If you eat carbs at time "zero", when do you get kicked out of "ketosis"?

(Bob M) #1

So, I’ve been trying to test a theory that eating carbs sometime after lifting weights (body weight training for me) wouldn’t kick me out of “ketosis”.

If I eat carbs at time “zero”, when would I be kicked out of ketosis?

I’ve been tracking ketones (and blood sugar) and can’t get out of ketosis. For instance, I bought chocolate (multiple types) that I meant to leave a part of with our hosts over the holiday. We took it all by mistake, and to get rid of it, I ate a TON of chocolate one night. So much that I was basically sick to my stomach and felt a bit shaky.

And the next morning, my ketones were HIGHER than they normally are, 0.4 mmol/l. (I got 0.2 mmol/l this morning, but that was after an 80 minute body weight workout.)

I realize that there’s a relationship with amount of carbs, too, but I ate a lot of lower-percentage chocolate (truffles, coconut covered chocolate, etc.) and still was producing ketones.

My test won’t work if I can’t ever get out of ketosis.

Also, “ketosis” for me is a low level of ketones. For me to get to 0.5 mmol/l, I have to take these at night, maybe even fasting all day.

And, of course, any of the actual values are suspect. That is, 0.4 mmol/l might be lower or higher than that.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #2

How much carbohydrate, and how insulin-resistant are you? The key, apparently, is whether your serum insulin rises above the threshold (just under 25 μU/mL) or not. If it takes your body less insulin than that to deal with the glucose load, then you will stay in ketosis.

Dr. Phinney told me he never said that, but I swear I remember an early lecture of his, in which he refers to 100-125 g/day as “low-carbohydrate” and ketogenic. That memory could, of course, easily be the result of a misunderstanding or wishful thinking on my part. (It could also be true for people who are insulin-sensitive enough.)

Also, the time involved would depend on your diet, according to Bikman. If the pancreas is used to dealing with sudden high glucose loads, it maintains a store of insulin to release early, as a first-phase response, while it gets busy secreting more. After long enough without a heavy carb load, the pancreas dispenses with that insulin store, so the response to a sudden heavy load will take longer, since all the necessary insulin will have to be secreted, without a first-phase response of stored insulin.

#3

Wow. I loved chocolate but I just couldn’t do it ever. It’s so rich! One table? Sure, well in my past, not now. But more? :smiley:
I decided to buy a table of chocolate every day (and eat it) when I got my first job… I lasted for 1 day I think. Maybe two. It just wasn’t charming every day in such a big amount. (I bet the Cradbury my Australian friend sent me would last longer, that stuff is a hard drug, I couldn’t stop and those were big tables. And I did carnivore just before it arrived…)

I can’t say anything about the actual topic, sorry :slight_smile:

(Bob M) #4

What do you think about the theory that “an object in motion stays in motion”? I’m beginning to think that I’ve been in ketosis so long that my body doesn’t want to get out of it. I say this because over the holidays, I’ve eaten quite high carb some days…and every time I’ve tested, I’ve still been producing ketones.

Now, I haven’t been testing enough probably. But it’s hard to be at a house with 15 people and break out the test kit to prick my finger. And I forgot how painful these tests could be. :wink:

And often, there’s no way to know how many carbs I ate. For example, I had several homemade buns, some potatoes, and more at Thanksgiving. Then ice cream and pumpkin pie for dessert. How many carbs were these? I have no idea. And was still producing ketones the next day.

Lately, my normal meals have had very minor amounts of carbs. Even after working out, I didn’t eat carbs. I was trying to get back on track. (Though oddly, when I eat lower carb, my ketones seemingly go lower than when eating higher carb?)

Anyway, these are the results so far:

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Ketones by blood (new Keto Mojo), breath (old Ketonix), glucose (by new Keto Mojo). Not sure why my blood sugar is that high, other than exercise causes my blood sugar to go up.

(Bob M) #5

Well, “chocolate” is a poor choice of wording. I went into a higher-end chocolate shop and got chocolate “confections”. So, think chocolate + sugar + coconut; chocolate covered confections with sea salt; things like that. I chose the “dark” chocolate varieties, but for these, “dark” is probably 60% at most.

And there were 4 adults, so I bought 3 confections for each adult. We ended up taking them all home, so I ate at least 5 of them myself, and some of them were large and sugary.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #6

It’s likely that once one has been eating a low-carb diet for long enough, a short burst of high-carb won’t perturb the system quite so greatly.

Also, you in particular have been eating keto for so long that I imagine any insulin-resistance you might have had has long since been reversed, so it likely wouldn’t take much insulin to bring down serum glucose after a bolus of carbohydrate. I wouldn’t make a habit of it, but you are probably in better shape than a lot of people to handle that much carbohydrate.

(Ohio ) #7

Sweet u met him. Big influence on my life.

His angle on “well formulated ketogenic diet” seems like it’s 50% meat. So I can see him saying 100g but leaving out that net carbs are like 10g and/or resistance starch is imbedded in his calculus.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #8

Yeah, it was at Ketofest 2019.

He’s actually not big on keto as a high-protein diet, unlike some other figures in the keto world. He’s big on a “reasonable” amount of protein, which he defines as 1.0-1.5 g of protein / kg of lean body mass / day. His thing is more about being sure to get enough fat.

And he said he tells the patients at Virta to limit themselves to 50 g total carbohydrates, in the hopes it will work out to 20 g net. (Unlike Dr. Westman, who calls 20 g total the “prescription strength” version of keto, lol!) Dr. Phinney is also big on eating to satiety as the way to know that one is eating enough on a ketogenic diet.

And just because I never know whether people are talking percentages by calories or by weight, let me just point out that 50-50 fat/protein by weight is 69% fat and 31% protein by calories. Whereas 50-50 fat/protein by calories is 2.25:1 protein:fat by weight.

#9

But why would it? If one eats 50g total carbs, then the net carbs (that matters to me, personally, according to my experiences) will be somewhere between 0 and 50. I have a huge chance for getting close to 50, personally, my big fiber and erythritol eating times are in the past. Surely many people are like this, 50g total would bring way too much net as well.
It makes more sense to me to figure out what gives us ketosis. If very low net carbs are what matters, stick to it and ignore total carbs, at least I always did that. My total carbs were WAY above 50g but it didn’t matter as my net was low enough for ketosis. Not low enough for benefits except fat adaptation but I arrived there too eventually.
Now my current goal is to eat extreme low non-animal net carbs as that seems to matter to my well-being…

20g total is pretty safe, it’s keto for almost everyone :smiley: I was unable to do it until carnivore but I follow my own ideas anyway. It was hard enough without putting any limit on total carbs and I luckily didn’t need that. As far as I know.
Generalization isn’t good, we are so very different, even our body doesn’t work the same and there are other factors. Some general educated advice is okay but we may tweak it right away to suit our own needs and abilities. Now I can eat very low-carb but adequate protein? Maybe 1-2 days per year and I am trying. There would be advantages to bring it lower and I am not TOTALLY sure I need my high protein though my body very stubbornly tries to persuade me and I kind of accepted it’s my reality (but need more experiments). Or I just eat way too often, I know I do, that may affect things, very easily.

#10

Two thoughts:

  1. Is it possible that the meter is within its margin for error, and instead of producing 0.2 it’s actually 0.0? Is there anyone in your life who isn’t in ketosis who would do a ketone test to see if they get the same score?

  2. Can you do a test with carbs without fat? Fat seems to have a significant positive impact on my ketones - plain bread or plain pasta or plain rice without any accompanying fat might be enough to push you out of ketosis?

#11

You’re out of ketosis once that sugar starts burning, you’re probably seeing higher ketones because of the delay when you were still making them, and that the carbs are preferentially burned, leaving more circulating ketones not being used, or being barely used at least. Plus, if you were drinking, that’d make them look real high.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #12

Another thought that occurred to me is, how long does it take the glucose from carbohydrate to enter the blood stream? And fibre slows down the absorption of glucose, so might it be possible to slow the absorption rate to the point where insulin never rises high enough to halt ketogenesis?

(Bob M) #13

Well, I’m still testing… a little bit. Our fridge appears to be dying, so I’m looking for that, and that’s taken a lot of time. Our puppy is now in an agility class, so I’m learning new stuff with her and trying to get her and my daughter (comes with me to class) on the same page. Agility is way more fun than obedience, but has new material to learn.

@Septimius My opinion: the meters suck. I had tested meters from the same manufacturer and got two different results. So, I use them more as general values instead of absolutes. Fat could be an issue, but I want to eat a “normal” meal, which for me means meat. Today (Tuesday), for “lunch” (don’t eat breakfast), I had (in this order):

1- raw milk, collagen peptides, whey protein
2- beef heart with jalapeno stuffed olives and capers
3- rice noodles with butter
4- fermented seaweed

I ate about 90 g of carbs in the rice noodles (actually weighed it this time): Monday, I did not weigh it. Here’s the small amount of data:

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The BW training was about 45 minutes each day. No HIIT, and I’d like to do about 15 minutes of that, but I’d need to get up 15 minutes earlier. I get up, have my coffee, go to my “gym”, work out, take a shower, train my dog, feed the dog, make my daughter’s breakfast, take both dog and daughter to her bus stop (0.4 miles away), come back, let dog go potty, put dog in crate, drive to work. That’s my 5:30 am - 9 am routine Monday-Friday. Need to get up by 5:15am to get HIIT in.

@lfod14 I think what’s happening is that my body is shuttling carbs to my muscles. The goal is do eat similarly on a day I don’t do body weight training and see what happens. I’ll see if I can do that tomorrow. My theory is that I should see ketones go down, because there’s less chance for my muscles to need carbs.

@PaulL When I had my CGM, eating very high carb caused a 1 hour hump. That’s it. After an hour, my blood sugar was where it was before.

I eat a low fiber diet, as you can see from an example of my “lunch” above.

Well, 90 grams of carbs has not yet caused zero ketones. Will attempt to test more, but I might be looking for a fridge tonight. And even if I don’t, then I have to leave work, go home, eat, clean up, take dog out, take and/or pick up one daughter from dance class. I normally get home at 8:30pm, change, watch 15 minutes of TV, go to bed. I’m on the move and doing something from 5:30am to 8:30pm every weekday. Get 15-30 minutes of relaxation, go to bed, start over.

(Alex K Chen) #14

If my blood glucose spikes to 160 after less than 40g of net carbs, does that wreck keto? Insulin will increase for a while, but the low net carbs still means that glucose will go down just as quickly. Recently I’ve had an average glucose of around 70 most days, but I still have occasional spikes (only once every 2 days) when I eat vegetables.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #15

A very good question. That high a blood sugar is undoubtedly going to stimulate an insulin response, and it is the insulin that inhibits ketogenesis. I suspect that 160 is enough glucose to cause ketogenesis to be inhibited in everyone, but how quickly someone will return to ketosis probably depends on that person’s degree of insulin-sensitivity or -resistance.

(Bob M) #16

Well, I think I’m giving up on this. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I had high carb “lunch” (first meal of the day). Monday and Tuesday, I did about 45 minutes of body weight training (most sets to failure). Wednesday, I did not exercise.

My theory was that Wednesday I should see a decrease in ketones, as the carbs are less likely to go to muscles.

Here are the results:

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The numbers like 21, 32 are from my Ketonix breath ketone analyzer. All of the numbers are similar.

But I felt worse on Wednesday, was way more hungry than normal, and was tired too. When I eat higher carb on the days I exercise, it’s as if I never ate high carb – I have no hunger for hours. But Wednesday, I had way more hunger than normal.

My routine lately is to practice a TKD two days a week, even though I “lift” three days: upper body, lower body, total body. I was eating carbs after upper body and total body.

Possible benefits of carbs after lifting: they seemed to make me feel slightly better; they seemed to “puff up” my muscles. Hard to describe, but without carbs, I feel (and probably am) leaner. I feel more muscular after eating carbs. (It’d be interesting to see if this is testable, but the error in measurements like that are so high to begin with, not sure I could test this.)

Other than this, I can’t tell any benefits. There doesn’t seem to be a benefit in actual lifting, as I’ve been slowly gaining strength for a long time. I have been “stuck” at 3 pullups for a while, though I’m almost at 4 now. (3-1/2 to 3-3/4 is what I’d call it.) My strength gains are slow regardless of what I do.

So, I’m going to take a week or so off of TKD, and see how I feel. Then, I’ll add in a TKD again to see how I feel.

But since I don’t get much out of testing, I’m going to stop testing.

I did have to switch drugs for a condition I have, and that has seemed to cause higher blood sugar. Those levels are 15-20 more than they used to be. I did not, however, take my blood sugar before switching the drug. I’m going off old values. I’m going to see what I can do to lower the blood sugar, and that may be – gasp! – eat more fat.