@Rian so well put! There are many reasons one would utilize the ketogenic diet beyond simply weight loss. Merely feeling healthier overall and reducing your dependence on food is one of the many benefits I use keto for as I don’t need to lose anymore weight.
Unfortunately the line you see throughout the ketogenic interwebs is “too much protein gets converted to glucose via gluconeogenesis” which is repeated constantly despite that being misguided and inaccurate. There’s a lot of misinformation on the internet that leads people astray.
Thanks to everyone for responding to this post and contributing to a useful discussion! <3
I watched the Live Stream of the entire conference at Low Carb Breckenridge, including Ben Bickman. I documented my reaction here:
Be sure to check out the pertinent copies of presentation slides I posted there.
I left two comments on Dr Bikman’s Low Carb Down Under YouTube video:
So eating an all meat (& fat) diet with NO plants reduces serum insulin to absolute minimums! (zero?) Now I know the mechanism that knocked my high volume metastatic prostate cancer into remission! Yes, the summer of chemo along with a ketogenic diet produced stable PET bone scans, but the sites did not go dark until I became a carnivore.
Well, I’m over 40, and my life is miserable if I try to restrict to less than about 1.8g/kg lbm. I’m just always hungry if i try. I’ve always been fairly insulin sensitive and physically active though. I’ll take my chances with mTOR since keto seems to take care of the purported inflammation,diabetes, and cancer risks from eating protein.
Organ meats are concentrated multi-vitamins with tremendous amounts of critical B vitamins such as B12, selenium, choline, zinc, omega-3 fatty acids, CoQ10 and carotenoid anti-oxidants. These are extremely valuable nutrients that modulate immunity, produce cellular energy and neutralize harmful compounds in the body. These regions also contain lot of valuable collagen, elastin and gelatin, which are extremely valuable for healthy joints, gut lining, connective tissue, skin and hair.
Organ meats are particularly rich in purines which are nitrogen rich DNA & RNA materials. These are some of the most valuable nutrients because they provide the raw materials for healthy genetic material. These meats also contain fat-soluble nutrient activators in vitamin A, D & K2. These nutrients help the body utilize minerals more effectively and play an important role in immune modulation. …More
I’ve read a lot about how hunter gatherers, eating lean prey, would preferentially eat the liver and brains and other organs of their prey, while leaving the muscle meat for their dogs.
I wonder, given the leanness of game animals and the bred intramuscular fat of domesticated animals, if it necessarily tracks that we should all be eating a lot more organ meats and a lot fewer ribeyes and pork bellies. I suspect that the muscle meats we are eating, if sourcing well, are actually pretty nutritious in a fat burning state. Perhaps, not as great as organs, but good enough for healthfulness, perhaps.
At this point, it seems to me that as long as one isn’t having kidney problems or otherwise struggling with excreting the byproducts of protein metabolism, then the satiety gained from more protein (if that is the case) is well worth it. This is assuming that one is really not eating many carbohydrates.
In reading about this stuff, I came across references to there being a maximum amount of protein that one can absorb, i.e. in time increments, so it matters how long the material is in that part of the small intestine. I take it that more than what can be absorbed will be excreted.
I saw one study that found that the increased muscle synthesis from eating protein was virtually the same between two groups of people, one which ate 30 grams of protein (113 grams of lean ground beef) and one which ate 90 grams of protein (340 grams).
Anyone interested in learning more about what Dr. Bikman is talking about should check out the most recent The Health Edge podcast. They do a great job shedding similar light on the subject of protein intake and the varying hormonal responses that ensue depending on the carb content of the diet. You can download the actual podcast or check out the YouTube video if you prefer it that way:
I’ve read this also, it’s always interested me. Assuming it’s true I’ve tossed around a few ideas but I’d be curious if there are definitive answers. Here are my thoughts:
offal was the easier option and probably took less work to remove, cook, and eat.
people who ate offal felt better than those who didn’t (ie benefitted from the improved nutrient profile)
offal tasted better. I used to live oversees and the beef where I lived was lousy. It was grassfed but the breed just tasted like crap. But the offal meat was delicious. So maybe thousands of years ago this was the case everywhere.
This is really a massive and surprising thing, in my opinion. His explanation of the varying Insulin:Glucagon ratios begins at 16 minutes in.
Insulin to Glucago ratios: (Lower is better.)
Fasted: 0.8
Low-Carb Diet = 1.3
On S.A.D. ('standard American diet) = 4.0
Change in ratios from the response to eating protein:
Fasted = 0.5 - it actually goes down.
Low-Carb Diet = 1.3 to 1.4 - almost no change at all. (He says it goes up 6%.)
S.A.D. = 70.0 - !! This is PROFOUND. Incredible difference.
The reason they ate it first is because leaving it in a carcass to take back to the rest of the group (elderly, women and children in most cases) the meat could get spoiled, much like modern day hunters do the same prep on a carcass before lagging it out of the forest. The organs would give them a quick boost of energy for carrying the meat back to the group.
One of the more interesting slides in his talk is included above. It shows that additional protein in a “fasted (euglycemia)” subject showed very little effect on insulin but a doubling of glucagon.
The graph shows the fasted blood sugar starting at 80 mg/deciliter.
Does anyone know if this has been replicated in subjects with blood sugars that don’t reach that low level? My morning FBG is 110, and while I see it lower than that, I’ve never seen it at 80 and rarely 90.
I’d like to know if extra protein is likely to not be problematic for me.
No way to measure insulin or glucagon would be the first issue. So given that, what do you measure for an N=1? Just weigh myself?
Background: For the last week, I’ve been trying to duplicate Carl’s success and I’m in that thread. I’m doing OMAD and increasing fat. The only measure I have is that weight seems to be moving, and that my breathalyzer ketone reading goes up if I have some extra fat, like a tablespoon of butter after dinner. Most people say ketone readings don’t matter and aren’t what we’re after. Ketones are the effect of fat burning, not the cause.
I think there were a few presentations that explain ketone generation and the Krebs cycle in better detail than a lot of people understand it (for example, people around here have said that acetone breath is a song of excess protein, not ketosis as though acetone isn’t a frickin ketone).
If you’re interested, Mike Eades Breckenridge 2017 Does Fat Burn in the Fire of Carbohydrate.
Experimenting. Finished a 36 and decided to try a day of ZC. Bacon, eggs, beef steak, avocado mayo, chicken quarter. It’s only a day, but I was fasted so…
The bet is on. Will weight be up, down or solid at this morning’s weight?
What is hunger? What is satiety? Is satiety “feeling full”?.. that may be over-satiety. I think we gradually learn more about satiety as we tune in to our individual hunger feelings. Cravings are another version of non-satiety, where we can feel full but feel we need something more.
Switching from macronutrients to micronutrients: there has been observations made by people pursuing fasting of the benefits of multi-mineral sea salts in switching off hunger. I think a confounder to remove in any satiety study for macro nutrients would be making sure any participant cohorts are replete in micronutrients such as minerals.
