My personal experiment. Quick transition to ketosis? page 3

[emmie]

If you're relying on the ketostix to assess your degree of ketosis, you have a flawed experiment. All kinds of physiological issues can impact the 'color' (including level of hydration), and some people don't get much color at all but are in deep ketosis.

For example, I personally usually get no more than a 'light pink'--even after months at 10-15g carbs a day. This was true when I first did Atkins in 1973 and used the sticks as instructed in his book. Despite the 'light pink' I lost weight very well and had all the other signs of ketosis--e.g., suppressed appetite.

I'm very carb sensitive, so I continue to eat very low carb--but I ignore the Ketostix.

[justyouraveragecavemen]

Yep, OTC. They are not perfectly reliable when comparing one person to another but when you are only measuring changes in yourself, they can help. And they're pretty cheap.

Well, I'll buy them just so we can use them as an added source of info.

If you're relying on the ketostix to assess your degree of ketosis, you have a flawed experiment. All kinds of physiological issues can impact the 'color' (including level of hydration), and some people don't get much color at all but are in deep ketosis.

Done.

[Knifegill]

The night is done. Notes from throughout the night, as jotted on the pad:

10:42, hunger pang, came and went without incident.
11:40, rush of heat, sudden energy (probably adrenals kicking in)
Keto stick negative @ 11:40
Keto blood drawn @ 12:50 and tested, result negative.
Drank coconut milk @ 1:15 (at this point, ketones are dietary, not endogenous)
01:43, keto stick @ 15 mg/dl
02:36, keto stick @ 30 mg/dl
07:00, keto stick @ 15 mg/dl


Planning to get more strategic to conserve keto sticks. Will do one at 10:00, 01:00. and 05:00. Also planning to have blood done again in three days, on the night after the 18th. Cycle test results coming in another hour or so, wife waking up soon and I need to make my duck.

Ate seven pieces of bacon at work, now going to eat a duck hindquarter, 90 small green olives and four eggs. Plus tallow and bone broth.

Interesting comments about excess protein keeping me out of ketosis. Perhaps I actually should cut back this week, for the experiment. Grocery day is coming...

Interesting thread... Could you also post macronutrient energy daily totals - would be great.

Thanks,
Markus

Feel free to plug my food intake into a dietary tracking program. I use fitday, but there are plenty of other ones - probably better than fitday for all I know.

is this one meal?

i can put food away, but 6 eggs and a pound of beef would knock me the hell out. damn.

...actually, i'm going to try that this weekend.

That's what I ate as a meal, yes.

[BobthePhotoGuy]

Take a scissors and cut the Ketostix in half length wise.

It's like getting 2 for 1!!

Bob

[Knifegill]

Take a scissors and cut the Ketostix in half length wise.

It's like getting 2 for 1!!

Bob

Win!

[JonnyH]

Interesting read on Ketosis testing:

Jimmy Moore?s n=1 Experiments: Nutritional Ketosis Day 1-30 « Jimmy Moore's Livin' La Vida Low Carb Blog

[Knifegill]

Did the cycle just now. VERY odd! Instead of hovering between the previous range, my pulse rarely peaked 120, and often stayed as low as 114 for several seconds on end! That's a slightly bigger wobble, and more time spent at the lower heart rate. Same speed, same tension. But is it really better performance if it was so unsteady?

Jimmy Moore?s n=1 Experiments: Nutritional Ketosis Day 1-30 « Jimmy Moore's Livin' La Vida Low Carb Blog

Yeah! Good stuff!

[Knifegill]

One small can tuna on waking.

Edit - Not tuna! I keep calling it tuna! Pink Salmon, it was pink salmon...

[Knifegill]

Per recommendations, slightly reducing protein intake and increasing fat intake. Just drank my 840 calories of coconut milk, twice the usual. Will have smaller portion of meat in the morning, with an extra avocado or two...unless I just sleep instead!

[Lewis]

Good thread, I've been low carb recently, probably around 70-80g per day. I found the following quotes from the authors of 'The Art and Science of low carb living' interesting ...

Yeah, very interesting book. One of the premier books on low-carb.

especially the comments about if you get between 50-150g of carbs per day your starving your brain of glucose and ketones, any thoughts on these comments?

'If you eat a reduced carb diet of less than 150 grams but more than 50 grams, you body does not become Keto-adapted and you are starving your brain of both glucose and ketones. End result – the body converts protein to glucose or - you go on a carb binge.

Brief answer -- since the thread's mostly for knifegill's experiment, though a little general discussion shouldn't derail it.

They talk about "islands of safety," don't they? (I've heard Steve Phinney use the term in other dietary contexts, too. He seems to think one would ideally do what a known healthy aboriginal population did -- and that might be quite specific. You could find another that did something fairly different, and you could alternatively do that. But possibly you couldn't do something in-between. Interesting. Who knows?)

You don't give the context or the page reference. I think this is in the context of sustained exercise -- and that mainly aerobic but sometimes passing into anaerobic.

Well ... standard Primal -- i.e. "maintenance" range -- is 100 to 150 g a day:

How many carbs should I eat each day? | Mark's Daily Apple

I guess you couldn't do very much of the sort of exercise Steve Phinney seems to be thinking of on that without burning through that 400 to 600 kcals of glucose-energy. But then Mark does say to do intense but short exercise and otherwise "move slowly".

I'm not at all sure how much time the great hunting populations spent in ketosis. My guess would be that the figures from Cordain et al. in the paper from 2000 grossly underestimate the quantity of fat and grossly overestimate the quantity of protein and carbohydrate that Paleolithic populations would have eaten. In France in the Ice Age during winter? .... and those historical accounts of Eskimo and the Plains Indians.

Yet you can have a pretty low carbohydrate intake and still not actually be in ketosis. It fascinates me that Peter at Hyperlipid is eating something that doesn't look at all like a "normal" diet and yet he's only "drifting on the borders" of ketosis.

Then there's this whole interesting question, raised in Lights Out, of seasonal variation.