Keto on pause!

(Jose Rodriguez) #1

Fellas first i want to start with, i am not the brightest or the smartest but when it comes to being strict on a diet i stick to it. So please don’t judge on my intelligence… So…
Ive slacked on my keto diet just a bit due to some lack of energy, headaches, i got sick , noticed i was forgetting things, when i get up from my bed i felt dizzy so i was told here i was lacking magnessium and electrolytes… But i also read the brain needs minimun 130g of carbs please educate me further. I started jan 1. Dropped 35lbs. N stopped.

(Mark Rhodes) #2

There is a process called gluconeogenesis whereby your liver will convert proteins and fats into all the glucose your brain will need and enough for any other functions. This is why keto can be so effective. Your body manufactures what it needs and is demand driven rather than supply driven such as the SAD.

(Jose Rodriguez) #3

Mark im so glad to hear your reply, so im going to jump in again, this time i would need to be more strict, im going today to get multivitamins. So basically if i go 90% fat, as long as i get my electrolytes and magnessiun right i should be :ok_hand:.

(Mark Rhodes) #4

That could be a little high. When the wife and I started we went strict 20 g of total carbohydrate or less per day.
I ate everything else as much as I wanted as often as I wanted. That helped me get through the following weeks with results. I was careful to avoid hidden carbs in shelf items as well as sugar alcohols and didn’t get involved in the net versus total debate, just stuck to total.

I just went back in my food log for April 2017 and saw I was eating fat grams to protein grams at about 2:1. I didn’t limit protein. Still don’t really I just eat less rather naturally. As time moved on I ate less fat bombs or fat driven meals. I do think it was important for my body to have all that extra fat early on.

My marcos were 80/16/4 on average

(Mark Rhodes) #5

@Jose_rodriguez
and yes to those electrolytes. We didn’t and the wife was 104F fever and her skin color went grey. I almost force fed her pasta I was so worried.

(A ham loving ham! - VA6KD) #6

That number is about the calories the brain needs to metabolize per day to remain conscious. The missing part here is that the brain can happily switch to burning ketones in lieu of glucose for the most part - about 75% of its energy needs can come from ketones, but there are some processes where glucose is necessary and that’s where gloconeogenesis within your liver kicks in to more than readily meet that need. You really don’t need any carbs as just about everything in your body can run (some more efficiently) from ketones and for parts that can’t, GNG within the liver covers those.

(Jose Rodriguez) #7

Thank you for covering that part for me i will be doing research on gng to make sure i fully understand it.

(A ham loving ham! - VA6KD) #8

GNG is a survival mechanism. It’s the formation of glucose from non-carb sources. Without it you’d die and it’s a process that’s ancient and seen in all cellular life.

With a high carb low fat diet, you’re running on glucose produced from carbs and I think of that as drinking from a glucose fire hose - there’s a bunch of it flowing through and your body is sipping off what it needs while the rest is going into fat as storage. A high fat low carb diet flips that so you’re running on ketones produced from fat and any needed glucose is produced only as need via GNG from fats or proteins. In both cases, excess intake causes fat storage, but excess is far harder to do on a high fat low carb diet.

(Jose Rodriguez) #9

Sir you are exactly what my day needed. Thank you very much. If you can throw at me any especific vitamins i should go grab today for the hard transition days coming up I’ll appreciate.

(A ham loving ham! - VA6KD) #10

Other than the usual salt, magnesium, potassium electrolyte stuff, sorry, I can’t really say. Most ketoers find that they just have to do what they find works for them. Personally I don’t seem to experience the dredded “Keto flu”, or if I do it doesn’t bother me. Some folks get it quite hard and really struggle with it. Maybe someone else here can offer better advice on the initial transition to ketosis. I can say though, I’ve been fairly lazy with ketosis with stretches of very strict for months at a time and every time I have a carb heavy event, I feel it the next few days but getting back into ketosis is easy and smooth sailing. Some others though relive the keto flu every time…