Not losing my gut!

(Todd Chester) #21

It is called “glycogen synthesis”

(Robin) #22

Todd, not sure we can help you. Seems everything we suggest is wrong, at least for you.

Only you know you. It appears you have researched extensively already. I hope you find your answer.

(Todd Chester) #23

Indeed. I fell for the marketing bull s*** about healthy carbs. There is no such thing. T2D is low level poisoning over a sustained period of time. Yup, that was me. My pancreas, and probably my liver too, sustained damage from YUGE levels of blood sugar. Keto saved my life. But my pancreas is still not capable of what it was before the poisoning. It does its job quite well under Keto. “Supposedly” your “beta cells” never grow back, but there is evidence to the contrary in animals models with vanadyl sulfate supplementation. You can find those studies over on Pub Med.

(Todd Chester) #24

Hi Robin,

Paul suggested I ate too much. What other suggestions did I miss? I am after Gut fat. Everything else is doing fine.

-T

(Stickin' with mammoth) #25

Yes, there is one thing that specifically deposits abdominal fat: cortisol. Since your nutritional intake apparently cannot possibly be improved upon, you may want to redirect your attention to how quickly you get stressed out and for how long. Type A personalities are particularly prone to this psychological loop.

(Todd Chester) #26

I do believe you called that one. Thank you!

Oh crap. My life is nothing but stress. And that would explain the Gut Only issue. Without going into what is causing the stress (this is not the Opera show), I can only say there is little if anything thing I can do about it.

Do you have any supplements or other idea to cope with stress? I’d say go (fly) fishing more often,
but, again without the details, I can only say it is impossible.

I have wanted to start Tai Chi for years, but never have a free moment when I am not being tore in one direction or another.

A quick look at TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) show the issue to be Kidney Yin.

https://www.empowher.com/holistic-health/content/kidneys-and-adrenals-traditional-chinese-medicine

It may be time for me to have (another) talk with my favorite OMD (Oriental medical Doctor).

And I have got to find way to remove the stress from my life.

(Todd Chester) #27

Bears have interesting diets. They are omnivorous, just like we are, except they can digest grass (cellulose) and carrion.

(Stickin' with mammoth) #28

Yes…

…stop making statements like this. It’s bullsh!t. You’re obviously smart, you’ve gotten this far doing a ton of research and experimentation on your own, you’ve tasted success, you can go farther and you know it.

Instead of pushing against it by adding even more stuff (yoga, supplements, etc.), consider using powerful mental Judo techniques to side step it, reframe it, diffuse it, or harness it. Self talk is either a killer or your own personal methamphetamine, it all depends on the focus and the delivery.

Ima go out on a limb and make the prediction that you’re a perfectionist with a lot of pride. That’s great rocket fuel but it also makes every decision in your life a big, bloody deal because it makes every obstacle a choke collar. In a Catch-22, to get more wins, you’ll tend to focus on the obstacles rather than the wins. It’s how we were taught since birth (and they lied to us). The car goes where you steer, your mind and body go where you focus. A great analogy is trail running: Runners find that if they fix their eyes on where they’re going to place their foot instead of the log or root they’re trying to avoid, they move faster with fewer injuries.

We’ve been taught all our lives to wrestle every demon to the ground and kill it, that was the lie. That just wastes your life on demons. Focus on the wins, focus on the goal. Keep the rocket fuel fresh by constantly and repeatedly celebrating how fµcking awesome you’ve become, ad nauseam. Look how far you’ve gotten, look at everything you’ve learned. Do you even remember how many successes you’ve had along the way? No? Then write those bad boys down. I’m not kidding, start a journal of wins, just wins. Keep it secret if you must, but keep it close so you can get that meth kick when you need it.

Emotions trigger an alarmingly powerful cascade of hormones in the body, hence the cortisol connection. It’s not the stress you need to change, it’s your response to it. Perception is a bitch, but it’s everything:

Are you wrestling with a gut or is a gut the only thing left after everything you’ve accomplished?

Einstein said it best: “Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them.” Shift your focus, shift your mind, watch your body shift to reflect the new man you design.

#29

Mentioned above, but I’m going to reiterate. The laws of thermodynamics dictate that an energy deficit is necessary to lose weight no matter what or how much you eat or don’t. If you’re not expending more energy than you’re ingesting, your metabolism has zero reason to tap stored energy and won’t. Vice versa, if you consistently eat more energy than you expend, your metabolism will store it. Eating fat helps boost your metabolic rate (RMR), which means you can ‘overeat’ fat with less penalty. Still, different strokes for different folks.

‘Keto hunger’ is very different from ‘carb hunger’ for a simple reason. When you’re in ketosis your metabolism can access stored energy easily and seamlessly. It can not when you’re not in ketosis because insulin is blocking. So the demand to make up an energy deficit by eating gets progressively more adamant with each passing moment.

As for the OP and the suggestion by @Aqua_chonk, specifically where your body stores its energy can be determined by multiple factors - like chronic stress. Learning what to eat to help regulate your hormones and reduce and eventually eliminate the degree of stress might help. This is individually variable to large extent so requires trial and error. The simplest thing to try first is just eat less overall for a couple of months to see what happens. Best wishes.

(Todd Chester) #30

Not a perfectionist in the slightest. A bit of a hint. I am a medical caretaker.

(Stickin' with mammoth) #31

You might want to reread this thread for a final ruling on that one. :slightly_smiling_face:

(Todd Chester) #32

I pick out a few things I like to do perfect, like the perfect retrieve of a fly (the goof ups catch more fish though). I do what is necessary and not a lot more on other things. I simply do not have time to do anything else perfect. I do not have a lot of control over my life. And I do have some perfectionists to deal with at times. They are very frustrating. Do not mistake a high IQ for a perfectionist.

You should see the way I measure things when I cook! I use the containers of the ingredients to measure out other ingredients. 9/10 of a block of what? I use the whole stinkin’ block! The idea is to wash the least stuff in the end.

(Stickin' with mammoth) #33

Ahhhh, yes. I see who you are now. Such being the case, this will probably not be a teachable moment, however the information is all there if you ever want to come back to it. Good luck.

(Todd Chester) #34

The “energy deficit” comes from my weekly fasting. The other 6 days, I keep the Glycemic load to under 15 and mostly eat meat and fat. I don’t pig out. I just eat what makes me satiated. Any overeating gets blow off though my respiration or urine. And it does not happen very often anymore. I can tell by the smell on my hands. (And from the toilet, but this is a family forum, so you did to see me write that.)

I have wondered if I should extend my fast to two days in a row. But I do believe Aqua nailed it. It is stress. I am only fat on my gut. If I can come up with a way on processing the stress in my life better, I do believe the fasting will take off the gut in short order.

And all my scars are gone. Means it is working.

(Todd Chester) #35

What is your favorite method of dealing with stress? I mainly just internalize it. Cussing only helps a little. Getting angry does not help either, so I don’t. I try to just bob along like a fish bobber. But sometimes I just feel like crying. I don’t actually, but …

I do notice I have a calmness after going fly fishing. It is a great upper body work out and as such great for my blood sugar. And when I catch my first fish, suddenly, the world looks different. The flies buzzing my head no long bother me. The weather is not too hot or too cold. I can’t believe a customer pissed me off so much. The world comes into a much better prospective. And I do catch a lot of fish. It wears off though. I only get to go out for 30 minutes or so, once every two months between customer calls.

I think if I could get out in nature a bit more would help. Trouble is, I have only tiny fractions of spare time available to me.

(Robin) #36

Stress.
It’s big. I had a moment of complete clarity about stress at a hot yoga class many years ago. A hard time in my life. But the instructor spoke about Equanimity, as it relates to yoga. When every fiber of your being is screaming to get out of the pose, every muscle is begging for mercy, and you simply cannot hold the pose for one second longer.
But instead of stopping or running away from the pain, you breathe and you lean in and breathe deeper and you allow the muscles and the strain to surrender to the pose. You don’t run away, you lean in and breathe. And stay.
Equanimity. If I ever get a tattoo it will be somewhere I can see it easily and often. It applies to every aspect of my life.

And…. Back to basics. I agree with Paul. You eat too much.

(Todd Chester) #37

If that were the case, I should be getting fat everywhere on my body, not just my gut.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Equanimity&ia=definition

Easier said than done. What is your trick when your body hurts?

(Stickin' with mammoth) #38

Already told you, I transform it.

Robin already told you, she breathes into it and surrenders to it.

When I said that I see who you are, I wasn’t agreeing with your assessment, I was reaffirming mine. I don’t know what exactly your agenda is here on Ketogenic Forums, but from what I’ve seen so far, I fear you’ll get little out of it. That “high IQ” of yours seems to act like Teflon in the face of transformative information. Enjoy your demons.

#39

To use myself as an example let me preface: I’m currently 77 years old. Whether due to luck, genes or a combo of both I’ve led an active life with no serious illnesses or injuries. I still work full-time in retail. Until keto I ate bog standard SAD. That included 30 years making and drinking my own beer every day! During the decade of my 60s I gained about 35 ‘excess’ pounds, which I now attribute to a combination of insulin resistance and metabolic slowdown due to age. I’ve eaten keto for 5 1/2 years. The first 6 months or so I intentionally underate and lost those 35 excess pounds. For the succeeding 5 years of ongoing maintenance I have been 145 pounds total weight and 15% total body fat. Neither weight nor comp have varied by more than +/- a pound or per cent in those 5 years. I maintain a spreadsheet to record exactly what and how much I eat daily. I also want to say that the last day I felt ‘carb hunger’ was day 2 of the 4-day water fast I did to initiate ketosis and I have been in continuous ketosis since day 3 of that initial fast.

From experience I know that if I eat daily within a ‘caloric window’ that is a range of approx 350 or so kcals. I will maintain weight and comp. If I eat below that window for several days I will start to lose weight, if above for several days I will start to gain.

What’s my point? I eat to maintain because I’m where I want to be. But if I wanted to lose or gain, I would simply eat outside my window more or less and however many days it takes to do so. The change takes place in my abdomen, both gain and loss.

Hope this helps.

#40

It’s interesting that you say this - because generally men do put fat on in their stomach region first. I’m happy to be guided by you on this, as only you know your own body - but my uneducated guess would be that you’re in an energy excess, but that it’s only slight. So you’re adding fat in the primary storage area, but you aren’t taking in enough excess to add fat elsewhere. I think this is why the others have recommended eating less.

I am not a fan of CICO, although I do believe in intake vs expenditure. (My resistance to CICO is that I’m female, and we’ve been told all kinds of nonsense about very low values for decades - so I think starting numbers are often incorrect for women.)

I explain all this because I suspect I have been overconsuming energy due to medical factors. I ignored CICO and ate to satiety, but I suspect my appetite has been falsely inflated due to medicine.

However, despite this false appetite and overconsumption, I still lost a lot of fat, albeit relatively slowly compared to others in the keto/carnivore world.

I suspect my success despite having high intake was because my carbs were so incredibly low (I eat carnivore) - and perhaps also because I increased my activity. Exercise makes you hungrier in the short term, and this is definitely the case for me - but perhaps the trade-off in overall metabolic rate in the long term was worth it, and the body recomposition is definitely worth it.

So if you’re not keen to change total intake or to take the advice further up the thread from others, you might want to refactor your macros, or to adjust your activity - or both.

Good luck.