I’m 3 hours in and loving it. I’ve done Keto three times, in 2010, 2018 and 2020. Each time was for about 3 months and each time I lost between 10 - 15 kg. I have always fallen off it due to finding it hard to stick to with family/friends/social occasions etc. Each time I’ve stopped, the weight has just piled back in to my previous set point. Having watched this I’m keen to do it again and just accept that it’s for the long term. I always feel better in ketosis anyway. Thanks for the kick up the arse, Dave!
Matt you are on to something. A lot of us have tried and retreated back to old habits. I believe that keto/low carb approach is really beneficial for long term health/cardio improvement and life enhancing. Cheers Joe
My idea is maybe allow for more flexibility. There are no hard and fast rules. Eating a none keto meal a few times a week doesn't have to be a big deal or a failure. If it's still helping you lose weight and your health is good then it's miles better than nothing. Can also come up with rules like first social meal of the week can be non-keto but the rest after just get steak/meat. Know your fallback on the menu. Many places have steak or wings for example. My two cents. Keto with a few non keto meals is still way better than an unhealthy diet. Assuming that keto works well for your weight & health - because it doesn't work for everyone I know of people who got heart disease on keto. But it does seem to be healthy for some individuals.
@@CursedKitten1 it's not the diet itself that's healthy or unhealthy - it's how you do it. You can be vegan and eat only chips and vegan ice cream. Or you can eat greens and legumes, etc... Same with keto, you can eat loads of bacon, xylitol ice cream, fake dough pizzas, etc... or you can eat greens and meat and eggs...
Yes Dave. I'm 3 months into a keto diet. 2.5 stone down and starting back climbing after a long break. This is exactly the information that I need. Cheers for the hard work.
Dave, you've really outdone yourself on this video! I'm still working my way through it in 1/2 hour segments. It's very dense in terms of the information it contains, which in turn gives me plenty of food for thought. I really appreciate all of the hard work that went into researching and producing this. I love the way you've gone directly to the basic research, applied it to your own experiments and drawn your own conclusions, which in turn you've shared with us. I also look forward to the future nutrition topics you plan to delve into. I feel very fortunate to have discovered your channel. The only downside is that I find your voice totally mesmerizing, to the point where I cease to process the words that you're speaking. Gotta love that Scottish accent!
Registered Dietitian here, I think this is not just a great review of the evidence but also a fantastic critical appraisal. Big fan of the keto diet for myself. Agree that it is a crying shame that it’s been vilified for so long due to the demonisation of fat. A quick overview of the research on statins would make one begin to question the current consensus on blood lipids. Thanks for this Dave
Dave, I consider you one of the most impressive sports people of all time. I've never known of anyone get so much out of their genetic potential. Your books are marvelous. Keep it up boss.
Hi Dave, wow! I finished the video over multiple days. I relate to your situation as someone who's body composition has a hard time matching with my athletic pursuits (mainly mountain biking and bouldering), and I've also had consistent depression symptoms since my teenage years. Your methodical approach to studying this stuff is amazing. I first tried low carb in 2018, but did it seriously when I moved to England from the US in 2019. I found my weight did drop quite quickly back to my normal weight when I was 20 or so. After a few weeks of feeling really sluggish I went on a 3 day bikepacking trip and continued to eat low carb on the trip. I felt that my power was somewhat reduced, but my ability to keep going was impressive. Before catching the train home, I gobbled down a pastie (and beer) from a pub and vomited explosively in the train toilet about an hour later! Ever heard of that issue from going from presumably serious ketosis to eating a carb rich meal? Of course it may have been food poisoning or dehydration as well... Not sure if you ever tried SSRIs for your depression, but I found that my satiety went way down on them. I tried eating low carb while taking them and I just couldn't do it consistently. I was gobbling down treats and immediately ready for more, I even ate faster! Definitely gained a fair bit more weight than I've ever had before. Now that I'm not taking them I'm able to switch to low carb relatively easy. I do find that being in ketosis does seem to help with my depression and plan to make that the focus of my eating vs trying to eat for best physical performance.
I'm just going to say it - Dave MacLeod is the David Attenborough of keto/climbing. Thanks alot for this Dave, really appreciate all the hard work on this and the academic approach you have taken.
SUCH a great content - worth the 4 hr listen! As a health practitioner who works with people who very active but also very sick, it's wonderful to hear such a nuanced perspective on sports nutrition. Interventions that work with elite athletes (who often are quite healthy individuals on the spectrum) frequently do not work with the "average" athlete or people who are unwell. I often prescribe various forms of diets (ketogenic, low carb, high carb, vegetarian, etc.) as an intervention and can say it's very difficult to navigate tailoring a diet to specific health & performance needs. Thank you for the incredible attention to detail.
If I could like this video multiple time I would! At first I was just interested in listening to Dave and not trying the diet, but this 4h set me on a rabbit hole of reading and watching for and against material and after doing an experiment with keto, I can say that I experienced a lot of the positive that Dave is talking about in his video. Thank you for your hard work, sharing the knowledge and staying open minded Dave :)
Hi Dave. Really appreciate the astronomical effort that has gone into this. Hopefully you have pumped out a few research papers to synthesize the amount of research you've clearly undertaken. Would greatly appreciate more specific examples of your own dietary patterns in different training phases - food types, meal timing, macronutrient breakdown etc.
I've been able to stop after the tl:dr because I simply trust Dave as a conscientious researcher and communicator. So good to see at least one content creator bucking the 17 second video clip trend in favour of quality and detail! Dave needs to get on the Podcast circuit!
What an incredible video! I tried the keto diet back in 2018 with some okay results but struggled when eating out of the house! This video has convinced me to try it again as I experienced some amazing benefits first time around, especially freedom from the food demon lingering in the back of my mind constantly talking to me about food. Very excited for some of the follow up videos around specific training contexts, individuals and periodized training
This is great! I am only 20min in but I have always been very appreciative of Dave's explanations and ways of thinking and presenting things, the depth, the comprehensiveness. All this info will be very useful for me too, who struggles w similar issues. Thank you Dave!!
Dave, thanks for all the effort that went into this! Excellent video that deserves multiple viewings to grasp the details and nuances of Dave's experience with incorporating nutritional ketosis into sports performance. I'm purchasing some DM swag to show support for this kind of long form content!
Thanks Dave! Ive been on keto for about 2 years mixed with intermittent fasting. Ive noticed a huge increase in power, strength and endurance over this period while climbing, often not needing to eat until after I finished a sport climbing session. I sent my hardest route ever a few months ago. This diet + consistent training has been a game changer for me. I went from my hardest send being 12A to sending multiple 12cs and one 12d.
Much respect. Your science communication skills are amazing. Thank you so much for true valuable information in huge a sea of confussing messages. I will have to watch section of your view several times to really get everything. Thank you so much for sharing this information.
I'm half way thru and it's a fascinating video. I take a deep interest in both climbing and nutrition and this video listens as many of my favourite LC/Keto/Carnivore podcasts. I especially appreciate the following: a) the personal and climbing angles [the latter often non-existent in other discussions I've seen, unless critical of keto], b) the fact that it's not straight up "do this for 30 days" challenge/advice, c) the fact Dave didn't rush the video - the first time I'd heard him refer to plans of make one was months if not years ago [very rare quality these days], d) the caveats - not being binary and dogmatic, and finally e) leaving room for discussion, questions and further discussion. Simply put, mind-bending. Thank you. One question, if I may. At some point in the video you say that adhering to strict keto, unless you're diabetic or in need of a medical intervention, may be an overkill for an otherwise healthy athlete. Being a weekend climber I've followed a strict keto diet for about 2 years with about 90% rate of success. The remaining 10% being transgressions or experiments, every time leaving me feeling like I'm going against important rules/commitments. I wonder how you have been able to mentally deal with experiments and becoming more liberal with some foods, something I've been unable to do, especially seeing that keto has been very beneficial for me in many areas.
Thanks for all your work on this Dave, really well put together. Two questions: 1. Timing of CHO - around higher intensity exercise v at dinner. It seems possible that fasted, low intensity exercise, or even low intensity exercise without recent CHO intake, may be beneficial in encouraging fat oxidation, mitochondrial quality and quantity etc. I find this easiest in the morning, like many, with low intensity run/ climb (I like to both climb and run in the mountains). I then tend to 'replenish glycogen' through CHO intake, especially if I'm planning to train later. I also tend to 'fuel training' through cycling my CHO around this. I know other who 'save' CHO for dinner and are therefore in ketosis / v low carb for longer in any given day. My experience with this is that it affects training, especially later in the day, even if I've eaten CHO the night before - my guess has always been that glycogen levels being low explains this. Do you have any thoughts on this? 2. Training for mitochondrial quality and quantity - e.g. uphill athlete suggest a high volume of low intensity training can really affect the ability to oxidise fat, shift the crossover point as fat oxidisation occurs at higher intensity etc. Keto would also seem to affect this positively. Obviously, done in conjunction is likely to give the best benefit but I wasnt sure on your views on the efficacy of this type of training for mitochondria (you seem to suggest this is more genetic but I may be wrong?). Further, given your hypothesis about the intermittent anaerobic nature of climbing, which makes lots of sense to me, and the small muscle groups involved, how important would you guess mitochondrial quality and quantity, and not being 'aerobically deficient' is to climbing performance?
Thanks so much Dave. I can't say enough to express gratitude for your thorough research and sharing your knowledge and findings with us. You're a true science man and kind and thoughtful person. I appreciate you 💕
Thanks for doing this Dave. I’m so grateful this information is finally available as I have struggled my whole life with weight issues which held me back from progressing in my climbing. Im excited to be losing weight on keto and stoked for the possibility of exceeding my younger years as a climber.
great video as always dave, i have no interest in a keto diet and i watched the whole thing. Your balanced approach and rigour is very appreciated. looking forward to a video on fasting if you get around to it!
Really enjoy your open minded and scientific approach. This subject has interested me for years. Beginning with wondering why I was hungry all the time often needing to get up early for breakfast or refuel mid run. I’ve had too many variables to pin point which areas of my lifestyle and diet I needed to change. I also have taken a further interest in how/when we release sugars and use insulin. I’ve looked at this from a sport perspective and whilst working with a diabetic friend. So thank you for putting together such a well researched video.
Only 12 minutes in but you've really raised the bar with this one, Dave. Top-drawer content and production. Fantastic, thanks for putting this out. (Feeling a bit guilty about the Ruby Murray I've got lined up for my tea now though. 🙈)
Wow, thank-you. I have been somewhat overwhelmed by all the saturated fat data supporting a vegan diet recently to avoid CVD and be heathly. This never made total sense to me, (despite being a lacto vegetarian) as my Father was originally a dairy farmer. They were brought up on fried breakfasts, cooked in lard with full fat milk, yet no CVD in the family history. So I always thought high fat diets were good if they were worked off in the fields, through hard physical exercise. Also I attended a lecture by Mike Stroud, who with Sir Ranulph Fiennes crossed the Antarctic eating mainly blocks of lard melted into hot chocolate. They completed blood analysis and had healthy levels of TG, and LDL/HDL levels throughout their expedition, amazingly! So after enjoying your video I have the confidence to now scrap the vegan diet attempts and try a keto diet as a vegetarian who enjoys completing a few triathlons each year so will play around with the carb levels as you suggested. Thanks again for sharing all this data and your fabulous insights!
Yes and the history of western polar explorers utilising high SFA diets goes back a lot further - see work of Vilhjalmur Stefansson a century or so ago.
Thanks for your video ! Btw, in morisons in Hawick In Scottish borders where we leave, pack of five jammy doughnuts even today cost 50 pence! It's beyond my mind.
How brave Dave to post this. I listened it in two parts and enjoyed it. I did not fully understand all the science but grasp it in broad lines. I admire your professional academic approach and humility. I am very interested in hearing more about how to implement and test ketogenic diet. Aging body (56 years) also is part of my reality but I still feel that I can improve and do better. I am also interested in that energy flow discussion as time to time I feel like my energy levels are not sustaining where I would like it to be. So looking forward for the coming chapters of your journey.
Thanks a lot, David, for this 4-hour video! That's incredibly generous of you. I will digest it in small increments. My favorite books on respectively sugar and fat are Jason Fung's Obesity Code (2015) and Nina Teicholz's Big Fat Surprise (2014), admittedly popular science, but written by scientists and based on a host of, I think, solid research. I will look at the papers you quote... as soon as I find the time, though. Thanks again! 🙂
Dave, I'm not through the video yet, but one thing I'm very interested in is the types of carbohydrates you were eating, specificity in regards to depression and eczema. I've struggled with both for years but when i did my first 3-day water fast my eczema was gone within a week. I started experimenting with food afterwards and found that grains seem to be the culprit(for me). They make my eczema flare up and a grain heavy dinner always correlates with decreased mood the following morning. I now get most of my carbohydrates from white rice (and some potatoes) and have noticed a great difference. Wonder what you've noticed in regards to grains vs non-grain carbs. Thanks for all your quality content, you've helped my climbing immensely!!!
I did not find that types of carbs mattered, although I did not to a careful sequential elimination strategy to find out. Like you I also found that prolonged fasting resolved eczema in a couple of days. But obvious this is temporary. But later found that a carnivore diet with no plants at all (other than tea) had the same effect. I'll expand on this in another video but I found that after the longer carnivore bouts, I could go back to eating a range of carbs including grains (although I don't eat a lot), with no recurrence of eczema.
SO much work went into this - thanks Dave ! Here's a vaguely connected topic I think about sometimes, and might throw into the mix : has anyone looked into whether micronutrient levels, especially magnesium, could explain why many historical cultures were able to get along fine on high-carbohydrate diets ?
This is straight up the best video I've seen you make. Well done for the dedication to the research and citing sources. I've been doing keto for ages but I always thought the benefits were in my head. Would you ever consider making a study? I would definitely be up for being a guinea pig
Righty ho, as a naturally fatter climber from a tubbier family who often isn't satiated with the amount I eat I'm gonna give this a go and eat and eat and eat! Some more detail on its application and advice on what sort of meals to put together would be very handy!
Hi Dave, First at all I Very thank you for this huge amount of content and all the time that is behind of it. I would like to ask you, if is possible that you configure the video to allow RU-vid for generate automatic subtitles. I am from Spain and I have some troubles to understand it only listening, specially some Key words that isn't in my regular vocabulary. Many thanks.
Love the way i feel on keto/carnivore especially the mood equilibrium but im trying to put on a few kilos of muscle…. Its bloody hard to eat enough calories without chunking down bars of butter, something i dont think would be good for my triglycerides. Im down 4 kgs already !
Whoa this is an amazing thing to just gift us with. Thanks Dave. What do you think about high level professional climbers who don't optimize their diet? I saw a video of Taylor Macneil sending a slew of double digit boulders and cheese pizza seemed to be his main source of nutrition. Do you think they are genetically wired to perform optimally with that kind of diet? Or are they just leaving a ton of potential performance on the table?
I did my first E11 eating my fair share of cheese pizza. I was definitely leaving potential on the table IMO. Hard to say for others, it will likely vary quite a bit. By age 30 or 40 there may be a little more left on the table.
I would love to hear more about your struggles with foot eczema. I've struggled with it my whole life as well. I manage it with medication but I cant wear rock shoes every day.
So interesting and in depth, thanks a lot for doing this. 1 ) Do you feel you got injured less by simple virtue of weighting less? 2 ) What about pure strength activities? All those studies were more on the endurance side of things. e.g hard bouldering at very high intensity. It seems keto might be even better here? What's your anecdotical and personal evidence on this? I get the impression you improved across all climbing activities. I have exactly the same problem with "binge eating"; I managed one month without eating refined sugar just fine but once I start... I can very easily drop a few kgs on keto, not so much with carbs.
Thorough and insightful work, Dave 🙏How do you go about intake of electrolytes? Do you supplement potassium/magnesium/salt in water during the day and/or after exercise or rely on diet only? If fasting in the morning, would you recommend increased intake? Thanks!
Skimming through the video I think it's odd not to mention testosterone The literature correlates dietary saturated fat with testosterone levels due to increased cholesterol. This would help explain mood benefits, performance gains, recovery gains and improved body composition. I'd be curious to hear about blood test results wrt T levels. Inflammation is another important factor - plant based diets are anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is important for removing damaged tissue so there's another possible reason why Keto works to reduce injury/improve recovery. The mechanism I've read is that dead bacteria in meat contain endotoxins which are absorbed into your bloodstream (possibly aided by saturated fat) and those increase inflammation
I'm gonna give it a go. I struggle to get my body fat below 20%, most of it in my legs. I'm hoping it's a body type thing! I suspect I fat adapt well, I can generally hike all day without food, and I generally don't bonk. I'm curious how my body responds.
Awesome video, it was cool to hear my old professor’s research mentioned! I understand that as your body is adapting to the Keto diet, your performance in climbing may suffer. I have a couple questions about that. If you periodi e with the keto diet, there isn’t enough time for your body to fully adapt and for you to fully reap all the benefits of the keto diet. Plus, you may get keto flu and feel awful/performance suffer. So why would anyone want to periodize with this tool that requires such a long adaptation period?
Absolutely great stuff! I would love some more specific advice on the kinds of foods that form the bulk of your diet and the kinds of meals that you eat, do you think timing of the meals makes a big difference? Also do you find digestion times after eating longer or unchanged, as in Can you train straight after eating? Do you still use glucose to supplement during training? Thanks for sharing your knowledge and I'll be telling everyone I know who could benefit to watch
Hi dave, thanks for posting this it's been very helpful. A quick question have you ever had to use targeted keto diet for those high intensity climbs? I've been fully keto for a couple of weeks now but my climbing has suffered abit with the peak intensities. Cheers George.
Thank you for the informative video. Alot of helpful information and context here. Regarding a restricted calorie diet and satiety (or lack thereof), would you be able to comment on where a line would be drawn between real hunger and boredom / routine? I am quite fortunate in that I can quite easily control my calorie intake and maintain a reasonable body weight. What I have found is that in periods where I have tended to pack on a bit more, I was eating more because I either made a habit of it or was bored. I felt hungry at the time, but after a short period of adjustment, the feeling of hunger goes away because the habit is broken. That, in my experience also goes hand in hand with eating junk calories that do not add value, exacerbating the problem further. In my experience it would appear that there is room for intervention here that could yield some easier improvements before making more "structural" adjustments to your diet. What is your take on that?
Hi Dave, a bit late to the party but concerning electrolytes that you talk about at 26:07 and 31:31, i was wondering if you have some scientific papers concerning their use in a ketogenic diet, if you found any. While you were supplementing in electrolytes, were you taking broadly available ones or specific ones in regards to the symptoms you monitored? And finally, are you currently taking some electrolytes , based on your observations of your symptoms mentioned at 31:39? Thank you for your time and for sharing such Knowledges and informations! Happy new year from Britanny :)
Since I started keto two weeks ago I dropped from 175 to 158 pounds in two weeks and my body fat percentage is 9 percent. Crazy. So far I have not experienced the hunger change. I was not constantly hungry when on carbs nor am I now.
Hi Dave, Thanks for the detailed video. I'm intrigued about what you mentioned about joint health. I'm wondering if weight loss could be a confounding factor, i.e. loosing weight minimizes load on joints. Did you feel similar improvements during earlier stretches of weight loss? Curious to hear what you think. In terms of general health effects of fat intake, I think it's interesting that many natural (or epidemiological) experiments can also be used to argue both ways. Some of the worlds areas with the highest longevity use ~45 % fat to cover their dietary needs (arguably with high amounts of unsaturated fats). However, all of these places have
I very much doubt weight made any difference. Most of the time when I'm walking I have a 70m static, a large trad rack, two tripods, two cameras and a lot of tea on my back. So a couple of kilos less on my ass is not a big difference. But I suppose it's possible. I am not aware that all places with good longevity have low(ish) protein intake. I think it's more plausible that causality arises from absence of highly processed western foods and the ingredients that go with them rather than protein. Secondly, making inferences from modern populations is tricky since they are possibly all low in protein compared with the bulk of the period humans have been around, taking to one side regional differences and difficulty measuring this accurately. I don't really have a fixed anything in my diet, except to say I do try to eat a minimum grams of protein of 100-140g. Fat is scaled to energy needs really, which changes. Today I mostly sat in front of the computer. So over the next day or two maybe my appetite will demand a little less, especially if I get up tomorrow's route first try.
@@climbermacleod Good point, I better invest in some lightweight gear then :-). I guess the jury is still out on so many of nutrition's interesting questions, let's hope for some better data in the future. Thanks for your reply and good luck with your route then!
Aaron, I think you might need to be extremely skeptical when looking at longevity-based epidemiological studies as there are way too many confounders to really isolate specific dietary patterns (especially since they and all the other environmental factors would have changed dramatically over a lifetime). You can add to that additional questionability of even the "longevity" aspect: "Instead, the introduction of state-wide birth certification coincides with a sharp reduction in the number of supercentenarians born in each state. In total, 82% of the GRG supercentenarian records from the USA predate state-wide birth certification. Forty-two states achieved complete birth certificate coverage during the survey period. When these states transition to state-wide birth registration, the number of supercentenarians falls by 80% per year overall (Fig 2a) and 69% per capita (Fig 2b) when adjusted relative to c.1900 state population sizes." [1] [1] Newman, Saul Justin. “Supercentenarian and Remarkable Age Records Exhibit Patterns Indicative of Clerical Errors and Pension Fraud,” May 3, 2020. doi.org/10.1101/704080.
Dear Dave. As I am also a self experiment enthusiast I want to play around with keto after watching the video. There are many keto diets out there and I was wondering if you could give a link or some pointers to a proper one explaining in layman terms how to practically compose a variety of meals. Thank's in advance for your answer
Intermittent fasting was key to finally healing elbow tendinopathy combined with your recommended eccentric exercises. I have several nagging jt/finger problems that I'm trying to solve. Is the the keto diet anti-inflammatory? Have tried any anti-inflammatory diets?
If you ever feel like experimenting with an extremely reductionist plant-based eating pattern again a la your potato experiment, I would love to see what a purely legume/pulse/green/flax -based eating strategy would do to you. Insulin response to legumes is not tiny but I wonder if you'd still have issues with constant hunger due to the enormous quantity of fibre.
