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Keto Diet vs Flexible Dieting (IIFYM): Effects on Body Composition & Overall Health – Thomas DeLauer

All right. This video’s going to be a little bit different. Ordinarily I like to super in-depth on science, but one of the things that I want to start doing more often is responding to comments and responding to questions that come in, in a little bit more of a casual sense and a little bit more of a real talk sense. One of the big questions that has come up, especially now that we’re in the beginning of the year, is what are my thoughts on flexible dieting?

I want to talk about this a little bit, and I want to go into some detail. I’m going to use a little bit of science, but I’m going to keep it a little bit more basic. This question came up because I talk about intermittent fasting a lot. Intermittent fasting, sure. You can have a little more flexibility with the diet. And I do tout that in some of my videos. I say, sure, you can have a little bit more in the way of carbohydrates. You can have a little bit more flexibility because your body’s doing most of the work when you’re in its fasted state.

But the thing is is that flexible dieting as a whole is an entirely different story. Flexible dieting kind of came to be from the crossfit community mainly. The crossfit community was big in Paleo, but then they kind of got into a lot of the flexible dieting world, which nothing against crossfit whatsoever. I’m just giving you sort of the origin. And the idea behind flexible dieting is that it’s going to simply be calories in versus calories out. And you’ve probably seen some of my videos on that before. I talk about calories in versus calories out, and what is truly effective. If you are in ketosis, do calories matter?

If you’re not in ketosis, do calories matter? Well, at the end of the day, yes, calories matter. Calories in versus calories out, to an extent. But what we have to look at with flexible dieting is you had a lot of this combination of fats and carbohydrates. And whenever you have the combination of fats and carbohydrates is when you have the problem. I talk about this with my clients from time to time. If you were to take something that is seemingly unhealthy … for this sake, let’s make it simple and say a gluten-free pizza. This gluten-free pizza has a gluten-free crust that by itself is not really that unhealthy. Maybe it’s got some brown rice flour, maybe it’s got some tapioca starch. It’s not amazing, but it’s not super bad by itself. Then on top of that, you have sauce which is really not that bad. Then you might have some meat toppings, which aren’t that bad by themselves. Then you have some veggies which aren’t that bad by themselves. And then you have some cheese which I’m the biggest fan of dairy, but if you’re on a ketogenic diet by itself, cheese is okay. So how come all of a sudden, once they’re combined into one food product, does it suddenly become unhealthy?

If you just take a step back, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. You’re kind of like wait a minute. Why are all these individual food groups considered healthy until they’re combined. Well, it all has to do with insulin. If you’re spiking your insulin with a carbohydrate at the same time that you’re taking in a fat, you’re going to have a problem. You’re going to have this fat that gets shuttled into storage because you’ve spiked your insulin. That’s exactly how it works. Same kind of thing with a gluten-free bun and a burger. By itself, that burger isn’t that bad, but you combine it with the bun, and all of a sudden you’ve got an issue again. That’s where the big problem with flexible dieting comes in, is you’re skyrocketing and you’re messing up your insulin levels. You’re constantly having this weird fluctuation where your body cannot find homeostasis, which leads me into my next issue. With flexible dieting, you have this big fluctuation of insulin. You’re never finding balance. One of the keys to getting your body in a position to actually lose weight is getting your insulin values nice and stable.