Is it safe to have cheat days on keto?

[Rclause]

Safe to have a cheat day? I’ll let you know if I ever have one. To me you are limiting carbs or not. Cheat is just another adjective and nothing more.

[Fangs]

Smart. eat more carbs day or not eat that many carbs day…I so get that. Good positive swing on it vs. cheat. Cheat stinks. Your personal choice to indulge or not.

[Rebj]

You wouldn’t congratulate an alcoholic if he has a drink after 18 days of not drinking

I like this…

[Shinita]

There are people who do offer an alcoholic a drink here in Australia, quite insistently, sorry to say.

It’s a problem here too, in Hungary, I’m sure. I have tiny social life and I’m not a teetotaler so I have no problems but I still know not drinking is typically unacceptable and it’s very bad, we have already way too many alcoholics. We are good at hospitality too and sadly, it often means people are super insistent. Especially family members when they don’t live together, grandmas are legendary (mine was okay, thankfully). I need big meals and I was super good at overeating in my high-carb days so it was baffling when people thought I still ate way too little when I visited. And they yelled at me once because I only ate 2 plates of rich food (or because I refused cake afterward? anyway, I didn’t eat actually a ton because I became very full earlier and it’s an insult, apparently).
This tendency is so strong that hobby bodybuilders who normally eat according to strict rules can have the opinion that it’s asocial, rude and totally foolish not to accept cake when there’s a family birthday and it’s stupid asceticism not to get loose on holiday. I understand people who force strict rules on themselves need a break sometimes but not everyone is like this. I enjoy my woe, no matter how strict it is at the given moment. And it doesn’t matter anyway if ignoring my own good rules makes me feel horrible while I don’t even enjoy the food. But they aren’t like that and can’t imagine people being very different from them.
Some people think everyone loves sugar and if several people tell them it’s not true, those must be liars. Everyone loves and desires sugar, after all. People’s beliefs are frightening sometimes. And a tad insulting.

I consider these all super rude. I feel offended if people want to squeeze food/drink into me when I said 3 times I don’t want it and maybe even that it’s not good for me. They must hate me and want me harm. I know they don’t but they act like that. I won’t eat it just because they insist but it’s annoying and confusing. What about respecting other people a bit?
It’s bad enough when one actually eat anything. But when you figure out your dangerous, very harmful substances and do your best to avoid them, it’s even worse. It’s like forcing something on someone who is allergic to it (some parents actually do that, despite what the doctor tells them. I feel sorry for so many kids without any good choices)…

I usually think about differences, it comes naturally to me, generalization is boring and wrong. But I realized that most (? but definitely way too many) people think everyone should eat like them (at least if their goal is the same) so they give potentially horrible advices. I’m sure they aren’t all evil, they are just ignorant. But they still can do much harm and even if one easily says no, it can be very annoying.

[Diygurl19]

Now, the damage isn’t going to be too great if this is a rare occurrence, but a lot of people are addicted to carbohydrate, and one slip can lead to more carbohydrate and end up undoing your ketogenic diet

That is so true! The problem I’m finding that I have is I’ll have a piece of cake that someone brought to the office and then a few days later, I’ll still have that “I need something sweet” craving and have something else, or go to the movies (which is a major trigger) and have popcorn. I’m getting worried because I don’t want to get to the point where everyday after dinner or lunch I 'm having SAD sweets. KETO sweets are triggers just as much as SAD sweets. The holiday season is upon us and I know I’m going to have a difficult time.

[PaulL]

For her, it is a kindness to offer people sweet things, 'cause they enjoy them.

I wonder if your friend also keeps supplies of heroin and cocaine on hand, to offer to guests. 'Cause people enjoy them, too. . . .

To me, there is no difference between encouraging a person you don’t know, attempting keto, to have carbs or a “cheat day”, when they are early in the process and encouraging an alcoholic to have a drink, although I haven’t seen it that way before, it fits.

Preach it, sister!!

We can’t see each other here and it is not obvious at what stage any of us are, in our journey to good health. I am deemed healthy now and that is very much against the medical odds.
I would never offer an alcoholic a drink and I would never encourage anyone to intentionally go out of ketosis if they want/need to be in it for their health and well being.

Amen!!

[FrankoBear]

When being a host at a dinner party.

How can one tell if someone is alcoholic/ vegan/ keto/ carnivore/ paleo, molluscatarian? Can we trust the alcoholic will refuse the alcoholic drink?

An alcoholic beverage may be offered without suspecting.

Many social occasions orbit around food. The festive season is named that for a reason. People offer carbohydrates and plant-based foods all the time. They don’t know about potential carbohydrate addiction, potential insulin insensitivity, views on the ethics of the husbandry of food animals.

Society is a delicious minefield.

[lfod14]

Our blood vessels can handle a normal spike from a normal carby meal. Eating a bag of jellybeans in a sitting is equally terrible for all of us keto or not. Just remember once the insulin is higher fat you eat is very likely to be stored. So when you eat carby, best to also eat lower fat for the rest of the day or at least next couple hours afterwards. Also, cheat MEAL…not cheat DAY! A day of eating crap is a lot harder to undo and makes it more likely to wind up with cravings followed by a carb binge. You gotta learn your own triggers and see what you can get away with but the first couple times you can feel like you got backed over by a truck and have the flu. Pretty amazing how garbage food can make you feel once you go a while without it.

[atomicspacebunny]

I’ve read stuff that suggests it’s ok and other stuff that says it’s not… I’m not talking full blown cheat I mean just going over the carbs a moderate amount?

Nothing wrong with that!

Depends on who your feeding, from a much deeper anthropological perspective I would say we are now feeding our palate not our gut microbiome with processed carbohydrates that do not feed the 3 pounds or more of billions and billions of microbiome in our gut so the good strains die off (soil based) and the bad ones take over which causes the metabolic dysregulation when you throw refined carbohydrates onto those bacteria strains that only digest meat and fat not plants?

In my own N =1’s I have proven at least to my self that this is so, I can go for unbelievable long periods of time i.e. fasting with-out eating anything but only with resistant starch, nutritional yeast, brewers yeast, soil based probiotics (takes very few initial doses which last a long-time) and how much iodine I have stored on-board in the thyroid gland; I feed the microbiome and they keep me alive, I lose body fat and reduce blood sugars without feeling hungry in the slightest which is probably closer to the ancestral microbiome, but not as close as living in the actual environment (immunity to bacteria and viral infections or similar species cross-talk).

I can eat whatever I want and not get the this lash back of weight gain or this so called carb addiction which is more of a palate and tongue issue than anything or the desire to taste highly concentrated foods made by a laboratory not nature which I can eat also with no problem because my microbiome are resistant to it (no rise in blood sugars?) and just be sensible about it and not make it a daily or weekly thing.

Natural foods are very bland and do not have quite the saltiness or sweetened highly refined carbohydrates do.

What I’m outlining here is very very time consuming and not as practical in the over-simplification people try to place on what is considered a “quick fix” for a “long-term diet” to “fix” things?

[tjcmeow]

Try OA… I tried everything and it didn’t work (sober 11 years). Needed the support from other people struggling with the same thing

[Chantarella]

@Nay108
Yes BUT…it says the men were eating keto for 7 days. Only 7 days before the test was done. I`d like to know what happens if somebody has eaten keto for a year or two, and then had some sugar.

[Don_Q]

I`d like to know what happens if somebody has eaten keto for a year or two, and then had some sugar.

I just tried eating a bunch of candy after eating reasonably clean keto for a year as part of a 3 day “metabolic adaptation” experiment a couple weeks ago. It was like eating a jar of lightning. It kind of freaked me out actually because my blood sugar was clearly way higher than it should ever be. I suspect I was unable to produce enough insulin to suppress it.

Our carb metabolism gets a bit rusty after a long period of <10g/day carbs. Still perfectly serviceable, but rusty. It took several days of eating carbs before I felt “normal”. Fortunately I was able to drop back into ketosis within 24hrs at the end and I’ve been back on strict keto happily ever since.

[Chantarella]

@Don_Q
Were you diabetic before? Because that might make a difference too. I dont think I have ever felt as if my blood glucose was too high. I wouldn’t even know what it really feels like. I was prediabetic before I started keto, but never could complain that I felt physical symptoms. Maybe I was tired- but I was tired about a LOT of things- LOL

[Don_Q]

Were you diabetic before?

Prediabetic/Type II. My last A1C in 2019 was 5.1. I’m guessing it’s in the high fours now. I was pretty hardcore keto for nearly a year before the test. I was doing water fasting 15 days a month for four months last year. Your body starts regulating carbs a little differently under those conditions.

[Chantarella]

@Don_Q
Doing water fasting 15 days per month is pretty drastic. I think that alone could make a sudden influx of sugar precarious.

[Don_Q]

Doing water fasting 15 days per month is pretty drastic. I think that alone could make a sudden influx of sugar precarious.

I should probably clarify that none of the fast were longer than 3 consecutive days. I think 15 consecutive day water fasts are a bad idea generally speaking. I was doing 3:3 Feast/Fast on a continuous basis. Fast 84 hours, feast 60 hours, repeat. I did that from January to May, and then coasted on regular keto. Fat drops pretty quickly, but you can still build a respectable amount of muscle by lifting heavy on the feasting days. It’s not for everybody, but I like it.

[Chantarella]

Good that you like it. I have heard of fasting one day and eating the next.

[KetoCancerMom]

I`d like to know what happens if somebody has eaten keto for a year or two, and then had some sugar.

I am not diabetic, pre-diabetic, or anything like that.

I started eating keto in July 2018. 11/28 was Thanksgiving in the US, and I ate some carby things at supper. The following chart shows what my glucose did, tracked via continuous monitor.

Likewise, this chart is from September. Unfortunately I had a sensor malfunction, so I was resorting to fingersticks to track my glucose after supper. At supper I had an iced tea that had some non-sugar-free flavor syrup added. I think it was about 27-36g of sugar (I just don’t recall and don’t want to dig into my post to find it).

[Chantarella]

Interesting. Normal for blood glucose to show when reintroduced to the diet. But how high? And how much insulin is needed then and do we produce enough after the faucet had been turned off for so long? In healthy bodies, the insulin production should always fit the need. I don’t really know what the long term effects of keto is on glucose metabolism.

[MarkGossage]

After 15 months of keto eating I tried an OGTT (oral glucose tolerance test) at home with the drink that the UK NHS uses. I didn;t eat any carbs for the three days beforehand(which is what is recommended) deliberately to see what the impact would be. My results looked like this.

X axis is minutes
Y axis Blood glucose in mmol/l