Giving Keto a Bad Name

(Carolyn aka stokies) #21

I feel you on this for so many other reasons. Some of the things I had to sort out were:

  1. Stress. Mine crept in like a ninja, an dapparently I am highly sensitive to it. It would clobber the f#@% out of me and cause me to stall for months, even back when I was doing Atkins in 1998.

  2. SLEEP vies for my other top contender in screwing up what I perceived as progress. I had such a huge sleep deficit, it took a long time to sort it out and force myself into finding how to get full sleep.

  3. Over training. I am an endurance cyclist and I love to resistance train. It took me forever to figure out the timing of HIIT/resistance workouts and its impacts on my health and weight. Working out is another form of stress on the body after all.

  4. I constantly was undereating. That was difficult for me to deal with and I still struggle unintentionally with it.

And last but not least, I know there is a lot of internal bs my body had/has to heal that even tests can’t indicate progress with. IR is not the easiest to measure, and you can have health BG levels and still be resistant. I found also any pre-set weight measures in the past that I stayed at for any length of time also added to my plateaus.

Hang in there - if you feel better, then I feel it is worth the effort, regardles of scales or clothes… just my 2 cents.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #22

As I am fond of pointing out, a well-formulated ketogenic diet is not a weight-loss diet, it is a weight-normalization diet.

As Amy points out in the video, what we want to lose is excess fat, not weight per se. The body, when given the resources, may wish to put on more muscle tissue, or strengthen bone. The extra weight from added muscle or increased bone density may cancel out—or even exceed—any weight loss from decreased fat. Give your body adequate protein and abundant energy in the abscence of carbohydrate, and many good things can happen.

(Pat) #23

Yes PaulL that makes sense. I wonder where the idea of using scales and “ideal weight” came from. I realise now that I should have taken the advice KCKO. But I wanted quick results like the people who lose a lot of weight quickly.

(Jane) #24

Ya, everyone would like to be that :unicorn: but few fit that bill and most are men who have hormones working for them instead of against them.

#25

Cut your dairy for 2 weeks and see what happens.

(Pat) #26

I’ll try that. I didn’t think I was having much dairy and I don’t eat a lot of cheese I can’t manage more than an ounce at a time but I do enjoy a coffee with cream and scrambled eggs with cream. That’s a lot of dairy is t it? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:
Thanks

(Pat) #27

And my husband says it’s a woman’s world not a man’s :grinning:

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #28

The Metropolitain Life Insurance Company used to publish tables for men and for women, of what weight range appeared to be healthiest for each height. This was based on actuarial data (in other words, their records of customers and how long they lived), and at the time it was a good rule of thumb for maintaining health. (Of course, that was back in the bad old days when we all thought carbohydrate made us fat, and saturated fat was nothing to be feared. :rofl:) You used to see those charts in every doctor’s office, but for some reason, they started disappearing after 1981 . . . can’t imagine why. . . . :grin:

Professor Volek and Dr. Phinney use those same tables to determine their patients’ “reference weight,” off of which their recommendations for how much protein to eat are based. You can find the charts on the Virta Health Web site.

(Cindy) #29

Tina, you mentioned coming off BC and not having a period since then. You’ve also mentioned having trouble sleeping. Do you think you might be perimenopausal? Have you had any of those hormones (estrogen, progesterone, etc) checked? Those hormone changes can be HUGE and despite not losing weight, all the work you’ve been doing might have stopped the common menopausal gain.

(mole person) #30

It depends on which vegetables and how much. It depends on which sources of fat and protein and how much? Almost everyone here has experienced carb creep and that’s why we always ask. We know how easy it is to get there. At one point I found I was over 20 g of carbs in CREAM alone.

Sources of carbs that we eat on this diet include every vegetable and some add up fast. A single tomato has 5 g of carbs, 100g of chopped kale has over 5 net grams. It adds up to 20 g very fast.

Every large egg has one gram, every bit of cheese has some, every tbsp of cream has 1 gram, every handful of nuts will be a few. And almost every sauce or dressing or packaged food has some. I just took a peek in one cupboard to look for some hidden carbs:
1 tbsp soy sauce - 1g
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar - 2g
1 tsp beef stock powder - 1g
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce - 1g

You only have twenty and they stack up VERY fast. If you’ve never tracked them then it’s easy to think you are having very few because you are having so much less than before. It takes tracking at least for a while to really understand where all the hidden sources are.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #31

I switched from flour to cornstarch for thickening gravy, because it takes less of it to do the job, and because the local supermarkets don’t seem to stock xanthan gum. But corn starch is still carbohydrate, even though the amount in a cup of gravy is not too bad. As Ilana points out, however, it would be a good source of carb creep if I get careless.

Carb creep is not worth freaking out over, but it is worth bearing in mind, if one is not getting the desired results from eating keto.

(Annie Jenkinson) #32

Great advice there, I think.

I barely change in weight on keto and yet my belly fat that I hated has mostly shifted and I can get back into the clothes I was about to tear at the seams.

So, weight (for me) seems to be neither here nor there… the problems I had are lessening and any weight loss will be a bonus.

However, as I see it, losses are occurring from the places I need to lose fat, and I feel so much better–even if my weight goes up or stays the same.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #33

Yeah, I kind of think that avoiding muscle wasting and osteoporosis could probably be thought of as a good thing, ya know? :grin:

(Annie Jenkinson) #34

Great post. Yep, these macros we all hate doing are pretty essential. And if not those, then we need a magnifier on the ingredients lists. Most things in my stock cupboard were ripe only for the bin, having all sorts of hidden carbs.

I also realised–for the first time in my life–how many calories are in the most innocent of healthy meals.

I know we’re not calorie-counting here, i.e. keto handles higher cals, and now the cals come from good foods that are carb-lean/no carb… but hell, some days on my old diet I probably wolfed my way through 5,000 in sweet stuff without a clue.

It would be very easy to get up to 3-4k cals a day now, even with healthy foods and a few dollops of MCT and cream! I still take the cream and the MCT but now I’m aware, thanks to the macros.

The whole business of watching everything we eat initially is an interesting learning curve, even if we stop after a few weeks and just eat low-carb, high fat, knowing we’re getting healthier one way or another.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #35

Remember, it’s fat to satiety, not past satiety, lol! :bacon:

(mole person) #36

I find all carbs this way, even healthy ones. Last night I ate a huge piece of rib-eye roast. I was absolutely stuffed after but had made a salad as well and felt bad about not eating it. So I gamely put a large portion on my plate. At first every mouthful was a trial, I just had no room, but the more I ate the easier it became and I started to really enjoy it by the time I was half through. Eating it actually seemed to make MORE room in my stomach. I’ve noted this repeatedly on keto, the vegetables seem to make their own space. I think the solution for me is to stop eating anything after I’ve had enough protein, because everything else seems to act a bit like the old carbage on my appetite.

(Running from stupidity) #37

ME TOO!

#38

Amy has a part two to the video posted upthread :slightly_smiling_face:

EDIT to tag in @Jacaranda1

(Running from stupidity) #39

This is clearly hashtag of the year at this point.

#40

It’s early but I’m calling it :wink: