Carb-filled cheat day

[Msims]

That’s funny, because I’ve always heard that coffee lowers risk.

[keehan]

I think the honest truth is that no one really knows! Some people get them, some never do…

[Marshelle]

As a side note, I was in a three-day all-you-can eat situation through Sunday morning. And I ate way more than I normally eat (more times during the day, and more food each time) although I kept it almost entirely keto. I was afraid to weigh myself for two days after I got home (because, you know, “cheating”).

Sigh😔

#malegenes

[Daisy]

Agreed. I am not a fan of these shaming type words - cheating, lazy keto, blah, blah. Whatever choice you make is your own and has consequences which vary depending on what you ate. If people were less keen to make judgey comments those that were being judged might just feel a bit better about themselves and get to a place where they made choices that had better consequences.

Can’t say I’ve been dealing with them super-well, but a hell of a lot better than I would have been if I weren’t feeling, physically, so much better than this time last year. I need to stay keto at this point, quite aside from any metabolic / weight issues, just to keep up with the stuff life is throwing at me.

Agreed. Again! It may not always seem like it because old habits have us reaching for what we think of as ‘comfort’ food. The sad fact is though that they will not give us that comfort that is so sorely needed. It takes a while to realise this and probably necessitates going through some rough patches on keto to see the difference but there are far more productive ways to find comfort.

[kbeyersdorf]

We recently took a two week trip from San Francisco down to Santa Barbara with many stops in between . I really have no desire to not have clam chowder Or dive into some famous ice cream joints have a very famous cinnamon roll place in Pismo Beach… so for 12 days I ate like I was on vacation.

I didn’t really feel that crappy when I had an in and out burger w fries and when I returned home I had only gained 3 pounds. The best thing is it only took me four days to lose that 3 lbs +2 more.

I’m goimg on nothing but speculation and an provable opinion is to why I gained So few LBs ---- first thing is we probably walked 4 to 6 miles a day on the trip, then my son’s soccer coach told him to get a 1 mile run in every other day - which he did on the beach in the sand and I ran it with him finally we also swas a lot.

I don’t have any plans anytime soon to rain today is carbohydrates into my diet - but I was happy to see that The weight gain was minimal and getting back on board with the plan was very easy

[knopfler96]

I’ve been eating ketogenic for 8 months. At the 7 month mark my weight loss stalled, just short of my goal weight. I assumed my body had settled at a weight it was comfortable with and that my membership in the 100 lbs lost club would have to wait.

Around this time I was exposed to some stuff from Mark Sisson and Dr. Joe Mercola, who both discourage staying in ketosis for long periods of time. Time to experiment! I went to Five Guys with the family and enjoyed an excellent burger, fries and soda. Tasty!! I went right back to my standard keto WOE the next day.

Five days after my first carb up I hit a new low weight on the scale. So, naturally, I ate more carbs! This time was a Friday night to Saturday night carb binge. I’m talking pizza and beer here, not sweet potatoes and few berries. Same results as the first time. Up around 4 lbs on Monday morning and then back in ketosis and down 6 lbs by the end of the week. I never imagined that I would cross the 100 lbs threshold with Krispy Kreme in hand!

The next week I went on vacation. Perfect time for a carb up, right? So . . . I ate 200 – 300 grams of carbs every day that week. Needless to say, I was more than a little nervous to step back on the scale when I returned home. Holy Fat Bomb! I was up 10 lbs! No worries, I lost it all within 5 days.

I’ve been carb cycling like this for 5 weeks now. Heavy carbs from Friday night to Saturday night, then keto the rest of the week. I pickup 4-5 lbs of glycogen, then drop it. I’m not noticing any negative effects and I am enjoying the new found flexibility around food. This actually seems like something I could do the rest of my life.

For the metabolically healthy, does cycling between glucose and ketones provide any metabolic advantages?

[gabe]

You are an inspiration.

My experience is that a full-on cheat night leads to up to 2 kg weight gain over the following few days, but it drops away by the 7-day mark. It’s just the hydrophilic glycogen. Probably.

Tim Ferriss swears by cheat days/meals. I’m beginning to wonder if I should “cheat” more often – even though I feel no real need to eat sugar and carb-heavy stuff all that often.

[Madeleine]

Gabe, check out Robb Wolf’s thoughts on “cheating” if you have time (and if you’re seriously considering adding in cheat meals). He discussed it in many podcasts right after his last book came out, and it was in a way that I had never thought of before: basically that as humans (actually as primates!) we have a very strong negative association with the idea of cheating, that we associate it with taking unfair advantage of others. He explains it better than I do but the conclusion was: if you’re ok with the consequences of having something that’s off your plan, fine - but don’t sweat it or add any moralizing to it, and afterwards just get back on the wagon. Also in his (fairly extensive) experience as a personal trainer, planned regular cheats - or whatever you want to call them - just don’t work. He and Tim Ferriss are probably buddies and it would be fun to hear them hash this out!

[devhammer]

Glad it’s working for you… That likely means you have normal (or close to normal) insulin response.

It’s really important to note that for people with insulin resistance and/or T2DM, cheat days or carb ups are more likely to result in disaster.

[PrimalBrian]

It’s really important to note that for people with insulin resistance and/or T2DM and/or dysfunctional relationships with food, lack of self control, and a fatalistic spiraling attitude once the guilt-laden carb cyclone starts and doesn’t stop for several weeks, cheat days or carb ups are more likely to result in disaster.

Fixed.

[roxanna]

I was just thinking this. Cheat days do not work this way for me and the weight stays put.

[nalien2000]

Many call it cheating, I prefer the term relapsing.

[knopfler96]

I’m interested to see how the Ketogenic Forums and 2 Keto Dudes evolve. This community skews toward people interested in controlling type 2 diabetes and obesity. However, if 2 Keto LLC wants to create more content around keto they are going to have to bring more metabolically healthy people into the tent. For example, it seems like the new Keto Families show would want to talk a lot about how metabolically healthy people use keto as a tool to maintain their health.

[PrimalBrian]

I, too, have been wondering/thinking about this, too. Very good observation, @knopfler96.

[turbeville]

I agree. I thought part of the idea of the forums was to expand the audience to allow discussions from people eating for different reasons but it hasn’t seemed to go that way yet.

[Bellyman]

knopfler96, thanks for your post!

This is something I’ve wondered about myself and appreciate your real world experience.

When I started this thing, I think I was playing with insulin resistance but it hadn’t developed into T2D yet. I wanted to do something about it before it got out of hand.

I do remember of hearing a doctor type (I know, that term gets used loosely) suggesting that for people who are insulin sensitive enough, that it can be a good thing for people to move out of ketosis at least periodically just so the body can remain adapted to burning both ketones and glucose and that requiring the body to move back and forth between the two on a regular basis made it easier for our bodies to move back and forth. Whether they were full of it, I don’t know, but your post is kinda on subject.

I don’t eat enough carbs to knock me out very often but it seems like when I do, it’s very brief and not a big deal at all. But when I do, it’s only been a single meal, at least so far. Kinda makes me feel like my worrying over it has been a bit over-dramatized. Eat a few carbs now and then and enjoy, just get back on the keto wagon afterward and, as they like to say here, keto on.

Like mentioned above, though, for a full blown T2D, that would probably NOT be a good plan, though, I do wonder whether if they stay on a keto diet with good nutrition for long enough, whether they might get to that point eventually.? (Don’t know, but something else I wondered about.)

[OldDoug]

Bellyman, interesting stuff. On burning ketones or glucose, my gut feeling is that the body really does not have much of a struggle, there. While being fat-adapted may take some time, and indeed insulin resistance can be a huge hindrance, once we are burning fat, then I’ve never heard of there being any real trouble with ketones - a majority of the body’s cells are able to use ketones, and they apparently are more efficient at using them than glucose.

Even if eating no carbohydrates at all, we’ll make glucose for the cells which cannot run on ketones. This will be going on all the time while in ketosis, and it doesn’t make sense to me that switching the other cells back to glucose would be “hard” in some way - from an evolutionary standpoint, and given many of our personal histories of decade upon decade of running on carbohydrates. Just a guess on my part, and I’m just an old nut on the internet who likes talking about this stuff.

I don’t eat enough carbs to knock me out very often but it seems like when I do, it’s very brief and not a big deal at all. But when I do, it’s only been a single meal, at least so far. Kinda makes me feel like my worrying over it has been a bit over-dramatized. Eat a few carbs now and then and enjoy, just get back on the keto wagon afterward and, as they like to say here, keto on.

I agree - in the grand scheme of things it probably does not matter for most of us. That could be tempered by individual situations, and by the frequency of it - we are mostly talking about long-term, cumulative stuff here.

Like mentioned above, though, for a full blown T2D, that would probably NOT be a good plan, though, I do wonder whether if they stay on a keto diet with good nutrition for long enough, whether they might get to that point eventually.? (Don’t know, but something else I wondered about.)

For most people, yes, I say they can certainly get to that point, though how long it takes will vary among different individuals. I’ve had one A1C test in the Type 2 diabetic range - 7.3% last April, where 6.5% or above is considered diabetic. 4 months later, it was 5.7%, right at the bottom of the range that is said to be pre-diabetic. Keto and fasting has made the difference, and I am set on getting it a good bit lower.

I think “keep calm” is a good maxim, as getting all churned-up over random “cheating” is not worth it. However, and especially for those of us who are insulin resistant, and/or have high blood sugar, there’s a ton to be said for “keeping calm” and not giving in to the carb-eating urges.

@richard has made an excellent point, here - that during the time we spend over 6.1 mmol/l or 110 mg/dl blood glucose, we are killing off the insulin-making pancreatic cells faster than they can replace themselves. I think of one week, first being strict keto, hopefully below those numbers. So all week, we’re healing. Then during another week, we cheat a time or two, let’s say we end up with one day’s time above those blood sugar numbers. Now we’ve not only given up 1/7 of the healing, we’ve been doing harm during that time, quite a net swing to the bad.

[devhammer]

However, if 2 Keto LLC wants to create more content around keto they are going to have to bring more metabolically healthy people into the tent.

I’m struggling to see how my comment serves to keep anyone out of “the tent”.

I believe that what you’ll find at KF is that on certain topics, the moderators will step in and add context to ensure that discussions that might lead astray newbies and/or people who DO have metabolic derangement have the caveats that those folks truly need.

While there isn’t deliberate outreach to the high-protein or carb-cycling communities, I don’t see anyone saying that those ideas cannot be presented here. But to the extent that the ideas presented are contrary to good health, or potentially detrimental to some subset of ketoers, I think it’s reasonable to expect some pushback.

That does not mean that the ideas or those sharing them are unwelcome. Hope that clarifies things a bit.

[knopfler96]

I was just looking for somewhere to park my comment. All the admins are very respectful and encourage idea sharing across the spectrum. Thanks.

[sugardaddy]

I read Carb Nite and The author explains what to eat, high simple carbs, low or no protein or fat (think jelly donuts) It refills the glycogen stores and reset the hormones that trigger hunger and satiety. It breaks stalls etc.