Are all carbs born and digested equal? Or: Getting Away With Being Italian

#1

Hello again,

I would like to have some guidance as to what little “leeway” one might have with a diet that tries to contain some typical element of Italian food, meaning pasta, bread, and rice, without getting out of ketosis.

I keep reading around that 50g of carb a day should be (low) enough to stay in keto, but I translate that to around 80g of a plate of pasta, which seems the contrary of keto to me. Same goes for bread. I must be thinking the wrong way here. I wonder (all the time) what effects butter or oil on the pasta or on the sauce might have on this.

So, I wonder if carbs have a different effect according to their origin and their way of digestion? Is one gram of carb from an innocent (whole food, natural, coming straight from nature) broccoli or cauliflower the same (as far as kicking me out of ketosis is concerned) as one gram of carb from what is still a refined food, like whole wheat pasta or rice? And does the way of absorption, and the risk of getting kicked out of ketosis, change if the same amount of carb is eaten with abundant fat to decrease the insulin response?

Second question: how damaging is your typical 200 or 250ml glass of red wine in the evening?

Background: nowadays, I have no issues at all skipping breakfast and lunch (and all snacks in between), and going zero calories (zero means not even some cream in the coffee) until dinner. But when dinner time comes, I would love to know if I can have it in a way that resounds with my culture: a glass of red wine in front of me and, perhaps once or twice a week, 70 or 80gr of pasta (perhaps with a lot of butter to flatten the insuline curve?) without getting kicked out of ketosis?

I am 174cm (I think it’s 5’ 8") tall, and weigh 72 to 73 kg (I’ll call it 160 pounds).

Many thanks for your kind answers.

#2

It’s individual how much carbs you can eat and stay in ketosis. 50g is too high for many (most?) people, hence the popular 20g limit for keto but some may get away with significantly more. Exercise matters. If you have muscles eagerly waiting to replenish their glycogen stores, that’s probably the best time to eat more carbs. But in the end, I doubt anyone can tell what would happen in your case, you may try and figure it out.

A plate of pasta seems way too carby for keto if you ask me.
Thankfully pasta was the easiest to replace for me but I am an egg maniac and a Hungarian. A nice Hungarian stew fits keto very well and I can eat it without the dumplings.

(Ohio ) #3

All carbs are different. Everyone’s body chemistry is different. Too many variables here. I’d read up on the relationship between prebiotic fiber and probiotics for a deeper understanding of what’s going on.

Then you might ditch the booze once you start realizing what that does to your microbiome and the ability to process carbs.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #4

Okay, here’s the biology of it: All carbohydrates are composed of glucose molecules bonded together in various ways. Some of those bonds make the carbohydrate indigestible; we call those carbohydrates “fibre.” The digestible carbohydrates are dissolved in the digestive system into their constituent glucose molecules, which then enter the blood stream.

Since too much glucose in the blood is dangerous and possibly even fatal, the pancreas mobilises to produce insulin to force that extra glucose out of the blood. The rise in insulin switches the metabolism from fat-burning to sugar-burning (so as to help get rid of the extra glucose), and it causes the glucose that the muscles can’t burn to be saved in our adipose tissue as fat.

Insulin is necessary to life, but too much insulin is damaging to the body. Hyperinsulinaemia, also known as insulin-resistance, is the cause of the chronic diseases that plague our society. Ralph De Fronzo and his team have determined that the threshold is 25 μU/mL. More insulin than that, and we are in sugar-burning, fat-storing mode. Below that level we are in fat-burning mode (ketosis).

If you are very insulin sensitive, you can eat more carbohydrate without raising your insulin above the threshold. A limit of 20 g/day of carbohydrate works well with most people to keep their insulin low enough, but some people are so insulin-resistant that they can’t even eat that little carbohydrate and still stay in ketosis.

Anyway that’s what’s going on biologically, how you deal with mamma’s special pasta dish, that she made just for you, is a real problem, but one I don’t know how to help you with. However, I can tell you that you are entitled to do what you need to do for your own health, despite the reactions of your loved ones. Is their any way you can stick to the antipasto and the meat dish, and stay away from the tiramisu?

Since they are all glucose, they are all digested the same way, except for the fibre. Fibre can slow down the rate at which the glucose enters the body. The keto carbohydrates we recommend tend to be lower in digestible carbohydrate, and higher in fibre. This is why we advise against sugar, starches, and grains, and encourage the eating of leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables. If it’s green and grows above ground, it’s probably okay to eat and still stay in keto.

How much carbohydrate is in that wine? The alcohol is safe (though too much causes fatty liver disease), but sweet wines have a lot of carbohydrate. Dry wines have less, and hard liquor tends to have even less. Beer is liquid bread, in terms of it’s carb content. Dr. Unwin says that Champagne is pretty safe to drink on keto. The caveat, however, is that people on keto find that they are much more sensitive to the effects of alcohol and have to strictly limit how much they drink.

That’s not very fat. My ex was 5’7"/170 cm and looked his best at 154 lbs./70 kg. However, even at normal weight, a keto diet can help with body recomposition. After my main fat loss (80 lbs./36 kg), I found that over the next twelve months I continued to lose inches, even though my weight remained stable. So obviously my muscles and bone were gaining mass, even while my fat mass was still declining.

(Geoffrey) #5

It’s definitely a dilemma.
A friend is taking my wife out to lunch for her birthday today. Of course I’ve been invited but it’s to an Italian restaurant. I went online and looked over their menu and the only thing on there that I might be willing to eat would be their meatballs but I can’t guarantee that they wouldn’t have some kind of breadcrumbs in it as a filler or binder ingredient. So I’m choosing to not attend.

#6

Thanks again to all and, once again, in particular thanks to PaulL, who is a real beacon of knowledge!

I had to laugh when I read about the home made “mamma pasta”. I am 57 and live in England on my own! Exactly because I live abroad (alas, not because of a real choice, as I left in search of opportunities like millions before me) I am extremely attached to what, to me, represents the Old Country, and Italian food is a great part of it.

To you, pasta is a dish. To me, the garlic sizzling in the pan, or the boiling water in the pot, is childhood, beloved people who are not here anymore, and a lot of emotions beside.

I chose a different route than Geezy56, as my social life here in Blighty is a lot to do with Italians and, unavoidably, carbs. I think I will settle on 5 days of brutal keto during the week and 2 days of moderate carbs, without missing on social occasions, on the weekend.

But I still have the curiosity to know whether those 80 grams of pasta that I will cook for lunch on Saturday will have exactly the same negative effect on keto whether I eat them with a lot of fat (say: very abundant quantity of olive oil) or not (not sure I can read an answer to that in PaulL’s answer).

Thanks to all again!

(KM) #7

The pasta might cause slightly less of an insulin spike if eaten with fat, but I think the effect on ketogenesis will be pretty much the same; pasta is quick to digest, period.

And yes, it’s very hard to reconcile traditions filled with love and caring and nostalgia, with the idea of it being unhealthy for us, whether that’s strudel, naan, ramen, homemade bread or spaghetti.

We all come to some agreement with ourselves about that, based on our priorities and our personal response to the foods. Here’s to hoping your N=1 experiment with pasta and wine leads to a good result!

#8

It may work for you. Many people seem to need continuous keto as carbs make them unwell or led them astray for a long time… I did on/off keto myself. My off days were typically low-carb. It turned out even my keto was too carby but at that point is was the best I could do. We should figure out what is the best deal for us, what we actually can do…
I noticed that I personally handle starches WAY better than sugars. Not even homemade sugary things are the absolute worst. So I avoid them.

:slight_smile: I wonder what that means to you but it’s in the eye of the beholder :smiley: Or you just use the word for “strict” or whatever…
I went low-carb many years ago and my attitude changed sooo drastically… People can change a lot! But I didn’t meet people in carby settings so often, that definitely helped.

#9

Ha! Brutal keto to me means 5 days a week with only the carbs I might find in broccoli, iceberg salad, rucola, or cavolo nero. No pasta, pizza or bread. No potatoes or beans. Not even lentils.

I seem to understand that, likely thanks to my fasting habits, I can enter a moderate ketosis fairly quickly. I appear (keto breath reader) to have woken up clearly in ketosis this morning, and that I have remained in that state (with a slight decrease after lunch) all day. I work from home today and my lunch was sautee mushrooms in a butter and mascarpone cream, topped by delicious crispy bacon. It was so good I’ll do it again for dinner. From tomorrow to Friday it will be OMAD (can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am I do not have to eat crappy sandwiches at work), with the “brutal keto” as described above.
Still, it needs to be sustainable and, to me, without carbs on the weekend it’s just not sustainable. But again I am confident I can spend a lot of keto time during the week, which then will cause my body to switch to keto increasingly more easily as the months go by.

#10

Thanks Kib!
I think I will feel encouraged to cook extremely buttery risottos on the weekend so I can get on ketosis earlier on the Monday :wink:

(Jane) #11

A 250 ml of dry red wine line a Cabernet is 6 carbs, so not too bad if you are eating OMAD.

For me - not all cards are equal as I discovered wearing a continuous glucose monitor. Rice spiked my glucose the highest - over twice as high as mashed potatoes.

My husband’s chicken and dumpling recipe wasn’t too bad. His dumplings are flat and I ate mostly chicken, broth and only a couple of dumplings, but was a nice treat. And we have it a couple of times a year, not weekly. I didn’t test pasta.

#12

To me, strict is when almost all my carbs come from eggs and liver.
But I like dairy too much. My carnivore days tend to be pretty carby sometimes… But it’s fine.
It’s not brutal though :wink: Especially not with more relaxed weekends as I do in October. But I remember when 40g net carbs was a bit too restrictive… I did a 10g carb day and I never thought about 40g net carbs the same again…
I had many, many years to get used to less and less carbs on average. But no potatoes, legumes, grains, added sugars was the very first step, it’s normal not to have them on low-carb. Some keep a tiny amount of some of these, even I had such days but exceptionally. And that was 80g net carbs, I still barely had any for these super high-carb items. Maybe in soups. Some green peas made wonders there. Dry legumes were just too carby.

But I did vegetarian keto. I couldn’t get my nutrients and satisfaction without “a lot of” carbs. It’s very different from my mostly carnivore days when I have plenty of carbs left so I can spend it on a single tiny very carby item if I want and it’s still keto… I don’t often do that but it’s so very different from the times when I had no allowance for extras at all. Maybe 1-3 grams for fruit…

Oh I forgot to write about fat adaptation! You are a newbie. I have read many times that going off doesn’t reset anything, just slows the process down but I still would try to be stricter even on weekends to get fat adapted as quickly as comfortably possible. It may be just my instinct, maybe it will happen just fine anyway, hopefully some knowledgeable one will comment on it but it was so important for me that I actually did keto for 7 weeks the first time. Never went near that length but somehow I knew I wanted fat adaptation (and didn’t know if quitting messed with it at that time). It wasn’t even hard, I just happily quit when I “could” and enjoyed the honeymoon phase of fat adaptation. At least I had those, it must be individual.
But if your weekends are so precious and anyway, they can’t keep you from getting fat adapted…
They may have some other benefits of sticking to keto for longer, maybe the weekends keep something alive that would be better to get rid of…? But maybe not, these are quite individual, I am just thinking about various things here. And sometimes a longer time helps. Just saying, it’s your life and you feel what you can and willing to do. I always feel I should try longer times, I just fail and it’s often in my looser weekends… But 5 days are long enough for me to get all the benefits I notice, I may lose a few days if my weekend is too wild though. Hopefully you don’t have the unfortunate attitude some of us have that if you already went off, let’s use the chance and eat various carby items… Mine mellowed out but I still have it to some extent and it’s wrong.
Some people do say that they just lose too many good days with non-keto weekends. I can do it better and you need to decide for yourself what floats your boat. Good luck and enjoy your keto and non-keto days alike!

(Bob M) #13

Also, food order will help with blood sugar and insulin (not sure about ketones though). If you eat meat and/or vegetables first, and carbs last, that’s the best idea.

I’ve been able to have non-zero Keto Mojo ketone readings while eating 100g carbs per my first meal. After body weight training for 50 minutes to 90 minutes, 100g carbs was like I didn’t eat any carbs in terms of feeling well. I used rice noodles for these tests.

However, eating the same amount of carbs on the very next day, with no exercise, I felt worse. Hungrier, tired, etc.

Some people think eating carbs before bed is “good”, as it supposedly makes you sleep better. I’m not sure that’s true, but I have heard this argued.

#14

Hi ctviggen,
what an interesting thing to say and it’s the first time I hear this. Do you have any source so I can better understand what is behind this? Still, normally my idea of a creamy risotto is that I eat the risotto, and that’s that. No before and no after. I tend to eat moderately even when I eat badly :wink:

#15

Thanks Shinita!
I don’t know how far adapted I am, but I think I am at a better level than a “newbie” due to my habit of intermittent fasting. In fact, I am pretty sure my insuline level is much better than what it was years ago (digestion has become faster, and weight has gone slightly down) as I have started to reduce the carbs and increase the proteins and fats. However, I was never very consequent, both because I love carbs and because I was not really bent on a keto diet. I just knew that less carbs is better for me.
2024 is where I will be more consequent, and follow a plan which will, hopefully, become a habit. But I will still need the Italian stuff on the weekend.
I suspect (you tell me if I am wrong) that fat adaptation can be driven through fasting, and I am better at fasting during the week than at staying away from carbs during the weekend. If needs be, I think my way would be to increase the fasting time during the weeks (e.g. a 36 hours fasting between Thursday evening and Saturday morning), something I would love to be able of doing without the horrible headaches I have experienced up to now.
But we shall see how it goes. At dinner I got one glass of wine and one whisky (just to push it a bit), otherwise sausages, bacon and mushroom with mascarpone cheese and butter. If I am still in ketosis tomorrow morning I think I am golden.

Thanks Janie, this is very good information and very reassuring as, as you say, very comfortable on OMAD days.

(KM) #16

I have heard of a hack but I have no idea if it’s just nonsense or not, so try at your own risk. Supposedly drinking about 2t of vinegar in water with or 10-20 minutes before a high carb meal flattens the glucose spike somewhat.

Vinegar and diabetes

#17

Hi Kib, I drink apple cider vinegar with tepid water and some lemon almost every day (I started it for the health of the gut). When taken after the meal it seems to help my digestion, when taken before the meal it seems to reduce appetite, which would be another “hack” whatever the effect on the insuline level.

Another “hack” I use with pasta (but you need high quality one) is to cook it one minute less than I normally would, have it cool under cold water when I drain it, and then immediately put it on the pan to finish the cooking for 2.5/3 minutes as it mixes with the sauce. It is said to transform some of the carbs in starches, reducing the amount of carbs that is effectively absorbed by some 30%. Again, you need high quality pasta or you’ll ruin the entire thing. It would not prevent being kicked out of ketosis, but it would limit the damage (or so they say)…

#18

As far as I know, fat adaptation happens due to ketosis due to low enough carbs. Intermittent fasting with low-carb (but not keto) definitely never make me fat adapted… I don’t know if it makes fat adaptation quicker on keto, I would think it’s still mostly about your carb intake… :thinking:
I just don’t know and never cared, it was easy to get fat adaptation through keto and it’s hard to lose it, at least it was my own experience (I already was very fine with low-carb before keto, since several years so I mostly did low-carb when I quit keto. but a single high-carb day didn’t undo it either).

I am looking forward to read about your experiences, keep us informed :wink:

#19

I prefer to think of PaulL as more a bacon of knowledge.

#20

I’ve been trying to enjoy a little more Italian food now that I’m two years in and have my weight and metabolism more or less under control, monitoring carefully to see that I don’t spike glucose, gain weight, or get totally out of ketosis. One strategy has been to sacrifice bread completely in favor of the things I really love. I regret all the restaurant bread baskets I’ve picked away at on automatic pilot. A second is to have three courses and make the pasta course small. As an American my natural instinct is to make an entire meal of a huge plate of spaghetti, but it isn’t hard to have a salad or antipasto and a meat or fish course that are almost carb free, sandwiched around a modest dish of pasta or gnocchi or risotto.