Good thing I never finished a project!

I infer they mean that you can’t divorce CICO from patterns in hunger signals.

People make unnecessary assumptions and that causes them problems. When I took active part in various Keto and LCHF communities, I volunteered to help with that. No, you can’t just eat bacon. No, carbohydrates aren’t forbidden, but merely limited. And so on.

I remember some active folks helping people who didn’t want to eat meat learn how to eat Keto without meat. Some of them even managed not to be stereotypical vegans. 😉

And I’ll tell you what I’ve told everyone who has "well, ackshually"d me about CICO: yes, but sugar seems to cause most people most of the time to struggle with limiting food intake, whereas fat tends to do the opposite for those folks, so eating more fat and very little sugar helps them play the game on easy mode. This is an effective way to transform eating habits. I was one of those people. Eat fat xor sugar, for the folks who understand Boolean.

And I’ll point out three things:

• Studies that purport to study and debunk low carbohydrate eating routinely choose limits for carbohydrates higher than what Keto and LCHF folks actually eat, which renders those studies inconclusive with regard to Keto/LCHF. They’re debunking something else. Some of those studies, for the sake of simplicity, feed subjects fats in a way (typically large amounts from a single source) that no human would, which avoids the benefits of eating a variety of whole foods, which Keto and LCHF approaches recommend. (Even Protein Power, which incorrectly recommended increasing protein intake during the Atkins craze of the 1990s explicitly recommended switching from processed food to whole food.)

• There’s no guarantee that the health problems introduced by extensive Keto/LCHF eating are worse than the health problems that accompany an extra 20-50 years of obesity. (Some studies, including one by Banting (I’m going by memory and will accept being wrong about this), indicated that at least some of the population can eat almost zero carbohydrates indefinitely with good health outcomes.) Neither “side” can be sure of its stance here, due to the practically difficulty of studying this question. In particular, cancer comes for us all, in one way or another. In many ways, life is becoming an exercise in ensuring that cancer gets you instead of some other disease. 🤷

• Many folks, including me, report success using Keto/LCHF as an intervention rather than a lifestyle. I can report that I changed my eating habits radically so that now, even when I’m not attentively restricting carbohydrates, my default choices hurt my body less than they did before Keto/LCHF. I think that’s why I’ve regained 40 pounds instead of all of it.

I get fiber by eating fiber. What’s the problem?

Nothing about the ketogenic approach to eating precludes fiber nor water and it does not promote maximizing protein.

It tells you to drastically limit carbohydrates, eat enough protein, and otherwise eat fat.

Some folks have reported better results eating more protein and less fat. More, not as much as possible. Not a ridiculous amount. 20-30 g per day more.

I’m very familiar with the complex social forces that lead people to get this wrong and for those wrong messages to proliferate. Please hold your cards and letters.

Source: I lost 160 pounds in my 30s eating keto and only gained back 40 once I reached middle age. I know that’s not double-blind, but it’s also not nothing.

Peace.