Guys, I am bit worried, I need some help/advice:
I started what I expected to be a 7 day fast. But my sugar level where too low from the start, So at 60 hours I felt some pain in my kidneys and dec
Dr Boz Calculates levels of autophagy using blood sugar/blood ketones ratio
Iām certainly not a doctor but it seems like maybe you should do shorter fasts
I can function just fine at 35G and 5Kā¦ the low glucose at low ketones are the concern: 42G and 0.7Kā¦
If ketones are high enough, the need for glucose drops to the basic essentials - red blood cells and some nervous system/brain function.
With low ketones, that looks offā¦ I would get a second meter (or borrow from a friend) to confirm that yours is accurate.
I would stop a fast if you feel pain. Kidney pain may be the result of dehydration so make sure youāre taking enough salt and water (actually I take a range of minerals when I do extended fasts). My longest fast was 19 days and I usually get to that deep autophagy after the first week.
Thatās just my n=1ā¦ Iām not a medical doctor, just a personal experimenter.
Glad to help. Iām a dataphile myself so I track almost everything I can to make sense of thingsā¦
Most serious research Doctors qualify every statement about autophagy in humans with something like, āWe donāt know, but in animalsā¦ā Having said that I think Dr. Bozās metric is useful, when viewed in a state of protein restriction/denial.
Others have already noted this but I think it bears repeating:
The 2 sensor pathways that we know how to manipulate for autophagy are AMPK and mTOR. Ketosis activates AMPK. Limit the amino acid pool, specifically leucine and 2 others that activate mTOR. So if one is restricting/denying protein intake that should limit mTOR activation.
Those 2 together SHOULD stimulate autophagy in humans, I believe it does watching my age spots fade, scars diminish, also loose skin and wrinkles from being fat disappear.
Having said all that, I am so lean now that I will only do fat fasting in the future. On day 5/7 of a well hydrated adequate electrolyte fast I was absolutely drained, drank some MCT and got on with it knowing I didnāt really mess with the autophagy promoting pathways too much.
I believe/hope that the animal data will be proven to extend to humans.
My conclusion is a little different. Iām 47 and my concern isnāt just with losing fat or recycling bad lean tissue with autophagy. I am also very much interested in building up a base of new lean muscle mass.
I think mTOR is much maligned but itās just as important as AMPK for longevity. The difference is whether itās chronically high or intermittently high.
My goal is to maximize both by being in autophagy most of the time but spiking AMPK with protein and heavy weightlifting to increase muscle hypertrophy locallyā¦ then get back into autophagy. If I can do this in a state of higher ketones, then I also get the lean mass preservation mechanismsā¦
Itās tricky, so I try extended multi-week fasts, protein sparing keto/fast, keto, cyclic fasting, etcā¦
I donāt know if you were responding to me but I see no discrepancy, and I train with heavy lifts while fasting because I donāt care so much about muscle autophagy, I want organ autophagyāliver, kidneys,brain, gut etc.
Hi Karim - I am obsessed with this graph. I love the way you are thinking about looking at GKI and body fat percentage. Iāve been fasting for 2+ years, but Iāve just started tracking my GKI (and doing keto) in the last few weeks. May I ask, how did you create this graph? Iād love to try and recreate this with my data! Thank you! Katherine
Hi Katherine and welcome. I use excel and plot the GKI and BF% on two axes (primary and secondary). I canāt post the excel on the forum so Iām not sure the easiest way to share it, but someone else on the forum may know?
Hi Karim! Oh Excel, ok very cool, I can do that. Iām so curious, have you seen evidence that GKI and weight or BF% are consistently correlated? It would make a lot of sense if they were, but Iāve never seen anyone else write/make that connection so directly before. Probably the closest Iāve seen is Dr. Boz saying anything <80 = weight loss and this āData Driven Fastingā concept that suggests you can use your glucose readings as a barometer for when you should eat. Iām super curious about this topic, because Iāve never really found a sustainable way to get my weight (and really BF%) down to where I want it. This gives me hope!
Iām a scientist by trade so the first thing I tried to do was to correlate the GKI to BF%. I can see the trend visually but the noise in the data made it difficult to mathematically correlate.
The GKI is generally polluted by elevated glucose due to occasional stress, but the algorithm doesnāt know that. The ketones can likewise be polluted by exogenous fatty foods ā¦ and then the BF% is a strong function of accumulated food and water retention - so eating a salad can increase BF% by retaining more fluid around the fiberā¦ I knew it wasnāt true when I gained BF% on an extended fastā¦
The only reasonable correlation was the overall effect I measured on a multi-week fast where GKI < 1
If I had more data points and more variables, I may have been more successful.
Personally though, itās still a directionally useful indicator. If my GKI < 3, Iām losing fat.
I love it. Maybe there is a way to factor in cortisol levels to account for the stress fluctuations in glucose? Though, I suppose thatās not an easy at-home test.
Iām always skeptical about those BF% on at-home scales. I didnāt know it was specifically water/food retention, but that makes a lot of sense. Thatās wild that you āgainedā BF% on an extended fast!
When you say āIf my GKI is <3, Iām losing fatā - Do you mean body fat? Or can it also be burning just dietary fat?
Thatās one big question I haveā¦ how do I know when Iām burning body fat and will maintain it (vs. immediately restock those fat cells it when I go back to eating, even keto food)?
And, another big unanswered question I have is how does this all work with your bodyās āweight (or BF) set-pointā? If you maintained a GKI of <3 for an extended period of time would your body keep losing weight or will it start to āfight backā at some point to try and preserve a certain amount of fat?
I donāt know if you have any inisght on those, but Iām imagining youāre probably exploring the same questions.
May I ask, what kind of scientist are you? I was a physics major undergrad (though have been in business ever since) and my fiance is a bio-chemist, so I regularly ask him my fasting/keto questions and then am forced to realize how little I understand about how the human body actually functions!
While thereās no way to tell if the ketones in the GKI are dietary or not, in my experience itās unlikely to get that low of a glucose and high of a ketone (GKI<3) eating whole natural foods without losing body fatā¦ eating only fats would break this rule but Iāve never done that and fats alone wouldnāt be whole foods anyway.
Iām a physicist whoās in business now too.
Hereās my experience on maintaining fat loss:
Keto is the gentlest and most sustainable loss mechanism because thereās an abundance of nutrient rich fat soluble vitamins and minerals as well as anti inflammatory fats with minimal insulin excursions. This avoids the bodyās starvation panic stress where cortisol takes over and pumps in glucose by breaking down muscle. That leads to an insulin response and you stop losing fatā¦ you lose muscle.
At some point, the body will reach a historic set point ā¦ or rather a series of set points. Think of your stable weight plateaus since puberty. The body has a memory of those set points and will work backwards through them. Each time you get to a historic set point, it will reduce your metabolism so youāre unable to continue your weight loss journey.
Iāve found a couple of tricks for breaking through thisā¦
the first is a refeed. I think if my weight as being caught on a fishing hook, the more I struggle, the worse it gets. The remedy is to back out slowly and then redirect it again but as gentle as I can be. This means that I have to accept that the super fast loss I experienced for weeks will be partially reversed (temporarily) and then will go half as fast for some time until I break through.
The second is fasting. This sounds like the exact antithesis but itās not. Water fasting with minerals puts the body in a state of necessary change. Itās more aggressive but ketones and hormones kick in to help. A couple of weeks usually do the trick.
My current battle isnāt weight loss. Iām trying to build up muscle and keep the fat off. Unfortunately, thatās more difficult at 47 than it would have been at 27. Having said that, Iām in better shape than Iāve ever beenā¦even going back to my teenage years.
Hope that helped
Take a screen shot of the data in Excel, save as jpg. Post as usual.
Thatās what Iāve done. I think she was looking for the sheet to update her own data on the same format.
Hi Karim -
That helped a lot. Thank you!!
I cannot believe youāre a physicist turned business person too! Weāre a rare and unique breed. No wonder I like the way you think.
I got into all of this a bit backwards. I started with fasting actually. About three years ago I started dabbling in it. First with a potato fast, then intermittent fasting, then 24 to 3-dayāers. Starting in January I got serious about it, doing ADF and 4:3 fasting for four months straight, but continuing to eat what I wanted when I was not fasting. Slowly I cut out sugar and for the last month Iāve been Keto.
Going Keto has made a huge difference for me. Iām down 6+ pounds and my clothes fit way better. Iāve just started re-introducing the fasting. Iām doing two 40-hr fasts this week.
Thatās so interesting to learn about how you hit your previous set points. I think that is totally what happened w/my March/April plateau. And, the switch to Keto broke me out of that. Really good to know what to do if it happens again, though!
And, that makes a lot of sense (what youāre saying about GKI<3), for me. I only hit that if Iām fasting or working out. Keto alone doesnāt get me there typically.
It is exciting that you donāt need to have weight loss as the big goal any more. Donāt you wish you knew all this back when you were 27? It would have made things so much easier. But, hey, building muscle now is going to be way easier than at 67. Iām sure youāll get there! It sounds like youāre very disciplined and well-researched.
Thanks for all the help. I really appreciate it!
Thank you, for introducing me to dr boz. I have read her book and her 81 resources to back up the keto lifestyle. Dr. Boz has given me the tools to help deal with people who scold me on the keto life style.
This is such a wonderful thread. Hope everyone is still doing well after these years.
I stared Paleo in 2013 and was in the best health of my life from 2014 to 2019. Losing 70 pounds and in better shape than in my 20s.
Since covid, I have lost my way. Up 30 pounds while still eating clean. However, I stopped my fasting routine.
Decided to break out my keto mojo and get more info about what is happening. Doc visit recently showed A1C at 6.1 even though I am eating paleo/clean. (Except the wine aspect).
Currently on a 3 day fast, half way through.
Cheers to all who are sill out here and doing their thing.