Adding more carbs?

#1

I’ve heard tales of people eating 75 or even 100 carbs per day after fat adaptation and still calling this ketogenic.

In my experience anything over 50 kicks me out.

However the tantalizing fantasy of eating 100 carbs a day but maintaining ketosis is too beautiful to ignore.

Is it possible with normal exercise routine (30 min cardio a day)?

Or is this something where if you ride a bike for six hours straight then you can eat some extra carbs?

I would so love to be more normal. Low carb but not next to zero carb and still be in ketosis.

#2

The issue with carbs is not so much the going out of ketosis, but the time it takes to return to ketosis. The more insulin resistant you are the longer that will take.

If you’re very insulin sensitive, you could eat 100g of carbs at once then go back into ketosis in a few hours, especially if you were exercising after eating to burn them off.

#3

Carb tolerance is determined by insulin sensitivity. How efficient (quantity of insulin and length of time) is the body able to uptake glucose into cells. Ketone levels are less important than BG in measuring this. For example, if my ketones are 4.5 mmol and I eat a HC meal, it may drop down to 2 mmol. So I’m still in ketosis, but since my BG is now 100, lipolysis has stopped because my insulin level is too high.

For comparison, my sister can eat 30g of carb at a meal, her BG will rise less and within a couple of hours, be back down to basal level. A few hours later, at the next meal with 30g more carbs, her body can do it again.

Exercising won’t equalize us in the short term. Exercise can even decrease blood ketone levels as muscles use them for fuel. Only improving IR will allow us to eat more carbs with less impact on BG. Until then, if you want to eat more carbs, do more fasting. For example, can you eat a moderate carb OMAD regime and achieve your goal?

#4

@4dml
@steak

Same question for you both:

What of the fact that ketosis causes peripheral insulin resistance which means your blood glucose will be a little higher in general while in ketosis, and take a bit to go back down to normal if you went onto a carb rich diet for a considerable amount of time (ie one high carb meal is not going to do it).

(jilliangordona) #5

I think after about a year and a half on keto with lots of intermittent fasting, I am finally insulin sensitive enough to handle some carbs. Yesterday and I some sweet potato around noon, and pastor tacos around 6:30. At 8:45 I was still registering ketones in my blood!

Now, that does not mean I am going to make it a regular thing, because after a while I will end up just undoing the hard work I’ve done. You may get to the point of being able to handle some carbs here an there, but I would not advise making it a regular thing.

#6

That’s not a problem. IR is insensitivity as a result of extended periods of hyperinsulinemia. What you’re describing is hypersensitivity that results in temporary elevated BG not (the damaging effects of) elevated insulin levels.

This article explains it better than I can.

#7

@4dml

Thank you! I have already had the information in the article confirmed by my doctor. Though I wish I had had it while I was freaking out for the past several months over this phenomenon! The article explains exactly what I was experiencing, the cause and that it’s nothing to worry about! It is basically seems like a narration of my experience lol!

I posted that thread about this phenomenon that got longer and longer and didn’t see anything as well researched and written as this article (if you or anyone else posted it there as well it must have been after I stopped logging in while awaiting my doctors appointment). All I got were some relatively encouraging articles, but that were a bit vague, and posts with helpful ideas but nothing so well written, sourced, researched and clear cut!!!

The only thing it is missing is what my doctor clarified for me: this change is not permanent and will revert to normal levels if one quit the keo diet.

It is truly odd that no author of these articles mentions this when it is clearly a very pertinent question! Unless I’m missing it or it is clearly and strongly implied somewhere?

Thanks again.