*if you’re going to carb, that is
The Sofer study was uniquely insightful in that they compared 3 carb-rich meals per day with the same amount of carbs but restricted to 1 meal. Both groups ate 3 times per day. Tl;dr: one carb meal is modestly better than three even when total carbs are controlled. Since the carb-meal happened to be dinner, #fakenews reported that “carbs at night” are superior… but we saw right through that – the real conclusion was carb frequency not carb timing.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, angiotensin, Bromocriptine, Cabergoline, chronopharmacology, circadian, diet, Dietary fat, Dopamine, fertility, melatonin, Protein, sex, sleep, Sun, Vitamin D
Tagged calories proper, carbs, circadian rhythm, diet, melatonin, Paleo
This is how ketoadaptation works (when it works), chronologically, on physical performance (I think):
Dark grey line: the gradual increase in performance for someone training on a regular diet.
Red line: performance declines on keto initially, but is back to baseline (light blue line) by week 3.
Light grey line: as long as ketoadaptation doesn’t impair performance, similar gradual increase in performance for someone training on a regular diet. Parallel to the dark grey line. May even catch up to the dark grey line. I don’t know, but probably not as per FASTER – long-term LC athletes were not superior to their LF counterparts.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, strength
Tagged calories proper, carbs, diet, insulin, ketogenic, ketones, muscle, nutrition, protein
A fattier cut of salmon (think: skin-on, high skin-to-flesh ratio, etc.) has about ~2 g EPA & DHA (fish oil, FO) per 100 g, or ~10 g per pound. Average price (around here, this time of year) is ~$10 / lb. So, about $1 / gram FO, in 50 g salmon. See also, the Fish Blog.
As reasoned in The poor, misunderstood calorie, FO from seafood is roughly 4x more effective than FO from supps. There was no head-to-head study comparing seafood to supps, but a study on seafood with half the dose of FO was twice as efficacious as a study on supps. Half the dose + twice as efficacious = 4x. The greater bioavailability and assimilation of FO from seafood can only explain a small part of this… I suspect other nutrients in seafood explain another part, and displacement of other calories by the protein in seafood further explains another part. But this post is about FO per se.
Turmeric is about 5% curcumins by weight, or it takes about 20 grams of turmeric to get 1 gram of curcumins.
But you can’t go eating it by the spoonful because: 1) that’s nasty; 2) it’s messy and stains everything yellow; and 3) it’s not bioavailable, like, at all.
2g curcumin vs. 2g curcumin + 20mg piperine:
Fortunately, bioavailability is drastically increased by black pepper &/or dietary fat. For this reason, most curcumin supps contain either piperine or some sort of lipids. I’m not a big fan of piperine because it seems to non-selectively increase the absorption of tons of things – and there are some things we don’t absorb for a reason: they’re toxic… so I’d rather just use a little pepper and take it with some seafood.
It takes about 3 weeks to become fully ketoadapted and you don’t really get more ketoadapted thereafter, at least as per max fat oxidation rates (which seems a pretty good surrogate, imo).
Important point: “Athletes who drop carbs cold turkey suddenly suck.” And performance usually recovers by around week 3. This has been confirmed in nearly every proper study on the subject, in a variety of contexts.
Which brings me to the latest alleged slam on keto & physical performance:
Low carbohydrate, high fat diet impairs exercise economy and negates the performance benefit of intensified training in elite race walkers (Burke et al., 2016)
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, strength, TPMC
Tagged Atkins, calories, calories proper, carbs, diet, energy balance, energy expenditure, exercise, fat, insulin, ketogenic, ketosis, nutrition
Effects of diet composition on postprandial energy availability during weight loss maintenance (Walsh et al., 2013)
Now, we’re getting somewhere!
3 diets (carbs 10%, 40% or 60%; protein was higher in the lowest carb group). Four weeks. CROSSOVER.
Then a test meal which approximated the diet assignment. Total “energy availability” in the blood was approximated by measuring the calories in blood glucose, free fatty acids, and ketones.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, Energy balance, fat, insulin, Ketosis, Leptin, Protein
Tagged calories proper, carbs, energy balance, energy expenditure, fat, fiber, insulin, ketones, nutrition, protein
Study: 12 weeks, obese men, very high fat low carb (VHFLC) vs. low fat high carb (LFHC) (Veum et al., 2016) #FATFUNC
Pictorially:
It wasn’t explicitly AD LIB, but pretty close. I say this because that is the magnitude of appetite decline we might expect when people go on The Hunger Free Diet(s), eg,
^^^ GOOD IDEA
Posted in Advanced nutrition, circadian, diet, Dietary fat, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, Sugar, TPMC
Tagged body composition, calories proper, carbs, diet, insulin, ketosis, nutrition, processed food, protein, soda
It started out as “lose weight without hunger on LCHF” and went all the way to “effortless fasting on keto.” Works for some and it might be true, but the same can be said for low fat diets! The key, I think, in both contexts, is simple: fewer processed & refined foods… something the Paleo movement got right, imo (although I still think many low-calorie sweeteners are way less unhealthy than HFCS & sugar).
The logic:
1) add “good calories” like almonds to your diet and appetite spontaneously compensates by eating less other stuff: energy neutral
2) you don’t compensate for added “bad calories” like sugar-sweetened beverages: positive energy balance
3) remove bad calories from your diet and you don’t compensate by eating more other stuff: negative energy balance
Book: Good Calories, Bad Calories
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diabetes, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, fat, fiber, gluten, insulin, muscle, Protein, sleep, TPMC, Trans fat
Tagged body composition, calories proper, carbs, diet, empty calories, energy balance, fat, insulin, ketogenic, ketones, ketosis, muscle, nutrition, obesity, Paleo, processed food, protein, soda, sugar, trans fat
Tl;dr: SFA and DHA
Essential fatty acids? Well, there’s really only one, DHA, and we really only need a gram or two. In other words, our entire requirement for dietary fat can be met by about 2% of total calories (plus a few extra grams to accommodate fat-soluble vitamins) (plus DHA is never the sole fat in a food, so you’d be getting a few more grams of other fats, too). But still, a very low fat diet! But impractical and probably not very palatable or healthy.
On average, dietary fat comprises about a third of calories, roughly equally divided between SFA, MUFA, and PUFA (slightly less PUFA).
Major sources of SFA are pizza and desserts – no wonder SFA gets a bad rap!
Posted in Advanced nutrition, coconut, diet, Dietary fat, fat, Fish, TPMC, Trans fat
Tagged Atkins, calories, calories proper, carbs, diet, energy balance, fat, nutrition, obesity, Paleo, trans fat
:::begin rant:::
Trigger warning? Maybe.
Disclaimer: I’m pro-LC (P<0.05), but not anti-LF because LF works better than LC for some people. And with the exception of things like keto for neurological issues, I think macros take a back seat to many other factors.
Myths: carbs cause insulin resistance (IR), diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. Carbs are intrinsically pathogenic. If a healthy person eats carbs, eventually they’ll get sick.
And the only prescription is more keto.
And of course all of this could’ve been prevented if they keto’d from the get-go.
Proponents of these myths are referring to regular food carbs, not limited to things like Oreo Coolattas (which would be more acceptable, imo). Taubes, Lustig, Attia, and many others have backed away from their anti-carb positions, yet the new brigade proceeds and has even upped the ante to include starvation. Because “LC = effortless fasting?”
Does this sound sane?
“No carbs ever,
no food often…
otherwise diabetes.”
no one in their right mind would say lentils & beans cause diabetes
Posted in Advanced nutrition, circadian, diabetes, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, fiber, Fish, Fructose, gluten, Grains, insulin, Ketosis, melatonin, mortality, muscle, Protein, sleep, smoking, strength, Sugar, Sun, TPMC
Tagged Atkins, calories, calories proper, carbs, circadian rhythm, diabetes, diet, empty calories, energy balance, exercise, fat, fiber, high fructose corn syrup, insulin, ketogenic, nutrition, obesity, protein, soda, sucrose, sugar, trans fat