1. Maintain nonstop nutritional ketosis (since Spring 2022), at age 71.

2. Two meals per day (around 11h30 and 18h30) without snacking (about a 16-hour daily fast). I eat to complete satiety at each meal.

3. I do not count calories or carbs - I simply don't eat high-carb foods.

4. I pay attention to food order in a meal: fiber first, then fat/protein, then anything else.

5. I drink water, black coffee, herbal tea, and homemade lemonade sweetened by stevia. I do not drink any alcohol.

6. I eat a small dessert every day - I make a good chocolate mousse and a delicious cheesecake sweetened with Stevia. For me, this small quantity does not trigger any dopamine-induced craving for more.

7. Regular sleeping schedule of 22h-06h.

8. Routine of daily light exercise (exercise machines) and walking 4 km.

9. Every few days, I measure my glucose and ketones with my Keto-Mojo, a finger-pricking device like diabetics used before Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs). It has become routine; the results always show moderate-to-strong ketosis.

10. Follow the scientific literature, especially randomized control trials (RCTs).

11. No medications, and am generally in the best health of my life.

WHAT I KNOW (FROM EXPERIENCE)

1. I do not suffer; rarely hungry or tired. Even without some of my favorite foods, there remain many foods that I love, and that I eat without consideration of quantity. Letting go of trying to control food intake is liberating.

2. I began low-carb with very low expectations. I thought I could never give up things like bread and pasta. I was very wrong, and the lifestyle change has been profound. Food has become important: thinking about it, planning it, shopping carefully and reading labels, cooking, having fun trying low-carb recipes. Food is no longer something from a box or can to be quickly prepared.

3. No problem at restaurants - I order meat or fish, and can generally substitute salad or vegetables for the rice or potatoes. However, there is usually nothing for me at cafes or pastry shops, except coffee and water.

4. My weight has been stable for over a year, less than 2 kg variation from 70 kg, BMI 22.

5. No lipid panel problems (cholesterol, etc). My TG/HDL ratio is excellent (1.2).

6. No indication of vitamin/mineral deficiency or excess.

7. Sleep quality and nocturia greatly improved.

8. Mentally alert and passionate about many projects.

WHAT I CURRENTLY BELIEVE ON THE BASIS OF QUALITY RESEARCH

1. Evidence is increasing for the positive properties of the metabolic state of ketosis, beyond avoiding the negative properties of carb-heavy diets. Most people are not aware of nutritional states or why they matter.

2. The extent to which nutritional values are based on non-existent or dubious science is quite amazing. Studies must be read very carefully. Epidemiological studies often confuse correlation with causation (and/or are reported as such in the press). Meta-analyses (analyses of multiple studies) are considered by many as the apex of research - but more often than not, the result is apples/oranges comparisons and garbage-in/garbage-out (GIGO).

3. Humans been getting sicker for decades, since the sugar industry demonized fat and began adding fructose to everything. Poor metabolic health is behind the global rise of non-infectious chronic diseases (NCDs), e.g. Cardiovascular, Cancer, Alzheimer's, Type 2 Diabetes, etc. It's not mostly genetics and luck; it's mostly diet and lifestyle.

4. Probably 80% of the problem is processed food. However, contaminated whole foods are increasingly a problem. The toxicity in our daily lives is worse than most people realize. But we have to make food decisions.

5. Metabolic health is the main component of wellness, and most people eating the standard diet are unaware of its dangers. Getting well begins with two things: asking your doctor for the non-traditional tests that diagnose overall metabolic health (e.g., fasting insulin), and ignoring out-of-date nutritional guidelines.

6. Obesity is more a common symptom than a cause. Thin people often have metabolic syndrome and get NCDs. The goal should be good health, not a bathing suit size.

7. The Energy Balance Model or Calories-In/Calories-Out (CICO) approach to weight loss usually fails after the short-term and results in yo-yo dieting. For many reasons, losing weight is not simply a matter of eating less and moving more. The entire application of the calories concept to food is misguided. A calorie (in the vernacular) is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1°c (i.e., has nothing to do with the mechanics of human energy).

8. Exercise is critically important to good health, but has little to do with weight loss.

9. Good sleep and time-restricted eating encourages autophagy, the recycling process of damaged cells. The less often you eat (including snacking), the more your body repairs itself.

10. Plant-based regimes tend to be high-carb, although they also tend to be more whole-food and thus compare well to the standard diet.

11. Humans evolved to gorge on high-carb plant food when available (especially seasonal fruit), but to not depend on it - this is evidenced by the fact that any more than a teaspoon of glucose in the body at any time is treated as toxic. Some glucose is essential for all mammals, even obligate carnivores (e.g., the lion). But there are no essential carbs for humans - the human body has no problem to make all the glucose it needs from non-carb sources, via gluconeogenesis.

12. A problem is the lack of Nutrition in medical school curricula.

13. Most adults have fixed ideas about food. Things will be slow to change, like they were with tobacco. The important institutional low-fat proponents are unwilling to admit that they got it wrong for the past 50 years. But there is nothing fad about low-carb - it is here to stay, because it works and the societal need is great.

© T.Jack 2025