Hi! Just checking in since I saw that there’s been some discussion of my RMR data. 
I’m traveling a bunch at the start of the year and won’t be able to bring my RMR testing machine with me, but once things settle down I’m happy to help gather some more data on this. I’ll just have to work it around the rest of life.
I’m enjoying the discussion!
That would be awesome. It will be really fascinating to see how your RMR has adjusted now that your in more of a “maintenance” stage. 
I just heard (on the low carb MD podcast) with Jason Fung a discussion of some studies. One study was where they took obese teens and replaced their high-fructose drinks with starch. They lost massive amounts of liver fat. Fung was saying that if you weigh 150 pounds, you effectively have 150 pounds that can deal with glucose. But the only thing that metabolizes fructose is the liver. This might explain why high “starch” people don’t necessarily get fat. (I have to say, though, that rice, even heated and cooled, still causes my blood sugar to go through the roof; so, I’m not so sure about this theory. And high PUFA intakes also have to be taken into consideration.)
Another study was a Phinney study, isocaloric, three levels of carbs. The low carbers reversed their markers of insulin resistance without losing weight. The other two did not do as well.
Of course, Fung was disgusted with the CICO folk and had lots to say about calories.
Really? You never get cold? I had to stop fasting for a while, because I got way too cold, to the point where I couldn’t touch my own hands.
Now, I take breaks between fasts, and only fast one 36 hour fast per week or one long fast per week. And then I try to ensure I eat enough when feasting.
That seems to have worked, although I will still get colder at night most times. And sleep is always an issue. I usually sleep less.
I’ve been fasting about 4.5 years, done 15+ 4.5+ day fasts, many more 3+ day fasts, many, many more 36 hour fasts, usually eat 2 meals per day.
When I first started this current stretch of ADF* fasting, in week two I had a couple days when I was cooler than usual (and, actually, I was cooler than normal - I shook hands with someone who commented on my hands being cold). And then it stopped.
Something similar happened when I was losing weight to begin with - I had a stretch (a week or two) where I was colder than usual, and then I cranked back up to my usual blast furnace self.
In me, this rebound doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what I’m doing - food intake and activity remained stable. My suspicion is that my metabolism just adjusts back to my version of normal.
*Really, I’m try to do three non consecutive fasts of a minimum of 36 hours - this month the days are mostly Sunday, Tuesday, Friday, but ADF is easier to say and close enough.
Personally I compare the mechanics for metabolic syndrome with getting a fire going. Sugar and white flour are the leaves or little twigs that burn easily, while complex carbs are the bigger logs (maybe a bit damp), Omega-6 oils, emulsifiers and all that crap are the various fluids that will quickstart a fire. You need enough of the little stuff to get the fire burning, but once it burns it will burn just fine using only the big logs.
Once you have metabolic syndrome glucose will convert to fructose via the polyol pathway and the “good” carbs are metabolized in a completely different way.
This is why I’m so interested in a Kraft “glucose” pattern. Kraft tests are not practical for me (unknown over here, and expensive), but there have to be characteristic patterns in glucose response after a meal. Figuring them out, and see how they change long-term on a low carb diet, would give us a DIY check if we’re improving, apart from HOMA-IR.
See my other thread: https://www.ketogenicforums.com/t/fasting-glucose-and-kraft-tests/96306
Bob, yeah, lucky, I guess (and plenty of fat yet to burn here too). Have you ever measured the temperature of those cold hands?
The “at home” version of heating/cooling will usually only result in a gain of about 1% resistant starch, so that leaves 99% as much digestible starch as if one just cooked the rice and ate it - not going to be any meaningful change.
Wow. I often feel cold even with OMAD/IF. I wonder if I should maybe go back to 2 meals a day for a while in order to raise my base metabolic rate. Plenty of fat to burn too, about 40 more pounds above ideal weight. But with chronic disease it’s better to aim for autophagy, even if the BMR drops a bit…
Not sure about rice, but potatos aren’t that bad. They have about 17g carbs (cooked), which drops to 15g or something if kept in the fridge overnight. So 250g roast potatos (that I indulge in maybe once a month) is less than 40g carbs, a far cry from the 300g a day in the SAD.
I’ve never seen anything that really proves that about potatoes. Rice, as I understand it, is where the largest gains in resistant starch have been achieved - and this was getting it up to 5% or 6% by several days of heating and cooling cycles - I’m thinking this was in a Korean or Japanese university laboratory, among a vast number of trials.
Even in that “state of the art” example, the digestible starch is still going to be at 94% or 95%, thus my largely shrugging my shoulders and shaking my head at the whole deal. 
Thing is - RS rice is not just about heating and cooling! A pivotal factor is in the reheating technique - via sufficient frying.
Have you tried sealing the rice by frying it well in plenty fat to heat it up? The RS rice protocol I follow involves that frying as key to seal it so it goes past the stomach. My understanding is that if done right it makes it to the large intestine where it’s then digested by the good bacteria.
Otherwise if one adds to cooled rice to, say, soup, the starch just dissolves quick in the stomach etc. There was a time or two when I improperly reheated the rice and felt the effect of eating straight simple starch, unpleasant.
The figures I’ve seen is that it adds a couple of percent RS based on total weight, not as percent of the carbs. I found this article claiming that more than half of the calories can be converted, but it gives no link to a study.
Frankly I don’t get this universal hate for carbs. It’s just as bad as the mainstream universal hate for fat. I’m with you as far as refined carbs are concerned, but not unrefined carbs from starchy vegetables.
In the end it comes down to a simple question: Is a ketogenic diet the optimal diet for all of us, or would it be more healthy to eat some carbs, provided they are in their natural form (starchy vegetables, legumes) and not refined? Our ancestors didn’t eat ketogenic all the time. If you believe that a paleo-diet is ideal, you’ll integrate some carbs.
I’m with Robb Wolf here: I think metabolic flexibility is a good thing, we’re built to eat some carbs (unprocessed, seasonal) and to alternate stretches with carbs (summer) and ketogenic stretches (winter). I don’t see any evidence that there is harm in eating some carbs for metabolically healthy people, as long as we stick to the pattern of our hunter-and-gatherer ancestors who mostly ate 15-20 percent carbs. Integrating the occasional carby meal might be more beneficial than going strict keto 100% of the time. After all, there is a consistent pattern that a little stress is beneficial, too much isn’t good, regardless of whether it’s stress from allergens, exercise, alcohol or lectins. Small amount will make your body more robust because it will learn how to react to those adverse substances. Why should carbs be different?
Of course someone in MetS should go strict keto in order to reverse it, but it’s a different story if you’re metabolically healthy. Maybe the sugar/insulin spikes we see in people on a strict keto diet are just there because their body has forgotten how to deal with carbs.
I’ve heard this coldness from many people even just doing IF…
I simply never felt cold just because I ate in some way. Not during my 40-120 hour fasts, not when I did OMAD and I don’t remember being cold even when I actually starved for 11 days in an unheated house in winter (I used lots of clothes and blankets and I suppose my mind was busy with other things? I needed a job. Normally I am definitely cold sitting in a significantly warmer house than that).
Sometimes I wonder if I don’t feel cold because I almost never lose fat but I surely did that in my longest fasts and starvation. I suppose my body dislike being in “panic! it’s FAMINE” mode, it’s an optimist just like me so it takes a lot to lower my body temperature. In the first days, it burns energy as usual or almost and even if my metabolism drops later (I don’t know when and how much but it must be done, I don’t even have enough extra fat to depend on it very much), it doesn’t target my body temperature first. After I have lost a significant amount of fat, I felt no difference and it’s something people usually complain about, being so cold in a slimmer body while they was so warm while they were fatter, the changes are often drastic and it’s non-existent in my case. I still have some extra fat and I am curious if it will change. But my slim SO isn’t cold either and this house is very cold for the average person in this country… He feels cold when hungry though (9-10 hours after breakfast). I am very rarely really hungry but I am never cold just because that.
Cold extremeties while sitting in my room, that happens. I am not cold at all, just my extremities. I can cover everything but my poor nose. While my trunk feels wonderfully warm covered by a single layer or two. I get it, priorities and not wasting too much energy but I prefer warm extremities… Oh well. Was I a proper animal, I would run around and get warm… I almost never need gloves outside. Only in my room.
I tried using resistant starch in many forms (potato starch, others) for 5-6 months, along with many different probiotics. After experiencing only detriments, and doing more research in this area, I gave up. For instance, you say that the rice is digested by “good” bacteria. What makes you think they are “good” and not “bad”? And why do you need to take in rice at all to have a beneficial microbiome?
Anyway, I will eat potatoes at times, although my blood sugar takes a hit from potatoes. See this for instance:
Some bacteria will convert resistant starches into short-chain fatty acid that we need for our immune system. They also produce a lot of neurotransmitters, including serotonin. AFAIK we’re talking about soluble fiber here, not insoluble.
There is some dispute on whether we need fiber at all or whether we get those fatty acids in meat too. Still, I’ve heard several times that people took a hit to their mood after switching from keto to carnivore (e.g. fiber to no fiber). And of course we adapt to our food, we will see significant changes in the amount of gut bacteria within a couple of days after switching to a different food composition.
I don’t think we need rice in our diet. But I do think it’s beneficial to eat fiber now and then, but we should favor soluble fiber.
I’m familiar only with benefits for this, not detriments. You know of detriments?
For anyone who believes that we know about our biome, I just request you do some research and try to figure out what we know. Talk about the Wild West of research!
One could also start here, though I would say we can easily challenge the theory that fiber is good:
In mice:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-25190-5
This illustrates how quickly the biome can adjust:
When volunteers switched to the animal-based diet, bacteria including Bilophila wadsworthia, Alistipes putredinis and species in the genus Bacteroides quickly rose to prominence. Those bacteria can withstand bile, which the body releases after a person eats fat. On the meat diet, Alistipes and Bacteroides bacteria also began pumping out short-chain fatty acids. Some of the fatty acids have been associated with inflammation in animal studies, although this study did not measure long-term health effects. Interesting to contemplate who this observations fits with the stories of suppressed inflammation on the carnivore diet that have been discussed in some recent H.V.M.N. Podcasts.
For me, one of the key takeaways here is that the microbial changes are really very transient. This means if you want to really alter your microbiome you need to make changes and stick to them. The authors of the study hypothesize that this might have played a role in human evolution, saying that “consumption of animal foods by our ancestors was probably volatile, depending on season and foraging success, with readily available plant foods offering a fall-back source of calories and nutrients. Microbial communities that could quickly, and appropriately, shift their functional repertoire in response to diet change would have subsequently enhanced human dietary flexibility.”
From:
And then when you start wading through all of these papers, trying to determine why they say certain bacteria are “bad” and certain bacteria are “good”, you realize they say this in light of a high carb diet. The effects for low carb/keto/carnivore really aren’t known much at all. And this whole “diversity” thing appears to be poorly thought-through, as I’ve seen multiple people on the carnivore diet get a high diversity score. (And let’s not even get into actual testing of your microbiome, which is just so error prone as to be basically useless in my opinion.)
So, I can tell you honestly that we have no idea what’s good or what’s bad when it comes to the biome. If eating meat (even eating ONLY meat) was “bad” for the biome, our race would not exist today.
By the way, the ability of the biome to adapt very quickly to whatever you eat is one reason I’ve stopped worrying about. 1- I know it will adapt to whatever it is I eat. 2- I don’t want to have to continue to take in “resistant starch” or fried rice or whatever I think helps the biome for the rest of my life, when the data to support this is basically non-existent. If we get long term RCTs showing reduced death due to some manipulation of the biome, then I’ll consider it. Otherwise, I don’t worry about the biome.
If you’d like to know just how much protein Keys did (or did not) feed his subjects, try The Biology of Human Starvation by Keys, et al., 1950.
When people started dying of refeeding syndrome and it became a recognised medical problem, it was concentration camp survivors under medical supervision in hospital. The problem is not the fasting per se, it is how the refeeding handles potassium levels. A couple of Dr. Phinney’s LCDU presentations (available on YouTurbe) discuss these cases, what the doctors learned, and what treatment is required to refeed successfully.
It is known science, derived from Cahill’s work in the 1960’s, Starvation in Man. The body actually prioritises proteolysis over fatty acid metabolism, in a balance calculated to maximise the chances of surviving a famine. The fat stores are not consumed until fairly late in the process of starvation. The good news is that the human body is quite hardy and can sustain quite a bit of damage before giving in.
If you wish to fast for any length of time, you need to be aware of the potential risks as well as the potential benefits. When you read or listen to Phinney and Fung, you have to remember that they are coming from opposite sides of a serious debate—that is, Fung is promoting fasting, so talks up the benefits, whereas Phinney is trying to inject a note of caution into a wildly enthusiastic discussion that seems to him to avoid mentioning the risks—but what they actually say and write is strikingly similar. Even Dr. Phinney admits that fasting up to about four days is probably safe, and even Dr. Fung stresses that fasting for longer than four days should be done only under close medical supervision.
It is worth remembering that Angus Barbieri, who fasted for 382 consecutive days, was under the constant supervision of a medical team, and his doctors only agreed to allow him to fast for that long because he made a strong commitment to stopping fasting, if at any point it appeared to be harming him. Also, bearing the post-World War II experiences with refeeding concentration camp survivors in mind, the doctors were extremely careful about how they returned Mr. Barbieri to eating food.
I have no scientific proof. The last time I heard it was in an Mikhaila Peterson interview with Ivor Cummings that I watched just a couple of weeks ago. She said that carnivore has done wonders for her health but her mood was actually better on traditional keto. And I remember reading a few similar remarks in social networks, but I don’t remember where.
Actually I meant “There is some dispute on whether we need fiber at all” in the sense that I’ve seen good arguments for both sides, and neither side could fully convince me. And until we know more, I’m not ready to throw out “low fiber” as an issue of the SAD. I remember reading about an analysis of 200+ populations of hunterers and gatherers, and they averaged 15-20 percent carbs. This means they did eat a lot of fiber, as carbs are always coupled with fiber in nature.
I fully agree that we have no clue yet how our gut microbiome changes and what the consequences are. The Inuit and Masai did well on an all-meat diet, but this proves only that we can do well on a no-fiber diet, not that a no-fiber diet is optimal. There clearly are some benefits from feeding our gut bacteria, and we don’t know if they just compensate problems that we wouldn’t have in the first place if we hadn’t switched to a high-carb, high-omega-6 SAD. I’ve read a report about a study (not yet published I think) where MS patients were fed some of those fatty acids produced by gut bacteria, and they improved markedly, much better than with traditional medication. The baseline was a high-carb diet of course…
I’m simply trying to see both sides. There may be a middle ground between “fiber is good” and “fiber is bad”, and it may very well be “some fiber is good for some of us”. I’m pretty certain that serotonin production in the gut is important for sleep and mood, and this may take a hit if we switch to carnivore. Maybe evolutionary it was better to be angry if there were no easy-to-harvest veggies out there, who knows?
Myself, I have been nearly carnivore for a month now and may end that experiment soon. I started to suffer from severe insomnia again (which is part of my ME/CFS but got much better on keto), and the fact that it’s gradually getting worse indicates that this may not be a transition effect. (Weight loss has stalled too, but weight is only a secondary target and the stalling may be due to muscle buildup. A month is too short to tell anyway.) The only positive change I observed was that my constipation got resolved, as expected (if you know Paul Masons talks on this subject). I’ll give it a few more weeks, but at some points I’d like to see benefits that outweigh the downside. Then I’ll probably cycle back, swich to standard keto for 2-3 months to see how that affects me, and then give carnivore another go.
Things may be different for healthy people vs. sick people. No doubt that healthy people should do great on a carnivore diet, and probably people with specific illnesses (like metabolic syndrome). However, a machine may break in several places, and we have to find and fix what’s broken instead of a one-size-fits-it-all remedy. My guess is carnivore will work great for some people with severe health issues (be it depression or autoimmune diseases), probably for most, but do nothing for others. The potential benefits would suggest that it’s a very good idea to give it a try, but if it doesn’t work then it doesn’t work.
But to conclude: I still think carnivore is great, and I’ll still recommend carnivore as the best elimination diet for all kinds of health issues. But there is a chance that it doesn’t work for all of us.
My take here is different. I suffer from ME/CFS that threatens to make me permanently bedridden, and we don’t have a clue about the pathomechanism. I simply can’t afford to dismiss potential influences on the disease. In judging different approaches, I will always consider a wide range of theories, knowing that many of them will turn out to be wrong. However, the only way to decide this is to follow these theories. And there is enough science in the connection of leaky gut, microbiome, neurotransmitters and immune system modulation.
Microbiome issues may be responsible only for 0.5% of weird diseases, but then only 0.3% of the population suffer from my disease. In fact, if something affects only a very small group in the population this makes it more likely to be responsible for my disease. If people dropped like flies from microbiome imbalances this couldn’t be the reason for my disease
