There is something about nuts that makes you want to eat more nuts… Have you noticed this to be true? Most people who do consume nuts put them into little bags or little containers or get them in self-contained packages so that they don’t have access to the full tub of nuts that are already cracked and opened for you.
The best advice I can give you if you want to start a low-carb keto diet to lose weight or to reverse diabetes is to not have nuts. If you’re at a plateau and you want the diet to work again, don’t have nuts. By “nuts,” I mean almonds, cashews, macadamias, and even peanuts, although technically, they’re legumes. It’s a very common problem to not be able to stop eating peanuts. It’s not just nuts, but also nut butters. Down the road when you’re at your goal, macadamia, cashew, and almond butters are fabulous things to have and to incorporate back into your lifestyle, but not when you’re trying to lose weight or reverse diabetes. You should also exclude nut flours, like almond flour and coconut flour. Many people on the internet who are using these have not had to lose weight on their own. Many of them are trying to be healthy for other reasons or they’re already at their ideal weight or metabolic state. Don’t recreate keto cookies with nut flours.
Around the year 2000, I went to visit doctors who were using a keto diet – Dr. Atkins, Dr. Bernstein, Dr. Eades, Dr. Rosedale – and I asked them what they do. I learned from their clinical practices and what we did is we formalized that clinical practice into research. Our studies have been published in major peer-reviewed journals ever since the year 2000. What was happening more recently is that people came to me and showed me that what they were being taught wasn’t working. When I teach what we’ve used for a long time, things just start to work. One of the major things that I find people have success with is dropping the nuts.
Too many carbs in nuts
A lot of people will ask me why ditching nuts often works to get better results. There are a few possibilities. One is that when you eat nuts, you can over-consume carbs. One ounce of nuts has about 6 total grams of carbs – we always use total grams, not net grams, because some people do absorb the fiber and sugar alcohols, which can affect the keto metabolism. If you have one ounce of any kind of nut, you’re at 6 total carbs. We want people to stay under 20 grams of carbs per day at first for this to work for everyone the first time, every time. Now, if 6 grams gets multiplied by two or by three, it gets you up to the 20 gram limit very quickly. Remember, you have to burn through all of the carb grams before you start burning your body fat. That’s why we limit the carbs. The low-carb diet is really a ketogenic diet, because the ketones come from your own body fat. If you get a tub of nuts, because they’re cheaper in bulk and you end up having one handful, that’s 6 grams. Then, as the day goes on, you’re working, you get hungry, and you get another handful – that’s another 6 grams. Some people can control the amount of nuts they consume, but if you can’t, then just be honest, drop them, and take the two-week test to see if that doesn’t turn the corner for you.
Nuts are high in calories
The issue might also be that you are consuming too many calories, because nuts are very high in calories. If you’re at the edge of wanting the low-carb keto diet to work for weight loss but you’re not very active or you’re unable to be active, then you want to be careful about high calories. (If you overdo calories, you’ll have difficulty losing body fat, even on a keto diet.)
Nuts may be a trigger food for you
A third reason why dropping the nuts is so effective is that they’re a trigger food for most people. A trigger food is something that you eat that makes you want to eat more and that you lose control around. Nuts are the classic trigger food. If you find yourself not stopping until the bag is empty – and not because you feel full – then this may be a trigger food for you.
Nothing seems to beat nuts
People tell me that when they eat nuts, other foods just aren’t quite as satisfying. There’s a residual desire to have more, where people don’t feel quite so full. I don’t know why. The mechanistic research is way behind as are the clinical observations in the keto low-carb world. Hopefully one day, we’ll figure out what that mechanism is for a trigger food like nuts that makes you not be satisfied with the other foods like you used to be with nuts.
Check out the full video here.