One of our employees decided to cut out fast food completely. Total weight loss in over 6 months of doing this? 0 pounds.
Why? Because his at-home diet was still full of sugar and carbs (and he admitted as much..."I'll never give up bread!")
Meanwhile, I did a low-carb "lazy Keto" diet where all I did was keep carbs under 20g net per day. I continued to eat fast food at least a couple times a week (I ate a lot of burgers with no buns.)
Total weight loss? 25 pounds over 8 months, and have kept it off. I started the diet December 1 of last year, so it's now been almost a year.
It really is the carbs and sugar that do you in, no matter how organic or home-cooked/homemade those carbs may be.
What people also fail to mention with their anecdotal evidence is their age and gender. It is relevant because young bodies and brains are still growing, increasing calorie demand compared to a middle age adult.
> It really is the carbs and sugar that do you in, no matter how organic or home-cooked/homemade those carbs may be.
It really is the calories that do you in, no matter what type of calories or how you restrict yourself otherwise. All the diets are just some kind of abacadabra (or facade or placebo effect if you will) to make you focused on your calories intake, for example with specific rules about having to avoid certain products or ingredients which make it difficult to follow so that e.g. the subject cannot snack in between meals.
If you take in a lot less calories than the amount you require, you'll burn fat quicker. You'll lose weight quicker as well (although if you also start exercise, muscles weight more than fat). A lot more calories leads to building up fat quicker and gaining weight quicker. Both, eventually, until you are on the level of your calorie intake.
It furthermore also stands to reason that something with sugar is more difficult to limit than keto products because the former is more tastier. From an evolutionary PoV it makes sense because the sugar from fruits was a quick way to give us energy.
Furthermore, you should ask yourself whether the ingredients of the high carb food are needed. You'll find that you don't need them in the first place, possibly not in the amounts you eat them, but if you eat one cookie with the coffee in the evening that doesn't suddenly "ruin your health" because it is high on sugar. It doesn't "ruin your diet" either. The problem is that people cannot stick with one cookie in the evening with coffee. They snack far more, between meals. Yeah that adds up. Look on the packages and do the maths.
All the bad stuff is on the packages as well, very convenient: saturated fat, sugar, and salt. What a coincidence that our governments demand this being listed!
So FWIW @ericabiz is correct "It really is the carbs and sugar that do you in".
You also responded to @kichuku regarding sugar being sugar:
> The natural in sugar is irrelevant. Sugar is sugar; as in fructose is fructose, and glucose is glucose.
Not exactly. Fructose doesn't initiate an insulin response in the body... so it doesn't increase LPL... there are other problems with fructose but the 'natural' in the sugar shouldn't be dismissed.
Its not. The people who are obese mostly [1] consume too much, and often carbs are the culprit. If they reduce their calorie intake, they lose weight. It doesn't matter if they use a keto pseusoscience with that, go to a dietist to follow a raw food pseudoscience diet, or diet solo without a dietist limiting caloric intake on sheer willpower (a proven method based on decades of science). Even people who don't get into a "state of ketosis" because they diet on raw food or willpower lose weight. The thing they all have in common is: limiting the caloric intake.
[1] "Mostly" as there are some diseases which are exceptions, an example could be thyroid problems. I'm not gonna comment on this, not familiar with all the English terms on the exceptions.
> Not exactly. Fructose doesn't initiate an insulin response in the body... there are other problems with fructose but the 'natural' in the sugar is important.
Cane and beets are natural sugar as well. All sugar is natural, except artificial sugar, but then we call it artificial sugar. The term sugar doesn't tell us which sugar (e.g. glucose or fructose or lactose) but neither does the term natural sugar.
Its akin to denoting to stating "[..] fruit apple [..]". An apple is always a fruit. There is no need to underline that.
Given that bread is a fairly old food, while the obesity problem seems recent, something seems off with the idea that we should all be on a keto diet.
If you're in the "I'll never give up bread!" camp, I would encourage you to try and find sugar-free bread. I tried doing that, and let me tell you, it is extremely difficult. Even your healthy looking whole grain, multi-seed, organic superfood bread usually has a ton of sugar. But it can be done :)
Looks like a strict keto to me, anything under 30g net carbs per day will put you into ketosis.
