Keto with a twist?

(Laura C) #1

Is it possible to incorporate multiple popular diets into one? I follow @instantloss on Instagram and she does a little Keto, a little Whole 30, and a little Paleo.

I wouldn’t say that I am necessarily struggling with Keto but good lord do I miss my fruit and veggies that aren’t allowed on Keto. Oh and my Chobani Flips Yogurt I was eating for breakfast each morning.

I do not have any problems with dairy but would love to be able to have a small glass of 2% milk every now and then.

I’m starting week 4 of Keto today and I am back at my starting weight. I have a feeling I am not eating the amount of fat needed to get into ketosis as I am not counting my macros either. I might just need to do an experiment and see what works with my body and what doesn’t. I definitely do not mind cutting the sugar out and keeping my carbs on the DL but would love to be able to eat a banana, apple, strawberries, etc as a snack or even breakfast in the morning.

I would love to get everyone’s opinion on this!

(Michael ) #2

Not sure what your goal is so hard to recommend something. You can mix diet types but if your carbs are too high, you won’t be in ketosis most of the time, so it wouldn’t really be a ketogenic diet. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, just not keto by definition.

Paleo is essentially the most healthy version of keto with optional fruit and tubers. Eliminate the fruit and sweet potatoes, and you’re keto. I did paleo for awhile and gradually just dropped the carbs without really thinking about it. The transition from paleo to keto is pretty easy compared to cold turkey keto transition from regular diet.

The best thing about paleo is the heavy emphasis on healthy eating and not just macros. It’s a good background for a healthy keto plan with lots of vegetables, little dairy and low omega 6 fat sources.

How many pieces of fruit you can eat and be keto is person to person and type of fruits ingested.

I don’t know what whole 30 is but sounds like a paleo type thing so probably equally compatible or incompatible, depending on personal goals and body composition

I will experiment with fruit and tubers after i hit target weight but my suspicion is that i gravitated towards keto because my body prefers it. To sau I’ll never eat a mango again sounds crazy though

(Michael ) #3

I looked up whole 30… it’s just keto without dairy so i don’t see a conflict. I did something similar to identify food allergies and autoimmune response. I ended up reintroducing butter and a little cheese but i don’t do other dairy. So, i guess im whole 30

Oh wait, fruit included in whole 30. Sp, it’s just paleo i guess…I’m confusing myself now, but basically your question is"can you eat fruit?"

If you want to but you might not be keto

(Beth) #4

That is an interesting question. I think that some people try to cycle in and out of keto or eat some carbs only when they’ll be burning them off immediately.

In my experience it’s a little painful to get into ketosis due to keto flu, I can’t imagine going through that regularly, but maybe it get’s easier once you are fat adapted. The other factor is how metabolically damaged you are. If you are not that insulin resistant, you can probably eat a different macro profile with more carbs and may prefer something more like paleo which is still low carb but not enough to take you into ketosis.

I personally was doing paleo for a couple years and find that keto is easier for me to adhere to. This is because the carbs (and resulting blood sugar swings) trigger cravings and I start to get a little cray cray. But with that said, I was borderline T2D and have spent my life on low fat high carb diet that probably messed up my sensitivity to insulin. If you are trying this for weight loss and you are not suffering from a metabolic problem, it may be great middle ground to try paleo and maybe some intermittent fasting.

(Karen Parrott) #5

Yes! Customize. I’m Paleo, LCHF and Keto with Time restricted eating windows. If you don’t make it your own you can’t optimize your health and life IMO.

(Laura C) #6

I do not have any health issues. My bad cholesterol was elevated last year when I got my annual physical done. I have my annual again next week and by that time I will have been on Keto for a full 4 weeks so I am curious to see what my blood work will come back saying, if that’s even enough time for this diet to take charge on what it’s doing to my body. I follow the author or Against All Grain on IG and have two of her books. I might take a look into her recipes and see if I can relate more to them. I feel like I’m already invested in Keto with all the special ingredients I have purchased and continue to purchase. I used to get Starbucks as a “treat” on Friday’s and boy do I miss those. I have since purchased some of the Torani sugar free syrups for my coffee and use those with butter and coconut oil with heavy whipping cream and it has made my coffee tolerable. I always put Coffee Mate Caramel Macchiato creamer in my coffees at work!

I’m not overweight by any means. When I started this I was 127 at 5’5" but I would like to be able to get rid of my double chin that has slowly started showing it’s face again and tone up around my belly section.

I will probably just have to play around with certain things to see how my body reacts.

(Jo O) #7

Substitute sour cream for yogurt add some berries if it fits your macros.

Milk: heavy whipping cream to water (any ratio you like) for me 2-3 tablespoons to a 1.5 c water. It will taste like whole milk.

(Ken) #8

The true Paleo macro for carbs is 5%. Sweet potatoes are not Paleo. Real Paleo is lipolytic, with a fat macro of at least 60%. All this other nonsense is Paleo Corruption, negating it’s beneficial effects.

(Michael ) #9

I think you mean keto

#10

the chobani flips are just sugar bombs and not alot of fat. My wife was adicted to them and i was able to have her step down to a greek gods full fat yogurt with sliced fresh strawberries or blueberries on the way down to no yogurt. she doesnt seem to miss that much now. also got her off all sugar substitutes and fake cremers by going to heavy cream as light as she wants to go and she cant drink coffee without it now. Just give it time.

#11

One of the foundations of Paleo is that - even though it tends to be dramatically lower carb than standard recommendations - it’s basically macro ratio-neutral. Most paleo folks are quite low carb and are in ketosis some of the time, but starches are definitely in the mix for others.
What’s your basis for “real” Paleo?

#12

If you’re not getting into ketosis, I think one (or a combination) of three things is happening:

  1. You simply haven’t adapted yet.
  2. You are consuming too many grams of carbs.
  3. You are consuming too much protein.

It’s possible to get into ketosis while fasting, so consumption of fat (in any amount) is not necessary to get into ketosis. That said, if you want to maintain your weight on a ketogenic diet, you’ll definitely need to consume fat.

According to myfitnesspal, one banana has 31g of carbs and one apple has 24g of carbs. It might be hard to eat just one of those fruits and still limit your total carb intake to 20-30 grams per day. Obviously, it’ll depend on what else you eat during the day.

If you want to still be able to consume fruit, milk, and other foods which likely have too many carbs to get into or stay in ketosis, you might consider intermittent fasting instead. Intermittent fasting won’t necessarily get you into ketosis, but it’ll provide your body with a longer period of time for your insulin levels drop. You’d fast for a significant part of the day and limit your eating to a relatively small portion of the day. One popular protocol is to fast for 16 hours and then eat during an 8 hour window. (Basically this just amounts to skipping breakfast and making sure that you don’t snack after your evening meal.) If you don’t see acceptable results with this protocol, you can lengthen the fasting time until you do see results.

(Ken) #13

Cordain’s “Cereal Grains, Humanity’s Double Edged Sword” and the multitude of studies found on Beyondveg.com.

The concept reportedly goes back to the 1960s, but the name and author of the book escapes me right now, I never read it.

#14

Cordain is one of the fathers of our current Paleo movement, but I can’t imagine that even he would say that there’s such a thing as “real” Paleo, and in any case all the extensive research and writing since Cordain suggests a pretty big range on the macros (depending on genetics, metabolic health, etc).

The whole basis of Paleo is evolutionary biology, which for humans means a wide span of ecosystems and seasons (and millennia, and continents…) so it’s definitely not one particular ratio of macronutrients, nor something that one person created.

(Banting & Yudkin & Atkins & Eadeses & Cordain & Taubes & Volek & Naiman & Bikman ) #15

I suspect that a more real Paleo would involve a seasonality component, such that you’d eat meats all year, add fruits and veg in the spring and summer, and root veg in the fall and winter. In a pre-agrarian society, seasonality would be a harsher mistress than it was after farming and much harsher than the industrial world. Preservation would come with farming and more with refrigeration and canning.

Anyrate, you can combine protocols. But you have to follow the rules of any protocol for it to do anything for you. I fear that adding Whole30 restrictions to Paleo restrictions to Keto restrictions would leave you an expensive space in which to eat. You’d be dropping honey, a lot of fruits, sweet potatoes except in very small quantities. That’s just Paleo done to keto carb limits. You could probably keep limited quantities of blueberries, strawberries, peaches, raspberries. But adding W30 would limit you a bit further in terms of your requirements.

If I were interested in this, I’d get really good at keto. Then add the Paleo component (grass fed, organically grown produce, proper eggs, wild fish, etc). by that time you’re probably at Whole 30.

I think, done properly, paleo and keto are fully compatible. Nice wide section of intersectionality

#16

Yes. Another way to think of it is that if you’re following Paleo and your carbs are low, you’re eating a high-quality, nutrient dense keto diet.

Whole30 I think is trickier to work in since it’s so specifically focused on 3 meals/day - but, yes, lots of overlap in these three!

(Banting & Yudkin & Atkins & Eadeses & Cordain & Taubes & Volek & Naiman & Bikman ) #17

3m/d is not really incompatible with keto. Not so good for IF/EF/OMAD protocols, but if you’re looking to keep carbs down at ketogenic levels and see where that takes you, you’re fine with 3m/d. Or even 4.

That said, 3 meals a day is an arbitrary number enforced in agrarian societies to keep workers going. As an arbitrary number, I am highly skeptical that it’s all that important. I’ve had times where I do two, where I do four, where I did six.

But the short is, you can limit your keto with whatever additional rules you want to impose, except for high carb or low fat.

(Ken) #18

The seasonable aspect of Paleo is a factor as far as fruits, but you have to remember that paleolithic fruits bear little resemblance to modern ones. They were more like berries, and there was much more competition from wildlife for them. Ripe fruits also spoil quickly, modern ones are usually picked and then put into cold storage. Honey was rare, so not really worth consideration in an evolutionary context. Neither were root veggies like sweet potatoes and others.

Meat and fat usage was year round, mainly because pemmican, the main storage method, lasted literally for years when sewn into rawhide bags. That’s mainly why the paleo macro is 60/35/5%. Technically, you could add fruit/berries for a few months, but that would cause fat gain, which was beneficial back then, but obviously not now. So, in reality, you’d only add in Carb based foods at levels above the 5% macro with one goal in mînd, the creation of body fat

All this is covered on Beyondveg.com. I suggest paying attention to the science of strontium analysis and how it’s able to determine what people actually ate by bone and teeth analysis. This debunks much of the “fauxpaleo” assertions.

#19

No you don’t.
The only thing you “have to” do to get results, is figure out what works for you.

(Rob) #20

While I agree with this in principle, when starting out, most people need some rules because it makes it easier to stick to when everything is hardest (getting over cravings, etc.). From an effectiveness POV I would suggest sticking to a protocol and then n=1 once you are keto and/or fat adapted which normally doesn’t take too long.