Keto myths - boy, I needed this today

#1

After fretting about my ketone levels lately (“ketorexia”?), I stumbled across this article. I really really needed it. It provided some much needed take-a-deep-breath perspective.

(Doug) #2

Brian, you posts are consistently very good - love the way you think. We all have varying needs for the “mental game” or ways to evade it, so yeah… :sunglasses:

#3

Ha, thanks @OldDoug! I get so much out of this site and the folks here, that when I can give/bring something back to help others, I’m eager to do so, as I know you and many others do, as well. :+1:t2::sunglasses:

#4

Thanks for this link, it was a good reminder of KCOK and not to be obsessed about Ketones and counting. Aware is one thing, but obsession really wears me out!

(John) #5

The one I hear a lot lately is people who think you go into keto and deplete all of your glycogen stores, then your body only runs off of fat. You have glycogen, lots of it, and you use it all day every day.

(Doug) #6

What’s this - Keep Calm Or Kill yourself"? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

#7

Some days, it seems that way, hm?!

(What The Fast?!) #8

Doug - you are the most positive, encouraging poster on this site!! You are legit man!

(Doug) #9

Honestly, Helewisa, I’m torn - there is good value in being positive, and not bemoaning one’s failures. I read a good post on this forum that was made long before I joined, saying they liked the fact that it had a very small amount of people talking about their failures, i.e. “Oh my God I pigged out on sweets yesterday and now I feel like crap,” and the like.

Can totally see that. Good, scientific, unemotional information is invaluable. And so can be other stuff, even if it amounts to “Rah Rah, stay on the program,” - sometimes, that’s what people need.

Yet it’s also great to talk to like-minded people, with all their human frailties and fallibility, just like us.

(Tim W) #10

I’ll have to find the studies (I think it was Phinney and Volek) but there is some evidence that your muscles will still have a base level of glycogen after long periods of exercise and/or fasting.

The idea seemed to be that your body will always re-fill the muscles with a small amount of glycogen, no matter what. Maybe we store it in case we have to run from a bear in a hurry. We can use up that glycogen in a pinch but as soon as glycogen is produced again, either by ingestion of food or gluconeogenesis, those basic levels will be re-filled again, before anything else is done with the glucose (anything other than run critical organs of course).

(John) #11

It is Phinney and Volek but does not say there are small base levels of glycogen.

Despite these marked differences in fuel use between LC and HC athletes, there were no significant differences in resting muscle glycogen and the level of depletion after 180 min of running (− 64% from pre-exercise) and 120 min of recovery (− 36% from pre-exercise).
Conclusion

Compared to highly trained ultra-endurance athletes consuming an HC diet, long-term keto-adaptation results in extraordinarily high rates of fat oxidation, whereas muscle glycogen utilization and repletion patterns during and after a 3 hour run are similar.

3.5. Muscle Glycogen
Compared to baseline, muscle glycogen was significantly decreased by 62% immediately post-exercise and 38% at 2 hours post-exercise in the HC group. The LC group exhibited a similar pattern; muscle glycogen was decreased by 66% immediately post-exercise and 34% at 2 hours post-exercise (Fig. 6A). There were no significant differences in pre-exercise or post-exercise glycogen concentrations between groups.

image

Long story short, though we store less glycogen in the liver, our muscles have the same regardless before, during, and after exercise, and more in the blood during exercise. The whole idea of the keto diet “depleting glycogen stores” is bogus.

(G. Andrew Duthie) #12

I dunno. Perhaps it’s the company I keep, but most of these come across as straw men to me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard, for example, someone claim that you can eat unlimited fat on a ketogenic diet and still lose weight.

I think it’s healthy to have a gut check on misbeliefs, but they should actually be prevalent to be debunk-worthy.

My 2 cents. :slight_smile:

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #13

I suspect it comes from a misunderstanding of what “don’t count calories” and “eat fat to satiety” mean. I eat unlimited food in the sense that I eat until I don’t want any more, and if I’m getting enough fat I stop being hungry long before I start to feel stuffed–the opposite of how it worked when I ate carbs. The first time it happened to me was weird–there was food on my plate, but I was done. I’d been accustomed to eating spaghetti, say, till my belly was bursting and still wanting more.

(Tim W) #14

That’s what I was thinking of, you explained it much better than I. Bottom line, our muscles don’t deplete to zero carbs, even after long bouts of exercise.

(Doug) #15

Wow. Well now, thank you so much, Andrea. I’m a “forum” person - really love the format.

Myths - like “that 21 year old supermodel you met online is actually a 60 year old man, obese, cycloptic, with a tendency to drool and with a good bit of acne…” - yeah, that does happen. :smile:

(Have been there - on the other side - 24 year old Diane, A.K.A. ‘Skirt Girl,’ an aerobics instructor from Atlanta, was me - and I never had more fun with a screen name. OMG - guys can be so crude! :laughing:)

Being serious in the here-and-now, though, I’ve got a huge wall in front of me - giving up the mad pursuit of excess and doing the long-term or ‘permanent’ (ouch, hurts to say that) lifestyle changes. Everybody else’s struggles are real to me - been struggling all my life. And - heh - I think in large measure that’s best - that we’re made to struggle, and if we’re not challenged enough, we decline. So, whattayagunnado? Talk it to death, perhaps.

Myths - “Is this guy for real?” My wife-to-be, November 1996, when we first met online. She was really quick, always a half-step ahead of me with wit. She thought I was “deranged,” to quote her directly. I was still truly new to the online experience, and really energized by it. Would have previously scoffed at the notion of meeting anybody met “online.”

Still, nature took its course, and the next month I went and visited her, she in New Mexico, me in Ohio. And again in January, and she came to see me in Baltimore, Maryland in February where I was working. She moved in with me in April, and 3 years later, on April 1, 2000, we were married. We had Jester’s or ‘Fool’s’ hats for everybody and even the most elderly and august personages in attendance donned them.

#16

There is a VERY prominent long time Atkins and keto advocate (whom I will not name) who earned his internet chops by, amongst other things famously adding “butter to his butter.” He seems to have pulled back from that a bit lately as he’s struggled to lose weight, but for a while there was a thread in the keto community that fat upon fat upon fat was OK.

Translation: you’re lucky you run in THIS circle. :smiley:

(Tim W) #17

I second this notion. Part of the obesity/diabetes epidemic is caused by our sedentary jobs + ease of accessing food, a little more struggle in life, in all it’s forms, would do most our bodies good!