I seem to be getting fatter

(What The Fast?!) #42

Thanks! Are you a man or woman? Do you do any fasting? Do you know how much lean body mass you have? I train a LOT and I’m wondering if that’s making my cortisol spike and prevent me from losing weight as well.

(What The Fast?!) #43

I’ve had them long term. Mine went wonky for the first few months, then it normalized. Then, I did a LOt of fasting and it got even worse than the first time. Since then, it’s never gone back to normal, even though I haven’t done extended fasting in many months. Pre keto, my cycle was 28 days, every month. Now it’s anywhere from 5-7 weeks apart.

(LeeAnn Brooks) #44

Well, I now stand corrected.

To be a little honest, I’m kind of hoping something like that happens to me. I’m 4 months in and have skipped every other cycle. I’m 44 so not planning on having any babies. I don’t want to deal with the side effects of menopause just yet, but skipping a period every other month would be just fine with me.

Though I’m not sure I can blame it all on Keto. I also went months without any period at all last time I lost a ton of weight and was running long distance (2 years ago). I did that on low fat. I missed 4 cycles straight. I don’t know if it’s the loss of weight, the heavy activity level, or the combination of the two.

#45

Female, 50 years old, 22% by body DEXA scan. In five months, I’ve skipped three meals, total :slight_smile: I don’t fast and can’t, I’ve tried. Have you read The Maffetone Method? I swear it’s changed everything for me. I was one of those people who should have looked waaayyy better than I did based on my training and diet. It was the overexercise, which took me forever to figure out cuz it was really nothing compared to a lot of other women/people. But for my body, it was intensity daily (coupled with a full time teaching job, hot yoga at night, life) that was too much for me and I would have never thought of that!
You wanna talk about self control? I thought I had so much of it because of my training and diet adherence. I thought wrong because training at heart rate (calculated by book 180 - age…mine is 135 because you can add 5 if you’ve trained consistently for over 2 years or whatever it is) takes MAJOR control! It’s sooooo slow at first, for a long time. My aerobic system is not trained like I thought it was! My anaerobic system is because that’s what I did every.single.day. Anyway, it’s made a huge (THE) difference for me. Let me know if you give it a try. Cortisol was the thing

#46

My stomach went flat when I started keto but the. I gained this 8lbs in just over a week and it’s mainly in my stomach area. That’s why I’m confused. I’m wondering if I should up my protein as maybe my gluconeogenesis pathway might be the issue.

(What The Fast?!) #47

@ketoteacher1 Girl, you are speaking my language. Honestly - you have NO idea how much this means!! I literally JUST started MAF training, based on recommendations from @ianrobo and a few others.

I just did a 26 mile ride this morning, here are two snapshots - one from this morning and from almost the exact same ride last week…

I am planning on adding some fasting in to see if I can drive results faster, but if it’s cool with you, I’d love to chat with you directly! I’ll message you directly! I have been at this for almost 1 1/2 years and can’t figure out the magic formula. There was a period where I layed off the cardio (I pulled a hamstring so switched to just walking/yoga for a few months) but that still didn’t do it. I’ve had all kinds of testing done as well (genetic testing, food intolerance testing, hormones, thyroid, lipids, etc) and discovered some things.

Armed with all this knowledge (MTHFR gene, avocado intolerance, do better on lower vegetables, etc), plus MAF training, plus adding in some fasting, plus doing higher protein to maintain/gain muscle…I think I may just figure out the combination to this lock. :slight_smile: @collaroygal and @OldDoug have been cheering me along the whole way too, they’re are both dreamboats. :slight_smile:

Here is today’s ride:

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Here is last week’s ride…look at the difference in those heart rate zones!!

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#48

That rapid weight gain is not likely fat. You can’t gain fat that quickly, like you can’t lose fat that quickly, either. I would highly doubt you’re eating enough protein for it to be the problem. You really do have to OD on it to get to gluconeogenesis and that’s hard to do.
What the fast I’d be happy to talk directly. Not that I have all the answers but I spent YEARS on this stuff and finally feel like i"m doing something right, so maybe I can help. Your posts always help me

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #49

Gluconeogenesis is pretty much driven by demand from the brain and certain other organs; too much protein is not really likely to increase the rate of gluconeogenesis. Protein does stimulate insulin secretion, however, which is what we are trying to avoid, so we want a moderate intake; too much or too little both cause problems.

(What The Fast?!) #50

@ketoteacher1 One other thing to note…I think the issue with my riding is that I’m in Zones 4 & 5 a LOT…so I’m not efficiently burning fat at those levels. I do have a high anaerobic threshold, but still. In fact… @PaulL - speaking of gluconeogenesis…I think that my intense rides put me in a state of gluconeogenesis because I couldn’t use fat stores for that intensity, but I didn’t have enough glucose (glycogen stores) to power me either, so in turn, my body used gluconeogenesis…could that be accurate? I’ve noticed recently that my BG is higher on a daily basis (in the high 80’s, low 90’s), thinking that could be a side effect as well.

#51

I’ve purchased some herbal water retention tablets, my mum swears by them for her mild to moderate edema. Plus I may see a change after my cycle ends. I’m hoping this 8lbs disappears along with some actual weight loss in the next few weeks.

I’ve been researching for weeks and I honestly thought I was doing it right. Problem is there’s so many ‘keto gurus’ online contradicting each other it gets quite overwhelming.

Do you think maybe I should consider a water fast for a few days or more?

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #52

I’ve been following your posts for the past twelve months, and it seems that your system is so far off the average that I’d hesitate to speculate, for fear of giving you either false hope or false encouragement.

That said, however, I would speculate :grinning: from the rise in BG that you are experiencing “adaptative glucose sparing,” which would be a sign that you are fully fat-adapted, and your muscles are burning primarily fatty acids and leaving your ketones and serum glucose for the organs that absolutely have to have them (brain, red and white corpuscles, certain pancreas cells, etc.). The way to tell would be to see what your HbA1c is doing. If it’s remaining low, that would be an indicator of glucose sparing.

So if you are fat-adapted, I would expect your muscles not to need glucose. But I guess that would depend on how explosive your exercise is. I know that glucose is required for good explosive performance, whereas ketones come into their own where endurance events are concerned. I haven’t read The Art and Science of Low-Carbohydrate Performance yet; do you know if it says anything about this topic? Of course, they are supposedly revising it, since there is new science to include, but apparently we won’t see the new edition for another year or two.

(What The Fast?!) #53

The hilarious thing is that I THOUGHT I was doing endurance training…but in reality, it’s highly glycolitic work, based on my heart rate profile, so I was likely not able to use fat efficiently at those levels.
I’ll look into the book, their stuff can get a little too sciencey for me but I’ll give it a go.

(Doug) #54

Andrea, good for you for your continued pursuit of this hard-to-find ‘Grail,’ if you will.

On metabolic rates and the efficiency of burning fat - it’s not so simple as I once thought. If we view it solely as adding oxygen to the fuel molecules/oxidizing/burning - then carbs do have a built-in advantage in that we don’t have to add as much oxygen to them as we do to fats. All other things being equal, I’ve read that it’s about 20% more energy coming from carbs per unit of oxygen that we supply. If nothing else altered the equations, then that would be rather a hard limit on fat-burning, compared to carbs.

What really surprised me is that ketogenic diets make for more mitochondria (the “powerhouses of the cell”) being formed. I don’t know if human studies have yet been done, but it certainly takes place in mice. This could mitigate the assumed handicap that fat-burning brings, versus carb-burning, i.e. more cellular energy production and respiration could occur. I think it’s fairly common for carb-burners to have a drop-off of performance when they go ketogenic, then there is recovery. Whether or not it returns to former levels, or surpasses them, in general, I don’t know, but some individuals do seem to end up just as well or better.

Basing the glycolitic/lipolytic fractions on exercise intensity may not be as simple as we once thought…

(Diane) #55

Thanks for this information, another area for me to research. I’ve come to believe that my chronic fatigue syndrome may be fundamentally a symptom of drastically impaired mitochondrial function. Hoping for improvement in my health is my main motivation for eating ketogenically. This gives me more hope, thanks!

(Doug) #56

Diane, here’s one study/discussion, though it’s focus is on rat brains.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1867088/

Given the findings of Bough et al., it will be interesting to determine whether carbohydrate restriction or 2-DG can induce mitochondrial biogenesis.

From other reading, I think this has been proven - ketogenic diets make for more mitochondria being formed.

(Diane) #57

I know my health has improved since started eating ketogenically 10 months ago. Before that, I was in bed, unable to take care of normal daily functions for about 9 months, with very little improvement over that time. No matter how far I still have to go, It’s important for me to see how far I’ve come.

It took me decades of eating a SAD diet to get where my health fell completely apart. I’m very grateful for the progress I see and the hope for recovery that I’ve found (and keep finding). I would definitely recommend this approach for anyone with similar struggles. However long this healing may take.