1. There cannot be too much fat per day.
That varies with each individual. If you are not seeing results or are gaining body fat, while on low carb, then you have to lower your dietary fat intake.
Dietary fat intake can fall anywhere between 50 - 160 grams a day. It shouldn't go lower than 50 grams, but it shouldn't go higher than 160, unless you are an obesity resistant person who is already slim. The better your leptin expression, the more body fat you will burn so the more dietary fat you can allow. This means you can be closer to 160 grams safely when slim.
The poorer your leptin expression, the closer you have to keep to 50 grams of fat, as you are not burning enough from storage, and this will only heighten more storage. The body becomes more efficient at storage once fat goes over 160 grams.
2. My coach does not want me to use macros.
Because they want you to use calories. Each macro contains calories so if your coach's program is based on the restriction of all calories, they can care less which macro the calories are coming from.
3. A lot of the "keto" meals that I see online appear to be high protein and low carb, rather than high fat, low protein and low carb, which is what my understanding of "keto" is.
Ugh, I am so tired of this misconception, but it just continues popping up like fungus.
The type of meat that these "keto" people are eating is actually very high in fat. There is no "high protein" diet. It doesn't exist. The only way you can consume a "high protein" diet is if you use some type of protein supplementation. Even if you were to consume only wild game, which is extremely lean, satiety will not allow for you to ever eat "high protein".
But "high protein" is not the issue. The issue is always the energy macros - carbs and fat. If you are low carb, then the only thing that remains is the fat. This is why so many people simply cannot meet their protein goals eating meat alone. They must supplement to not go over their fat macros. Protein supplements are void of fat.
Why does this happen? Because fat must be kept moderate, particularly if you have poor leptin expression, or you will get fatter. It takes very little to make fat go right over that moderate threshold. You only have a 50 gram a day allotment if you have poor leptin expression. So, the fat in meat can quickly become problematic, particularly when you take into account added fats and any dairy you are consuming.
So, you may be eating more protein than you should be, if you are following a classic ketogenic diet, but you are certainly not eating "high protein". Aside from that, we don't advise on classic ketogenic protocols on this blog as our focus is obesity/metabolic syndrome, not neurological conditions. This means that the "keto" protocols we recommend are not meant to sustain chronic ketosis but to induce periodic ketosis instead.
4. Ketosis is disadvantageous for the building of muscle.
Some studies show it is. Some studies show it isn't.
Some programs do very well using ketosis for "gains" and others do well without it. Why are these studies showing different results? Because whether it's beneficial or not depends on your metabolic state. This is why all diet and exercise studies show different results and why all diet and exercise advice fails. What works for one metabolic state, does not for another.
The reason ketones would be considered disadvantageous to the building of muscle is because they are a signal to the body that it is starving. Starvation causes the breakdown of lean muscle mass into glucose. Knowing this now gets us somewhere.
If you have metabolic syndrome, you are already breaking down lean muscle mass into glucose at an exaggerated rate, so being in ketosis, which further reinforces starvation alongside a stressor like exercise, would break down lean muscle mass even more. This is why a person with metabolic syndrome should never exercise fasted.
For the healthy, being on a program which restricts protein and calories, can affect muscle gain particularly alongside ketosis because of this ramping up of lean body mass breakdown. They would have to choose a program that keeps protein and calories high enough to ward off this problem. Then ketosis would not be an issue for them.
It is quite a skill to keep protein calories high enough in order to build muscle as that takes a caloric surplus of protein, while still keeping fat and carb calories low enough to not build body fat. It can be done though, as body builders maintain this balancing act quite well because they are healthy enough to do so and their body responds with no glitches to calories, but an overweight/obese person will have quite the struggle.
The struggle comes in two forms:
- The trainer will recommend a deficit in total calories, which includes protein.
- The overweight/obese person is breaking down muscle at an incredibly high rate, which is further reinforced through total caloric restriction.
For this reason, it is very hard for overweight/obese people to achieve two opposing goals at the same time - weight loss and muscle gain. Well, actually it's impossible for them to achieve this using an obesity resistant body builder's method of doing so. They can absolutely do it in alternative ways, like the ones we recommend on this blog, rather than the ones recommended by your body building coach.
We recommend metabolic control first. You must stop the rate your body is breaking down its lean muscle mass. The reason the body is doing this is to keep blood glucose high due to abnormal blood glucose regulation. So, taking control of your blood glucose is goal number one. This is not accomplished through calories. It takes much more than that to affect blood glucose.
Only after this out-of-control gluconeogenesis is put in check, can you actually build significant muscle without causing further blood glucose dysregulation. An increase in insulin sensitivity will allow muscle tissue to respond to growth and glycogen synthesis. All are needed in order to look like your body building coach.
5. I am on a low fat, calorie restricted diet but my triglycerides (trigs) are steadily going up.
Because "low fat" and "calorie restriction" does not address high trigs. This is normal and typical of these diets. Nothing unusual is happening to you. You should have expected this. This is why people on low fat and/or caloric restriction still have high trigs, high cholesterol, diabetes, etc. Basically, metabolic syndrome.
Low fat diets only lower total cholesterol in people who have a genetic predisposition for diet to affect their cholesterol. This occurs, primarily, through the lowering of HDL cholesterol but some people will see a lowering of their LDL as well. Again, this is mostly genetic.
Calorie restriction causes stress in the body, which breaks down lean muscle mass into glucose and then that glucose is converted into fat for storage. This is an increase in de novo lipogenesis so of course your trigs will increase. Also, low fat/calorie restricted diets are usually primarily carb based because these diets do not focus on macros. They focus on total calories only. High carb diets increase trigs through the same process described above.
By the way, it doesn't matter if the carbs are only from "veggies". Vegetables are air. Air is starvation so you go right back to breaking down muscle mass into glucose as described above. In fact, vegan/vegetarian diabetics have the most dismal blood glucose control because not only do they have glucose coming in, in the form of grains, but they are also breaking down their muscle mass at an exponential rate. Double glucose = worse diabetes.
You can only hope for the best on the diet you are on. For instance, if you starve enough and don't develop diabetes, then your trigs will most likely stay where they are and you won't be able to decrease them, but at least they won't increase further.
6. If extended fasting only balances out periods of eating with not eating, keeping you the same as if you have done nothing, then intermittent fasting wouldn't be any different.
Intermittent fasting effects metabolic hormones differently than extended fasting does.
Fasting only "balances out" if we are talking about calories but that's not what fasting is targeting. This is why extending your fast does not help. It only makes things worse. If it was all about calories, this extended fasting would work miracles and the more you could extend it, the better it would work. It doesn't. You would have to extend it to concentration camp levels and remain there in order to see any results. Of course, the results will be obtained through the loss of lean muscle mass and malnutrition, but the scale wouldn't care. Your "weight" would get lower.
What you are targeting through intermittent fasting are other metabolic processes that can help you when you do eat again, like an increase in the metabolic rate to help burn body fat. There are also other helpful effects like a release of liver glycogen, human growth hormone, lower insulin, etc. All of which intermittent fasting does quite well. The fasting is short enough that you reap all of those benefits and the fast stops before they start going in the reverse.
So, when we talk about fasting, we are talking about everything except calories. This is because fasting does not affect calories in any significant way as the body simply compensates with its caloric intake once you eat again. You would be better off targeting calories with a calorically restricted diet rather than with fasting because at least with a diet, you will actually achieve a deficit and sustain it, if only for a short while.
So, you aren't fasting to "eat less", you are fasting to effect metabolism.
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