Keto made easy

Eating Too Much Fat on Keto? When to Stop Pushing Fat for Weight Loss

2017-08-25

The title sounds backwards for a keto channel, and I knew it. People had just got used to the idea of eating fat, and here I was telling them to eat less of it. This nine-minute video is my answer to a question I kept seeing: "how do you eat fat to lose fat?"

In this video

Then vs now: how my position on fat moved

This video is the middle of a change you can watch across the channel. Four weeks earlier, in my long beginner Q&A, I said keto is primarily about not eating carbs, that fat is optional, and that the "fat as a lever" idea didn't make sense to me (video cTGYIFOTPl8). Here, a month later, I'm describing fat as exactly that: something you turn up, down and back up by phase (video NUJNFG6lLWw).

By the 2018 basics video I had settled on calling fat "the variable." You eat it to fullness at first, it comes down in the weight-loss phase, and it goes back up to stop the weight loss at maintenance (video UygKGoP_BtA). So the lever idea I once didn't get became the frame I used.

What didn't change: carbs are the fixed rule, protein is a target, and fat is what fills in around them. That held across all three videos.

The claim worth unpacking: "you get the extra fat from your body"

The core of this video is that once you're adapted, the fat you burn can come from your body instead of your plate. I made that point with kitchen-table numbers, not a study. The metabolic-ward studies on the ketosis evidence page are the closest test of it, and they're worth knowing because they cut against a popular idea.

In one, 19 adults spent time on a ward with either carbs or fat cut from their diet. Body-fat loss was 53 ± 6 g a day when carbs were restricted and 89 ± 6 g a day when fat was restricted (Hall 2015). In another, 17 men were switched to a ketogenic diet at the same calories: energy expenditure went up by about 57 kcal a day, and body-fat loss slowed after the switch (Hall 2016).

Both were short ward studies, so they say little about hunger over months, which is the part I cared about. But they do line up with this video's practical advice. Dietary fat isn't magic for fat loss, and when the scale stalls in the weight-loss phase, fat is the obvious place to trim. Where the studies and I part ways is emphasis: I credited keto's success to appetite control, and those trials held intake fixed, so they can't test that.

The line that holds up: protein stays, fat moves

My closing advice was to cut fat back, hit your protein targets and keep carbs restricted (video NUJNFG6lLWw). The protein half of that has support. Across 24 trials and 1,063 people, energy-restricted high-protein diets gave modestly more weight and fat loss and less loss of fat-free mass (Wycherley 2012).

So if you're trimming calories, trim the fat and leave the protein where it is. That's the same order I gave in the 2018 basics video, where I warned that "breaking a stall" by cutting protein often just loses muscle (video UygKGoP_BtA).

The line I'd say more carefully now

Near the end I said restriction of calories is how you get into ketosis, then corrected myself to restriction of carbohydrates (video NUJNFG6lLWw). The second one is what I meant. Ketosis comes from cutting carbs. Calories decide whether you lose weight once you're there.

I also gave the 70–75% fat figure for maintenance without a source. Treat it as a rough picture of "more fat, more food," not a target to hit.

If you take medication

Trimming 20–30 g of fat a day is a small change. If you're on diabetes medication, though, any change in how much you're eating can change what your dose should be, so that's a conversation to have with your doctor before you start cutting, not after.

Key points