There are more effects on someone than the weight loss. What you eat affects hunger, hormones, blood sugar, inflammation, bowel movements, energy, and more. This graphic is reductionist to the point of being deceptive.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately, what if you were asking about how to hike up a mountain. Like you really wanted to get into it seriously, and learn and be prepared for the demands of the trail. What if the internet essentially just kept telling you “the only thing that matters is increasing your elevation”
Like, yeah, that’s true in a very unarguable way. The summit is higher than the base. But if that’s the only thing on your mind you’re probably gonna make a lot of mistakes that make things way harder for you.
Nobody told you about hiking boots, so you just showed up in flip flops? Technically you still only have to accomplish the same task of increasing your elevation, but now you’ll be miserable and about 100x more likely to just quit.
What if the mountain path suddenly dips down before going back up? If all you know is you’re supposed to increase your elevation, you might get really freaked out and think you’re doing something wrong when you start descending.
All of this is to say, the multitude of details are very much worth discussing in terms of weight loss. Two things can be true at once: being in a calorie deficit will result in weight loss, and calorie counting as a strategy may not work for everyone unless they have the requisite knowledge required to design a sustainable diet for themselves
This applies to all these diets, not just calorie counting. "Don't eat carbs", "don't eat fats", "don't eat processed foods" are all different ways of saying "You just have to raise your elevation."
They all imply there's just one singular thing you have to do, but they're not sustainable.
Your conclusion is great, it's all about designing a sustainable diet for yourself that works.
Keto (not advertizing it, people just eating animals are the worst for our planet) works by changing your entire body to use Ketones instead of Sugar.
This completely changes your appetite and energy levels, also you will be in a constant state of burning fat, so pauses will immediately cause weight loss, different from eating sugar, where you have glucose and glycogen still there. this is not proven.
Just as a heads up, every study ever performed confirms that keto offers no additional weight loss benefits compared to any other diet when calories are equated. Something I think of often when the keto people start talking about how the magic supposedly works
For those interested, science vs is a great podcast where they review the latest research studies and interview scientists publishing papers about various topics, with all their sources cited.
They have a few weight loss/diet episodes, and while everyone here is correct about how different food has different impacts on the body, it seems like science always concludes that losing weight comes from eating less food no matter the diet.
So while this post may be oversimplified, if your goal is just to lose weight, it's not wrong. Maybe not healthy, but not wrong.
The podcast is targeted at the layman, so it's not just boring academics talking about things, check it out.
I think the point of the infographic is that there isnt a weight loss diet in existence that encourages a calorie surplus. Theres a literally infinite number of variables, ideologies, psychological and physiological differences as well as desired secondary outcomes that make certain weight loss diets more useful or attractive to individuals but they all share the same KEY mechanism for reducing adipose tissue as a primary goal.
IF was the best for me because it was the easiest. No need to avoid anything or do any portion control. Just don’t eat for a certain number of hours. I lost weight without having to watch what I eat. I think just the fact that I stopped snacking in the evening already helped a ton. The best diet is the one you can stick with.
Yes, diets primarily work by caloric deficit. But if you eat nothing but Snickers and maintain a calory deficit you're gonna have a bad time.
You should read up in low carb, something doctors have recommended for diabetic patients since the 1930's, because of how metabolism works (specifically glycemic response to specific macro nutrients).
This chart is meaningless.
If anyone wants a better layman's understanding, read "The Zone" by Barry Sears (a biochemist). Don't read any other books of his, just the first one from the early 90's.
This is such a fucking stupid infographic, it's just straight up misinformation.
I have done keto, my partner was doing Calorie counting at the time and was curious and did the math for me. I was consuming about 150% of my normal pre-diet Calorie intake and losing 500g per day for a month. CICO is flatout not the mechanic used.
Not only that, but CICO on its own terms just isn't at all useful. It's like saying "the cure to poverty is to make more than you spend." Like, no shit. It's just fully handwaving in terms of anything actionable. What are the barriers to exertion? What effect does food type have on feeling satiated? Is there a biochemical mechanism? Psychological? Social?
It's just an absurd reduction to "personal responsibility" that seems to be the default answer to any widespread, population level problems that the speaker doesn't really understand.
Keto causes greater water loss vs calorie counting on a healthy diet, so it's not surprising you lost more "weight" per day. It's a terrible way to lose weight, though.
This video explains it (all sources to studies are listed, too).
Yes, the largest factor for reducing body weight is calorie balance. Yes, there are nuances as other commenters point out about different effects on your body. But a lot of the discussion in this thread is really low quality and sources are few and far between.
I highly recommend Harvard's Nutrition Source for high quality science-based information on diet. The language is very accessible as well.
If you have specific questions about your health and diet, I'd suggest speaking with a Registered Dietician (RD). They are licensed medical professionals who specialize in this.
For those who are unaware:
Registered Dieticians are different than Nutritionists
Registered Dieticians are well educated (as of now, requires a Masters of Nutrition degree), and have to take continual education and bi-yearly license renewal tests, to stay relevant and up-to-date.
Nutritionists can literally be anybody who wants to call themselves a Nutritionist. No education/training/credentials necessary.
Registered Dieticians are well educated (as of now, requires a Masters of Nutrition degree), and have to take continual education and bi-yearly license renewal tests, to stay relevant and up-to-date.
Nutritionists can literally be anybody who wants to call themselves a Nutritionist. No education/training/credentials necessary.
This is so true. I would also add that you tend to find more "Nutritionists" on social media pushing bad info. They are basically the chiropractors of the nutrition world.
I started dieting a month ago to lose a bit of weight. Im lazy so I dont exercise more, I just eat less. Im lazy so I dont think about what I eat so I eat everything, I just eat less of it.
It works. I dont see why it wouldnt.
The only deviation is eat a bit more twice a week so the body doesnt get used to a low intake and start working on low power. Though I dont know if thats even possible.
Same here. I generally eat decent food since I enjoy cooking but I do smaller portions and straight up avoid snacks and sugar drinks as much as possible. It's working, slowly but it's working and I don't feel miserbake doing it. People keep forgetting it's a marathon and not a sprint.
Quite a biased guide.
It imiplies that the objective of all diets is to lose weight.
If that's the intent for the guide, then it should show all diets, and all of them would have to show that they do that by creating a caloric deficit
Keto diets don't really create a caloric deficit. Instead, it fucks with your metabolism by inducing ketosis in conditions you normally wouldn't. Essentially, you're tricking your body into thinking you're starving, which means you start breaking down fats when you don't need to. I hear it's absolutely miserable and bad for you, too.
Intermittent fasting does something similar, if it's done correctly. Shit is wild.
Close but not exactly, your body is capable of freely switching between fat or carb burning.
When your body really thinks it's starving, it will start "eating" your muscles instead.
Fat burning gives steady supply of energy instead of the highs and lows of energy dense carbs. You feel this the hardest after lunch, on carbs you'll often feel tired and sluggish. You don't have this on keto.
Switching into keto can be a miserable experience though, so you're right about that. Once in keto it's chill.
The thing with keto is when overweight people start they are overeating, and so dropping carbs puts them into calorie deficit for sustaining the bodily functions. Then forcing the body to have no quick fuel availble starts ketosis.
But over eating on keto can keep you from losing weight. Look to the traditional diet Inuit First nation that survived in the tundra on meats and fats. They weren't in ketosis