EAT MOAR FAT! I'm finally GETTING it. page 62

[lissee]

I've been a bit awol around here the past few days, but wanted to pop in to say that I've enjoyed reading all the links people have been posting. Paleobird & others. Just bought the Art... low Carb Living... book last night and started to read it.

Interesting how getting adequate Salt plays such a major role when we're doing Ketosis.

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks.

[Leida]

UD2 is dangerous and the most massively unhealthy monstrosity of a diet plan ever invented. Run, very fast and very far away from it.

I will only do UD2.0 if I stall for > 2 weeks on the current regimen. My biggest concern with it right now is that the stomach stretches during the carb load if I use white potatoes; I can use white rice, the volume is lower, but it makes me super-hungry & I really don't feel like having grains again. I am also not a fan of machine-centric workouts. UD2.0 does work wonders for fat loss. Both Cyclic Ketonic and UD 2. advocate a large carb load after a complete depletion, and it seems to work, as the moderate carb loads seem to do little good. It is effective and far easier than the Lean Gains. Lean Gains is the one that I have nearly impossible to follow in the real world. I have no data yet to compare UD effectiveness to simple ketosis for myself. I hope to accumulate it over the next few weeks. I am opened to trying to stay in ketosis and training, as I do not have the die hard training goal.

Ketosis is a true appetite killer. Yesterday I went on the 'field trip' with my work group. We basically rode the bus and did some easy strolling in the mountains, so I thought it would be a great day to do a long fast. I experienced a hard core hunger at 10 am, and had half of my Tibetian tea (tea with 3 tbsp of butter and salt). Almost immediately felt better. Had the rest of the tea in the afternoon, skipped lunch - actually saved it for my husband, and went for a stroll while everyone else was eating. The smells of food and the sight of muffins, donuts and candies did absolutely NOTHING to me. I also chopped my folks' fruit plate after having my supper, including wonderfully smelling apple and gorgeous grapefruit. Salivated a little, but had no problems keeping hands off. Hard time was about hour 19, had to eat a tbsp of coconut oil before driving home. I felt stuffed before going to bed on ~ 1000 calories consumed in a day.

This morning the weight finally dropped from >127 to about 126 lbs. However, I feel weak & experienced no recovery from Tuesday lifting. Today I am hoping to hit between 1300 and 1400 calories & pick up more protein than yesterday & go to a steam room after training to help recovery.

The biggest challenge for me will be staying ketonic over the weekend. I could never managed that YET. But I will be making salmon, so if I skip fruit and keep veggies to minimum I should be able to stick to at least under 50 g carbs, if not under 30 g carbs. My goal is to keep the weekend gain to 1 lb.

Next week I will be taking off training to winterize the garden, so ketosis should work very well with that, since there is no intense exercise load.

[healthy11]

Hello... been reading the thread, too, but haven't posted too much about what I have been experiencing. I finally broke through a long stall and am down from 143 to 136. That's in about a month which is crazy for me. When I first started PB I lost 15 lbs. fairly quickly then lost another 5-10 really slowly and stalled forever. Like a lot of us here I started eating "safe starches" ...having smoothies in the morning and getting lazy about having some non-primal treats like non-GMO pop-corn. Now I am feeling great being VLC/high fat and finally losing again, feeling mentally healthier, and having more energy. I don't count anything... I have just cut my protein portions a bit, upped my fat a lot, eat a bit of veggies, and include dairy! I eat twice a day (coffee with half n half or cream in the morning). I was eating way too many veggies and too much meat before and BAS were not helping me lose weight at all. I don't think the BAS is good advice for weight loss... they can be so many calories! I also walk a lot on the weekends... about 15-20 miles split up on Sat/Sun (short dog walks on the week days). I haven't been sprinting or lifting heavy things, though, which I need to incorporate. Anyways, so glad to be back to what works... loving ketosis and loving eating high fat. My body is happy... this is definitely the right way of eating for me and for awhile there I was just thinking something's not right and now I know why!

[yodiewan]

It is effective and far easier than the Lean Gains. Lean Gains is the one that I have nearly impossible to follow in the real world.

I am not as familiar with UD 2.0 as you are, but I did read ChocoTaco's thread on it a while back and it sounds MUCH harder than Leangains. Leangains is very easy for me. I just eat plenty of carbs and minimal fat on workout days, then lower carbs and moderate fat on rest days. Simple. UD 2.0 has like 3 different types of workouts and a refeed period that has to be timed to coincide with those workouts. It sounds insane and like it would be very hard to comply with. Just my two cents.

Back on topic: I think I'm doing pretty good at this ketosis trial. I've been sick the past few days (cold/flu/something) so it was hard to tell how I would have felt otherwise, but today I feel pretty good. I definitely feel... different mentally. Kinda calmer, although that may have just been generally lethargy/weakness from being sick, haha. We'll see.

My challenge is still getting enough protein in only 1 or 2 meals. I don't really like eating more often than that. Not sure if this thread on Paleohacks has been linked already, but I found it pretty instructive:
How do I get my Ketostixs to Purple? - PaleoHacks.com

RobS is following a diet that is more restrictive than probably most of us here are doing or want to do, but he says that it's necessary to split your intake into at least 3 meals in order to avoid too many calories or too much protein at once.

[sbhikes]

I don't know much about the zone diet, but maybe it didn't get you to focus on the right fats and oils for the tiny amount of fat it does allow in the diet. So maybe the eicosinoid part is real, but it wasn't coming from the body fat but from the dietary fat. I imagine that the zone diet says to consume lots of healthy canola oil and avoid animal fat. I had a lot of joint inflammation and pain before I started consuming animal fat generously.

Ugh. Leg cramps this morning. Bone broth time. I am on the fence about the big salads. I had one for dinner last night covered in olive tapenade and chunks of beef (leftover from making bone broth.) I was considering a big salad for my main daytime meal today, covered in a can of sardines.

[sbhikes]

Leida, you saw that doing an endurance activity it worked great to rely on fat for energy. But then you saw that you can't lift heavy very well on a ketogenic diet. It's not the right match with the type of energy required and the type you are providing yourself. If you insist on this crazy idea to have a skinny bodybuilder body then you will have to do crazy eating disorder shit to yourself and this is not the place for you.

[Leida]

I am not as familiar with UD 2.0 as you are, but I did read ChocoTaco's thread on it a while back and it sounds MUCH harder than Leangains. Leangains is very easy for me. I just eat plenty of carbs and minimal fat on workout days, then lower carbs and moderate fat on rest days. Simple. UD 2.0 has like 3 different types of workouts and a refeed period that has to be timed to coincide with those workouts. It sounds insane and like it would be very hard to comply with. Just my two cents.

It does sound simple, but for me that continuous flipping just doesn't work well, because I often cook in batches and have to feed the entire family, and it drove me insane trying to match my swings to the family menus. Low fat proteins are hard to come by. Our stock of meats are all relatively high fat, grass-fed beef, pork, whole chickens, liver and wild salmon. I really don't like to endlessly buy expensive skinned turkey breasts. Or sitting there with my can of tuna and bok-choy soup watching the pork roast crackling disappear. In 100% cases I ended up having some, and here goes low fat day down the drain. Real meats just feel better for you than canned tuna and skinned turkey. Also, the switches between the high carb to low carb gave me endless mood/energy swings and hunger was out of control. If I go low carb consistently, hunger normalizes to the caloric input that keeps me maintaining easily (or even losing if I push it a little). That is one avenue of self-experimentation I am trying to pursue now, is watching the energy and moods on super-low carb. I know it was very steady on the veggies and meats only, when I did normal paleo. I don't think I could ever really nail LG on deficit the way Choco did, and never really lost any fat on it. It just did not work for me.

Leida, you saw that doing an endurance activity it worked great to rely on fat for energy. But then you saw that you can't lift heavy very well on a ketogenic diet. It's not the right match with the type of energy required and the type you are providing yourself. If you insist on this crazy idea to have a skinny bodybuilder body then you will have to do crazy eating disorder shit to yourself and this is not the place for you.

Actually, I haven't seen that. Cyclic-Ketonic Diet is supposed to be the shit for the lifting heavy. I failed it before, but I was eating crap on low carb days (PB & liver sausage). I have heard about people lifting wonders in ketosis (and on high carb as well). Primal itself advocates LHT on low carb, Mark's article says it's fine. Lyle does put endurance into ketonic days, and lifting heavy around the carb-up, but normal CKD does not make this distinction. I am not a champion heavy weight lifter. I prefer heavy lifting to endurance lifting because it builds muscle on me, while endurance work does not, but my heavy is not man-quality heavy. I do not gain on my lifts fast, and they are quite modest. So, in the end, I will try to go ketonic, and in all likelihood, I will end up with accidental carb-ups, that are not huge. Unless I cannot shake off the wheight, then I will do UD without the last carb up, and will be smarter about taking breaks between weeks of lifting.

And, yeah, I've consulted books and the psycho-service. I officially do not have an eating disorder, a body dysmorphic disorder or any other disorder. I have a bit of a body image issues, but I am working on it. Otherwise, I am completely normal and my phsycologist's evaluation was 'if it ain't broken, don't fix it' and he said I was doing the right thing with my Mindfull Eating research and mind work. I am good, no worries.

[adamm]

Leida, you saw that doing an endurance activity it worked great to rely on fat for energy. But then you saw that you can't lift heavy very well on a ketogenic diet. It's not the right match with the type of energy required and the type you are providing yourself. If you insist on this crazy idea to have a skinny bodybuilder body then you will have to do crazy eating disorder shit to yourself and this is not the place for you.

Eh, what? I've been on a ketogenic diet for well over a year (minus two months where I experienced with slightly higher carbs) as a type 1 diabetic. I lift heavy 5 times a week fasted. Granted my lifting sessions are only around 45 - 55 minutes each, but I lift HEAVY. I have had no problem maintaining that, increasing both strength and muscle mass while on a very low carb diet.

I mean for me a cheat day is eating meatballs with some of my home made tomato sauce (hey, tomatoes have a fair amount of carbs in 'em) which may take me up to 35 grams of carbs for the whole day.

But back to my point, I feel great lifting heavy. It might be easier for me as I'm on a 5 day split (chest, back, arms, legs, shoulders) which gives me plenty of time for my muscles to replenish glycogen, but when I'm lifting, I feel great.

--Me

EDIT: and sbhikes, seriously, take a chill pill, you are pretty hostile methinks.

[Lewis]

I've been a bit awol around here the past few days, but wanted to pop in to say that I've enjoyed reading all the links people have been posting. Paleobird & others. Just bought the Art... low Carb Living... book last night and started to read it.

Interesting how getting adequate Salt plays such a major role when we're doing Ketosis.

Seems to. And also see:

The Blog of Michael R. Eades, M.D. » Tips & tricks for starting (or restarting) low-carb Pt II

However, the anthropological and historical records seem to show that peoples eating lower-carb diets actually use less salt. Start looking around and you can come up with any number of explorers, stranded in regions where people ate little other than meat, making comments such as "I had to do without bread or salt".

The explorer and anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson notes:

It may possibly be true that the carnivorous Eskimos in whose language the word salty, mamaitok, is synonymous with with evil-tasting, disliked salt more intensely than those Indians who were partly herbivorous. Nevertheless, it is clear that the salt habit spread more slowly through the New World from the Europeans than the tobacco habit through Europe from the Indians.

Stefansson - Adventures in Diet

When the word in your language for salt is synonymous for "evil-tasting" that's a pretty interesting indication of something. Stefansson also relates in My Life with the Eskimo --

Amazon.com: MY LIFE WITH THE ESKIMO (9781236669339): Vilhjalmar Stefansson: Books

-- how when he was living among the Eskimo -- Inuit as they (or rather some of them) are known now -- when he didn't want to share food he salted it. They wouldn't touch it then.

Yeah, they got some sodium through consuming blood and presumably -- as Dr. Phinney says -- sea-ice, but it seems they did not like salt.

Maybe the need for salt is a temporary need during the switch to VLC? I don't know, but it seems like a possibility.

[Urban Forager]

I'm in the hospital with DS. DS has a chronic lung condition that was exacerbated by smoke from wild fires in our area. He's doing well; his main complaint is that he doesn't have his gaming computer and the internet in the hospital is lame. I'm still eating fat first and it's been a real help. Last year we were in the hospital for 3 weeks and i found it challenging to stay primal, this time it feels much easier. At this hospital we have a fridge in our room which I've stocked with fat and tasty snacks for DS to help as through any rough patches in the hospital fare, which is surprisingly good. Butter, cream and lemon can make anything better.

The doctor thinks we may be able to leave by next Tuesday, which would be good. I'm so glad I started eating this way before we came to the hospital. I don't think I'll be losing any weight while I'm here but at least I wont be eating a lot of junk.

My biggest challenge is sleep, always difficult in the hospital.