N=1 Frustrations, Theories, Ramblings and Experiments

#1

67 yo female, 5-1, started keto in January at 171 pounds, now down to 143 pounds. Fasting insulin was 37 when I started FBS was in around 100-112. Have been on LC on and off for decades. Keep net carbs to 20g, total calories to usually less than 1200, due to being short and old.

OK, that’s the basics, here’s the specifics that I’m trying to get a handle on. I’ve done a few 48 hour fasts, do IF for 18-20 hours basically every day. After the last Zornfast, I’ve had a hard time getting my numbers back under control. I lost basically nothing after the fast. My FBS have started to creep up over 100 again, 112 this morning. I have basically ALL the monitors, and here’s today’s other results:
Blood ketones: 1.0. I’m usually around 1.5 in the morning.
Greenwon breathalyzer: .01 or .10, depending on whether you read the first or second number. (low, in other words) I’m normally between .03 and .04 in the morning
Keto sticks: Yes, I know what people think, but they do correlate for me: Moderate

All these readings are going in the wrong direction. My hands are puffy, so I know there’s fluid retention contributing. My weight actually dropped half a pound this morning, but now I’m where I was pre-fast. So, some thoughts:

Could FBS be creeping up because my extremely high insulin has started to drop? Ill be testing it in May. Can’t test without an order, I live in NJ, where everything is overly controlled.

Yesterday’s potential dietary discretions: I was in a difficult situation, and had the following for dinner: The cheese and pepperoni from three slices of pizza, and a Quest Hero bar, the one with Allulose. I also had two fat bombs, 5 slices of bacon and a small salad with cheese and olives packed in olive oil during the day. Can anyone hazard a guess as to how many carbs are in a pizza topping?

Has anyone else had issues with Quest Hero bars? I just started eating them recently, and usually only have a half of one. Great for when you’re out and kind of “stuck”, but maybe not for me.

My fat bombs are cream cheese, butter, Swerve and peanut butter, plus a few no sugar chocolate chips. Two may be too many, but I licked the beaters and counted that as one, and then had another at midnight when I got home from an extremely frustrating evening.

My FBS is what’s concerning me the most. It’s been over 100 since my last fast, normally in the 80-90s. I’m thinking of doing a fat fast for a few days, just to see what happens.

Anyone have any insights on any of this? I know I’ve done well up to now. Losing 28 pounds in 3 1/2 months is great weight loss for me. I have about 20 pounds left to lose and I know it will be slower. But I don’t want to see my blood glucose numbers rising.

(Ron) #2

Pre-Dawn Phenomenon?

#3

I just don’t know if that would start suddenly. I can’t wait to test my insulin and see if it’s dropped. If it’s going down, I could see why my glucose would go up.

(Chris W) #4

Ron may know what my answer is already

based on your limited macro info you are probably a little low on fat intake and protien slightly high for the day. So what is happening is your body is upping your glucose, and I would not bet it has as much to do with insulin as not having enough fat to burn that your body feels it is safe to do so, but you did have extra protein laying around.
One of the evil things that happens with some of the sweeteners is that they invoke a insulin response, which will clamp down on ketones and start the storing pathways for glucose if it goes high enough. Then once there is no glucose to follow your insulin drops, you have a drop in blood glucose because of the insulin spike and then after a while insulin drops as well. So now you have extra ammino acids laying around in your blood stream from the protien bar that may or may not have caused it(the spike), or the fat bomb with swerve in it. So GNG starts up to get your BG back up, and your keytones will have to wait a while until that is back up, and stable. A few hours later you some what recovered, and your ketones are coming back up.

My simple answer is dump the sweeteners, the quest bar, and eat a little more fat. Quest bars are OK for an emergency but I would not rely on them as normal daily thing. Pizza sauce will also have some carbs in it.

(Chris W) #5

Another thing are you hungry all the time?

#6

Hardly ever hungry. No hypoglycemia and I’ve always been very prone to it.

#7

Yes, I don’t think I can do the bars or too many fat bombs. :confused:

#8

This N=1 stuff is hard!

Looking back at my food diaries, I see 3 potential stallers for me: processed food bars, nuts(mixed) and fat bombs. My numbers were back to normal this morning, blood ketones 1.7, breathalyzer 0.29(or 0.02,whichever way you look at it) and FBS 91. Obviously, something I ate this week affected my earlier numbers.

I guess the answer is to eliminate those three things and then add them back in one at a time. I’ve been at some variation of 143 for the last 2 weeks. Fasting for 48 hours didn’t result in any sustained weight loss, might not do that again for a while.

My macros are 20 net carbs, 100 g of fat and 57 g of protein. I don’t track every day but I think I might need to.

(Chris W) #9

Fat bombs are probably fine, just remove the sweetener. I was doing that myself, after I took it out I realized I could not taste it anyway. I have really cut back on sweeteners as of late. I keep a couple protein bars, but I only used them a couple times in six months, mainly before I fat adapted when hunger was a lot higher.

Why are you so low on protein?
if I did you math correctly that is like .5g to lean BM with some WAG estimates.

#10

Hmm, I used KetoDietBuddy for my macros. I estimated my body fat percentage as 33%, which is what my scale says, maybe that was off. Removing the sweetener is a really good idea!