Camping Experiment


(paddy0761) #1

Just returned from a 3 night camping trip with friends as part of Australia Day celebrations. It’s rough camping with no facilities. We all carry our own fridges, water etc. It’s Australia so alcohol is mandatory.

I packed carnivore for the 4 days plus quite a bit of red wine (4 bottles over 3 nights - Hey! it was a celebration).

All I took was roast chicken, boiled eggs, salami and cream cheese…and wine.

Consumed the most wine on the last night (1.75 bottles over 6+ hours). Yes. I was “maggoted.”

When I arrived home about 1:30PM today after having had roast chicken, a boiled egg and cream cheese at midday, my blood ketones were 2.1 and BG 5.3.

I realise ethanol is “burned” first as it is a toxin and must be dealt with as a metabolic emergency, but I was surprised BHOB was at 2.1 given that wine has a few carbs (particularly when consumed in that quantity), plus the ethanol intake should stall ketosis, shouldn’t it?

Here are my questions;
How long (sleeping) would it take to deal with the ethanol and the carbs from that 1.75 bottles (1.3 litres) of red wine over 6 hours? Must ketosis necessarily be stalled during this metabolic emergency? If BHOB is running around 2, how low is it likely to fall during this “emergency”. It doesn’t seem right that I can cut the wine off at 11:00PM and have BHOB of 2.1 at 1:30PM the next day having only eaten 90 minutes prior to that reading.

I’m not complaining. I think it’s great, but do others “recover” a ketotic state this quickly?


(Bart) #2

When I am fasting whether it be intermittent or longer I have found I can get away with something that should knock me out of ketosis, but doesn’t’. If I am eating a couple of meals a day the same thing would knock me out. That is at least what I have found about my body anyhow.

Also I have read that alcohol itself will not knock you out, and possibly increase ketones for a short time, the big problem with alcohol is your body stops burning fat while it is burning off the alcohol.

The carbs will be the thing that kicks you out.

This is what I have taken from all the reading I have done.


(John) #3

I drink about every day, stop for a week and don’t see any difference either way. You numbers could be high due to dehydration. When I did training for it, 20 years ago, they taught that you could process one drink (a beer, a shot, or glass of wine) per hour. I got to be the test dummy for this, drank a ton of Wild Turkey and did breathalyzers every hour, it held true for a 21 year old in great shape.