Metabolic Health

Here’s How Extra Calories Caused Fat Gain for Arleth in a Keto Diet and How She Solved the Issue

It is possible to gain substantial weight even on ketogenic diets if holistic health principles are not pursued.

This story might surprise my regular readers as I have written several articles previously highlighting the importance of hormones compared to counting calories. I thought this follow-up story would be essential to clarify the importance of calories for fat gain in a specific context.

A Brief Introduction to Arleth’s Fat Gain Issue

First, I’d like to briefly introduce Arleth, who is the main character of this story. I share her story because it is typical in the ketogenic communities and represents my observations of many more people.

Arleth’s low-income parents migrated from Spain to Australia when she was six years old. Then she worked as a model in her 20s, having a defined and trimmed body and gifted with a beautiful face attracting the audience to her shows.

Since her teenage years, she has been on diets to keep her form. The fundamental principle for her was to eat less and move more.

She couldn’t think of any other way to keep her physique to the required standards in her competitive career. She loved her job as it was her passion, and she also earned the desired amount of income to support her low-income parents and six siblings.

Even though this principle worked for her until her late 20s, she faced a nervous breakdown due to excessive stress. Her stress was both physical and mental.

Unfortunately, this unexpected and undesirable setback in her life ended her career as she quickly gained too much weight and lost her confidence to return to work as a model.

This disappointment further increased her stress and caused more weight gain due to emotional eating to suppress her unpleasant feelings.

Arleth was fortunate to find a supportive family doctor who believed in holistic health and created an effective recovery plan for her.

The integrative medicine approach helped her to recover from the nervous breakdown. Her mental health issues were successfully resolved.

The most effective was a tailored psychotherapy program that addressed her chronic stress and emotional issues. Her mood improved, and she started enjoying life again. However, she found it impossible to get her previous physique back.

With desperation, Arleth started trying other diet programs on the market. First, she joined a weight loss program that was based on portion control. It reminded her of her earlier days when she ate less and moved more.

She thought this diet might have worked, but unfortunately, it did not, as the new diet made her hungrier. Furthermore, she couldn’t find the energy to exercise.

After a few months, Arleth gave up this diet as she did not want to have another nervous breakdown.

Her family doctor asked Arleth not to follow any diet but focus on healthy eating. However, she always ate healthy food refraining from junk food, but she did not understand why she gained weight. She had no clue her metabolism was dented.

A Promising and Disappointing Attempt

One of Arleths friends invited her to a conference about ketogenic diets. She had heard about them before but did not know how keto diets worked. Therefore, she decided to attend.

The speakers and attendees of the conference were so enthusiastic that Arlerth thought what they said was too good to be true. The central theme of the conference was to eat favorite foods and lose weight. No diet was required.

Various speakers introduced their experiences and shared findings from the literature. Arleth and her friend decided to give a chance to a ketogenic diet. The formula they followed was 60, 30, and 10, as advised by most of the speakers at the conference.

It meant that Arleth needed to consume 60% of her calories from fat, 30% from protein, and 10% from carbs.

The ratio of these macronutrients sounded wonderful to her as she finally introduced her famous food to the new diet. But she did not know how to apply these ratios as her mind was stuck on the “eat as much as you want” claim.

Arleth always loved to eat cheese, butter, cream, eggs, avocados, olives, and macadamia nuts but thought she never dared to eat them in her previous diets. She also enjoyed fish, seafood, poultry, little red meat, and vegetables, so this diet was a godsend to her as an omnivorous person.

Arleth and her friend followed the motto of “eat until you satisfy and don’t count calories.” Initially, she had a few digestive disorders due to the high fat in her food. However, using digestive enzymes, her digestion improved.

She loved this diet and kept her hopes high based on the buzz at the conference. Her friend, who started losing weight, also supported her. Arleth felt great overall.

Nevertheless, after a few months, Arleth started gaining more weight instead of losing it. She had no clue why her friend was losing weight on the keto diet, but she couldn’t. They were eating similar types of food.

A Serendipitous Encounter for the Desired Path

Serendipitously, I met Arleth at a BBQ at a friend’s house. She looked at my plate and teased me, asking whether I was on a diet. I said no and elaborated on my one-meal eating regimen. She found it very interesting and wanted to know more.

After introducing my eating regimen, keto-carnivore, she said she was confused with everything I did. She wanted to know my keto formula. I told her around 25% of my calories came from proteins and 75% from healthy fats, as I explained in a previous story.

When I explained I did not consume carbs for personal reasons, she understood it. However, she wanted to know how I could keep my body weight under 10% and maintain lean muscles on such a high-fat intake diet.

When I said I consumed only around 2400 calories daily, she got more confused. She asked whether I counted calories religiously as it was against the principles of ketogenic diets. I said no, but the type of my food and my portion made it easy for me.

This small conversation opened a new window for Arleth as my approach shook her assumptions and inspired her to redesign her diet.

I’d like to briefly explain why the wrong assumptions of Arleth were the root cause of her weight gain on a ketogenic diet.

The first mistake was the umbrella concept that calories did not make a difference in weight gain if one followed a ketogenic diet.

When I roughly analyzed Arleth’s daily caloric intake from three meals and three snacks, including half a kilo of macadamia nuts, three avocadoes, and buttered/creamed coffee she consumed, the problem became apparent to her.

In short, she was consuming around 6,000 calories but burning only around 2,000. When I told her her body was storing around 4,000 calories daily, she assumed that the keto diet would magically burn those surplus calories.

I explained to her the hormonal benefits of a keto diet. She understood that the human body could not magically burn so many calories. This harsh reality disappointed her profoundly, but she embraced the truth and asked for guidance.

When I articulated how each individual was unique and required a customized diet based on their caloric needs, body types, fitness levels, goals, and lifestyle choices, she wanted to know more.

I introduced Arleth to a friend who is a certified dietician specializing in ketogenic diets and intermittent fasting for metabolically disadvantaged people.

My friend volunteered to design a customized diet for Arleth as a complementary service by reviewing her medical history and other factors. It was a type of keto-omnivore diet.

Her new keto diet supplemented with time-restricted eating was based on her metabolic rate with precise caloric requirements as calculated by the dietician. This simple tweak made a massive impact on Arleth’s health and fitness journey.

She consumed around 2000 calories using her favorite food within an eight-hour window and remained fasted for 16 hours. With intermittent fasting, the keto diet, and moderate exercise, her body became fat-adapted, insulin-sensitive, and leptin-signaling shortly.

In the previous keto-eating diet, she couldn’t even enter mild ketosis like Amy, possibly due to high protein consumption from dairy products and eggs and maybe her high cortisol. But in this new regimen, she entered deep ketosis like me.

After a few months, Arleth started losing actual fat. She ate her favorite food in specific windows, not surpassing her daily caloric needs.

The hormonal effects of time-restricted eating boosted her mood and energy. She started resistance training which allowed her to burn more calories without causing muscle loss.

Inspiringly within a year, she lost around 20 kg of visceral fat, giving her much better physic. With this motivation, she continued the new eating regimen and made it a lifestyle.

After three years, Arleth lost all her excessive fat and gained her desirable look after 40. She got a new job in the advertising business using her previous modeling skills.

She learned that there was nothing wrong with eating healthy fats and following a ketogenic eating regimen. She needed to customize them to suit her needs.

I’d like to conclude this inspiring story with a few takeaway points.

Conclusions and Takeaways

Hormonal balance is critical for fat loss. Imbalanced hormones can cause unnecessary fat gain and muscle loss. However, excessive calories can also cause fat accumulation in any type of diet.

There are no magical ketogenic diets that vaporize calories, whether keto-vegan, keto-omnivore, or keto-carnivore. The physical law of caloric intake and expenditure impacts our metabolic health.

In simple terms, even if we eat the most healthy and delicious food, their calories still matter if they exceed our metabolic rate and daily caloric requirements.

Healthy fats and proteins can give more satiety which is a great advantage in a keto diet. However, it is also possible to overconsume them.

For example, some people cannot stop eating fatty cheese and adding cream to their coffee as they find them delicious.

There is nothing wrong with cheese, butter, or cream. They are healthy and delicious foods. However, when they are overconsumed, they can cause fat gain. It is because unused calories, whether from carbohydrates, fats, or proteins, will, unfortunately, be stored as fat in the body.

Let’s keep in mind that fats have denser calories. For example, a gram of healthy fat has nine calories. So, yes, fat has less impact on insulin secretion. Therefore I replaced carbs with healthy fats.

However, excess calories from fat can make a difference too. Thus, the “eat as much fat as you want” claim without considering the number of calories does not make sense.

We don’t have to count calories religiously, but we need to know how much food we consume and what our metabolic rate is. Like anything in life, too much or too little food can be a problem.

Another holistic health principle we must remember is that each person is unique. We have different metabolism, genetic makeup, and fitness levels.

Therefore, copying one’s diet might not work. In my experience and observations, everyone needs a customized diet based on holistic health principles.

In a previous story, I explained how hormones are more critical than calories in a specific context. Therefore, this new story, in a different context, might add more clarity to the hormones versus calories discussions.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life. As a new reader, you might check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting on my reviews, observations, and decades of sensible experiments. I write about health as it matters. I believe health is all about homeostasis.

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I also wrote about valuable nutrients. Here are the links for easy access:

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Disclaimer: Please note that my posts do not include professional or health advice. I document my reviews, observations, experience, and perspectives only to provide information and create awareness.

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