Anyone been on the ketogenic diet long term?

[ic1male]

I was thinking about doing the weight every morning and just plotting all the points on a graph to (hopefully) see a downward trend but I don't really want to be a slave to the scales. Just once a week will do and I do it every Monday after the ablutions. But I was curious tonight. Probably got a belly full of pork and a litre of water in there whirling around.

It was good news this morning though. I went through my wardrobe and found a brand new T-shirt that I got given for Christmas maybe two years ago and it never fit. Now it does.

 

[Efour]

I tried doing this for 2 weeks and then spoke to a Dietitian about the benefits of it. She laughed... Said theres not enough reliable studies carried out on it and that the increased cholesterol produced its own problems too so....

Stick to a sensible, balanced diet in a calorie deficit = lose weight.

 

[dowie]

I tried doing this for 2 weeks and then spoke to a Dietitian about the benefits of it. She laughed... Said theres not enough reliable studies carried out on it and that the increased cholesterol produced its own problems too so....

Stick to a sensible, balanced diet in a calorie deficit = lose weight.

Yup - tis a bit dubious how it has somehow promoted some message that carbs are bad. While I can see the attraction of keto for some short term weight loss I don't think some restrictive diet is a good idea long term especially with the effects unknown.

A healthy, balanced diet is still likely the best thing for people who are at a normal weight. Ideally a Mediterranean-ish one.

 

[ic1male]

I did lots of reading last night and another thing I’m going to change is dropping the coconut oil. I use it a lot for frying and occasionally eat it for a bit of extra energy but the 86% saturated figure is preying on my mind. Even though it’s hideously expensive, going to try some avocado oil and posh olive oil instead.

 

[robj20]

Yup - tis a bit dubious how it has somehow promoted some message that carbs are bad. While I can see the attraction of keto for some short term weight loss I don't think some restrictive diet is a good idea long term especially with the effects unknown.

A healthy, balanced diet is still likely the best thing for people who are at a normal weight. Ideally a Mediterranean-ish one.

I think it's partly true a lot of popular carbs we consume are bad.
I tried keto, it wasn't for me.
Now I try to really limit simple and processed carbs.
Got rid of pasta and bread for starters. Swapped standard rice for wild rice varieties.
Sweet potatoes, lentils, chick peas, squash instead of standard potatoes.
Cutting back on sugar as much as I can as well.

 

[dowie]

I think it's partly true a lot of popular carbs we consume are bad.
I tried keto, it wasn't for me.
Now I try to really limit simple and processed carbs.
Got rid of pasta and bread for starters. Swapped standard rice for wild rice varieties.
Sweet potatoes, lentils, chick peas, squash instead of standard potatoes.
Cutting back on sugar as much as I can as well.

Why are pasta and regular potatoes bad? What’s wrong with brown rice that you’d buy some hipster rice instead?

 

[robj20]

Why are pasta and regular potatoes bad? What’s wrong with brown rice that you’d buy some hipster rice instead?

I suggest you Google simple and processed carbs.

What's hipster about wild rice do you have something against food that isn't processed.

For instance do you think pasta is grown in the ground or something. I'm pretty sure you know it's a highly processed carb.

Brown rice is fine, certainly better than bleached white rice.
Wild rice is the next step up, nicer flavours, nicer texture, better for you.
Also big perk it doesn't need washing just simmer for 40 minutes. Doesn't stick together at all. Much nuttier flavour.

 

[dowie]

I suggest you Google simple and processed carbs.

You made the claim.

So brown rice is fine. Why is pasta a problem and why replace potatoes?

It just seems like people are restricting foods unnecessarily.

 

[robj20]

You made the claim.

So brown rice is fine. Why is pasta a problem and why replace potatoes?

It just seems like people are restricting foods unnecessarily.

I made no claim. Simply said what I'm eating, if you like processed carbs it's your life. I don't.

Unnecessary in your opinion.

 

[dowie]

I made no claim.

I think it's partly true a lot of popular carbs we consume are bad.
I tried keto, it wasn't for me.
Now I try to really limit simple and processed carbs.
Got rid of pasta and bread for starters. Swapped standard rice for wild rice varieties.
Sweet potatoes, lentils, chick peas, squash instead of standard potatoes.
Cutting back on sugar as much as I can as well.

I get the cutting back on sugar but the implication there when you say that a lot of popular carbs we consume are bad and then go on to list what you've cut out is that what you've cut out is stuff you think is bad...

I mean if you didn't in fact mean that and were just listing stuff you eat unrelated to that point then I'm not sure why you quoted me in the first place or listed all that stuff after making that statement.

 

[robj20]

I get the cutting back on sugar but the implication there when you say that a lot of popular carbs we consume are bad and then go on to list what you've cut out is that what you've cut out is stuff you think is bad...

I mean if you didn't in fact mean that and were just listing stuff you eat unrelated to that point then I'm not sure why you quoted me in the first place or listed all that stuff after making that statement.

Okay I think I know what you mean. Yes a lot of the popular carbs we eat are bad.

Pasta, bread, chips, crisp.

The ingredients that make up those carbs have been obliterated and processed beyond recognition it strips a lot of the nutrition or of them especially and mostly fiber.

This leads us to consume higher than we need quantities of carbs which are of the simple variety so brake down very quickly and give you spikes in blood sugar.

Take pasta it's at its basic wheat and eggs.
But if you compared say 500 calories worth or pasta Vs 500 calories of wheat and eggs you would be shocked at the volume size.
If people on the whole cut back on processed foods you couldn't eat such volume of calories, you feel full faster and stay feeling full for longer.

Pasta is a particularly bad one you can easily easy silly amount of calories and not feel overly full.

Another one is something like orange juice, think how many oranges are in a serving, would you eat that many oranges. Then you factor in you just removed half of what is good about fruit the fiber, you end up consuming too much sugar.

Some easy changes can make for an overall healthier diet.

I used to eat a lot of bread but now when I do have it I go for wholegrain or rye varieties, you eat half as much and feel full get a lot more fiber and micronutrients.

I basically just simplified my food. I say I get most of my carbs from Oats, lentils, chic peas, and whole grain rices.
I make a lot of my own bread and do things like 50/50 wholegrain flour/chic pea flour. You end up with a tastier product but it's not the white fluffy soft bread most are used to, I don't think I add sugar to anything anymore to the point commercial food tastes crazy sweet.

 

[dowie]

Okay I think I know what you mean. Yes a lot of the popular carbs we eat are bad.

Pasta, bread, chips, crisp.

Well yeah the chips and crips are a bit of given, bread is well just bread - bit naff but useful/practical for sandwiches if you need to go somewhere - though in moderation, strangely enough, the occasional fish and chips isn't as bad as people might think... especially if made at home without the nasty trans fats.

But the arguments against things like pasta and orange juice seem a bit silly - just because you'd not eat that many oranges in one go or that may eggs in one go doesn't mean orange juice and pasta are bad. I'd suspect that most people who have too many sugary drinks aren't binge drinking on orange juice but rather have bottles of coke etc.. and that over eaters are perhaps more likely to have issues with snacks and junk food than too much pasta.

The person who has a glass of orange juice with breakfast or who has some pasta at lunch time isn't necessarily eating unhealthily at all.

But I'll agree that if that is a problem, someone drinking too much fruit juice or over eating pasta etc.. then those are bad for them... but you can say that about lots of foods and I don't see an argument for pasta being a bad food in general. Its a component of Italian and Greek diets and they've seemingly got some of the best diets going tbh...

This kind of brings it back to the argument I was making in the first place - stuff like this keto diet and the Atkins diet before it seem to promote this idea in general that carbs are bad - so you get people who aren't actually doing the keto diet just trying to keep a low-ish carb intake regardless out of habit or some belief that they're bad.

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-weight/why-we-need-to-eat-carbs/

The government's healthy eating advice, illustrated by the Eatwell Guide, recommends that just over a third of your diet should be made up of starchy foods, such as potatoes, bread, rice and pasta, and over another third should be fruit and vegetables.

This means that over half of your daily calorie intake should come from starchy foods, fruit and vegetables.

Cutting out pasta or potatoes seems to be pointless IMO - unless you're really getting problems with overeating those things then I don't really see what it achieves as there isn't anything to suggest they're inherently bad.

 

[robj20]

It doesn't matter you clearly aren't interested in the topic. It's fine a lot of people just like to eat what's easy and convenient.
You say you don't see the point in cutting out pasta. I don't see the point in cutting out chic peas and lentils but most probably have never had them.

I bet you agree that there are bad fats and good fats but you seem to be burying your head in the sand when it comes to bad carbs and good carbs.

 

[dowie]

It doesn't matter you clearly aren't interested in the topic. It's fine a lot of people just like to eat what's easy and convenient.
You say you don't see the point in cutting out pasta. I don't see the point in cutting out chic peas and lentils but most probably have never had them.

Of course I'm interested in the topic - that's why I'm commenting on the thread. Where has anyone suggested cutting out lentils or chic peas... They're not some mysterious foods that only people who have tried fad diets have heard of. I think you'll find that Mediterranean diets mentioned in the previous posts can be rather big on hummus... what do you think one of the main ingredients of that is?

I bet you agree that there are bad fats and good fats but you seem to be burying your head in the sand when it comes to bad carbs and good carbs.

Where have I done that? You could perhaps try to deal with what I've actually posted rather than make stuff up - you'd already know I'd agree there are bad fats if you'd paid attention to the previous posts where, for example, I mention trans fats. You'll also note that I make reference to people consuming excess sugar. Why pretend otherwise?

What I'm critical of is what I've posted already - needlessly restricting things like carbs (inc pasta, potatoes etc..), a general notion that carbs are bad etc.. stemming from people who've gone along with diets like this.

What exactly am I burying my head in the sand over?

So far your argument for pasta being "bad" is that people might eat a lot of it? You don't seem to have bothered to argue why potatoes are apparently bad but you've mentioned (seemingly arbitrarily) cutting them out.

 

[Screeeech]

I don't like the notion of good carbs vs bad carbs, because it's not very helpful, people who misunderstand might end up removing all traces of carbohydrates from their diet in an attempt to be healthy. Instead they might eat lots of fat, which eventually becomes miserable and they relapse to the exact state they were in before.

Rather than focus on eliminating every food item in existence that contains carbs, they'd be far better off simply not eating processed junk foods and snacks - many of which contain unnecessary amounts of carbs. Because it's only these types of foods containing excess amounts of carbs, which cause problems, not carbs themselves.

Having a healthy balanced diet (such as a mediterranean diet) is going to be far more successful in the long run.

 

[Somnambulist]

^

And most of those junk foods contain high levels of fat too. Sweet and rich is a tasty combination...

Every diet craze always starts out with a premise that the reason you're overweight/unhealthy isn't because of over-consumption of hyper-caloric, hyper-palatable processed foods, low in micronutrients and fibre, and a distinct lack of whole foods, but that it's something else's fault - protein, fat, carbs, sugar, wheat, dairy... and so nearly every media-promoted diet book you'll find in Waterstones involves restriction of certain foods or food groups regardless of people's dietary preference (hence why people succeed and fail to varying degrees on all different kinds of diets when calories are restricted). It's always about exclusion, where as in reality dietary variety and inclusion is one of the most important things, since rigid diets tend to be the ones with the highest failure rates.

Meanwhile you have whole populations with great health-markers who eat all kinds of different diets high in various different things depending on what part of the world they're from, bodybuilders getting crazy lean eating everything under the sun as long as they're respecting energy intake relative to energy expenditure and macro-nutrient distribution, and general health/fitness folk like me who eat a bunch of whole foods, but also eat a little processed stuff and still walk around with a six pack, feel great and have a good relationship with food because the reality about nutrition isn't that exciting and it's all down to diets as a whole rather than any individual food or even meal in isolation.

 

[dowie]

@Screeeech that pretty much sums up my pov too. While I can see the usefulness of keto for some people for short term goals - a healthy balanced diet, as far as we know at the moment, is the way to go and currently the Mediterranean diets seem to be king.

One thing dietitians do seem to be quite keen on usually is not needlessly eliminating or restricting your diet if they can.

 

[Screeeech]

Every diet craze always starts out with a premise that the reason you're overweight/unhealthy isn't because of over-consumption of hyper-caloric, hyper-palatable processed foods, low in micronutrients and fibre, and a distinct lack of whole foods, but that it's something else's fault - protein, fat, carbs, sugar, wheat, dairy... and so nearly every media-promoted diet book you'll find in Waterstones involves restriction of certain foods or food groups regardless of people's dietary preference (hence why people succeed and fail to varying degrees on all different kinds of diets when calories are restricted). It's always about exclusion, where as in reality dietary variety and inclusion is one of the most important things, since rigid diets tend to be the ones with the highest failure rates.

Couldn't agree more.

I would say, that Ketogenic diets do have their place with morbidly obese people, say someone who's 30+ stone, as they are very effective for rapid weight loss. However they were often prescribed under the watchful eye of specialist obesity doctors, where someone is dangerously overweight and the weight needs to come off at all costs, perhaps as a precursor to bariatric surgery, or for other reasons..

The average person in the street who might be 1-2 stone overweight, is far better off just eating sensibly, however I do think that's often easier said than done, but nevertheless - it is the best way.

*sits and eats digestive biscuits*

 

[ic1male]

Nobody’s really mentioned sugar in all this and insulin/diabetes. This way of strict low carb eating for me is partly for weight loss and partly to bring blood sugar under control. Previously I’d eat maybe 200g carbs each day which is way too much. Now it’s less than 20g. I think you could easily manage less than 130g which is the recommendation I’ve seen in eating guidelines when you don’t need to lose any weight but 50g is probably even better to stave off insulin resistance. That’s about two rounds of bread!

 

[SexyGreyFox]

Nobody’s really mentioned sugar in all this and insulin/diabetes. This way of strict low carb eating for me is partly for weight loss and partly to bring blood sugar under control. Previously I’d eat maybe 200g carbs each day which is way too much. Now it’s less than 20g. I think you could easily manage less than 130g which is the recommendation I’ve seen in eating guidelines when you don’t need to lose any weight but 50g is probably even better to stave off insulin resistance. That’s about two rounds of bread!

Tomorrow I have to take my diabetes seriously (I picked that day because I've been on a week bender in Benidorm).
I need to shift a couple of stone at least and I'm determined this time.