My n=1 with sweeteners

#21

I agree. It seems plenty of calories and fat even without the fat bombs - though we don’t know the rest of the day, maybe the breakfast is the biggest, fattiest meal?
But I don’t see why the fat bombs are needed with all this fatty stuff…

#22

Just wanted to clear up that it was the lemon that did the trick. I didn’t change the amount of water I was drinking. I also heard apple cider vinegar can do the same for heartburn. Also, I had no idea I had an issue with stomach acid/heartburn until I tried fasting. So, it was really a game changer for me. I also use it after a meal if I think I am overeating or "should be " full. I can better trust my hunger cues now and am eating accordingly.

Here is the information that helped me. There is a specific amount of lemon to water but I just use a slice in a very large cup (32 oz?).

(Susan) #23

@lfod14 I can start tracking again, but I’m not sure what to do with the information. If you eat less fat, what do you eat when you’re hungry? You either get more protein or more carbs. I thought the idea was low carbs, moderate protein and fat till you’re full (or at least not hungry.) Just thinking about being hungry gets me going towards depression. I’m doing my best to keep my A1c down. My understanding is too much carbs or excess protein will interfere with that.
The purpose of starting this thread was to share that cutting out sweeteners didn’t make any difference for me.

Yep. Fortunately, both my husband and I agree with you. Sure I’d like to be lighter, but my mental health and lack of what diabetes would cause are more important.

(Susan) #24

I’ve been going back and forth about whether or not to say this, but I’ve decided it’s bothering me so much I need to get it off my chest.

I found your statement to be very hurtful. Go back and read my first paragraph. I started with standard keto. I then went to 2mad and intermittent fasting. I mention somewhere along the way I joined VIRTA. I paid about $500 out of pocket. I went with them because I think Dr. Phinney is the leading researcher in keto for the common man (and for endurance athletes). I tried carnivore for 3 months and had as low carbs as can be had - nothing except what was in meat, eggs, butter and cream cheese. All the while I gained and lost the same 5 lbs. I finally decided that I needed to forgo sweeteners. The purpose of posting to begin with was just to share that going off sweeteners made no difference for me.

I know I eat too much, both protein and fat, but I’m often hungrier after a meal than before. I’m unwilling to fast because hunger is such a big issue for me. Dr. Fung said that fasting isn’t that bad but then later said that you might as well fast for at least 3 days because the second day is the most difficult.

I think the real problem is most people don’t (and can’t) really understand major depression. I shouldn’t expect it of people. I’m frequently botomlessly hungry. My achievements (which are yelling at me in my face) are that I no longer have symptoms of diabetes and I’m no longer gaining weight (which I have been all of my life.) Hunger sends me in to a tail spin and I start thinking of suicide. Please don’t judge my overeating!

BTW - I’m retired now, but I taught biochemistry to nursing students and I know what I’m doing. I’ve read Phinney and Westman and listended to all of the 2kd podcasts and many many more - Dr Ken Barry, Eric Berg, Keto Connect, Tom Delaur, The Diet Doctor, Jason Fung, Tim Noakes, Keto life, butter makes your pants fall off, primal perks, zero carb health, the yearly low carb conferences… I’ve done my research and I’m doing it right and I’ve got the blood and urine ketones and the HbA1c to prove it.

#25

You do a couple things with it, other than having data to find correlations with later if/when something doesn’t work you’ll re-find your metabolic rate which is very important to know. Right now you don’t truly know how much you’re eating, but when you figure that out how do you know you’re not way above your current TDEE? I was eating around 2500cals a day (somewhere around there) and not able to drop an once for a long time, had my metabolism tested and it came back at 1700! I was eating WAY over what my body could burn, keep in mind every calculator had me at around 2800-3000 so I thought I was eating under that… NOPE! Once I had that number I limited my calories to slightly under that and started loosing again for the first time in a while, after that experience I have a very different view of all this stuff.

You first figure out why you’re hungry in between meals, tracking will show you what you’re not getting. Ignore that “moderate protein” crap, Eat what you want. We need protein, it doesn’t turn into apple fritters when you eat it, gluconeogenesis is WAY over hyped in this world. Protein is very satiating, for many (like me) way more satiating than fat. I can eat fatty gooey salty stuff all day long (seriously), try to eat steak after steak! Doesn’t matter how delicious it is, your body will stop you when it feels like you have a boat anchor in your stomach! You can even go over the 20g carb (I wouldn’t go over 30ish though) as long as it’s from veggies and low GI stuff. You do have wiggle room.

If I were you, I’d start the tracking back up, find the calorie point where you start loosing, eat what you eat for a week at a time and weigh daily, you’re weighing to watch trends, not freak about about normal fluctuations, record that daily in your tracker. Then you can adjust your cals to keep you loosing. Within that number you can tweak your fat/protein to suit your needs, carbs are pretty much gonna be a set thing all the time.

I’m really going to try this weekend to do a write up on me destroying my metabolism doing all the stuff many here are doing and the process to repair and how it turned out, I gotta find my original body scan because I wanted to attach those to show how drastic the change was when I did some stuff differently. Many here are anti-tracking, anti-calorie, anti-sweetener, anti anything other than just eating. Many of us can’t trust our hunger/satiety signals whether we eat keto or not, I ate strict cookie cutter keto for years and that didn’t matter. Other stuff DID fix that though (hello high protein).

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #26

You are right. Some people have the idea that ketogenic eating means stuffing your gullet with fat, and not simply eating to satiety. Others still hold to the CICO way of looking at things. But really, we know that the metabolism adjusts to accommodate input, slowing down when we restrict calories and speeding up when we eat more. Personally, I find that eating to hunger works well. There may still be room in my belly, but I neither need nor want more.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #27

You asked for advice and suggestions. @lfod14 simply stated the obvious. What you’re doing doesn’t work. So it’s time to try something else. Your problem may indeed be artificial sweeteners, which is what prompted you to start this topic. You said you tried to eliminate them for 2 weeks. Both I and @ctviggen pointed out that this is not much time. A lot of folks, a very lot of folks, have a problem with one or another artificial sweeteners. So instead of feeling hurt by an objective comment, I suggest you accept the advice offered.

This is the elephant in the room. Are you really eating keto? Judging by your your avatar photo you have a lot of onboard fat. I may wrong, but if you are in ketosis I would not expect you to feel much hunger, especially after eating.

#29

No, one wouldn’t expect that but it can easily happen. We are very very different and not all of us eat automatically less on keto. I never did (except on my keto OMAD week but OMAD wasn’t sustainable).
I usually don’t have so much hunger problems, at least, thankfully… But I massively overeat on keto sometimes. It can happen quite close to carnivore too (it’s very unusual, though so maybe doesn’t matter), WAY below my personal ketosis carb limit. Being just in ketosis I get hungry due to the carbs. But Susan doesn’t eat so much carbs. But maybe she is even more sensitive to them than me, it’s possible. And I know many people eat way more than me even on carnivore and don’t have the super easy satiation I normally have. We lose strong hunger at different points and I can easily imagine some people (almost?) never have that. Ketosis doesn’t always do the awesome things people talk about. I surely never got more energy and I don’t lose fat on keto even if I just eat enough to be satiated. I believe it’s helpful but I couldn’t find the way even after thinking about and experimenting with options for years. And it’s me, there are harder cases.
Hunger happens even with very little carbs… I can get satiated with small meals on carnivore but I get hungry again. And again. And again… I doubt I can lose that way but I don’t care, it’s super annoying.

It doesn’t seem to me that suffering without sweeteners is good for Susan - though I still would try to get off of them, just more gradually. I found it a bad thing to cling to sweets every day for my own case - but I can accept some people are okay like that. I know too little about Susan to say much. But we all know little to judge her. I know I do what I can since a decade and I still can’t lose fat. I am not nearly as great and disciplined like Susan, though… But it’s my personality or what, I can’t be stricter (actually, I tried that. failed epically).

Just because someone has an easy keto way, other people can have a too big problem. I still saw no tips to solve her problem. Maybe a slim chance in the case of giving up sweeteners but it’s pretty much impossible as it causes too much suffering and if I saw no change for 2 weeks, I wouldn’t do that either (but again, I am not disciplined. I would quit the hour things started to get hard. I skipped sweeteners for 2 weeks once because it was the easiest thing ever and I worked on eating less of them since many years. and I don’t consider them food, that helps with my attitude. if I am addicted to something, I clearly don’t give them up. see coffee…).

Unsatiable Hunger is horrible, feel lucky if you don’t know that. I know that, I just rarely have that on extreme low-carb. Why couldn’t some people have it often even on a strict keto? I don’t have mental reasons for it, I think… But I experienced a few times that mental things very easily trigger hunger. And there are compulsions. You eat without desire, hunger and need because you can’t resist.

#30

So true! One reason I did not continue my carnivore trial was that I always still felt hungry after eating meat alone. Adding the smallest amount of veggies to the meat helped. Who knows why? It clearly wasn’t about calories as the veggies added almost nothing.

And for me, cheese and heavy cream are not satiating one bit. If I really wanted to lose weight (which is not my main aim), I think I would need to eliminate cheese and cream. .

Another thing about “hunger” is that it can be driven by the state of your GI tract rather than (or in combination with?) hunger-signaling hormones. For those of us who have a history of digestive discomfort, wanting to eat can be about calming whatever is going on down there, which could be caused by a disturbed microbiome. There seems to be good evidence that anti-depressants can alter the microbiome, so maybe all three (anti-depressant use, microbiome and hunger) are in some way connected?

Good luck – Susan – on figuring out what works for you. It’s not easy!

This article talks about effects of anti-depressants on the microbiome, and it references other interesting studies on the topic:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-74934-9.pdf

(Michael) #31

Are you sure that you aren’t consuming vegetable oils or processed food?

(GINA ) #32

Have you had your hormones checked? I suspect you need a complete thyroid workup and female hormones too. Not just from a regular PCP, someone that specializes in that sort of thing. Were you ever diagnosed with PCOS? Dry skin? Hair loss?

It would be one thing if you were at those last few pounds away from a vanity goal, but to be so far from where you want to be and still not losing means something is wrong. To have your BG and a1c fall in line, but have your body hang on to fat so hard means something is wrong.

It sounds like your depression can be pretty bad, but low thyroid is often misdiagnosed as depression, especially in middle-aged women. Maybe you have both.

I am sorry for your troubles. I have been there, with my body working against me, not responding to what had worked before, or what works for everyone else.

In the meantime, I would say cut back on the fat bombs and eat more real food. Vegetables and protein. Make a stir fry with the vegetables from your garden and steak or chicken. Or a big salad with some meat and homemade dressing. I tried the 'high fat, low carb, limited protein" keto when it was popular and it was hugely unsatisfying for me. Meep an eye on your BG, but more protein isn’t likely to hurt and it may work on your hunger.

(Susan) #33

@Whiznot Yes, unless you count coconut or olive oil as ‘vegetable’. Since I don’t consider corn or soy or rape seed to be vegetables, the term can be a bit confusing!

(Susan) #34

@GME Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I’ve had my thyroid checked every few years since I got diagnosed with the depression. Always normal. I definitely don’t have PCOS. I’m post menopausal and on estrogen and progesterone. My GYN is leaning towards stopping the estrogen, but is willing to continue it since I very much want to continue. I’m not sure what measuring the hormones would accomplish in this situation and my insurance is pretty basic and probably wouldn’t pay for it.

I have large salads daily, mostly from my garden, and regularly have stir frys. Thanks for the suggestions. I was carnivore for a while and a lot higher protein. They recommended a pound of protein for each of my 2 meals. I never got quite that much, but a lot more than now. 3 months on that didn’t make a difference to my weight or well being, so I added the garden veges back in.