My keto journey in 1 month (fatty liver diagnosis)

fasting
(Graham Ginn) #1

Introducing myself to the forums. Not new to keto as I’ve experimented with it before a couple of years ago and it worked famously. I’m not what you would call a big heavy corpulent human by body type. I was an athlete in college and at 6’4" weighed, at most, during my peak performance days, 180lbs. That was in 1993 and then, over the years I fell for the government’s plan to fatten us all up and make us dependent on big pharma. I gradually ballooned to 231 this last year and a routine abdominal scan found my liver to be advanced fatty. I was one of those guys who had a slight paunch but if I relaxed it at home it was rather a large paunch of visceral fat and accumulation from beer, alcohol (wine and mead) and loads of Mexican food and starches of all kinds. My go-to was breakfast tacos with potatoes and eggs every morning, no doubt cooked in canola oil at the local gas station. I’m sure so many of you in the South can relate.

Nonetheless I was shocked into changing my ways with this gift of a diagnosis. I had actually picked up a six pack of 10% beer the day I read my scan results. I had cracked a beer, sat down in my chair and read the results after taking a sip. I promptly went to the sink and dumped it all out and the remaining 5 beers sit in my fridge at home. I now look at my life as if I’ve suddenly jumped on a different freeway. Sure life moves at the same speed, because I’m a middle aged human with a distorted sense of time advancement, but my life is more enriched and full rather than being on autopilot.

That’s what I love about the keto lifestyle…it forces me to be conscious about my food choices and it forces me to question the entire food industry and be very suspect of all of it. I assume most of you are at this point. If you are not, please watch Fat Fiction and discover the lie we’ve all been living since the 70s. It’s criminal what the FDA and USDA have done to 300m Americans. People should be hung for these crimes but the originators are dead or close to death these days and we’re left with the mess to clean up through education.

I swim every other day when my shoulder can tolerate it and I watch those big giant women who hang out in the shallow end and “move” with a pool noodle to get some “cardio” in. This one woman got out of her brand new shiny Tahoe and she could barely walk. I mean, wtf? I’m so mad at the food pyramid and how it has hobbled some amazing people. I just know this woman is probably the sweetest person and she’s convinced that her doctor’s recommendations are sacred and that she’s doing what he/she has told her to do because you know as well as I do if she has a doctor treating her and due to her size I suspect she’s had some real health scares. These are the type of people who nibble on snack cakes, have cravings 20 hours of the day, keep sweets nearby everywhere and generally live a deceptive lie towards themselves. They hide the food from friends and loved ones and think they are being sneaky. I have confronted friends who do this presently and said you are only sneaking on yourself. It’s so simple to changed this pattern of diet hell you are in. You just say no to carbs and increase fat and don’t move for 30 days, 60 if you want and the weight will FALL off.

In 60 more days I will return to the doctor who did my scan to get another one and to do some bloodwork. Hopefully the liver fat accumulation will have shrunk. I had a glass of red wine last night to celebrate my 30 day journey. It was great but I’m back on my journey of sobriety for another 30 days. If anyone reads this and can relate their own stories I’d love to hear about fatty liver syndrome and what you went through to change it. Did you? What did your doctors say? Any success stories?

Thanks!!!

(Jack Bennett) #2

:+1::muscle::+1::muscle:

(UsedToBeT2D) #3

My fatty liver was gone after 16 weeks Keto. No alcohol.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #4

If you stay off sugar (even more so than other carbohydrate) and avoid alcohol, your liver should recover very quickly. Dr. Robert Lustig did an experiment on ten children with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease from his paediatric obesity clinic, in which their sugar intake was replaced with other carbohydrates, and within ten days their non-alcoholic fatty liver disease had been reversed. Granted, this was a small study, but it shows what the possibilities are.

The important thing to bear in mind is that alcohol and fructose (which constitutes one-half of a sucrose molecule, the other half being a glucose molecule) both must be dealt with by the same metabolic pathway in the liver. When it gets overwhelmed, this pathway causes fat to build up in the liver. Over time, this leads to fatty liver disease, then steatohepatitis, then cirrhosis, and eventually to death from liver failure, if the abuse to the liver continues long enough.

An occasional drink of alcohol should be fine, especially if you are avoiding sugar. It is even easier to overwhelm the liver with fructose than with ethanol, since sugar lacks the short-term toxic effects of alcohol. A single glass of fruit juice can hit the liver with more fructose than it can handle in the time it takes to drink the juice, whereas eating the same amount of fructose in the form of whole fruit would not be so much of a problem. This is because, first of all, you probably wouldn’t be able to eat that much of the fruit in question, and secondly, the fibre in the fruits do you manage to eat will slow down the absorption of the fructose to a rate the liver can safely handle. Fruit juice lacks that fibre, and of course beverages sweetened with sugar or high-fructose corn syrup never had any fibre in them to begin with.

Dr. Lustig’s rule for the patients in his paediatric obesity clinic is that they are permitted to drink only milk and water, no fruit juice or soft drinks of any kind. If you emulate that and keep your alcohol consumption to a minimum (and especially if you can eliminate it entirely), your liver should recover just fine.

(Graham Ginn) #5

Thank you so much. In the past I was a fruit juice lover. Also drank sodas like mad. That coupled with my drinking no doubt led to my fatty liver…not to mention the bags and I mean BAGS of Gummy Bears I was consuming. I will be not drinking for at least a few more weeks until Thanksgiving where I’ll have two to three glasses of red wine with dinner that day. But after that, back to no drinking. BTW, I’ve done enough drinking to last me a lifetime so I don’t miss it like so many do. In one month I’ve ceased all fructose drinks and the only sugar I have had were three pieces of Dove individual chocolates. I’ve returned to seeing chocolate like the people in the mid 1800s did, chocolate and sweets in general should be a very very RARE delicacy. Easy in my mind to do so even though it’s absolutely prolific in our society.

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

I found, after about a year on keto, possibly a bit longer, that my taste had changed enough that unsweetened chocolate is now palatable and actually rather tasty, whereas in my sugar-burning days, it was far too bitter to contemplate.

I occasionally indulge in non-sugar sweeteners (be careful; each of them seems to be problematic for someone), but I find that the less I taste sweetness, the less I miss it. I am now at the point where glazed doughnuts (my drug of choice) and the like are no longer much of a temptation, but I still find yeast bread (especially the small loaves included with your order by one local pizzeria) very hard to resist.

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #7

I hear you on increased sweet tasting. Celery and sweet peppers are like candy now.

I have always liked my chocolate on the darker side but now even the 90% bars are almost too sweet, I do use them for cooking but don’t really enjoy eating it, too sweet.

(Bob M) #8

Allow me to be the curmudgeon: I’ve moved from 85+ % chocolate to the 70s. The 70s just taste better.

What I’d rather have is more cacao butter and less sugar, to get the fat up and the sugar down. That would lower the “percentage” probably, but would taste better. To me, the 85+ percent stuff tastes chalky and not smooth at all.

There is some 85+ percent stuff I can hack, but it’s also the most expensive. These are great for instance:

But they are $5 for 2.7 ounces.

If you go want to drink every once in a while (I usually have 1, sometimes 2, drinks per week), supposedly saturated fat is protective to the liver. Chug some cream!

(Robin) #9

I f you’re get to 30 days sobriety… go for another 30. You’ll be rid of one little monkey on your back. And your body will thank you. And yes… YOU GOT THIS!

#10

You may already know this, but when you do be sure to check out the Feldman Protocol, otherwise the doctor will say your cholesterol is too high.

Good luck, and thanks for the post! :+1:

(Scott) #11

On the same path - fatty liver - I’m at Week 9 on Keto, down 10 pounds, several inches, and really looking foward to not having a fatty liver - I’m participating in a fatty liver study, so we’ll see how it goes - keep on keeping on!