Ketosis Diet page 2

[Metric]

I'm also doing Keto (primarily for the same reasons Paleobird referred too). I'm only on day 28 of PB and have reduced my carbs for the past few weeks only. I've felt amazing so far. I've subscribed to follow your logs. Best of luck to you!

[kalli889]

There has been extensive (like decades worth) of research done on ketogenic diets for the control of epilepsy. (google John's Hopkins and keto) There have never been any negative health impacts of it at all. I have a seizure disorder and try to stay in ketosis most of the time and it's working for me. I've lost 65 pounds and am now thinking about trying to reduce my seizure medication dosage.

There are a few sweet potato zealots around here who repeat blog factoids about how keto will wreck your insulin sensitivity, make your hair fall out, etc. This is simply hogwash.

I wish you well and will be following your story with interest.

One of my mentors uses a ketogenic diet to manage her autism. You'd never know it, but she used to be an overweight shut-in. Now she's a super sexy and fit cabaret singer, and she looks 20 years younger than she is. OMG, she's amazing. She basically lives on bacon and eggs and cream, organ meats, all that good stuff. I danced in her show 5 years ago, and that was the first I'd heard of anyone using diet to manage their moods.

[sbhikes]

I'm embarking on a two week ketosis diet and need some accountability and support. Have any of you tried this before? What have been your experiences?

I'll be blogging about it on my primal/paleo lifestyle blog outdooramy.blospot.com . . .

I'd love to get feedback and comments to help encourage me through it. Especially since I'm such a carb addict. LOL. (I say that in the same way alcoholics say they are still alcoholics even if they are sober).

I've been stuck on a plateau for a while now and I'm hoping that this two weeks will be enough to kick start my weight loss again. I am starting this evening with a 24 hour fast.

I found that very low carb helped me break the cycle I was in where I couldn't go more than a few hours without getting hungry and where I couldn't exercise at all without getting totally ravenous. I believe that I was pretty hugely insulin resistant. I could exercise all day long and still my weight was creeping up. Low carb (I really aimed for about 20g) restored me very nicely.

I eat more carbs now. I can't seem to help it. I mostly try to keep it low during the day and eat the majority around dinner, but not always. Sometimes I eat carbs for lunch. I guess I've lost any discipline.

I have been stalled as far as weight loss ever since I started increasing my carbs. I attempted to decrease them again a couple weeks ago but it didn't break my stall. I think that this weight is what my body wants to be and that there is no choice but to accept it. I know Chaco will storm in here and say that is bullshit, but I exercise almost every day. This weekend I hiked 89 miles 4 days and gained 2lbs. I endured hypothermia during that time (cold thermogenesis anybody?), I ate carbs during the hike, I carried weight and climbed high mountains (lifting heavy anybody?), I ran from bees (sprinting?), I dodged poisonous plants to exhaustion. Nada.

I hope you have better luck than me.

[OutdoorAmy]

I
I hope you have better luck than me.

Thanks!

I'm 5'3" too, and I'd say 135 would be my ideal. I have a larger frame and a big chest, I think if I got any smaller than that my boobs would look sad and frame more skeletal than I'd like.

Interestingly, when I got my body fat analyzed at the gym before starting primal eating my lean body mass was 139 lbs. of my total weight. I'm hoping that will help make things a bit easier to get down to my goal. 140 wouldn't be bad either, depending on my body composition.

[Sabine]

If you are having a hard time getting your calories in, try a Liquid Fat Bomb. Easy to get down, packed full of fat calories. Just search for it on the Recipe Page.
Good luck. I find getting into ketosis makes me feel great.

[Lewis]

I totally agree that lean, very active individuals with healthy metabolisms often do better with adding carbs. But that doesn't mean that ketosis is necessarily harmful to everyone or anyone. I know you (AP) didn't say it was but some of the carb pushers have been lately.

And even the very active don't necessarily. Dr. Steve Phinney himself says he can cycle for about 3 hours covering some 60 miles and just not get hungry. He's in his fifties. When he was a young man and running on a sugar-burning metabolism, he'd crash out quite quickly. He did some research on bike racers years ago, and he'd assumed that they'd do better on very high carb, because this is what an earlier Swedish team had found, and consequently what everyone believed. But it turned out that (a) the Swedish researchers didn't continue the experiment for long enough for the subjects to become keto-adapted and (b) didn't know how to properly formulate a low-carb diet (they were handing out masses of lean steak, and people simply couldn't stomach it after a few days). After the requisite adaptation period, the cyclists did better on a ketogenic diet. Phinney also found the same with overweight individuals on a treadmill. At first, as he cut their carbs, they got lethargic and went slowly. After a month or so, they'd lost so much weight he loaded them up with backpacks -- to make the comparison "fair" -- and they also performed better than they had on carbs. He says they went ... and went ... and went.

One big difference is that because you don't have to dispose of so much carbon when you run on ketones rather than glucose, you don't produce so much CO2, hence you don't need to respire so hard.

Phinney tells both stories to Jimmy Moore in this podcast:

479: Legendary Low-Carb Researcher Dr. Steve Phinney Says There’s An ‘Art And Science’ To Living Low-Carb | The Livin La Vida Low-Carb Show

What Volek and Phinney make very clear in their book --

Amazon.com: The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable (9780983490708): Stephen D. Phinney, Jeff S. Volek: Books

-- is that you can do demanding activities on glucose or you can do them on ketones, but where you get stranded is if you're in-between. They say it's like thinking you could set off for a holiday island, but do just as well stopping half-way. However, you can't if there's only sea in between. I kind-of knew this, but they explain the whole phenomenon so well that I think it only really hit me after I read their explanation. The PB maintenance phase ("100-150 grams/day – Primal Blueprint Maintenance Range") is low-carb but not ketotic, but of course Mark's not telling people to try cycling for 60 miles on that protocol. "Move slowly," huh?

The podcasts where computer guru Steve Gibson tells Leo Laporte about his experiments with VLC are interesting, too. Gibson, much to his surprise, found his work output on his stairmaster going up and up with less and less effort after he'd adapted to VLC:

TWiT Live Specials 124 | TWiT.TV

TWiT Live Specials 125 | TWiT.TV

Then there's the astounding physical endurance of the fur traders and voyageurs. All done on pemmican:

http://owndoc.com/pdf/The-fat-of-the-land.pdf

I have to say I've dabbled with low carb before, but never actually gone fully ketogenic. However, after reading V & P's book I've become very interested in the concept. It seems like something worth trying as an experiment. I would like to see if I could have the experience of tapping huge reserves of energy. I'm sure primitive people in high latitudes must have spent much of the year in this state, as has been said on Lights Out and many other places.

Nora Gedgaudas seems to do very well on a Paleo VLC diet:

Primal Body-Primal Mind | Beyond The Paleo Diet

[Paleobird]

Thanks for some interesting links, Lewis.

I do agree that if you are going keto, you really should go fully, not just dabble on the border. I think a lot of the reason a lot of people say they feel cruddy on VLC is because they didn't do it consistently enough for a long enough period to really adapt to fat burning. They are still in sugar burning mode but their body isn't getting enough sugar to make it happy. So they toss the whole concept.

[Fletch666]

I did VLC (under 20 g carbs per day) for well over six months. Once I started popping some potassium and the calf cramps went away, I was great. I had no problems and felt fine the entire time. Even now I'm pretty much always well under 100 g/day. It's not that I'm trying to be low carb, it's just the way I've become comfortable eating. One of the side benefits was how easy it made IF. 19 to 24 hour fasts are effortless.

[Knifegill]

I'm embarking on a two week ketosis diet and need some accountability and support. Have any of you tried this before? What have been your experiences?

I'm wondering if two weeks is long enough to become adapted. If you've been doing a high-fat diet for some time, I suppose it might be plenty of time...

But there are so many views about this! Some would tell you that you become ketogenic every time you fast, and it only takes a few hours or a day to get there, yet others will tell you it takes weeks. I don't know who to believe! Or maybe that's a newb body versus one that's been eating real food...

I broke my last plateau by going very low carb for three or four days a week, then hitting the sweet potatoes at the end of the week. And it's working well. Well, that and rarely eating dairy, restricting nuts to once a week, and always eating high-fat, even on high-carb days. I do that mostly to spite Chocotaco. I'm at 5'9" and down to 171 pounds now, from 215. Up to one-armed chin-ups and forty push-ups, etc. But the last ten pounds of fat were dropped, I believe, by increasing my protein to about a pound of meat a day, and doing those few VLC days a week.

OH! Almost forgot, during my work week I basically only eat one meal a day, sometimes a few avocados or some canned fish for my first break at work, still within a 5-hour eating window. And a small box of coconut milk in the morning (toward the end of my shift) for medium-chain triglyceride ketone fun.

[OutdoorAmy]

I did VLC (under 20 g carbs per day) for well over six months. Once I started popping some potassium and the calf cramps went away, I was great. I had no problems and felt fine the entire time. Even now I'm pretty much always well under 100 g/day. It's not that I'm trying to be low carb, it's just the way I've become comfortable eating. One of the side benefits was how easy it made IF. 19 to 24 hour fasts are effortless.

Yes, I'd read on one of the links shared by someone else that potassium and magnesium are good to supplement during a ketosis diet. I haven't made it to the store yet, but if I start to feel any symptoms I definitely will add those. I tried to include potassium and magnesium rich foods on my plan as much as possible though, because I suck at swallowing pills! (Anything bigger than m&m and I just can't it down)

I'm wondering if two weeks is long enough to become adapted. If you've been doing a high-fat diet for some time, I suppose it might be plenty of time...

But there are so many views about this! Some would tell you that you become ketogenic every time you fast, and it only takes a few hours or a day to get there, yet others will tell you it takes weeks. I don't know who to believe! Or maybe that's a newb body versus one that's been eating real food...

Well, I'm just committed to trying it for 2 weeks, if things are going good I may continue it for even longer! I plan to stay under 100g of carbs period at LEAST until a reach my goal weight, and possibly longer, unless I take up a rigorous sport in the process. (Which is entirely possible, I do really want to play hockey . . . )