Cheat or carb cycle?

(Marianne) #21

Thank you, however, my conversion to keto and clean eating was not difficult for me from day one, although before that I had a lifetime of failure trying to lose weight via conventional dieting. When I say I was/am addicted to food, it’s all of the “bad” food (really non-food, i.e., sweets, baked goods, cereal, fast food, junk food, pasta, fried food, pizza, Chinese - you get the idea). Those are the things I gave up, but I ate so well and was so satisfied right from the beginning with keto, that I was never hungry and would be completely satisfied after a meal, until my next one. Clean keto removed all of my cravings and compulsions to eat my former binge foods. I found I have complete control as long as I don’t take that first bite of any of those former things. If I were to do that, I’d likely want to indulge in many of my other previous favorites, plus the guilt and fear wouldn’t be worth it to me. I wouldn’t be able to predict when I would get back on the horse, and I’d be afraid that another binge was just around the corner.

I eat limited cheese now because I love it too much. I don’t purchase brick cheese anymore because it is too easy to just keep eating it. I confine our use to a few slices of “plastic” cheese here and there (like Kraft American). It melts so well, is delicious and I’ll use it when we make cheeseburgers or add a few slices to melt in soup whenever I make it.

The beauty of this way of eating is that everyone designs their own plan based on what they can and can’t do and that works for them. Best to you on your journey!

#22

Always cheat meal, never cheat day! Alcohol is a different beast than carbs, because it’s like glucose (pure) as in your body puts full effort to burn that crap as fast as possible, vs carbs that can spillover and store as fat much easier. Carbs will be burned for fuel before fat, but alcohol will burn before carbs.

I do a TKD/CKD hybrid, so I could care less whether I’m “in ketosis” or not, I know I am when I’m not eating the carbs around workouts and on my off days. I have all the benefits I had when eating strict keto for years, and all the benefits in the gym of eating carbs. My A1C is still better than the majority of people eating “normal”, so win win!

If I want to eat crap, I eat crap. All that’s gonna happen in the next day in the gym will be even better, and what’s left will burn it back off, not a huge deal. Keto is the way I prefer most of my meals to be, but it’s not my religion. I use carbs as a tool at the right times, and when it’s right, I eat good things like normal people do. As long as you’re doing the right things 90% of the time, you’re fine! Our bodies aren’t the fragile, even when we’re still overweight, even when our A1C’s aren’t great, we’re still not that damn fragile. Only thing I always try to stay away from is restaurant deserts! Those things are just dangerous!

I recently got a Ninja Creami Ice Cream maker, WAY better than my churn style one (which was a good one too) so now I always have Ice Cream on deck, the ones I make are around 350ish cals, 40g protein for the whole pint and taste AWESOME! My wife made a “normal” ice cream for her and my son, which I’m sure will be amazing… I ran the macros on it, almost 2k cals, tons of sugar (1/2 cup of it to be precise) which I got the chills when I watched that get mixed in! That’s like me eating like garbage all day and skipping the gym for 3. NO THANKS! I’ll be normal, but that’s just destructive!

Fast answer, either cheat (meal), or carb cycle responsibly, and only if you’ll use the majority of them. If you’re gonna use them, there’s really no guilt.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #23

Also, alcohol, like fructose, has to be handled in the liver, so the calories don’t trigger the usual changes in appetite hormones. The result is that we end up overeating, because (a) the alcohol calories don’t register, and (b) the loosening of inhibitions alcohol causes distort our judgement.

(C) #24

Janie beat me to it, :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:. I was going to say that hard liquor is zero carbs. One thing I would say with that is that many people require significantly less alcohol to become intoxicated when they are in ketosis. I would recommend going easy…

(Luke) #25

Thanks for the heads up​:+1:t2: I’ve only celebrated with alcohol a couple of times since starting keto , and don’t feel that great a couple of drinks in. Way different to when I wasn’t keto , and total opposite. I don’t get that tipsy feeling that makes you go for another drink , I seem to stay flat and it just feels like my stomach bloats. :joy: probably a good thing. I will keep this in mind though in case it changes. Can’t be the first one on the DF. :wink:

(Alec) #26

Been 13 months carnivore with zero cheat days, zero carbs (apart from the occasional small quantity of condiment), and zero desire to eat any plants or any carbs.

#27

Yes! Last Saturday night with my lady friends and I had 4 drinks over the course of the evening- I was not in condition to drive home. Very embarrassing.

#28

It is certainly and interesting topic. If we are to believe that we ate a diet of nothing but meat or very little so-called other food then we should also subscribed to the feast or famine idea? I am not sure if it is a good or a bad thing that most Keto people once adapted are never hungry. At first I thought this was a good thing. Now I am not sure. It would suggest that the hungry hormone Ghrelin becomes dysfunctional.

#29

I would miss my hunger horribly, I actually do after some days. But it depends. How the person feels about it and if they still have some guidance when to eat (my “need to refuel” sign always works, even in my zero hunger times). I suppose it’s possible to eat according to plans but it doesn’t feel good, what if my body needs more or less? It should communicate it to me somehow.

(Megan) #30

Is this true tho? Maybe less hungry b/c there are no blood glucose crashes, and maybe being able to go longer in between meals before getting hungry again?

I don’t understand how these 2 things are connected. Why would eating very low or no carb make us lean towards the feast or famine idea?

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #31

I’d say, rather, that a diet of nothing but meat leads to the idea of feasting and fasting. Famine is signaled by restricted calorie intake, and the body responds very differently from how it responds when there is either an abundance of food (feast) or no food at all (fast). Dr. Jason Fung describes how this works in several lectures available on YouTube.

This is actually used against the ketogenic diet, and it is described as the “anorexia of ketosis.” Which is kind of a silly criticism coming from people who want us to eat less. However, if the reason we are not hungry is that our body has all the energy it needs (for now), then I fail to see a problem with that. The advantage of eating to satiety on a ketogenic diet is how many hours we can go between meals. And we will get hungry eventually, because our body doesn’t want us to starve.

Does it really suggest that, or does it suggest that ghrelin and leptin are now working together as they are supposed to?

When insulin is elevated, it blocks the brain receptors that register the leptin secreted by our fat tissue, to tell it that we don’t need to eat for a while. So the brain keeps on encouraging the secretion of ghrelin, because it thinks we still need food. When insulin drops to a healthier level, the brain can “see” the leptin again, so it shuts off ghrelin for a while. Eventually, our stored energy drops low enough that the adipose tissue stops secreting leptin, so ghrelin starts up again, and we get hungry. This is how things are supposed to work.

(Megan) #32

I still don’t get this, maybe because I neither feast nor fast. I do eat some dairy tho, not just meat. Heavy cream thruout the day in coffee, some cheese every few days, some yoghurt every few days.

(Luke) #33

Yes that is very interesting. I’m a newby so I was still getting hungry at the start but I can feel it fading. I had to feed myself one day I was just not hungry I wouldn’t have eaten all day if I didn’t make myself eat, it wasn’t the most enjoyable thing to do. I enjoy getting the hungry feeling it makes the whole food experience much more pleasurable.

#34

THIS! but we eat the same zc lifestyle.

regarding ‘cheat meals or booze with sugar mixes’ etc. from the original post I am in this lifestyle. I am zero carb/carnivore so there is no cheats for me. I just don’t require them but I sure had them on every single other plan I ‘worked and failed’. Now this is me, I drink sometimes booze but I take a hard liquor shot OR I mix some rum in a very very very week solution of sugar free, like berry flavor’d punch crap but it makes me ‘feel like’ I got a fancy Hawaiian drink to sip :slight_smile: I drink way more rare times now older I do get! So for initial post, nah on cheats. I just walked this way and don’t do that stuff anymore, ya know my brain couldn’t take it HAHA So over cheats and what ifs, again, personal view on original post :slight_smile: 6 yrs carnivore. best way I ever lived!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #35

Then don’t worry about it. Prof. Ben Bikman has said that a ketogenic diet and fasting are very similar metabolically, because they put the body in a state of ketosis. It’s just that one does it with food, and the other does it in the absence of food.

#36

agree with Paul.
some can easily function SO well on ‘intentional forced no food fasts’ but others can easily let ‘our bodies’ tell us when to eat and when not. We know that on a zc lifestyle or even an extreme lc like Keto Plan we heal and change…so listen to what ya need. Our bodies tell us literally and if we do just that, we fall into WAY LESS crazy eating like our old lifestyles :slight_smile: We find true health thru our bodies and that shows us stability in blood sugar which on our foods are correcting our nutrient deficiencies and way more…so hang on for the ride and we get there as most can attest on this forum. So many of us ‘became whole new people’ and I love it!

#37

I can relate. But even if I don’t get hungry, if I haven’t eaten since long and start to eat, hunger typically finally arrives after the first few bites (or at least appetite does) so no problem :slight_smile:

So many people really lose hunger on keto? Wow. I surely never will and it’s great but I really dislike when I have huge hunger and/or need for food every hour in my eating window (only happened on carnivore with very easy satiation. but with the right items I think I can avoid it in the future)… I have various phases. Sometimes no hunger for a week, sometimes I am a bottomless pit… Usually in-between and that’s what I like.

#38

Not sure. Leptin doesn’t affect your hunger levels and food intake from meal to meal but rather acts to alter food intake and control energy expenditure over a longer period of time to help maintain your normal weight. Leptin has a more profound effect when you lose weight. As your body fat (adipose tissue) decreases, your leptin levels decrease, which signals your body to think that it’s starving. This stimulates intense hunger and appetite and can lead to increased food consumption. Still, a lot is not known about the actual processes but scientists believe that leptin mainly acts on your brainstem and hypothalamus affecting your metabolism, endocrine system regulation and immune function.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #39

That’s interesting, because the researchers I follow all say that leptin is the primary satiety hormone. Live and learn, huh?

And the rest of what you say makes sense, but I had the impression it was part of our hunger and eating cycle over 24 hours, not about longer-term issues. We are supposed to take on a certain amount of energy, store it in adipose, the adipose is supposed to secrete leptin to signal the brain it’s okay to stop eating for a while. Then as insulin drops and the energy we just stored is released during the period between meals, leptin drops, too, and eventually the brain stimulates ghrelin to make us ready to eat again. And then the cycle repeats. Or so I’ve been told.

Stephen Phinney, Robert Lustig, and Gary Taubes all talk about leptin and how elevated insulin from a high-carb diet blocks the receptors in the ventromedial hypothalamus. Not to mention the effect of lesions to the ventromedial hypothalamus that remove the brain’s ability to sense leptin and the effect that has on people’s fat stores. The picture you paint is quite different from theirs.

#40

Paul, They may be right. Below are some of the more recently published scientific papers, where I got the above information.