Is it unhealthy?
A well-chosen ketogenic diet with intermittent fasting and plenty of fish and eggs is pretty much the perfect diet. Superior for cognitive health due to ketones, glucose restriction, omega 3, and choline. Superior for metabolic health, avoids all diseases arising from insulin resistance, such as diabetes, heart disease, various cancers, Alzheimer's Disease, diabetic kidney disease, gallstones, etc.
There are no known negative health effects, apart from loss of strength that is trivial to solve by timed consumption of glucose before strength exercise, aka Targeted Ketogenic Diet. However mind you that all diets require whole foods, and are subject to genetic status, and keto is no exception. If you eat artificial trans fats on keto, or you have a fatty oxidation disorder, you're gonna have a bad time.
What is your calorie intake?
I haven't got the slightest idea. Calorie counting is a noob trap so I don't do it. Still, I went from 115 kg to 75 kg over a few years of lazy keto. I could lose more and faster, but I don't bother, my main concerns are cognitive health and avoiding gallstones rather than weight loss.
Please help me understand!
If you want to truly understand nutrition, first you must learn what is diabetes exactly. Read this comment of mine that tries to summarize the pathogenesis of diabetes, and watch this excellent presentation by Ted Naiman linked from my post. That video should be compulsory in every nutrition curriculum really.
I'm a health professional, and I see a lot of keto hype lately. I always recommend against it to my patients, because eating lots of fats and meats can have a detrimental effect on your body.
There is zero evidence that fats or meats would be harmful without the confounding effects of carbohydrates and trans fats. We have a 2 million year history of meat consumption, so it would be very strange if they did. (For comparison, agriculture is around 30,000 years old, refined carbohydrates are 5000-100 year old depending on processing, refined sugar consumption dates back to 1000 years ago, and hydrogenated vegetable oils are barely 125 years old.)
On the contrary, saturated fats are not inherently bad, just incompatible with carbohydrates. Studies that show negative effects of fats or meat always contain like 40%+ carbohydrates, trans fats, or have similar confounding factors. Carbohydrates interfere with fat metabolism, trigger fat storage, and therefore cause metabolic disorders. The combination of carbs and fats will always show worse results than each in isolation.
Fructose is an obvious culprit, it is the single most obesogenic macronutrient. Among other effects it causes fatty acids esterification into triglycerides, it literally reverses the fasting response. Glucose is not blameless either, glucose and palmitic acid compete for energy production, and cells can only handle so much NADH and ROS without bursting, so they burn glucose, while palmitic acid is converted into ceramides that underlie insulin resistance. Glucose also blocks mitochondrial biogenesis, which is essential for fat metabolism. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, I could write pages on this topic.
Increasing cheese and meats into the diet will reduce elasticity of blood vessels (because it essentially blocks NO from the vessel wall and inhibits vasodilation)
I can not comment on NO-induced vasodilation. However I noticed that a few studies that blame fat/keto rely on insulin-induced vasodilation, which is a very, very poor model of heart disease. Insulin is one of the culprits behind impaired fat metabolism, fat storage, and therefore metabolic disorders. You definitely should not rely on insulin to dilate your blood vessels in an attempt to fight against heart disease.
lower glucose levels to an unhealthy level
Hypoglycemia is not naturally possible on keto, the liver continuously produces glucose from triglycerides and amino acids. In fact, ketogenic diets are protective against insulin-induced hypoglycemia, since ketones provide energy to the brain.
and of course increase bad cholesterol (and all else that comes with it.)
That is an incredibly simplistic and wrong model. In heart disease intimal hyperplasia and hypoxia, and adventitial neovascularization comes before any exposure to LDL particles. Even then, small dense glycated oxidized LDL particles are much more atherogenic, and they are the hallmark of carbohydrate intake. Cholesterol or even LDL-C never enters the picture.
Please check this comment of mine, and this thread that is linked from it. A must read publication I must add.
Not only that, there is a ton of stress on your liver, trying to find energy from elsewhere to deal with protein and fat breakdown..therefore using the keto-acids as energy (since there is no more glucose).
Carbohydrates, especially refined fructose, is much worse on the liver than keto. Keto is in fact the single best treatment against fatty liver. In fatty liver 59% of liver fat comes from adipose tissue due to insulin resistance where carbs are mostly to blame but fat also plays a role, 26% comes from de novo lipogenesis where carbs are solely to blame, and only 15% come from dietary fat, where carbs are also to blame due to their effect on fat metabolism.
Ketosis kicks in as a survival mechanism.
Just like caloric restriction, intermittent fasting, and exercise. They are all beneficial for weight control and metabolic health.
Weight loss comes in the same way anyone loses weight. Calories in < calories out. Since you are not eating carbs anymore, you are most likely eating less calories. Is that the case for you guys?
Calories are a factor in weight loss, but they are not the only factor, not even the most important factor. Only very gullible people think that 200 calories from fructose have the same effect on fat storage as 200 calories from omega 3.
First of all, processed foods are inherently more obesogenic than whole foods. Every diet is subject to this, no exceptions. This is most apparent when comparing refined carbohydrates in fast food and beverages to fruits and legumes, or artificial trans fats to natural fats.
Fructose is the most obesogenic macronutrient, whereas protein, omega 3, and fiber calories do not contribute to body fat. In fact omega 3 stimulates fat oxidation, hence partly why fish eaters have superior health to all other gruops.
As I have mentioned, the combination of carbs and fats will lead to greater fat storage and worse metabolic health because they screw up each others' metabolism.
Intermittent fasting is superior for weight loss and metabolic health. Snacking and frequent eating just keeps you longer in a non-fasted, fat storage phase.
Nutrient timing matters. Fasted cardio, glucose before strength exercise, and fat far away from any kind of exercise is the optimal.
Insulin fucking matters. If not for fat storage then for fat retention. Type 1 diabetes, uncontrolled type 2 diabetes, insulinoma, congenital hyperinsulinism, and bodybuilders injecting insulin. These are situations where insulin levels are changed independent of caloric intake, and there is a clear weight loss or gain happening. Likewise, standard american diet leads to hyperinsulinemia, whereas both keto and vegan diets lead to low to normal insulin levels.
Ketones can not be stored as body fat, so any ketones produced have to be used immediately, or excreted in breath, sweat, or urine.
Ketosis and protein upregulates various uncoupling proteins, which waste calories as heat. This might had an evolutionary role during winters.
Amazingly, carbohydrates without fat intake drive de novo lipogenesis extra hard, which wastes 25% of energy.
And a lot of other factors that I am too lazy to remember at the moment.
If there is extra fast initial weight loss, I presume its because you are losing glycogen stores and fat around the liver? Or does no one really care how its happening?
That is only part of it, glycogen and water loss only amount to 3-5 kg at most. I have a hypothesis that lack of adaptation to fat, such as low mitochondrial density, also plays a huge role in the initial weight loss.
Also, is there anything you would say makes keto different in terms of weight loss?
See the factors listed above.
How many calories are you intaking per day vs what you normally would before the diet.
See my remark about calorie counting above.
I've worked with several individuals who have lost 50+ pounds due to my recommendations (that were not keto based), so I know how weight loss works. Its all math, so I'm just so curious of all this hype of this presumably super unhealthy diet plan and if anyone can provide some insight.
Weight loss is not just math, it has plenty of other health aspects as well. I lost 40 kilograms and completely reversed my (gallstone-induced, somehow) cognitive decline and irritability and anxiety, in fact I improved on my cognitive health, while doing fuck-all for exercise, and never ever being hungry, and being absolutely sure I never ever develop gallstones again. I never felt better and if I could go back in time, I would introduce myself to keto as soon as possible.