogenesis or ketosis. When carbs go lower, the body has to turn up gluconeogenesis via autophagy until the the liver and brain adapt to allow you to thrive on ketosis.
At the circa 25% carb level, muscles and non-glucose dependent tissues will use only half the glucose at any work level than they do on high carb diets, but it has nothing to do with ketones. Also when carbs are at 25% the muscles actually become insulin resistant from the increased fatty acid stores, and the decrease in glucose burning enzymes. Total daily insulin is not higher, but the insulin needed to move x grams of glucose out of the bloodstream goes up by 200-300%. This is why low carb, maintence calorie diets don’t necessarily reduce daily insulin output because while carbs drop by a factor of 2-3, insulin required to dispose of a given amount of glucose rises by a factor of 2-3. This is a threshold where the brain gets just enough glucose from daily intake, but the muscles use the highest percentage of fat as possible without requiring ketones or autophagy (muscles can’t run on fat without ketones at high workloads though, even a maximally fat adapted muscle will need to get most of its energy from glucose when workloads rise above 6-7 METS because muscles can’t burn more than about 15% of daily resting metabolic rate per hour in the form of fat-it’s just not fast enough of a process.
When available carbs get lower than about 20%, or workloads demand faster sources than fat then autophagy or ketosis (or sometimes both) will krank up-autophagy more in the presence of cortisol and ketosis more in the presence of growth hormone.
Bumping an old thread as this is a topic I am revisiting as part of a bid to lose my last 10lbs (or so).
I think training fasted is understudied, especially in terms of hypertrophic response. However, there does appear to be enough out there to suggest several key tenets:
(1) Growth hormone production is amplified during the fasted state (not even exogenous HGH can compare). Training can increase this even more. Nothing too revolutionary here.
(2) Fasted training does burn more fat than in a fed state.
(3) The rate of protein synthesis can be doubled when you do eat following fasted training.
For these reasons, I am now doing all training sessions (weights, HIIT and LISS) fasted, i.e. circa 18 hours on weights and HIIT; no limit on LISS. I have gone into this from a near zero carb diet (which is a separate topic in its own right).
Anyway, good to hear your thoughts on this topic as always.