Counter-intuitive things I learned about nutrition and wellness while on intermittent fasting and keto diet, based on personal experience and all the reading up I had to do:

Fat is not always evil

Good quality fats from fresh produce like avocados, wild salmon, butter from grass-fed cows are actually good for you. Essential, in fact, for a healthy diet. Of course, in moderation. But universal rejection of fats because “fats are unhealthy” will ironically make us unhealthier. 

Asians need to eat rice

Maybe it was a good fuel source back then when we were agrarian societies and worked hard physically. But with our sedentary urban lives right now, that old cultural norm deserves a serious relook. Or at least we don’t need to eat as much as we do. Besides, the white rice grain had arguably become mostly empty calories, with over-farming practices and food system deterioration.

Breakfast is NOT the most important meal of the day

There isn’t any most important meal. It’s about healthy intake of macro and micro-nutrients through the day/month/years, eating in moderation and at the right time. Barring any existing health issues (say, gastric pains), it’s perfectly okay to skip breakfast.

Eating all the time is actually not all good

There’s a food myth that instead of eating 3 big meals a day, it’s better to eat smaller meals. Making your body digest food all day everyday is actually not ALL good. It’s good to starve the body from time to time during the day, or for periods of time during the year. Fasting had been a cultural tradition found all over the world, and it’s not just for cultural but health reasons.

Eat fat to trim away fat

On a keto diet, probably the first most counterintuitive thing one encounters is having to eat fat as a main source of energy. Yes, about 75% of your calories comes from fat. The funny thing is most people do this to lose weight (and fat). How? Long story short, avoiding carbs and eating (not too much) fats forces the body to switch to fat burning metabolically. 

You can have the sweet without the sugar

Yes. That realisation probably saved my diet from myself. Truth is, I have a sweet tooth. I loved my desserts, ice cream, and cakes. Even on keto now, I still do. So imagine my horror of having to wean off my sweets. I mean, what kind of quality of life is that if I can’t ever have a dessert ever again? (LOL) But the ill effects of sugar is also one of the main reasons why I’m doing this diet - I can see and feel what it’s doing to my body, and I’m getting worried. It was a huge internal conflict. Salvation came when I learned about alternative keto-friendly sweeteners that are actually natural, with no harmful side effects, and doesn’t raise insulin levels (unlike those artificial ones like aspartame). Monk fruit sweetener is actually one of those things that’s actually way sweeter than cane sugar, but without any of the ills. That was mind-blowing, because I always associated sweetness with sugar. No sweet without sugar, I thought. But yessss, now there can be sweetness without it. Even if I stop the keto diet in a possible future, I doubt I would want to or need to touch sugar again because there’s these much healthier and just as sweet alternatives.

A doughnut becomes a 10x doughnut while you’re fasting  

Coming out from a fast, it’s important to be careful what you put into you, because after a 16h fast, the body is very insulin sensitive and if you start taking your usual carbs in huge amounts, it sky-rockets your insulin compared to if you didn’t fast. So a doughnut that didn’t faze you without fasting could be a lot more potent while you are. Not done correctly, people can actually gain weight while doing intermittent fasting. I like to think of fasting as an amplifier - it amplifies both the goods and the bads that you eat, with outsized downstream effects. So we have to choose ever wiser while on it. What a keystone habit, that ensures a cascading effect of healthier food choices and mindful eating.

Fibre is not always your friend

The mainstream view is that fibre is good for you. Especially if you’re constipated. But I recently saw a video where a doctor talked about a study, and his own experience helping his patients, that fibre might actually worsen constipation. He likened it to adding cars to the road to stop a traffic jam. The research he quoted showed how constipated folks on a zero fibre diet did way better than those on a high fibre one. More bowel movement. Less bloating. Mind-blown. Truth is, I had fibre anxiety after starting on keto. Because I had to swear off fruit while on keto, and even had to be careful around vegetables due to intrinsic carbs, I worried if I was getting enough fibre for my gut health. But this study made me re-examine everything I believed about fibre. I’m going to experiment more in this and see how my body responds to it.

Salt is your best friend

Salt had always been associated with hypertension/high blood pressure. Even our health authorities get food vendors to display choices for less salt. So avoiding salty foods had always been my practice. But going keto brought about electrolyte loss, namely, sodium, potassium and magnesium. How this happens is most of these minerals are stored in the water as part of glycogen in our body, which drains away when you go on keto, thus leading to electrolyte lack, and muscle weakness, cramps, low energy etc. I find myself having to drink salt water and take more salty foods just to make up the 2000mg daily recommended intake.   

Plants are not always your best friends

Eat your greens, they say. I was vegan before and know about the health benefits of a plant-based diet. The mainstream narrative is such that it feels like you can do no wrong with eating greens, ever. But what I didn’t know before was how there’s also many anti-nutrients and toxins from eating plants too. Lectins, phytates and oxolates are just some toxins found in grains, beans, nuts, soy, seeds, spinach. All the stuff that’s supposed to be good for us, that’s supposed to do no wrong. Thing is, before Big Agri and the widespread availability of such plant foods, our bodies can manage to detoxify these plant toxins as we didn’t eat so much of them. But not so now. So eat your plants but watch out for these unwholesome phytochemicals.

Eat when hungry, don’t eat for the sake of eating

3 meals a day had become such a norm that it’s hard to imagine otherwise. But since on keto and intermittent fasting, I’d learned to listen to the body, that the body is the boss. Some days I’m starving before a meal and I eat more. Double portions, even. Some days, I don’t feel hungry and I (try to) eat less. I say “try to”, because it’s so ingrained in our social practices that we have to eat when it’s time, whether our body says it is hungry or not. Otherwise risk developing gastric pains, they say. I say now, don’t eat for the sake of eating. Eat when hungry. Stop when you feel full - you don’t have to clean up your plate, your body is not a rubbish dump to throw uneaten food in. And don’t eat when you don’t feel like it. 

A running log of counter-intuitive learning points - to be continued…