Let’s dive into ketogenic diets and their $33-billion gimmick. 

The carbohydrate–insulin model of obesity, the underlying theory that ketogenic diets have some sort of metabolic advantage, has been experimentally falsified. Keto diet proponents’ own studies showed the exact opposite: Ketogenic diets actually put you at a metabolic disadvantage and slow the loss of body fat. How much does fat loss slow down on a low-carb diet?  

As I discuss in my video Keto Diet Results for Weight Loss, if you cut about 800 calories of carbohydrates from your diet a day, you lose 53 grams of body fat a day. But if you cut the same number of fat calories, you lose 89 grams of fat a day. Same number of calories cut, but nine butter pats’ worth of extra fat melting off your body each day on a low-fat diet, compared to a low-carb one. Same number of calories, but about 80 percent more fat loss when you cut down on fat instead of carbs. You can see a graph of these results below and at 1:07 in my video. The title of the study speaks for itself: “Calorie for Calorie, Dietary Fat Restriction Results in More Body Fat Loss Than Carbohydrate Restriction in People with Obesity.” 

Just looking at the bathroom scale, though, would mislead you into thinking the opposite. After six days on the low-carb diet, study subjects lost four pounds. On the low-fat diet, they lost less than three pounds, as you can see in the graph below and at 1:40 in my video. So, according to the scale, it looked like the low-carb diet wins hands down. You can see why low-carb diets are so popular. What was happening inside their bodies, however, tells the real story. The low-carb group was losing mostly lean mass—water and protein. This loss of water weight helps explain why low-carb diets have “been such a persistent theme for authors of diet books and such ‘cash cows’ for publishers,” going back more than the last 150 years. That’s their secret. As one weight-loss expert noted, “Rapid water loss is the $33-billion diet gimmick.” 

When you eat carbohydrates, your body bulks up your muscles with glycogen for quick energy. Eat a high-carbohydrate diet for three days, and you may add about three pounds of muscle mass onto your arms and legs, as you can see below and at 2:34 in my video. Those glycogen stores drain away on a low-carb diet and pull water out with it. (The ketones also need to be flushed out of the kidneys, pulling out even more water.) On the scale, that can manifest as four more pounds coming off within ten days, but that “was all accounted for by losses in total body water”—that is water loss. 

The bottom line: Keto diets just don’t hold water. 

The thrill of seeing the pounds come off so quickly on the scale keeps many coming back to the low-carb altar. When the diet fails, the dieters often blame themselves, but the intoxication of that initial, rapid weight loss may tempt them back, like getting drunk again after forgetting how terrible the last hangover was. This has been dubbed the “false hope syndrome.” “The diet industry thrives for two reasons—big promises and repeat customers,” something low-carb diets were built for, given that initial, rapid water loss. 

What we care about is body fat. In six days, the low-fat diet extracted a total of 80 percent more fat from the body than the low-carb diet. It’s not just one study either. As you can see below and at 3:54 in my video, you can look at all of the controlled feeding trials where researchers compared low-carb diets to low-fat ones, swapping the same number of carb calories for fat calories or vice versa. If a calorie is just a calorie, then all of the studies should have crossed that zero line in the middle, straddling “favors low-fat diet” and “favors low-carb diet,” and indeed six did. One study showed more fat loss on a low-carb diet, but every other study favored the low-fat diet—more loss of body fat eating the same number of calories. When you put all of the studies together, we’re talking 16 more grams of daily body fat lost on the low-fat diets. That’s like four more pats of butter melting off your body on a daily basis. Less fat in the mouth means less fat on the hips, even when you’re taking in the same number of calories. 

This is the third installment of my seven-part series on keto diets. 

This keto research came from the deep dive I took for my book How Not to Diet. (All proceeds I receive from my books are donated to charity.) You can learn more about How Not to Diet and order it here. Also please feel free to check out some of my popular weight-loss videos in related videos below. 

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Do low-carb and ketogenic diets have a metabolic advantage for weight loss? 

When you don’t eat enough carbohydrates, you force your body to burn more fat. “However, this rise in fat oxidation [burning] is often misconstrued as a greater rate of net FM [fat-mass] reduction” in the body, ignoring the fact that, on a ketogenic diet, your fat intake shoots up, too. What happens to your overall body fat balance? You can’t empty a tub by widening the drain if you’re opening the faucet at the same time. Low-carb advocates had a theory, though, the “carbohydrate–insulin model of obesity,” which I discuss in my video Keto Diet Theory Put to the Test.  

Proponents of low-carb diets, whether a ketogenic diet or a more relaxed form of carbohydrate restriction, suggested that decreased insulin secretion would lead to less fat storage, so even if you were eating more fat, less of it would stick to your frame. We’d burn more and store less, the perfect combination for fat loss—or so the theory went. To their credit, instead of just speculating about it, they decided to put it to the test. 

Gary Taubes formed the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI) to sponsor research to validate the carbohydrate–insulin model. He’s the journalist who wrote the controversial 2002 New York Times Magazine article “What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?” which attempted to turn nutrition dogma on its head by arguing in favor of the Atkins diet with its bunless bacon cheeseburgers based on the carbohydrate–insulin model. (Much of Nina Teicholz’s book The Big Fat Surprise is simply recycled from Taubes’ earlier work.)  

In response, some of the very researchers Taubes cited to support his thesis accused him of twisting their words. One said, “The article was incredibly misleading…I was horrified.” Said another, “He took this weird little idea and blew it up, and people believed him…What a disaster.” It doesn’t matter what people say, though. All that matters is the science. 

Taubes attracted $40 million in committed funding for his Nutrition Science Initiative to prove to the world that you could lose more body fat on a ketogenic diet. NuSI contracted noted researcher Kevin Hall from the National Institutes of Health to perform the study. Seventeen overweight or obese men were effectively locked in what’s called a metabolic ward for two months to allow researchers total control over their diets. For the first month, they were placed on a typical high-carbohydrate diet (50 percent carbs, 35 percent fat, 15 percent protein), then were switched to a low-carb ketogenic diet (only 5 percent of calories from carbohydrates and 80 percent fat) for the second month. Both diets had the same number of daily calories. So, if a calorie is a calorie when it comes to weight loss, there should be no difference in body fat loss on the regular diet versus the ketogenic diet. If Taubes was right, though, if fat calories were somehow less fattening, then body fat loss would become accelerated on a keto diet. Instead, in the very study funded by the Nutrition Science Initiative, researchers found that body fat loss slowed during the ketogenic diet. 

Why do people think the keto diet works if it actually slows fat loss? Well, as you can see in the graph below and at 3:40 in my video, if you looked only at the readings on bathroom scales, the ketogenic diet would seem like a smashing success. Participants went from losing less than a pound a week on the regular diet during the first two weeks of the study to losing three and a half pounds within seven days after switching to the ketogenic diet. What was happening inside their bodies, however, told a totally different story: Their rate of body fat loss was slowed by more than half. So, most of what they were losing was just water weight. It’s presumed the reason they started burning less fat on a ketogenic diet was because, without the preferred fuel of carbohydrates, their bodies started burning more of their own protein—and that’s exactly what happened. Switching to a ketogenic diet made them lose less fat mass and more fat-free mass. Indeed, they lost more lean mass. That may help explain why the leg muscles of CrossFit trainees placed on a ketogenic diet may shrink as much as 8 percent. The vast lateralis, the biggest quad muscle in your leg, shrunk in thickness by 8 percent on a ketogenic diet. 

Yes, the study subjects started burning more fat on the ketogenic diet, but they were also eating so much more fat on the keto diet that they ended up retaining more fat in their body, despite the lower insulin levels. This is “diametrically opposite” to what the keto crowd predicted, and this is from the guy Nutrition Science Initiative paid to support its theory. In science-speak, “the carbohydrate–insulin model failed experimental interrogation.” 

In light of this “experimental falsification” of the low-carb theory, the Nutrition Science Initiative effectively collapsed but, based on its tax returns, not before Taubes and his co-founder personally pocketed millions of dollars in compensation. 

This is the second installment in my seven-part series on keto diets. In case you missed them, check out the other related videos below.  

The more things change, the more they stay the same. I created a whole website about the Atkins Diet, but, sadly, people keep falling into the low-carb trap. You can find some of my older videos on low-carb diets listed below. 

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