All About Energy Balance

If you are eating a high percentage of fat, low percentage of carbohydrates and protein *at a calorie deficit*, you will most likely at some point experience a negative cascading effect on your hormones. It’s hard to reach satiety, eating low carb, low protein, high fat at a calorie deficit because if a few spoonfuls of fat is close to 1000 cal, how can you obtain all the nutrients you need in whatever left you have allocated for the day? When people, and especially women, try to eat lower calorie at this ratio of macros, something’s gotta give. Unless you’re eating twice your maintenance calories at 80% fat to dodge the negative effects of low calorie at the same percentage, it will be your adrenals in a fight or flight response, to start.

I am not saying that energy intake doesn’t matter on keto or that being on a ketogenic diet allows you to eat more than what your body requires. I am saying one of the pitfalls of keto is that when you aim for traditional keto macros, there’s a chance you’re not going to reach satiety or obtain your much needed nutrients before hitting your daily target. This is simply because the protein to energy ratio in the foods you eat, matters.

We’re seeing the benefits of higher protein, such as satiety, balanced blood sugar, muscle preservation, cell regeneration and overall health and longevity - in addition to the fact that gluconeogenesis is not a supply driven process but a process that occurs as needed by the body. If you feel like very high fat intake was once working for you but you now feel suboptimal, (which is what happens to many after the first year or so of reaching the therapeutic benefits of traditional keto) this could be the reason!

Remember, since almost every metabolic disease is rooted in the same cause, the goal for any nutritional approach should be to lower insulin and inflammation as a basis for optimal health. Keto happens to do that by way of limiting carb intake and thus minimizing insulin spikes but there is more than one way to achieve this. Lifestyle factors that I will elaborate on in future posts include strategic meal timing, glucose disposal methods through exercise and supplementation.