OK guys, let me give you an example of a Holiday meal day you can have once you’ve been in long-term maintenance, are not metabolically deranged, and have a normal, balanced insulin-glucagon as well as leptin-ghrelin secretion patterns. My normal eating pattern is a fat based lipolytic one, following the same 60/35/5% paleo pattern I used to lose my fat with, except now I have both the occasional days I eat a few carbs on, as well as frequent ZC days as well. Since I’m back in a heavy training cycle, if I feel I need the occasional full glycogen recompensation day or so I do that as well.
I stopped eating around Noon on Christmas Eve, but still made it to the gym in the afternoon to get in a heavy leg workout as well as some cardio. No eating afterwards.
My sons and I got to Mom’s about Noon on Christmas. Most of my family eats lipolytically, but holidays are the exception. Starting with a Kir Royale, we dove into the appetizers. I sampled everything, concentrating on the sweets, but mainly avoiding things made from grains in order to limit bloat. Corn based chips don’t affect me much, so they are what I used for the shrimp and cheese ball and the artichoke dip. There were lot’s of other goodies there like nuts, guacamole, candies, etc. I sampled them all, but made sure I had plenty of room left for the meal.
We ate the meal at 2:00 pm. The main course was a rib eye roast, cooked rare. I made a rich bearnaise sauce for it, a full dozen eggs to one pound of butter. We also had asparagus and a Caesar salad, but there were also Yorkshire puddings and Mediterrainian redskin potatoes made with garlic, herbs, and plenty of bacon and butter. I ate it all, including two slabs of beef smothered with bearnaise sauce. I saved the YP for last, filled up with rich brown beef gravy, which caused me a little minor bloating. For dessert, coffee and a small piece of both pecan as well as buleberry pies, along with a scoop of ice cream.
Later, about 7:00 pm, I had another slab of beef covered with bearnaise sauce.
The next morning I hit the gym for an upper body workout and some cardio. For the heck of it, I checked myself with ketostix right afterwards in the locker room.
The strip showed moderate ketone levels. It’s very possible I was never even kicked out of lipolysis.