I’ve been doing the keto diet for five months now and I lost 40 pounds. I’d tried it last summer and lost about 15 pounds but I quit when I got my blood work checked any my LDL and total cholesterol had gone up by about 30% from the healthy range and into the unhealthy range. Naturally, I gained most of the weight back in about 4 months. I read up on the keto diet and cholesterol and decided to try again but modify the diet in an effort to mitigate the cholesterol issues. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. I’ve had my blood work checked twice while on this diet and the LDL and total cholesterol keep going up. It’s now well into DANGER territory so I’m going to have to find a new solution. It’s frustrating as this had been working well for me although I had plateaued and not lost any weight for about a month. I felt good on the diet and, after a few rough weeks adjusting to the requirements (planning meals, not going out to eat, spending a lot more on food), I found it easy to follow.
I’ve done a lot of reading on the diet and learned of the hyper-responders subset and the link to the e4 variant of the APOE gene. I checked my 23 and Me data and discovered that I do have the e4 variant as one of my alleles (I’m e3/e4). Bad luck there.
There’s a lot of “info” on the web saying not to worry about LDL cholesterol as it’s the size of the LDL particles that matter more than the levels but much of this seems to be written by advocates of the diet who simply want to believe it 's healthy rather than on empirical data. I would like to get a more detailed set of tests done to determine my risk factors. I’ve asked about getting an NMR test, a CIMT scan, or even a more detailed analysis of my LDL-C nad LDL-P levels done but I live in Canada and my public health drone of a doctor just says no and refuses to sign off on these tests. There are a few private clinics available for CIMT (can’t find one locally for NMR) but they require a referral and I haven’t been able to get one.
Sucks that I have to get off this and I’m not sure what to try instead. My doctor wants me to go on a 15% protein / 85% complex carb/low sugar diet. Basically a slab of fish or fowl with a massive amount of greens. I’ll give it a try but I know that amount of roughage will play havoc with my guts and I likely won’t be able to stick with it long term.
Any suggestions?