The Slow-Carb Diet vs. ketogenic diet: what's best for you? | Tim Ferriss

I'm asked quite a bit these days what should I follow meaning the person asking the question slow carb diet or ketogenic diet and I've talked a lot about ketosis and the ketogenic diet in tools of Titans on the podcast with people like Dom dagostino Dominic austino among others and various scientists and MDS here's the answer I think that for 90 plus% of the people out there the slow carb diet is the way to go slow carb diet is still what I primarily follow when should you use the ketogenic diet I found the ketogenic diet most

helpful when a I was suffering from severe symptoms of Lyme disease which was diagnosed on Long Island where I had removed six embedded ticks so it was not psychosomatic it wasn't misdiagnosed and that was the only thing after a round of of course proper antibiotic treatment in this case I think it was doxic that helped to uh mitigate and remove largely the cognitive decline or effectively dementia that I felt as well as joint pain ketones and the ketogen ketogenic diet in general have very strong anti-inflammatory effect and for even some conditions like say Alzheimer's there

are people who believe uh if you look at Alzheimer's as say type 3 diabetes or brain diabetes as some people do that when you offer ketones as an alternate fuel source to a brain that can no longer metabolize or utilize glucose ose properly you can address many of the symptoms so ketogenic diet for me is when I have a medical condition or a problem I cannot seem to fix via other means I will very frequently get into a state of ketosis not through diet per se in terms of ingesting different foods but actually fasting and

I talk about fasting at length and different ways to approach it in tools of Titan so I'm not going to be labored that here the problem with the ketogenic diet is that if you don't get it perfectly right it is the worst possible diet you could follow what do I mean by that the goal of a ketogenic diet is to get into a state of ketosis this means that your carbohydrate and protein consumption is low enough effectively zero in the case of carbohydrates and your fat intake is high enough so we're talking about 75 plus%

of your calories from fat that your body switches into effectively a starvation mode where it says we're not getting the carbohydrates and nutrients we need to produce glucose for the body for the brain and everything else so we're going to start converting fat that includes stored fat that's why you store fat uh into these alternate fuel source called ketones okay this is a very very binary thing so you are either in ketosis or you are not and we can measure it with say a fingerprick device called the Precision extra XT a by Abbot labs and

if you are not say at5 millars that's how the concentration is measured that's the number readout if you're not at 0.5 or higher and if you're in ketosis generally uh people would consider the feeling the Euphoria and the clarity that you feel at say one millimolar or higher for some people it's even 1.5 or two you're in ketosis but a a lot of people I say a lot I would say uh more than 60% of the people who attempt to do this will fail because they will miss things like some type of sugar that's in

the mustard they use or they will have some type of uh even say non-nutritive artificial sweetener that for whatever reason provokes an insulin response or a glucose response uh or this is a trickier one they aren't consuming a bunch of car hydrates they followed that but they're eating too much protein and then the liver turns the extra amino acids uh via something called uh gluconeogenesis into pardon my franch uh glucose and then you're screwed again so there are many ways to mess up the ketogenic diet and if you think you're in ketosis so you're eating

70 80% of your calories from fat but you're actually using glucose that is arguably the worst possible diet you could follow your blood lipid Pro profiles all these blood markers are going to go way out of whack so you either get it really really right or it's a terrible diet so for people who are very very meticulous very perhaps OCD like I am and detail oriented and can really suffer through the monotony of that diet it's great and in extreme cases also there are many people who think that it can benefit certain uh Cancer Treatments

uh whether it's chemo radiation Etc as an adjunct to supplement with say fasting and or the ketogenic diet uh typically I recommend slow carb diet because slow carb I would say there is an 80% based on tracking say now at this point closely tracking more than 200 people and certainly observing tens of thousands of people following this diet it probably has an 80% compliance rate meaning over the first the the percentage of people who can stick with it for a month is certainly in the 70 to 80% range ketosis and the ketogenic diet I would

say the percentage of people who can stick with a real strict by necessity since it's binary ketogenic diet is going to be less than 10% okay so less than 10% pass rate on doing the ketogenic diet for a month I think that is very fair it is really really boring diet to do properly unfortunately uh now I get the benefits of ketosis in a number of other ways sometimes on days like today where I've consumed a very very low carbohydrate small meal I will have something like this this is coffee with some exogenous ketones in

it exogenous meaning outside the body so you can think exoskeleton EXO outside exogenous or endogenous produced in the body exogenous ketones is a liquid that I pour in here it's called keto Force they're different types and it is beta hydroxy berate it's the same thing that you measure in your blood with a finger prick when uh you are say testing to see if you're in ketosis or not and that allows me to jack up my Ketone levels this I think can be misused also more frequently at least once a month I'm doing say a 3-day

fast and you want to do this with medical supervision folks don't be an amateur doctor I'm not a doctor don't play one on the internet but say from Thursday dinner to Sunday dinner that's enough time to get into ketosis briefly and I think there are other benefits to fasting that might be related such as triggering aut phy and deactivating or at least not activating something called mtor which talked uh with at length on the podcast with a a guy a guy a very world-class scientist who is shortlisted for the Nobel Prize uh named David sabatini

which you guys can listen to so uh I think there are benefits that can be derived incredible benefits from intermittent ketosis that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to use a ketogenic diet fasting EXO ogous ketones maybe a combination of intermittent fasting plus exogenous ketones Etc uh is very valuable as different tools in the Arsenal but for the short answer and I said this top of this long- winded explanation as well is that if I take a 100 people and I just selected at random from the population I tell them to do a slow carb

diet I would bet on at least 70% succeeding for a period of 2 to 4 weeks and in that period of time people who have air amount of fat to lose for instance very common if it's say someone who weighs more than let's call call it 200 lb and more than 15% body fat that they could lose up to 20 lbs of fat this is very very common it's not always the case but very common then you take another 100 people you put them on the ketogenic diet and it's strict and then they have to

self enforce you're not making food for them they have to figure it out I would say you're going to be looking at maximum 20% who are going to make it a month and in my experience I've actually lost more body fat on the Slow Carb Diet than I have in uh ketosis oddly enough because you would think that you would be pour from all your body fats store is fantastic well I've done a 9-day fast deep deep ketosis right which is already going to be highly muscle sparing surprisingly and lost very little fat why would

that be well because each pound of fat is something along the lines of 9,000 calories so even if you're very very very lean your 5% body fat you have plenty of fat to keep you alive for a week two 3 weeks and uh it's a slow burn for whatever reason and this could be microbiome related I suspect it is that when you're eating Prebiotic Foods on the Slow Carb Diet like lentils legumes Etc and also getting the thermogenic eff of food from more protein intake uh and it's a diet that's highly compatible with say power

training and uh resistance training different types for whatever reason I just see more fat loss on slow carb so that is not why I use the ketogenic diet is mainly as a means of improving cognitive performance and as a medical intervention so there you have it folks slow carb diet versus ketogenic diet hope that clarifies things when in doubt slow carb that's it if you enjoyed this video I want to propose you check out the podcast the Tim feris show why has it been number one on iTunes across all categories in some number one in

business why does it have 70 million plus downloads because I interview worldclass performers from Athletics business that includes billionaires from everything imaginable entertainment to tease out the routines the habits the tools that you can use so check it out the Tim Faris show