Why Keto is not That Easy

 

I have several blogs, including one on the ketogenic diet, (nutellaisnotpaleo), but I don't really contribute to any of them.  I was thinking about this topic on the bike ride to work, and I thought I would just go ahead and post it here on the Happy Little Three Speed Bicycle.  The HLTSB was my ride of choice this morning.  I've been riding my Rivendell quite a bit, but I lowered the sit earlier last week, and I did not tighten the seat post binder enough, because yesterday, I had the distinct feeling that I was sinking.  I raised it last night and really cranked down on the bolt, which, of course, stripped it.  The Rivendell is out of commission until I get over to the hardware store.

This post does have some bicycle content.  I heard of Gary Taubes and his work on the scientific history of the competing hypotheses regarding carbohydrates and fats and the role they play in health through Rivendell Bicycle Works.  His conclusion is that the "lipid hypothesis" won out via a series of mismanaged data, political influence, and happenstance.  The data that an overconsumption of refined carbohydrates cause a plethora of illnesses is more compelling, in his eyes.  It was enough to convince Grant Petersen, and Grant put out his book, Eat Bacon, Don't Jog. (I was going to link to it on the Rivendell website, but it looks like it is not there at this time.)

I enjoy Grants book, except for the part about exercise.  I don't really exercise on purpose except for bicycling and backpacking. I love Gary Taubes's books, beginning with his opus, Good Calories, Bad Calories, but his book that is specifically about the Keto Diet, The Case for Keto, is shorter and an easier read.  He also has a substack now, Uncertainty Principles.

A newsletter arrived in my email yesterday in which he was talking about the recent article in the New York Times about physicians who are now using Ozempic and its ilk on themselves. He is asking, in the article, if it is really sensible to take a medication, for a lifetime, when the same results can be obtained by abstaining from carbohydrates.

That's where I have a bone to pick with Gary Taubes.  It sounds simple, but it takes a lot of time and attention, and it is hard.  I am from a family that struggles with weight, heart disease in all its forms, and diabetes.  My father had had open heart surgery by the time he was my age.  In The Case for Keto, Taubes points out that some people can eat a dozen donuts a day and still stay skinny as a rail.  He lumps the rest of us into the category of people "who fatten easily."  Basically, in my understanding of the endocrinology, that means that we begin to develop more insulin resistance more easily than others, so the insulin spikes higher and stays in the bloodstream longer, trying to force the sugar out of our bloodstream and into our cells.  Insulin signals our bodies to store fat, and we cannot burn fat while our insulin is high.  If we exercise, say bicycle down to the pub, we burn up the glycogen stored in our livers without necessarily doing anything as far as mobilizing our fat stores, especially if we're downing granola bars and goops and gels that keep our insulin levels high.  Then we're oh-so-hungry and down a couple of pints of beer, and a turkey club wrap with some sweet potato fries, at least if you are me. Don't quote me on any of this - it is just my understanding of what I remember that I've read.

Gary Taubes, and even Grant Petersen to some extent, makes it sound like a no-brainer.  Gary likens it to his allergic reaction to corn.  He knows he can't eat corn.  He knows what will happen when he does.  So he just doesn't eat it.  Why don't people who fatten easily just not eat carbs, or at least severely limit them?  The answer is that it really is not that easy.  I don't know if the people who keep it up, seemingly without effort, are just wired differently than I am or what.  It's not just avoiding one thing - corn - but a whole host of things that are, basically, our cultural heritage.

I followed the keto diet fairly strictly for a couple of years, partly because my blood pressure was going up, and my doctor told me to, and partly because my wife got on board, and she is better at being consistent about that sort of thing, and partly it was because of the photo at the top of the page.  That was taken on the Nankoweap Trail in the Grand Canyon in October of 2021.  It just didn't look quite like me to me.  That was near the tail end of the pandemic, when I had been working from home and consuming vast quantities of almond butter.  I think that photo was also just taken at a bad angle, but whatever.  It's hard to find other photographs of me, because I am usually the one behind the camera, but here is one of me on the Hermit Trail after about a year and a half of basically living off cows by the half from a local rancher.

My blood pressure had gotten down to a low of 101/58, which is good, and it's great for someone with my genetics.  There's several things that are disturbing to me though.  I've never been a strict vegetarian, but I was brainwashed early in my late teens by the Laurel's Kitchen cookbook.  Tending vegetarian and eating lots of whole grains was my form of rebellion against my wonder bread and pot roast family.  In spite of all of the evidence Gary Taubes presents in his books, which are nothing if not immersed in the science, it still feels like a ticking time bomb to be fueling myself primarily on red meat and saturated fat.  Even if I have rationally decided that a ketogenic diet is healthy, the currents of prevailing cultural norms, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants," push against me every day.  Somehow, "eat mostly fatty cuts of beef and fat rich fish" just doesn't sound as healthy. And the reality of industrial animal production is simply, undeniably horrific.

And, while I'm not a big or regular drinker, I do like to cycle down to the pub for a pint.  And there are birthday cupcakes at work, once a month.  Sometimes there are donuts or cookies just laying around.  Being strictly anything - whether strictly keto or strictly vegan - basically makes me - maybe not everyone, but it makes me - feel like an asshole.  "I am not going to eat any of your birthday cake, because I think sugar is poison.  But you go ahead and enjoy it." And what about mangoes, and chutney, and brown rice, and beans, and burritos, and toast, and all the other things that are delicious!  Gary wants to make it sound like you are an idiot if you eat those things, but I don't think that's the case.

(I need to wrap this up now, because I am at work, but I could go on and on.)  It's a question of what's important at the moment, and how much discipline you can muster.  It is true, I found, that when you are strictly keto, once you are over the hump, you are not hungry in the same way as when you are eating carbs.  But, I have added back toast, and the occasional pint, and the occasional cookie, (and so on), and I have done that so much that my health is now starting to backslide.  I can understand the people, and the physicians, who prefer to take medication over adjusting their diet in such an extreme way.  But I know the diet works, and I hate the pharmaceutical industry.  I am basically forever in a quandary.  Right now, at this moment, I have a backpacking trip on the Escalante Route in the Grand Canyon coming up in a month.  I've also been having trouble with my back, which I know goes away with some of the inflammation and weight, so I'm trying to cut the carbs back to bare bones.  But Gary, come on man, it's not so simple.

I'll just jump back in here to add that here is an example from today's New York Times of the current cultural climate on food. 

I read the New York Times - that's my primary source of news, aside from NPR.  Sorry Joe Rogan, or whatever your name is.  I really don't know who you are.  Even though Gary Taubes's first long article, (that I am aware of), on diet appeared in the New York Times, they seem to be doubling down on what we could call the common notions of healthy eating. Saturated fat, is, as we all know, bad for you. Plants are good. Fiber is good. There are studies that support that. Gary Taubes goes a long way in pointing out that we really don't know all that in as ironclad a way as is commonly represented.  But I am a skeptic at heart, and I find myself skeptical of both the common notions, and of Gary Taubes's rebuttal of them.  So that leaves me in a quandary.  Since Gary isn't trying to sell super expensive keto retreats in Maui, I tend to trust him - but not 100%  It boils down to the fact that we are all going to die at some point anyway, so which boat do you want to go over that particular rapid in?  And if you look at the comments on the article, you can see how important the compassion for animals is for people.  And that is important to me as well.  I ask myself if my life is more important than the life of farm animals, and my basic answer is "no."  At the same time, I feel I owe it to my community and to my family to stay healthy.  There are ways to pursue keto more in line with vegetarian principles, but it is much harder, and I have all the laziness inherent in our species.  So I wrestle with these questions daily.