The title of the article seems to imply far more than what the article says, because there's nothing in that short article to indicate "what works better" than keto.
I found these two short paragraphs to be laughably stupid though:
Quote:
Keto doesn’t appear to work as well for women, because we metabolize fat differently and have different genes turned on and off in response to fasting,” Sladek said. “But we really do not know why that is nor how it happens — that is what we are hoping to learn.”
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First of all, they're equating keto with fasting. You can always do IF with a keto diet, in fact it's probably easier to limit your eating hours if you're eating keto. But that doesn't mean the only way to do keto is in conjunction with IF, or that the only way to do IF is by eating keto.
Of course keto also doesn't work "as well" for women as it does for men - there's no diet out there that works as well for women as it does for men. It's a very common complaint on diet sites - the husband and wife both go on the same diet. After a week or three, the husband has lost twice or 3 times as much as the wife has lost. Even diets that aren't really diets work better for men than women - Decades ago, my DH used to go on the "no ice-cream for 2 weeks" diet and lose a few pounds. If I tried that tactic, the best I could hope for was maintaining.
I can help them cut to the chase on their lack of understanding about why that is - it's the hormones. Women's bodies are geared to hold onto fat to get them through famines while nourishing a baby through pregnancy, and nursing a baby through infancy. The exact hormonal/metabolic pathways that do that? The only reason it would be the least bit important to know that is if you're trying to develop a diet aid that completely short circuits the hormones that allow women to survive and nurture an infant through a famine... so that a woman can go on a "famine" starvation diet and lose quickly.
The next paragraph makes it clear that their intention is only to demonize keto:
Quote:
Whether the diet is effective for any sex, the researchers caution against taking any diet to an extreme. It’s not clear whether all of the fat gets metabolized on a keto or fasting diet, or whether a lot of it just accumulates in the body.
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This one is beyond stupid - if the fat doesn't get metabolized, and is instead accumulating in the body, then you'd gain weight instead of losing it. Fat "accumulating in your body" (cells) has the same weight as the fat that you're losing.
But of course if it's not strictly a calories in/calories out diet, it's imperative to come up with some reason that it isn't good for you, no matter how effective it is in actual practice.