assuming same calorie intake on both the ketogenic diet and the conventional diet, would the ketogenic diet lose more weight even though the same calories are being absorbed?
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No, everything in the universe obeys the First Law of Thermodynamics, pretending you can change that with fad diets is exactly how fad diets start in the first place.
The answer is way more complicated than you think. The short answer is: of course not, thermodynamics says that if you consume/burn the exact same amount of energy that’s all there is.
The longer answer is that before ketosis you deplete all your carb stores due to your body’s preference for them. Once they are all gone, you have lower glycogen and blood glucose levels (your carb stores) so your only option is to metabolize body fat and/or lipoproteins in blood. So you may burn more fat as a fuel source, but you don’t burn any extra *calories*.
As everyone is say. Yes and no.
Your body uses 3 fuels: fat, protein, and carbs. Your body really likes carbs because it’s very easy to use. The simpler the carbs, the easier it is. This is why we love simple sugars so much. When your body runs low on sugar, it will start using fats and proteins which are harder to use but still work pretty well. So if you eat very little sugar, you will 100% use more fat.
However, this does not mean you will use more body fat. You aren’t going to train your body to prefer fats/reject sugars because that’d be like training a fire to not burn gasoline or to make wood burn hotter. It burns at what it burns at. It is still 100% about calories eaten vs calories used.
Some people do have a harder time using some fuels (proteins, fats, sugars) than other fuels compared to other people and may require a special diet, but most people do not. The best thing to lose body weight is to avoid added, simple sugars (because they don’t make you feel full and our body loves it so much that it’s very addictive) and exercise. Another great thing to do is look up a satiety index. This will tell you what foods make you feel full without a lot of calories, like baked potatoes.
I found that ketosis somehow impacted my base metabolism. Before my wife and I started keto, I religiously logged my calories for a month without changing my eating habits. I consumed about 1800 calories per day during the week and about 2500 calories on the weekend while maintaining my body weight. When we were on strict keto I averaged 2200 to 2500 calibration per day and lost 2-3 pounds per week. This happened without any change in physical activity.
I can’t explain it, but it happened.
Ketosis is the metabolic state where your body is burning fats for energy. It happens even on a traditional diet if you don’t eat for 16-24 hours.
If you’re on the carnivore or keto diet, your your primary source of energy is fat. If you lower your calories slightly, you will burn body fat.
On a traditional diet, this takes much longer to accomplish. If you stop eating, your body has to burn through the glucose from the carbs it just consumed. After that’s done, it has to burn through the stored glucose (called glycogen). This can take 16-24 hours. Once glycogen is gone, your brain requires energy, and your liver converts bodyfat into usable ketones for energy. These ketones supply your body with constant energy as well as your brain. So on a traditional diet to start burning bodyfat, it takes awhile. Now if you **consistently** reducing your calories, you get to this state more quickly each day. However, the “I’m hungry” signal tends to get sent often and this is what causes ppl to fail at reducing their calories.
On a keto or carnivore diet, you’re never switching fuel sources so yes, you tend to burn more bodyfat quickly. Also, the “I’m hungry” signal doesn’t get sent as often as a traditional calorie-reduction diet.
Now if you’re considering restricting your carbs, try reducing them below 1 gram of carbs per current pound of bodyweight, and see if you get results. So if you weigh 250 pounds, try eating less than 250g of carbs (plus reducing your overall calories).
If you completely eliminate carbs, it takes 2-7 days for your body to adapt to fat as it’s primary fuel source. Plus 75% of ppl fail the keto diet because they don’t understand it fully. A simple example is on day 2 they run out of meals to cook… or they get tempted at a restaurant to eat bread, pasta, or dessert…
So try reducing your calories & carbs first. If you get results, great. If you still wish to try restricting carbs (like keto or carnivore), then feel free, but do your research first. Once you’re in ketosis, it’s best to stay in that state.
Goodluck!
Ketosis is the state your body enters when it is starving. It will do everything it can to avoid burning fat (aka energy store) and will begin to utilise muscle as energy of the first resort.
It’s complicated. Your body WANTS carbs. So when you do a keto diet you’re going against something that’s natural and normal. It makes it harder to sustain long term. Diets in general aren’t awesome for long term weight loss because they require a period of restriction and then usually lead to a period of overindulgence. It’s more healthy and easier long term to clean up your life style overall. So this might look like reducing red meat, only one soda on the weekend, eating your veggies first, adding in a 10 minute walk.
Now to answer your question specifically- it depends on your body. I was a bodybuilder and during my “cut” season before a show, I tried a normal calorie deficit for the first show and I tried keto for the second l. I felt awful on the keto. My results were also unimpressive. Personally my muscles look better when I eat more carbs than fats. This is important if you’re wanting a certain aesthetic but maybe you’re not overly concerned with your size. Like I know I’ll never be super slim, I have too much muscle mass to be “slim” but I know the difference of 5 lbs and a cleaner diet make for how my body actually looks and feels.
I generally wouldn’t say this, but there are a lot of confusing answers here.
You are actually asking two different questions – your title question is about burning fat and your second question is about losing weight. Those are not the same thing.
What matters for weight loss is what is known as “fat flux”. Take the amount of fat you are eating in a day and add the amount of carbohydrate that you are convert to fat and storing. Subtract the amount of fat you are burning, and that gives you the fat flux. If it is positive, you are gaining fat mass, if it is negative you are losing fat mass.
Note that you could have eat a lot of fat in a day and have a negative fat flux. Or you could eat very little fat in a day and have a positive fat flux.
So it is really all about fat flux and the focus on calories is misleading. The body has no calorie counting function and in fact is is much harder to gain weight eating 1000 calories of protein than it is eating the same amount of calories of fat or carbs, for reasons that I think are pretty obvious if you understand biochemistry. But I digress…
Where keto comes into this is that many people are insulin resistant, which means they have hyperinsulinemia, or chronically high insulin. That makes it hard for them to burn fat and therefore easy for them to have a positive fat flux and gain weight.
Ketosis gets rid of (some people would say “masks”) the high insulin and allows the body to burn fat effectively. Which is good, but remember that it’s about fat flux – burning more fat doesn’t necessarily mean fat loss.
The real advantage of ketosis is hunger control. If the body can burn fat effectively and there is lot of excess body fat, the brain will reduce hunger. For people with a lot of excess fat mass, that reduction can sometimes be significant.
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