ADF - I think I broke myself

(Carl Keller) #24

I believe that our body’s natural response to losing a lot of weight in a short amount of time is to stimulate ghrelin (the hunger hormone) to encourage us to gain some of the weight back. I think your body is telling you that 125 is not the weight it wants to be even though you may not agree.

Perhaps the best response is to eat plenty of fat and protein to try to achieve satiety… three meals a day if necessary and even if you put on 5-10 pounds it might not be a bad thing if it finally satiates you and leads to a hunger you can reasonably manage.

(The amazing autoimmune 🦄) #25

I am not sure you would need to check it out. It is something that I read a long time ago. If you exercise too much or too intensely it activates gherlin , making you hungry. If you exercise moderately and for not too long it helps your body to regulate ghrelin

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #26

There’s something that doesn’t quite add up here.

2260 calories: 10% carbs = 56.5 g; 72% fat = 180.8 g; 18% protein = 101.7 g protein
or
2141 calories: 19 g carbs = 76 cals = 3.5%; 185 g fat = 1665 cals = 77.7%; 100 g protein = 400 cals = 18.6%

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #27

Try getting your carbohydrate intake under 20 g/day. (Net or total, it’s up to you, but total might help you more.) See how that works. You could also increase your fat a bit. One hundred grams of protein ought to be plenty, so try the other things first, then perhaps raise it a bit.

(James Gough) #28

Maybe you need to change how you think and feel about your hunger. Being scared of it isn’t helping. Your emotions can affect your body a lot.

Hunger can be a good thing. The latest research on living longer shows that being hungry most of the time increases your life expectancy a great deal, even by 50% in some tests, although 5-10% is regularly demonstrated. There are some great benefits to feeling hungry.

That said, you still need to reign it in a bit with some self discipline and not eat too much as well. I could eat +4,000 cals a day very easily. I started keto at the beginning of the year and it is full of the foods I love. But, I like my 6 pack and I’m 50 so I choose not to eat a jar of almond butter each day for breakfast :-b

There are a lot of great mindset and habit creation programs and even ways of changing how you feel about something like food and hunger. You can get rid of that feeling in a few hours of practice easily without even needing 1to1 help and just following instructions in a book or on a video for instance. It’s something I teach and there a lot of other people too. Look up submodalities, try hypnosis, NLP, to name a few.

Diet and body are just one part of the puzzle, however, nobody could start or stay on a keto diet without the mindset and will to do it. It’s the same for all diets, exercise and habits that we maintain on a daily basis. Mindset first, habit second. Maybe you just need to change how you think about food and feeling hungry?

(Rebecca Levy) #29

First of all when you were fasting, were you making sure you were “feasting” during the times you were eating? If you restrict when you do eat it will definitely drop your metabolism.
Also, have you been to a doctor? You need to get checked out and make sure something more serious isn’t going on that’s suppressing the part of your brain that signals fullness.

(Joan) #30

Hi Cacahuete, I’m 5’6" and started out at 230 lbs over a year ago and am down to 190 so far. I understand the starving feeling after eating a turkey lol, I know I’m stuffed but that feeling of uncontrollable hunger is horrible. For me it’s too much protein and too many carbs that will do it. And not even for that one meal, it will be a week or so before that feeling goes away. I don’t seem to have a “full” feeling, just varying degrees of uncomfortable. I struggle with the advise to eat to satiety, when I’ve tried I’ll eat a whole turkey! I eat OMAD, and only have a 2 hour window, that way I don’t go crazy with a bite here or a bite there. Question tho, are you sure you’re body wants to be at 125/130 lbs?

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #31

Either that, or it just feels longer, lol! :grin:

(James Gough) #32

:smiley: nice one.

(Karim Wassef) #33

Multiday fasting is 2-3 days of continuous fasting or longer.

Our bodies are remarkably good at remembering our behavior and will actually trigger detectable and undetectable events to make sure it gives us what we “tell it” we need.

For example, I had a pattern of fasting Wed-Thurs-Fri every week… then I switched it and decided to fast Mon-Tue-Wed instead. For those three fasting days, my glucose was much lower and my ketones were also lower than usual. This was because I was fasting when it was expecting food. Then when I ate while it thought I’d be fasting, my glucose and ketones went much higher. The ketones were high because it expected me to fast and my glucose was high because the food spiked it when it wasn’t prepared.

This isn’t just about eating. This Saturday, I did some intense lifting (usually I reserve the weekends for rest) and that exercise dropped my ketones from 0.7 to 0.1 … I consumed ketones faster than my body was prepared to deliver new. My glucose likewise dropped. Then on Sunday, at the same time as my exercise the previous day, my ketones skyrocketed for no reason at all. They went from 0.7 to 1.7! I was literally sitting down watching videos and my body “remembered” that this is when I tasked it to lift the day before and was “prepping”… not wanting to be caught unprepared…

That’s been my experience. We have amazing bodies and they are trying to keep us alive and healthy. Even the hunger signals are an attempt to communicate what it thinks we need based on a massive library of events we’ve experienced.

I’m an old timer now and a geek but I used to love the “knight rider” show with the smart car “kit” working with the star Michael (Hasselhoff) to solve crimes. It didn’t just obey. It tried to help by predicting, analyzing, remembering and even arguing with the human who was “in control”. They were real partners and better because of it.

I know I sound like I’m in conflict with my body but I’m really not. It’s a partnership but my body can’t speak to me directly. It’s like a super-smart amazing machine and friend who watches everything I do and is tasked with keeping me healthy and alive. I behaved badly for decades and it remembers. Now I try to listen to it more and understand its motivations better.

I call it “lazy” or “greedy” sometimes because it wants to eat and rest. But I taught it that that’s what I want. It’s working to economize energy usage because that’s what it was programmed to do and it’s what I reinforced for decades. Now, we’re reprogramming the source code to want different things and it’s working… slowly.

My predicted resting metabolic rate (RMR) is 1700 cal/day based on age/height/weight but my measured is 2700 cal/day. That difference is because my body knows that I want to use that energy and I want to use it now. It knows that I will ignore hunger signaling and that I take it as a signal to go for a walk, so now I get hunger signals coinciding with higher ketones …

Mind-body communication is a new frontier for me, but I’m liking my new discovered friend. :smiley:

(Windmill Tilter) #34

Holy cow!!!

Is that measurement from the Resting Metabolic Rate test you were going to do at DexaFit? They’ve got the good equipment so their tests are probably pretty darn accurate. Was the RMR 2700 or was it the TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) that was 2700? If it was the RMR, that’s absolutely off the charts!

:+1::+1::+1::+1::+1:

(Karim Wassef) #35

Predicted RMR 1730
Measured RMR 2363
TDEE Sedentary 2599
TDEE Lightly Active 2836
TDEE Moderately Active 3190
TDEE Very Active 3426
TDEE Extremely Active 4017

Of course, I was eating 6000cal keto which is very hard to do.

Karim's Extended Fast Tracker - come along for the ride
(Windmill Tilter) #36

This may sound kind of dumb; it might even be dumb. The thing that comes to mind would be to eat the exact same thing every single day for a little while. There is something called an “egg fast”, which is kind of dumb name, because basically the purpose of it is to eat nothing but eggs, and a bit of cheese for several days. (It should be called an “egg feast” I suppose). It’s usually done as a “reset” to break a stall. Many folks swear by it, although one complaint is that it makes them very sick of eggs. It’s really hard to eat too many eggs. I mean really, really hard. Even if you eat 24 of the little buggers it’s only about 1,440kcals. I could eat 2000kcal of heavy cream in a single serving, but on my best day I couldn’t eat a dozen eggs. I don’t know why that is.

If you think I’m kidding, do a search for “egg fast” in the search bar above. There are dozens and dozens of posts. It wouldn’t cost much to try, and it might be helpful given your situation. That’s the best idea I can think of. It might be worth a shot.

(Tim) #37

Alright @Cacahuete I broke my self-imposed exile to come here and answer this. I saw it in the summary e-mail a couple days ago and thought I could help. Sorry it took a couple days.

Over the last two years I’ve had quite the extensive set of experiences with fasting, probably more so than most on this forum. And, while some posts in this thread are headed in the right direction, I haven’t seen what I would consider a wholistic solution yet based on my experiences – so I thought I’d chime in, and hopefully it helps.

But before that, here’s what I could pull out for a timeline and details from your posts in the thread.

Timeline for Cacahuete - XX y/o Female - SW 210 lbs - CW 150 lbs - GW 130 lbs

  • XXXXXX XXXX - Age XX - XXX lbs XXXX kcal/day – Lowest Weight Best Shape version of you pre-weight gain, and your age.
  • XXXXXX XXXX - Age XX - 210 lbs XXXX kcal/day – Highest Weight Worst version of you post weight gain, and your age.
  • XXXXXX XXXX - Age XX - XXX lbs XXXX kcal/day – Phase 1 – XXXXXX
  • XXXXXX XXXX - Age XX - XXX lbs XXXX kcal/day – Phase 2 – XXXXXX
  • XXXXXX XXXX - Age XX - XXX lbs XXXX kcal/day – Phase N – XXXXXX
  • August 2017 - Age XX - XXX lbs XXXX kcal/day – Start Keto
  • XXXXXX 201X - Age XX - XXX lbs XXXX kcal/day – Continue Keto + Start ADF
  • October 2018 - Age XX - 125 lbs XXXX kcal/day – Continue Keto + Start OMAD - (Stop ADF)
  • XXXXXX 201X - Age XX - 130 lbs XXXX kcal/day – Continue Keto + Start 2MAD - (Stop OMAD)
  • March 2019 - Age XX - 150 lbs XXXX kcal/day – Continue Keto + Continue 2MAD + Post on Ketogenic Forums

Also, for each time period, please include the following;

  • Medication
  • Supplements - If Any - Note differences between fasting and feeding days if there were any. (eg. Electrolytes)
  • Significant Exercise Patterns
  • Description of your Diet
  • Approximate Daily Caloric Intake (On days you’re eating only - Example - For the ADF section, don’t average out caloric intake across days, just put what you would eat on your eating days while doing ADF)

If you could complete that table to the best of your recollection, it would help me come to a clearer understanding of your situation. The Phase 1, Phase 2, etc. sections are for major lifestyle changes prior to you starting keto – think diets or exercise programs you tried pre-keto. List everything major in your diet/exercise/lifestyle that stuck around for more than 2 months, and add enough Phases to cover the time periods when they started/ended. Broad descriptions of diet – ‘Keto’ ‘Vegan’ ‘Standard American Diet’ ‘Lots of Carbs’ – are fine, but try to get as close as your recollections allow on the kcal count, or just put ‘Lots’ if it was an eat everything in sight portion of your life.

That’s all I’ve got for now, hope the writeup was detailed enough to get the information I’m looking for filled in, but feel free to ask any questions if something wasn’t clear.

Once I see your responses, I’ll lay out what I think is going on based on my experience. I don’t think your responses will massively alter what I’m going to say, but I figured it’s better to get the best information I can from you before I make any false or incorrect assumptions.

#38

@Cacahuete I’m wondering if your issue isn’t something more along these lines. That your RMR has changed and that instead of the “2 eggs in butter” as normal, that you really do need to be eating more. So many of us, women especially, are programmed to think that 1500 calories/day is “normal,” because we spent so many years screwing up our metabolisms on low calorie diets. Maybe all you’ve done is unf*cked your metabolism and getting to actually eat is the new normal?

(Karen) #39

1500 might be correct for a female that is sedentary. I’ve used lots of calculators and it’s a number that shows up for me.

(The amazing autoimmune 🦄) #40

To me the biggest problem with the idea of a total calorie suggested intake is that all of those recommendations are based on a CICO diet. That may not hold true for someone who is Keto.

I don’t count calories, and maybe the best choice is to not do so. The OP should be eating at minimum a meal a day where she feels full, unless fasting.

I would however echo the idea that maybe your body doesn’t view 130 as the weight it wants to be at. Many times bodies like to have the extra ten pounds for emergencies.

(Rebecca Levy) #41

That’s very I interesting!

(Empress of the Unexpected) #42

I’m full at 1000 a day. Bacon. Two pork chops. Onion.

(PJ) #43

I have a question, not for @Cacahuete but for others here more familiar with this:

Would it help if she specifically worked on increasing her lean body mass with resistance exercise? A recent dude I was listening to (researcher) about ‘adaptive’ metabolism was saying the body gears (everything, including hunger) toward weight regain after we have lost lean body mass, and it seems to last ‘until’ such time as as the lean mass is regained. Lots of questions still, I am sure, about the details there, including ‘what’ lean mass (since some NEEDS to be lost with fat - it’s related to it - while LBM for muscles and organs is something else).

So I just wonder, if she took up resistance training and attempted to increase lean mass some, if she were able to do that, might it cause her body to reduce the hunger signals?