Help, If you can.......I need to GAIN weight

(Paul Metcalf) #1

I am epileptic and have never been over weight. Keto is life saving for me. …I was diagnosed with diverticulitis last week and am losing weight …not good for myself…any suggestions are appreciated. I need high high caloric dense foods that will not aggravate the inflammation in my gut. from what Ive read eggs and avacado are the top two. any other suggestions let me know. thank you

(Polly) #2

So sorry to hear about your diverticulitis. What foods do you find set it off with inflammation and pain?

#3

I don’t have diverticulitis but I have diverticulosis, which is a step below you. My doc told be to up carbs (didn’t have to be the terrible ones) and up fiber. All my issues from it went away after that.

(bulkbiker) #4

Meat and lots of it?

(Marianne) #5

Not sure from your post whether these two things alleviate inflammation or cause it, however, if you can eat eggs, I’d make keto ice cream and have some of that every day or several times a week. Very easy. One serving is:

1/2 c. heavy cream
1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 Tbs. or more of Xylitol (a package will last you a long time - not that expensive)
Add 1 Tbs. of good cocoa powder if you want chocolate

I put everything in a saucepan and mix with electric mixer until a boil. Remove from heat and let cool, then mix again and put in mason jar and into the freezer. I usually make four batches at a time.

(Allie) #6

Hopefully helpful.

#7

go zero carb and eat all the meat/seafood/fat ya love and want. drop the nasty plant material that is killing your guts…hey that is my zc opinion LOL

but yea it is a plan that might interest you for sure :slight_smile: so just a suggestion to come our way maybe? just a thought to help. until tried, one never knows what great can come from a change of plans??

(Paul Metcalf) #8

Im border line zero. avocado, nuts, an occasional salad is it.

(Paul Metcalf) #9

headed that direction once the infection is gone. Ill be adding back the cruciferious veggies. leafy greens are difficult to digest and clog me up. any suggestions/opinions on meal replacement shakes?

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #10

I don’t know about epilepsy. That may affect things differently. But…

I measure everything I eat. I eat to macros. I eat to a daily calorie target. If I eat less than a couple hundred calories of my current calorie target for 3-4 days in a row I will lose weight. If I eat a couple hundred calories more than my current calorie target I will gain weight. I don’t think this is rocket science.

I’ve been in ketosis pretty much 99% of the past 3 1/2 years. That’s important. I do not eat much veggies and I think it is very easy to eat sufficient carbs via veggies to interfere with ketosis. Thus, I think it is very important to track veggies. In your case, I suggest you track everything, at least for a few weeks. If you don’t know exactly what you’re eating, you know squat. Guestimating is just another word for wishful thinking.

#11

Vitamin K2 deficiency

Can you eat fresh fish or canned fish/sardines without oil?

The short chain fatty acids from Coconut butter are healing and go well with fish. However I remove the coconut oil at the top since I can’t tolerate coconut oil due to it causing loose stools.

I don’t have a digestive disease but I can’t tolerate raw leaf vegetation either for some reason but I can tolerate cooked green soups with coconut butter and fish.

Can you eat (organic) baby carrots? The carotenoids are anti-inflammatory.

What type of nuts are you eating?

Have you tried probiotics?

(Paul Metcalf) #12

bought some align today. Never new that about bay carrots. the doc wants to see me again in the morning. The antibiotics he gave me are not really helpinig and either is the imodium.
I’m a drywall finisher and have 4 houses waiting for me to get back to work.

#13

Diverticulitis alone does not necessarily cause weight loss. If you are losing weight then you should have yourself checked from head to toe. Did you have a colonoscopy for the diagnosis?

#14

I (thought) I had a lot veggie issues too, didn’t really bother me for a while because although I had some I liked I could go without them easy as well. I even tried carnivore for a couple weeks, didn’t like it but I thought I was one of the people that developed issues with them. Digestive aids and eating them more normally fixed that (I think the addl fiber and carbs had something to do with that as well). Seems I had low stomach acid (self diagnosed) and used to bloat a lot from them.

On the meal replacement, easiest/best way is to get a protein powder you like the taste off and add a fat source to it. That’s essentially all keto chow is, protein power, a multivitamin, you bring your own fat source, and they over charge the crap out of it! Whey concentrates are the best tasting as they still have some of the dairy fats in them.

#15

Are you wearing a 3M reusable respirator?

Drywall dust is deadly.

I use to drywall finish years ago but could never do it without a 3M reusable respirator. Especially when mixing the dry compound and sanding. I would also need to wear 3M Goggle Gear 500 when sanding.

The dust may contain substances including gypsum, talc, mica, silica, and calcite – ingredients known to cause health issues when inhaled. Gypsum can irritate mucus membranes and the respiratory system. Talc or talcum powder can irritate the respiratory system, damage the lungs, and can contribute to the development of cancer. Exposure to powdered mica can lead to fibrosis of the lungs and long-term respiratory difficulties. Silica can cause a dangerous condition called silicosis and other health conditions. Calcite contains calcium carbonate, another substance associated with silicosis.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #16

At the Low Carb International All-Stars conference yesterday, one of the researchers (Paul Mason or Ben Bikman, not sure which) was saying that you don’t actually need as little protein and as much fat as the ketogenic diet for epileptic kids traditionally contains, that a regular ketogenic diet will be fine. (Edit: For seizure control, I mean.)

Since a ketogenic diet is a weight-normalisation diet, not a weight-loss diet, you should be well able to gain weight on a properly formulated ketogenic diet. Are you interested in gaining lean tissue or fat? If the former, bump up your protein intake a bit and be sure to get enough foods rich in branched-chain amino acids, especially the essential ones (leucine, iso-leucine, and valine). If you want to put on fat, increase your carbohydrate intake (though be careful not to get kicked out of ketosis). In any case, you probably should not worry about restricting calories, but should make a point of eating to satiety.

The β-hydroxybutyrate from your ketogenic diet should make eating fibre unnecessary. I find that my diverticulosis gives me no trouble, unless I eat too much fibre.

(Bob M) #17

Mike, I like you. I really fo. But this has little to no basis in fact, at least for most. If it did, it would explain overeating experiments where people who overeat gain very little weight, or under eating experiments, where people lose little weight.

Maybe you’re unique, in that no matter what, your body uses the same calories per day, ignoring what’s coming in or out. That would make CICO possible. But you would be unique.

Here’s a smattering of studies on overfeeding:

Some of the first part of it I disagree with. I think nuts are VERY easy to overeat. I don’t think fat (without carbs, or maybe with carbs but without PUFAs) causes body weight gain.

I do think protein is a special nutrient. It’s very, very difficult to gain fat mass if you’re eating a ton of protein. Very difficult.

It would also be nice to see these same studies using a keto regimen. Good luck on waiting for those!

Unfortunately, a lot of these are behind paywalls.

Anyway, I don’t see why an increase in calories would not lead to an increase in energy expenditure, thereby lessening or completely getting rid of any weight gain. And we have to be careful with “weight”: without a DEXA scan, scale weight is pretty meaningless.

Fatty acid composition as driver of inflammation and metabolic disease
(Polly) #18

Sam Feltham did an experiment where he overate horribly whilst low carb and then overate whilst eating carb rubbish. He put on weight in the second round but gained muscle and lost fat in the first if I recall correctly.

If your aim is to gain muscle weight then you might want to stay low to zero carb (because of the epilepsy issue) and put your emphasis on higher protein and resistance exercise. That might enable you to gain muscle.

I hope the episode below is the one where Sam Feltham talks about his overeating experiment.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #19

@ctviggen Bob, I have been in continuous ketosis since Jan 2017. As I think you are probably aware, I am a very observant person. I eat pretty much the same stuff daily with only minor variations and I have 3+ years of daily meal spreadsheets to prove it, so I’m not guessing. Once in a while I try something different and if I like it, add it, if not, don’t. My current macros are 2:1 fat:protein grams, 4.5:1 fat:protein calories. That’s 240 grams of fat and 120 grams of protein; sub-15 grams of carbs.

I have pointed out numerous times why I think CICO fails. I fully understand the limitations of measuring the energy content of foods, determining personal efficiency of extracting what energy is there to extract, and determining how much energy one expends. Calories are just a simple, albeit relative, tool to track energy. I’m also very cognizant of the different metabolic processing of different macro nutrients and their potential effects on metabolic rate. That said…

Since I do not have useful hunger/satiety signals, I use changes in weight to determine whether I’m eating enough, too little or too much. I do not count calories to determine how much to consume but use calories as a measure of it. I’ve been in maintenance for 3 years and my weight has not varied by more than 5 pounds total, so +/- 2 1/2 pounds. If my energy intake fails to meet my energy output, I lose weight. I don’t think it’s a mystery why so, my body burns some onboard fat to make up the difference. If my energy intake exceeds my energy output, I gain weight. Again, I don’t think it’s a mystery why. My body stores some of the excess as fat. I think that’s the way we have evolved to deal with energy shortfall and excess.

My method has been very successful, in my opinion. For me, of course. I fail to understand why saying so is controversial. I am in no way justifying CICO. I’m in ketosis and burning fat and ketones. I understand (to some extent) the hormonal complexities involved. All I’m doing is using the simple calorie tool to keep track, even if it’s only roughly accurate, it’s relatively useful.

+++++++++

Here’s a question for you. Why would we evolve to expend immediately rather than store more energy than necessary to meet our current energy requirement? If any meal could be the last meal for days, weeks or even months, storing that excess energy makes a lot more evolutionary sense than just wasting it. Yet, as you have pointed out, we can do that by accelerating our metabolism. Why?

Could it be a response to metabolic derangement? If, in a state of ‘not normal’ given excess energy, our metabolism immediately uses it in the attempt to further normalize things. Or, once you’ve stored enough fat to get past a few weeks without eating, there is little need to keep storing it, so it gets ‘wasted’. A little excess fat is good and useful, but a lot not so much.

Fatty acid composition as driver of inflammation and metabolic disease
(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #20

This is very relevant and the presentation very well done: