Need to gain weight

#21

Of course there is fat, multiple kinds, it was mentioned. Just not enough when considering the small amounts for each for different reasons. I would drop those reasons first, well some but I am me, I ate oily seeds galore when I saw no better options (not for fat, I never had that problem).

#22

It’s a bit more complicated but probably not for all of us… (And protein isn’t as effective for fattening but probably no one tries to gain a significant amount of fat from extra protein so I don’t think it matters so much.) Excess calories are needed for sure, it’s another matter what the actual individual body does with it. I usually stall (it doesn’t seem to matter if it’s sugar or fat) but I am fat. I suppose my body would want to gain fat/muscle if I had little of these and excess calories (and exercise for muscles. maybe it happens anyway if one had low-protein before, I don’t know) would be presented. I would be pretty mad at it if it would work otherwise… Or worried, rather.

I fried some vegs in it. They soaked up A TON. (I remember when an eggplant drank 100g coconut oil… Okay, I didn’t do that again…)
Coconut oil was my cooking oil for a long time. I fry fish in it now (as my SO dislikes lard in non-pork food). Some people put it into their coffees.

Not pure coconut oil… But when I made a vegan spread from it (roasted sesame and spices were involved), it was different.

#23

Thing is, you are woefully underweight now, so your body will mop up that fat like there is no tomorrow. It’ll utilize every gram of it for energy before starting to store any for the future.

Hubby also had psychological fears of food when he had adhesions. And even after he had the last ones removed. It got to the point of him retching even at the smell of food. It was bad.

I fixed that with sublingual Cannabis. That worked a charm. I don’t know if it’s legal where you live, but if you want to gain weight and lose some fears, it is the go-to medication.

I totally understand that you have a deep-seated fear of foods, it’s only natural. But you do need to conquer it. It will kill you eventually if you don’t.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #24

This is an endlessly disputed notion. At the very least, we can point to studies where people at more than a usual number of calories on a ketogenic diet, eaten to satiety, but shed fat anyway.

Also, Dr. Alfred Pennington of du Pont, who, in the 1950’s and 60’s, had great success getting obese staff members to shed fat by eating on a low-carbohydrate diet, found that the amount they ate was largely irrelevant; but what they ate mattered a great deal. One executive, for example, would start to regain weight if he ate a single apple more than was allowed on his diet.

Sam Feltham, founder of the Public Health Collaborative in London, experimented by eating a 5000-calorie ketogenic diet for 28 days. He gained a kilo or two–I forget how much. A DEXA scan showed that he had gained something like 3 kg of muscle, but had shed around 1.75 kg of fat (I’m making up the numbers, but they are in the ballpark; you can check them at the PHC Web site). On a 28-day high-carb, low-fat diet of the same number of calories, he gained something like 14 kg.

The reason people experience this sort of thing is that when we eat fat and very little carbohydrate, insulin rises hardly at all, just the bare minimum necessary, but when we eat a lot of carbohydrate, it shoots up. And insulin is the primary hormone causing the body to store fat.

(M) #25

I don’t know too much details of the Inuit diet other than they are famous for eating mostly seafood, meat and fat, but they seemed to keep weight on. I wonder what the average amount of calories was for these people.

When I was eating canned cod liver oil I felt like like it was helping me gain or at least sustain my weight. However I had to stop because it is really high in PCBs. Also my vitamin D went past 100 and I don’t want to get toxicity of anything.

#26

Now knowing why you’re eating Pescatarian, have you considered adding the other meats back in with the inclusion of things like digestive aids, betaine HCL etc to help further breakdown and digest? Chicken and even beef can be made very tender which I’d think would help.

Are the adhesions from surgeries? Doesn’t matter, just nosey.

(M) #27

My body really doesn’t say to eat them. I don’t take supplements and those meats don’t have the b12 (unless you eat liver), vitamins and magnesium.

Aside from increased constipation when I’ve tried chicken and beef (which may just be the lack of magnesium, vitamins the seafood has) the psychological issues also play into it. I’m going to admit to it and hopefully not be laughed at. I am scared of anything that is not natural. I am afraid of corn or soy fed animals (I don’t look down upon those who do, like I said this is a fear, so please don’t take it as snobbish) and after having had grass fed meats I don’t enjoy the taste of the other meat. The prices of grass fed fatty meats is really high at the local farm here. The fatty chinook salmon I’m eating is expensive but its easier to cook up, has lots of magnesium, potassium and vitamin A. I also eat sockeye, and have snow crab with my meals which is high in b12 and iron. I would eat even more seafood if I could. I feel best with it mentally and physically. The only problem is mercury and getting enough fat.

I’m working my way up with the coconut oil right now. I’d like to do 2 tablespoons if possible. I don’t know if it would be best to spread it out or do it at once.

The adhesions are from an exploratory laparotomy after they saw free air in my abdomen, however they never found any perforations. It turned out to be unnecessary.

(Joey) #28

I’ll share a few reactions and observations re: this thread. And then I’ll give you some “tough love” advice that you certainly don’t want to hear…

Hate to beg the question, but how do you know this? I am highly suspicious that this is an accurate diagnosis.

My understanding is that adhesions cannot be seen (absent visual exploratory inspection) … at best, it’s the resulting food blockages which can be seen via scans.

They are caused by scars resulting from old school digestive tract surgey. Some folks are more prone to scarring than others. But you need to have had surgery on the intestines/bowels in order to have adhesional scarring.

Moreover, blockages from adhesions are extremely rare, hard to find, and typically fleeting and self-resolving when attributable to adhesions.

If I were in your situation I would be much more skeptical of such a diagnosis.

As @PaulL notes above, that’s not necessarily how calories work. In fact, when avoiding carbs, it’s not how calories work at all.

Calories represent how much heat is produced by a (food) substance when it is combusted in a lab - i.e., exploded into ash.

That’s not how the body works. At all.

Caloric content says nothing about nutritional content. Nothing. While it might be a mildly interesting scientific construct (debatable), caloric content is mostly irrelevant to good health and nutrition - most especially when carbohydrates (and alcohol) are not involved.

Okay, now you got me going :wink: … Adhesions are extremely unlikely to occur after laparoscopic surgery. And essentially impossible to arise from a simply laparoscopic exploration (which entails popping a mini camera inside through a tiny slit in order to have a look around).

There should be NO scarring of intestinal tissue if there was no surgery on the actual intestinal tissue. Can you please clarify: Did you actually have any surgery on your digestive tract? If so, for what purpose?

Now for the part you don’t want to hear…

I believe you have worked yourself up into a frenzy over the wrong diagnosis. And your multiple posts expressing deep concern over what’s contained in what and how each speck of food might produce some unique effect strongly suggests you are driving yourself into a stressful state for no benefit.

My free advice: Stop obsessing.

Instead, here’s my Rx: Take a meaningful amount of magnesium supplement to ease the constipation (which keto often makes worse for many, especially during the early months).

Find a good way to take the stress out of your mindset over food. You are a thoughtful intelligent individual who deserves better than this.

:heart: :vulcan_salute:

(M) #29

It was a laparotomy not laparoscopy. It was not a small robotic surgery but even those can have major consequences. Don’t underestimate what scar tissue can do. my incision is an inch below my belly button (no longer in the same place) all the way up to my rib cage. The perforation happened during a hospital stay. They thought it was near my esophagus. When they couldn’t find it they searched over and over throughout my whole body for the cause of the air. They would have been liable if anything happened to me so they were very aggressive to send me to surgery and told me I could die from sepsis.

(Joey) #30

Wow - Thank you for clarifying. Apparently you were on the receiving end of a significant procedure … and my misreading of “laparoscopy” was a big miss on my part. I apologize for heading off without getting the facts straight.

[FWIW, I had a small suspicious-looking mole removed from my chest (biopsied = benign) and have since been left with an outsized and growing scar (“keloid”) that seems to have taken over (and itch). I share this simply to highlight that I’m not unsympathetic to how scar tissue can follow even such a simple surface incision.]

But my advice (for which you didn’t ask) remains the same …

You are obsessing about food content while trying to work around what you believe are blockages. You would likely benefit by loosening your digestive content through magnesium supplementation (I know, you don’t like supplements)- and experiment with the dosage to avoid overly loose bowel movements while achieving easier digestive passage.

While wisely avoiding carbs - which are highly inflammatory to any digestive system - you could greatly vary your diet and enjoy all the great foods that are available to your keto WOE.

I understand and respect your trepidation, but you are making life a lot harder on yourself than it needs to be in order to reach the better health outcomes you’re aiming for. I wish you the best!

(Mike W.) #31

I have two questions. One, do you work out at all? Building muscle will help you gain weight. And two, you stated your vitamin D was over 100? Were you supplementing? I’ve never heard of a number that high with just food or sun exposure

#32

I looked it up. Chicken hasn’t so much so it depends on the person if they can get enough B12 from chicken (less than 1kg does the trick so it’s not extreme at all but I wouldn’t like to have that either) but beef has way, way more, very easy to get enough B12 that way.
Meat has plenty of vitamins but I don’t know enough about that… Magnesium, yes, that’s not very high. It’s still enough for many carnivores, I don’t feel lack of magnesium nearly as often if I eat much meat myself and my magnesium intake is about the same (very low) on every woe I am able to do… So it must be something interesting like with Vitamin C, our very need changes a lot. Or IDK.

But you would keep your current items anyway. If meat lacks something, eat something you eat now. Meat is very nutritious (many experienced that it has every nutrients they need) so if you just eat some of non-fish meat (fish is totally meat to me and no one ever can persuade me. it’s animal just the same) on top of your usual meat (you need the calories anyway, a bit extra protein probably doesn’t hurt… but if it’s not good enough, change something, eat a tad less fish or something), that sounds good to me.

And LOADS better than not getting enough fat and suffering. If meat couldn’t help with other things (but it could), it can add fat very, very easily. Even if it’s not very fatty, it can help you out a bit.

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #33

Sorry, I’m late to this thread.

Do I understand correctly, your in ketosis, so fat is your fuel, but you don’t eat any fat?

#34

That’s close to impossible to do if one eats anything… There is fat (IDK how much) but TOO LITTLE.
That’s a huge problem. Impossible to gain fat when eating very little.

(KM) #35

When you started speaking about the psychological aspect of what you’re experiencing, it rang a bell. I think you could be suffering from Orthorexia, broadly defined as a fear of junk food.

I realize that a lot of us could technically fall under this definition. Many of us, myself included, get very obsessed with label reading and specific foods or the elimination of a lot of foods.

Given what we are learning about processed foods and factory farming, I don’t think that in itself constitutes a disease or a problem. We’ve been encouraged for far too long to simply eat whatever is produced, and that’s not healthy either.

The article linked above speaks to the problems that happen when we get past the point of careful, to the point where we simply can’t eat much of anything.:heart:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #36

Fear of junk food sounds pretty sensible to me. In any case, avoiding certain foods because they have bad consequences can be a rational strategy, a serious example being the avoidance of nuts or shellfish, if one tends to go into anaphylactic shock after eating them. A rigorous attempt to avoid such foods is not an obsession, but a rational expression of the desire to live. Orthorexia sounds more like a judgement against the patient, one that could be applied to coeliacs or ketonians, for example.

Since the question of whether it’s a real condition or not has been debated inconclusively for the past thirty years or so, I tend to lean to the conclusion that it’s not.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7876234/

(KM) #37

There’s a fine line between being guided by what we learn, and being imprisoned by it.

As someone who can tip over that line and become paralyzed by my inability to find food I believe is remotely healthy, I’ll have to agree to disagree with you. Whether or not “orthorexia” makes it into DSM-5, becoming emotionally or socially obsessed with healthy eating can make a person highly dysfunctional and physically damaged.

#38

Yeah, being obsessed with health and in that process, ironically getting super stressed and unable to eat enough… That is serious.

Orthorexia ISN’T just being health conscious, not even being oh so choosy but only to the extent where we can afford it and get out nutrients just fine. It’s a quite horrible thing to fear food, bad food and potentially bad food… MAYBE it’s bad, better not to eat it. But what can we eat it? Maybe almost nothing… It’s super unhealthy mentally when extreme but of course, physically too.

I think @kib1 has a point, it may be Orthorexia. I understand it’s not just “oh it must be bad”, poor OP truly had problems and can’t just eat anything. But maybe quite helpful foods aren’t considered or feared too…

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #39

Didn’t we all get to our Keto/Carni diets by being independent thinking and dismissive of conventional food/diets?
We may have been pushed here by health issues but we are now huge sceptics, right?
99.9% of the world eat Carbs and sugar, we are freaks, right? …
If you are mistrustful of advice KP, I don’t blame you.
But there are folk you can trust.

#40

Do we have any statistics about people’s diets? I would be interested… Or average diet for countries, that surely exists… I will go and look but whenever I try something similar, it’s not so easy. Once I got curious and looked up my own country, that’s how I know that I eat as much fat on a good day as a young average man and way, way, way more protein.

It’s not always the majority who has it right :wink: We know that, fortunately.