I start each day with coffee mixed with butter and MCT oil. I eat meat for lunch. I eat meat for dinner.
I feel better than I have for years.
http://reddit.com/r/keto is a reasonable place to get started.
I'm on keto, but I use DIY Soylent and vegan protein sources for it. Not because I don't like meat (I LOVE bacon), but because I'm lazy.
Keto is wonderful because it keeps your blood sugar level low, which helps burn fat and prevents your body from storing excess energy as fat. Don't overdue the red meat though; there is a body of evidence that shows that red meat can cause cancer through the digestive track.
Also, much love for /r/keto. It's a wonderful community. Keto on!
-You start with caffeine, a known hunger suppressant
-Meat is high protein, which is (I think) fairly confidently known to be what stops your brain thinking that it is hungry.
These two factors, along with internal knowledge that you're attempting to lose weight and may therefore conciously attempt to eat less, should result in you eating less than you otherwise would.
Yet you purposely eat high fat and low nutrition foods such as butter - if you replaced those with other options - vegetables and starchy carbs - and attempted to eat protein-dense but low fat meats such as chicken breast - would you be still losing as much weight and also overall having a healthier body (which is less likely to lead to problems later in life?).
Obviously this article throws some of those assumptions into question, but I think few people would argue that replacing some fat in a (relatively) high fat diet with vegetables would be a negative for your weight loss or future health.
> You start with caffeine, a known hunger suppressant
And yet, most of the western world, including most obese people, drinks coffee. So apparently, the "hunger suppression effects" are not relevant, or they would be relevant to everyone.
> internal knowledge that you're attempting to lose weight and may therefore conciously attempt to eat less, should result in you eating less than you otherwise would.
That would also be true for ... just about every person who is trying to lose weight. And the vast majority of them fail spectacularly. So this can't be a reason either.
> Yet you purposely eat high fat and low nutrition foods such as butter
What does "low nutrition" mean, and why would you think butter is not nutritious? "Butter" is not one thing, much like "Meat" is not one thing. European style and US style butters have different nutrient contents. Butter from well treated, grass fed cows contains a lot more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_acid than grain fed cows that are not treated well (The taste is also different - after I got used to the former, which I can eat by the stick, the latter is disgusting in any form or amount). Butyric acid is seriously good for you (see e.g. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/12/butyric-acid-a... )
> would you be still losing as much weight and also overall having a healthier body (which is less likely to lead to problems later in life?)
Why would you believe that? That it causes problem, or that you would lose as much weight? Calorie in - calorie out is a theory that was never scientifically proved, and was scientifically disproved numerous times.
You make it sound like a bad choice, but that's exactly the keto food that gives them results, and the one that makes the difference. High fat food like butter.
Most people subscribed to /r/keto already tried all you advocate, and failed.
Keto works for them, don't try to disregard that.
For every fad diet, there are people who lost significant weight using that diet. It's how they get to be fads (and how you can know that the biological rationales are bunk).
This [ http://imgur.com/NJlqag1 ], was thru increased self-awareness which I jump-started by counting calories for the first couple months. (194 is the top of what the BMI chart calls "normal")
If you're mindful of what you're doing, then you'll only eat when hungry (and enough to not be hungry) rather than mindlessly snacking all day or mindlessly continuing to eat at meals until the food and/or conversation runs out. If you learn to pay attention (just enough to keep your senses calibrated), your body is fairly good at telling you what you need.
So anything that helps you stay mindful will help you lose weight.
I don't know if keto is solid science, but the theory cannot be represented as merely calorie reduction.
The only way to verify this is to do large scale controlled experiments. So until that time, we are going back and forth on anecdotes.
Note: In the interests of disclosure, I would like to point that I have tried all three diets and successfully (kept that weight off for more than 3 years) lost weight.
But I have reduced my triglycerides count from 390 to 140, I can program for 6 hours straight instead of just 2, I feel less tired through the day, and I am much healthier than ever.
Keto is not a fad diet to me, it is a lifestyle.
Weight is obviously important (obesity is not healthy) but there's far too much focus on weight in my opinion. There are lots of people who are not overweight who are incredibly unhealthy. Many of them don't think they're unhealthy because they're not "fat."
> I feel better than I have for years.
This, and how you look, is far more important.
Are you chronically tired? Do you get winded with modest exertion? Can you lift a modestly heavy object? Do you have bags under your eyes? Do you see definition in certain muscle groups?
The science of diet is unsettled. Medical science is always changing. There are few one-size-fits-all answers. But you can start to get a pretty good sense of your overall health and well-being by paying attention to how you feel and looking at your body in a mirror on a regular basis.
200 to 150 would be much more impressive than 300 to 250.