You can't have more than 20 grams of carbs in keto. I'm not much of a fruit guy, but love bananas and dates. usually, it can get away with 1 small banana or 3-4 dates, depending on the variety, I prefer to save my carbs for dietary fibre.
Calories mean pretty much nothing. They are a measure of heat energy. You put food in a closed system like a bomb calorimeter, essentially blow said food up, and see how much heat it produces. Needless to say, it's absolutely absurd to look at such a metric when assessing human nutritional needs.
Despite the terminology people use, you don't "burn" anything in your body, and we sure as hell are not a closed system. You metabolize fatty acids or glucose through processes like lipolysis and glycolysis to produce ATP, the energy currency your cells use to do the work they need to do.
You digest grams of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. Ask GPT to run lipolysis or glycolysis as a chemical process for you—calories never come up. At best, you can argue that some heat is released during these chemical reactions, so there are "calories" in there, but at the end of the day, your body is using grams of lipids and/or glucose to produce ATP, not heat energy. Niggas thinking they're internal combustion engines or something.
What then causes excess fat gain is the activation of a process called the Glucose-Fatty Acid Cycle, otherwise known as the Randle Cycle. If you consume an excess of fats and carbs together, your cells prioritize glucose metabolism to prevent blood sugar from spiking too much, which could otherwise be fatal or cause excessive glycative damage. Insulin is released to facilitate glucose uptake, which in turn suppresses lipolysis (fat breakdown) and promotes fat storage in both visceral and adipose tissue, leading to excess weight gain. Meanwhile, your body attempts to manage the surplus glucose through whatever other means it can such as glycogen storage, pissing it out, or conversion into fat, further contributing to weight gain.
Even worse, if glucose levels are excessive enough, they still wind up causing glycative damage to red blood cells and the endothelial lining of arteries. This glycation process deforms the arterial lining, making it more prone to trapping LDL particles—lipoproteins that transport cholesterol through the bloodstream. That wouldn't be catastrophic in itself, but glycation also leads to the formation of Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs), which, when they interact with LDL, trigger oxidation and inflammation. In response, the body sends in white blood cells called macrophages to deal with the oxidized LDL, engulfing them and forming what are known as foam cells. These foam cells accumulate in the arteries, and if the cycle of damage continues unchecked, they calcify over time, progressively narrowing the arteries and reducing blood flow. This leads to higher blood pressure, increased resting heart rate, and, if the damage becomes severe enough, a cardiac event.
And this is to say nothing of the glycative damage and excess fat accumulation around critical organs like the liver and pancreas, impairing their functions and eventually leading to issues like type-2 diabetes and all the fun that comes with that.
You know who's known all of this since before the 1960s? The sugar industry. It's why they've bribed key researchers even at Harvard since back then to shift the focus on nonsense like "cholesterol" and "saturated fat":
Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents - PubMed
Early warning signals of the coronary heart disease (CHD) risk of sugar (sucrose) emerged in the 1950s. We examined Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) internal documents, historical reports, and statements relevant to early debates about the dietary causes of CHD and assembled findings...pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Why do this? Why obfuscate the main cause of atherosclerosis, obesity and type-2 diabetes? Well, if you've never heard of the "bliss point", it's the exact right mix of sugar, fat and sometimes also salt that they know will be "hyper-palatable" and addictive, keeping consumers consistently coming back for more. It's why most junk-foods are rich in both carbohydrates and fat and sometimes also salt:
Unfortunately for the sugar industry and the food industry as a whole, these highly profitable foods are exactly what you should eat on a daily basis if you want to develop atherosclerosis, obesity and type-2 diabetes. But they don't truly care because... profits. That's why they did this.
- Pepperoni Pizza from Domino's (14-ich, 8 slices):
- Carbs: 310g
- Fat: 101.2g
- Beef Big Mac from McDonald's:
- Carbs: 46g
- Fat: 34g
- Wendy's Chicken Nuggets (4-piece):
- Carbs: 9.6g
- Fat: 13g
- Oreo Ice-cream 14 fl oz:
- Carbs: 78g
- Fat: 18g
- Burger King French fries (large):
- Carbs: 64g
- Fat: 23g
- Popcorn at AMC (Plain medium):
- Carbs: 82g
- Fat: 27g
The solution is to simply eat either a low fat or low carb diet. Both will solve the randle cycle stimulation issue and lead to the gradual loss of excess body fat. The former strategy, however, will still age you faster in the long-term via glycative damage and nutritional deficiencies which is why low-carb, like our lipivore ancestors, is the way to go:
Low-calorie and caloric restriction are also a joke. They work for reasons not involving calories. If you look closely, most "low-calorie" diets are inherently low-fat diets. Here’s why:
What are most people going to logically do to "calorically restrict" given the above information? Reduce fat, maybe keep carbs moderate and just prioritize protein. I actually just googled "Caloric deficit meals" and look at what Google Gemini gave me:
- 9 calories per gram of fat
- 4 calories per gram of protein
- 4 calories per gram of carbohydrates
"Meals for a calorie deficit can include foods that are high in protein and fiber, and low in fat and calories*. Some examples include:*
These examples show that caloric restriction pretty much works by restricting fat. And of course, reducing overall food volume, which can lead to both fat and lean mass loss. Most CICO advocates fail to understand the Glucose-Fatty Acid Cycle, or if they do, they don't appear to understand it well and overlook how fat restriction contributes to weight loss.
- Oats: High in fiber, low in fat.
- Kimchi cauliflower fried rice: Low-calorie, high-fiber.
- Beans, peas, lentils: Low-fat, high-fiber.
- Fish: Low in calories, moderate in fat.
- Lean meat and poultry: High protein, low fat.
- Low-fat or fat-free dairy: Minimal fat.
- Egg whites: High protein, zero fat."
Calories legit mean nothing once you're not stimulating the randle-cycle. I was this lean eating 3,500-5,000 calories per day and often going weeks without exercise:
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You can arguably overeat fats and aminos when having them despite not stimulating the randle cycle but when you're not deranging your metabolic processes with all the carbs and fats mixed up, especially all the carbs, your natural satiety hormones kick-in. You ever heard of someone eating steaks endlessly? But you've surely heard of people endlessly eating biryani or cheeseburgers... exactly. Those steaks will fill you up quick. Good luck consuming over 500 grams of protein and fat in a day, tbh.
Tl;dr: Fook calories. Eat hilib iyo baruur, throw out the bariis and prosper!
