Higher Carb Experiment

(Edith) #21

Would that “snuggle” be on your face by any chance? :rofl:

The human body is sooooo complicated. I imagine that for everyone there are probably several optimal paths that can be followed to feeling one’s best. This is because we are always changing and we constantly need to adapt. For example, maybe we needed to eat a particular way when first starting keto, but as our health improves the diet also needs to change. One’s optimal diet may need to change because a fitness goal changed, or improved health has meant more overall activity in general.

I added strength training back in March. I needed to up my protein and overall calories to be optimal.
Many people on this forum get into intermittent fasting and while that may work for a while, I believe it is just another form of calorie restriction. We can only cut back our eating windows and calorie intake so much before not only do we plateau, but we deprive ourselves of optimal nutrients. I realized this when I started getting into the strength training. Years of mostly two meals a day, had me eating too few calories and therefore not enough nutrients.

So… this brings me back to my own experiment. Even with the Thanksgiving holiday I’m already feeling better after reining in my diet and carb levels. I’m going to stay at the current level for a few more weeks just to make sure the body is definitely doing better before I try to increase carbs again. In the meantime, I am eating the majority of my carbs with the evening meal. If evening carbs keep me sleeping well, I may not need to up them after all. I also need see what happens with my electrolytes. The other benefit of the carb increase was keeping my electrolytes in balance more easily. My heart palpitations have been much less, blood pressure has been good.

I think I’ll stay stricter keto until after the new year.

#22

Very true. The diet I really enjoyed 10 years ago would feel very suboptimal now (I couldn’t even try it, actually, too many things have changed since then)… Sometimes things work and at some point we should evolve and change.

It’s definitely not that for me. I mean, yes, a smaller eating window may help to eat less but I still easily overeat if my eating window is, like, 3 hours long or even bigger. It’s PLENTY of time to eat a ton. I can eat my energy need in one sitting without trying.
But no matter if I eat 1300 or 4200 kcal, I need IF as it’s how I live… It would be horrible force-feeding without IF (unless if I eat at night, that’s easy).

And how could one deprive oneself if they eat all the food/nutrients they need, just not eating all day? Why would we force ourselves to follow a pattern we aren’t comfortable with? I never understood this. Forceful, undereating IF is bad, sure, don’t do it. But a proper IF that suits the one in question is perfectly fine. Not doing IF would be one of the worst things I could do against my body so I am pretty protective of it :slight_smile: 2 meals were too low-cal for you, well they tend to be too high-cal for me but it depends so OMAD isn’t my goal but skipping lunch is pretty much needed unless I can eat in a very strict way. Nope, skipping lunch is way more natural to me NOW. I couldn’t do it before, I got hungry already at 2-3pm every day, it was annoying…

Good luck to your experiment! I have one for myself too at the moment :slight_smile: Hopefully it will give some results…