Keto Demystified

Get the skinny on fat

I’ve been on the keto diet for just over two years now, and I’ve realized that it’s largely misunderstood. There are a lot of misconceptions about fat in general and the mechanisms of weight gain and loss. I’m going to attempt to demystify things for you and explain how and why it works. I’m going to do this in plain English without resorting to scientific jargon. Once you see what it is and how it works, you can decide if you want to give it a go.

I lost 55 pounds (and kept it off!) after going keto. I’d tried all kinds of things before keto to no avail: calorie restriction, 5/2 intermittent fasting (not eating anything two days a week), exercise. None of it worked. I couldn’t understand what the problem was. Even doing these things, I continued to gain weight slowly but surely. It wasn’t until I stumbled on keto and did a deep dive into it that I finally learned what the real problem was and how to fix it.

So, just what was the problem? It wasn’t that I ate too much. My caloric intake wasn’t any different than it is now. If anything, I eat more now than I did before. One of the biggest misconceptions is that weight gain and loss is a simple matter of calories in versus calories out. If you’re gaining weight, you’re eating too much! Eat less and you’ll lose weight. It’s that simple! But it’s not, as I learned after trying that. The problem wasn’t how much I was eating but what I was eating, which brings me to insulin.

No, I’m not breaking my promise not to use scientific jargon! Insulin is a key factor when it comes to weight problems, and there’s no way to explain things without talking about it. One thing insulin does is put the body into fat storage mode. When insulin is present in the bloodstream, the body will not release fat from fat cells. It doesn’t matter how much you’re eating (or not eating) if you have too much insulin in your blood all the time; your body will store incoming calories as body fat. This is why weight loss or gain is not simply a product of calories in/calories out. If the calories you take in are converted to fat and stored, and your body won’t release stored fat, simply restricting calories without addressing the insulin problem won’t result in weight loss.

This is also why exercise won’t result in weight loss if you have an insulin problem. If too much insulin is present, your workouts will not burn stored fat. What they will do is make you even hungrier because your body will need you to eat more food to fuel those workouts. The problem is getting access to your stored body fat.

So, what can you do about this insulin problem? First, let me talk about insulin resistance. No jargon, I promise. When you eat carbohydrates and protein, it triggers your body to produce insulin. The problem occurs when we eat more carbohydrates than our bodies are designed to handle. The bloodstream is constantly flooded with insulin, and over time, your cells become resistant to its signals. This, in turn, causes the body to produce even more insulin to overcome that resistance. And more insulin means more signaling to store fat rather than release it from storage. The solution is to reverse insulin resistance, and you do that by lowering the body’s production of insulin.

This is where the keto diet comes in. The crux of the keto diet is to replace the carbs in your diet with fats (not protein). I’ll explain in more detail later; for now, I just want to explain what keto does. One of the great things about fat is that it does not trigger insulin production like carbohydrates do. It provides all of the same energy your body needs to function without interfering with your body’s ability to access stored fat. When you cut the carbs from your diet, insulin production is minimized, and insulin resistance can be reversed. Your cells will become more sensitized to insulin’s signals, and your body will stop producing extra insulin to break through the resistance.

Once you get the insulin under control, your body can start accessing its stores of fat. I was absolutely amazed at how easily the weight came off. I lost ten pounds a month without even trying. Many people are skeptical of this. “What do you mean, without even trying?” I mean that I didn’t have to starve myself or work out until I was a sweat-soaked, quivering puddle of exhaustion. Once the insulin problem was resolved, my body naturally starting releasing fat into the bloodstream. Here’s what’s going on.

Fats and proteins (but not carbohydrates) cause the body to produce satiety hormones, which make you feel full. When fat was released into the bloodstream, it produced those hormones and made me feel full just as if I’d eaten it. My caloric intake went down by about 50% because I wasn’t hungry like before. You read that right: a diet where you are NOT hungry. In fact, I’ve never been more full all the time than when I was losing weight.

This is another reason (besides insulin) why simple calorie restriction doesn’t work well. If you’re still eating a lot of carbohydrates that aren’t producing high levels of satiety hormones, and eating even less fat, you’re going to feel hungry all the time. On the keto diet, everything you eat (as well as the fat released from bodily stores) produces satiety hormones which makes you feel full when you’ve eaten enough. It’s actually almost impossible to overeat on the keto diet without making yourself nauseous. Your body has a hormonal system that regulates caloric intake without any effort on your part (bonus!). I never counted calories. I just made sure to replace carbs with fats and ate until I was full.

And that’s how and why keto works. Replace carbs with fats, lower insulin production and insulin resistance, allowing stored fat to be released from fat cells. This released fat triggers satiety hormones, making you feel full, which makes you less hungry, so you eat less. The body’s own hormonal systems will regulate your caloric intake, and excess weight will simply disappear. It turns out your body doesn’t want to be fat and will slim down all on its own once you get everything working properly (insulin and satiety hormones).

Now for a few practical considerations. Keto is not a temporary diet, meaning that if you return to your previous eating habits after losing the weight, you’ll likely gain it all back eventually. You don’t necessarily have to stay on a strict keto diet once you’ve slimmed down, but if you eat too many carbs, the insulin resistance will return, and you’ll be right back where you started. I’ve stayed on keto since starting it two years ago, but every once in a while I’ll cheat. It won’t have any effect as long as I don’t make a habit of eating too many carbs on a regular basis. If I want pizza or a brownie a la mode (occasionally!) when I go out to eat, I can have them without everything falling apart. There are reasons other than weight loss to be on the keto diet, but it would require scientific jargon to get into that, and I promised not to go there.

As mentioned earlier, the keto diet is a high-fat diet, not a high-protein diet. The macronutrient breakdown (borderline jargon!) is roughly as follows: 20% protein/75% fat/5% carbs. Eat too much protein and your body will break it down and convert it into glucose, a carbohydrate. Eat way too much and you’ll feel poorly. How did I do it? Instead of eggs with toast, I have eggs with bacon. I use lots of cream, butter, and olive oil. You can get your fat calories from things other than meat and eggs. Yes, it’s true: you’ll get skinny by eating more fat!

You can still eat all kinds of veggies on the keto diet. Just not the starchy, carb-laden ones. I eat half a pound of veggies with dinner every night: broccoli, green beans, salad (with an entire beefsteak tomato!). In two years without fruit, I haven’t developed rickets or scurvy, so no worries there.

If you’re interested in trying the keto diet, you should learn about all of the details first. The ultimate resource is The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living (free PDF version here) by Stephen Phinney and Jeff Volek (some jargon in there). It’s written by actual scientists and doctors who’ve done the research in the field. Everything about keto is discussed, and it’s really the only book you’d ever need on the subject.

And that’s the skinny on fat! If you’ve got some significant weight that you’ve been trying to lose without results, you now know the likely reason why. The good news is that it’s relatively easy and painless to correct the problem and lose weight. Drop the carbs, get your insulin under control, and the rest is easy peasy!

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