Falling off the horse with Protein

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(Wassim Abu Zent) #1

Hello everyone, @carl, @richard

I love hearing about your experiences when you fall off the horse - be it with carbs, the wrong sweetener, that hollandaise sauce, daughter’s birthday, or a trip to Italy. I have not heard you folks describe falling off the horse because of eating too much protein. Have you seen your ketones go down and glucose go up because you ate the wrong ratios despite sticking to low carbs?

Diet Doctor has an article in his blog that describes an experiment the doctor carried out on himself, where his ketones stayed elevated despite eating as much protein as he desired. I wonder if this is the type of n=1 experiment that is in itself an outlier or do others share the same results? Of course the doctor does not say this will be the norm for everyone. The article is here:

Thanks


(Wassim Abu Zent) #2

I did notice shorty after the above post that the doctor’s eating “as much protein as he desired” translated to eating about 80-130g only, which is still within a ketogenic diet recommendation if you assume 80 x 1 to 1.5.

I am still curious to see if folks have fallen off the horse because of excess protein.


(Richard Morris) #3

When I first went on a low carb diet in 2004 it was the high protein moderate fat version of Atkins induction and I used to get nausea that eventually caused me to mistakenly add carbs back into my diet … and that precipitated a decade of ill health.

I went keto in 2014 using the newer lower protein formulation and found I had no problems. I tried adding more protein and felt nausea again pretty quickly. I also saw my ketones drop to nil, return of joint pain in my damaged left meniscus and my cravings for carbohydrates increased - likely as my brain began to notice it’s need for glucose go up. But these are all just subjective experiences.

I did some research to find out how much protein we apparently need. I mean for the one thing that protein is a unique ingredient for which is supporting lean tissue … and found the Rand study which looked at how much people need to stay in nitrogen balance.

Which showed that the actual baseline requirement is a lot lower than most of us think. No one needed more than 1.0g/kg LBM strictly to maintain their lean tissue, and some where on the planet there is a mutant who is able to remain in nitrogen balance with 0.3 g/kg LBM - and most of us are between 0.4 and 0.8g/kg/LBM. It also shows what a broad variability we humans have one from another - 0.3 - 1.0 is a massive range.

So this chart shows you where we recommend people start, and we tell people to find out what works for them to achieve their goals.

That advice should not be inadequate for most people - for me at 80kgs LBM that means 80g - 120g a day. But if you are planning on adding 1 kg of muscle over a year of weight training (which is a lot) then you will need at least an extra 2.7 grams of protein total every day (1000/365). So 82.7 to 122.7g per day.

I did do an experiment where I ate at what I thought was the Aussie RDI of 0.84 g/kg eating roughly 67g/day for 60 days and had a DEXA scan before and after and found that I’d lost a non-significant amount of weight going from 80,380g of lean mass to 80,342g.

And then I found out I’d calculated wrong and the Aussie RDI was body weight not lean mass so I had actually eaten 0.6g/kg BW … oops. But at least I found out for me that 0.6g/kg LBM was evidently adequate.

The real question is, can you eat more and what will you do with it. The answer is of course you can … and what you do with it is turn it into energy.

Most healthy humans can eat up to 3.31g/kg LBM of protein before they saturate their ability to dispose of the ammonia waste products from using protein for energy.

It’s kind of wasteful to use protein for energy since you have a better more efficient less polluting source - fat, that also generates ketones that support your bodies need for glucose.

But the primary reason most type 2 diabetics restrict protein is not for ketones but because it is a direct stimulant for both insulin and glucagon. T2DMs have a real problem with insulin cos we make too much for too long so we don’t do well with any nutrient signal that tells us to make some. We’re not great with glucagon either, as that is the signal to the liver to manufacture glucose and we make 3x the amount that a normal person would. So we are like a car with too much engine.

I did an (poorly controlled self) experiment where I fasted for 5 days to deplete my liver stores of glucose, and did a long bike ride to deplete my muscles of stored glucose so now I had a body that would use any insulin that came along to depress my blood glucose.

That shows that a type 2 diabetic like myself can be making insulin for up to 6 hours after protein has stimulated secretion - and interestingly the source of protein makes a difference.


(Adam Kirby) #4

That’s very interesting… what were you eating to produce the nausea?


(Richard Morris) #5

I suspect I was just accumulating the ammonia byproduct of protein metabolism faster than I could remove it as urea in urine. That was in the Atkins eat all the meat you want diet, with protein bars and protein shakes and lashings of bacon.

I still eat the bacon, tho.


(Nicole Sawchuk) #6

Thanks for the information. I am notorious for not measuring my food. Normally not an issue but with the new year I decided to add more exercise to my life. I haven’t exercised much in the last year. I am down to my goal weight yet my blood glucose levels still aren’t what I would consider ideal (I am not diabetic but definitely insulin resistant). So exercise seemed like a good thing (plus I missed it). But now I am super hungry all the time! I wake up hungry! I can’t fill up. Normally I would say eat more throughout the day (and it may come to that) but my days are super hectic and so my eating window is 4 hours. Side note: my weight has crept up a few pounds (nothing that I am getting too excited about though).

Might be time to play with my protein intake and this gives me a good starting point. Any other pointers please let me know in the experiment to dial it in!


(Wassim Abu Zent) #7

Thanks Richard, much appreciated.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #8

Are you sure you’re getting enough fat? Fat is pretty satiating and doesn’t stimulate insulin the way protein and especially carbohydrate do (it does to some extent, of course, but at a far lower level).


(Nicole Sawchuk) #9

PaulL I thought I would experiment with that this week and started eating straight spoonful’s of coconut oil to see its impact on my hunger (so gross). While it gave me energy, did not really stop the hunger. I knew this as BPC don’t work for me.
Now to play with protein and see what it does. I think I will end up finding a balance.


(Arlene) #10

Nicole, I don’t do well with coconut oil. I’ve tried it many times and it just doesn’t agree with me, perhaps because I’m Norwegian, not from the tropics. Butter (around 1 Tblsp), added to a reasonable amount of meat (maybe around 5 ounces of meat) will sustain me for 18 to 24 hours with no hunger.


(Nicole Sawchuk) #11

Love the suggestion! Last night I had a small ribeye (about 4 - 5 oz) with butter on it and I was stuffed so you might be onto something!


(carl) #12

I trust my body to tell me when I’ve eaten too much protein. Nausea is usually the signal.


(Ruth) #13

I’ve had to take a break from red meat because, believe it or not, I just got “steaked out” and I don’t care for ground beef and for the last couple of days, I’ve had a hard time getting enough fat and eating too much protein. I don’t feel nauseous, but my appetite has been kind of out of control whereas when my macros were in a nice, sweet spot, I had to remind myself to eat. Not to mention, I’ve gained a few pounds (although I have started working out 5-6 days a week and it could be glycogen stores…). Anyway, my next step is to try to get creative to add more fat.


(Justin Jordan) #14

If I eat more than 75 grams or so of protein a day, my blood sugar starts to go up. It’s the difference between true normal blood sugar (cruising at 85 - 90) and good for a diabetic blood sugar (120 - 130).

Despite having a pretty fair degree of muscle mass, the limited protein hasn’t lead to any strength loss (still gaining, actually) or lean muscle mass.