Planning........does this seem right?

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #30

Wait a minute! You binged on chicken and cheese, and you call that running off the rails and crashing? We should all binge so healthily.

If you’d eaten all the sourdough, all the almond tart, and finished off the cake, that would have been a binge! :bacon:

(Aimee Moisa) #31

I completely agree!

(Aimee Moisa) #32

Pat, I love the way you write. :slight_smile:

#33

Thank you.

#34

Please would someone explain the physiology of fat adaption - perhaps Old Doug (on the …too many G&T’s thread) as his explanation of the digestion of alcohol was so clear.

Thank you.

(Alec) #35

There was some good explanations in another recent thread

#36

Hello.

I’m sitting in south London, explaining to a type 2 diabetic friend (as well as I can as a very unschooled newbie) the history and politics of Western dietary advice.

I’ve given him the link from to the podcast of our special gentlemen, “The History of Dietary Guidelines with Gary Fettke”.

And I’m remembering there is an American doctor who was the great low fat promoter … but I can’t remember his name. Help please …

Thank you very much - this friend is a historian and this name will be very persuasive.

(Mike W.) #37

You ate 500+ grams of protein in one day? Are your grams different across the lake?

#38

I don’t think so. Why?

(Doug) #39

Thanks for the compliment, Pat. There is all the biochemistry of how we metabolize fat, but I look at “fat adaptation” pretty generally - carbs need to be severely restricted, especially in the beginning. We draw down our glycogen stores and gradually get into ketosis - this takes maybe 2 days or so and certainly varies. Burning fat then but it’s a long way to go to get adapted to burning fat all the way.

Slowly, the body gets used to burning fat, and it gets better at it. Varies by the individual again, but I’ve seen people saying things were still changing for the better after 6 months, even a year. It pays to get enough salt and other electrolytes - magnesium, potassium, calcium, phosphorus, and to get plenty of sleep and keep stress down as much as possible - don’t want cortisol problems or anything to be messing with the body when it’s already got all this stuff going on. Pretty important to be eating plenty of food, enough protein and just about all the rest fat - don’t want a slowing metabolism; we want the body to get used to fat as a fuel, to using a lot of it.

Eventually, the capacity to burn fat for energy increases, at as much as twice the rate one had while eating a lot of carbohydrates, and sometimes a bit beyond that. Sounds pretty good, huh? :slightly_smiling_face: Takes patience to get there.

#40

Thank you OldDoug.

But what happens in the body? What’s new? What changes? Or perhaps, what is fat metabolism?

I have a picture of little men, white hats and high viz jackets, pushing wheelbarrows of butter, coconut oil and macadamia nuts and quietly building a new factory.

I think I’m quite happy with the practical process, well the basics of it. I’m making and drinking ‘ketoaide’ but at the moment without magnesium, but I have magnesium tablets. I’m mainly keeping to the macros. If I deviate it’s to eat too much protein rather than too much carbohydrate which is mainly well below 20 grams per day. But I know that I really need to eat the carbs/green leafy veg for their mineral content. I eat lots of fat, butter, coconut oil, and the fats from meat and in eggs and cheese.

I’m not persuaded to buy a keto monitor. If I eat fat that’s what my body will have to use, and I don’t intend to confuse it with carbohydrates. Besides it hurts!!

I don’t feel hungry, if I have ‘cravings’ I have a little salt and fluids. I probably have more energy now. But I think starting this way of eating immediately after stepping off the plane from Canada might have prolonged jet lag, and perhaps made it difficult to distinguish jet lag from keto flu. I’ve not suffered the horrid keto-flu symptoms I’ve read about.

I’ve lots of little pots of rillettes in the freezer. Today I made my first fat bombs and made them without sweetener. And dinner was pork vindaloo and salad. I’ve a sink full of locally grown spinach sitting in water so that the grit and soils falls off - I’ll cook it tomorrow, just with butter, and freeze it in batches of 10 grams of carbs.

I’m thinking of traditional British and European high fat foods and how I can routinely use them. Now it’s past the summer equinox I hope to sow some Asian green vegetable seeds. It’s an interesting process adapting a new way of eating into a personal culture.

I think I’ve noticed that I’m calmer and gentler.

And as for plenty of sleep, it’s now 0329 …

Have a lovely weekend.

(Mike W.) #41

I just reread your post. You said you ate 500 grams of protein of chicken and then 300 grams of protein from a soup? 800 grams of protein in one day? That’s 3200 calories of just protein…

#42

Yes!

And I gained 1.5kg - just now, after a week of sticking to the macros, I’m back to 66.6kg.

I’m telling myself it was a learning curve and not indulgence, or a waste of money, or a delay in the process …

(Chris W) #43

In the body you get lower blood glucose, lower insulin, and those two are gigantic after a few days. Your inflammation will change, your liver will take over fueling the system instead of outside carbs being unregulated to major degrees. As your hormones change your metabolic processes will turn to being catabolic(tearing down) instead of anabolic(building). Your blood pressure should drop, your kidneys will start to dump water, your mitochondria inside most of your cells start to accept fat if they are not gummed up by years of carb ingestion or they start to repair to become so. Macrophages start to be able actually repair and work leading to less problems through out the body.

You mobilize fat via lipoloisis, your liver starts to break down fat for energy(ketosis mostly), fat starts to leave your muscles, organs, visceral fat, adipose tissue fat and you use fat you ingest directly. Ketones are used by your brain and other cells as forms of energy, and you get therapeutic results from that, some people get mental clarity, or extra energy. Your energy levels become stable and you do some things for longer and longer times every day(but some things do suffer). Your cholesterol and trigs both change, this one can be in the worse direction for a while but keep in mind that is the process of mobilizing fat, pretty much everyone’s numbers become “better” although that is a different topic. After a few weeks at least to a few months your cells mitochondria save a few organ exceptions directly take in the fat that is mobilized which makes the process more efficient. Autopahgy has more of chance to clean house, proteins get replaced and cells get repaired, growth hormones start to go up, and if you fast later on after fat adaption some these things seem to accelerate.

KCKO

#44

Thank you Chris.

Then I think my question is, “What changes are happening to the mitochondria?”

How does their physiology change? I read ketosis is a natural state of feeding the body - but why does it take so long for them to switch? Are the mitochondria dragged into submission? It seems more than a quiet tweak here and there?

#45

Ahhh …

Are you saying lipolysis eventually takes place in the mitochondria of (almost) every cell rather than lipolysis happening in the liver?

So this would be fat metabolism where it will be used and not happening centrally?

(Doug) #46

Pat, Chris W gave a great reply, above - I learn stuff everyday on this forum. I like to understand the basic nuts-and-bolts, too, the mechanics of how this stuff all works; it’s just fascinating. One really cool thing about mitochondria and ketogenic eating/fat adaptation is that the number of mitochondria increase. I think of that rudimentary characterization of mitochondria being “the powerhouse of the cell,” and it’s pretty profound.

Back in 1990, Robert. K. Conlee and some others studied rats that for 3+ weeks were fed a diet of 78% fat, 1% carbohydrates, compared to rats who ate a high-carbohydrate diet. The rats which were fat-adapted were able to swim longer than the high-carb rats. The muscle cells had more mitochondria in them in the fat-adapted group. “Glycogen repletion and exercise endurance in rats adapted to a high fat diet” - I cannot find the full text without paying money, though. :neutral_face:

The same thing happens when people train for long-duration exercise, cross-country skiing, marathon running, etc. Increased mitochondria mean that the person can produce more energy and perform at a higher rate, a big part of what “training” is. We have to add more oxygen to fat molecules to burn them, versus carbohydrate molecules, so - all other things being equal - there’s a built-in advantage to burning carbs in that we can get more energy for the same amount of oxygen, and oxygen availablility is obviously a limiting factor as it relates to relatively high-intensity exercise. But if we can increase the number of cellular mitochondria, we can get around the differences in the chemical equations.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #47

There are several metabolic pathways by which your mitochondria can creat adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for metabolism in the Krebs cycler (the source of the body’s energy). They involve varying levels of acetyl COA, oxaloacetate, and a couple of other chemicals. When you stop eating carbohydrate, the level of glucose in your bloodstream drops, which causes the levels of some of these chemicals to go down and the levels of others to go up. This is the signal for the mitochondria to metabolise fatty acids and ketone bodies.

But the changeover to fat metabolism seems to be more difficult than the change to metabolizing glucose (too high a level of glucose in the blood is, after all, a serious emergency), so the greatest degree of metabolic flexibility appears to result in a body that primarily metabolizes fats and ketone bodies, and that has to deal with glucose only on occasion. In fact, the skeletal muscles, once fat-adapted, tend to prefer to metabolize fatty acids, freeing the ketone bodies and the glucose produced from gluconeogenesis for use by those cells that can use them.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #48

You might find the following lecture to be of interest:

(Chris W) #49

So lipolysis is actually the release of free fatty acid fat(and glycerol) from the tissue which carry it, mostly fat cells into your system. That is done by a hormones called lipasse(s) more or less at the fat cells. That is not to be confused with ketogenisis which is the process in the liver that coverts the FFA’s into acettyl-coa and ketones. The liver will also convert the glycerol into glucose at steady and regulated level if you are nearing the floor of your blood glucose(gluconeogenisis). The burning of fat is very even and well regulated process when you subtract ingestion of food. Ketogenisis is normally happening at the same time as the mitochondria are taking in FFA after you have fat adapted, really it happens nearly right of way to a very limited extent but most of the cells mitochondria are not functioning correctly and have to repaired so that is why there is a delay in fat adaption for almost everyone. Ketogensis will continue while you are burning fat a cellualr level, the brain and a few other organs cannot accept fat as an energy source directly so they still rely on the liver for glucose and ketones. Certain types of fat ingested also need to be processed by the liver, be it to become fat or turned into energy, they still need to go through the liver first. These are mainly your butters and oils like coconut oil(MCT).

So its going from storage(fat cells) to mobilization(lipolysis) to breaking down(liver or cells mitochondria ) to energy forms (ketones, glucose, acetyl-coa which all end up as ATP) to burning ATP.

Also your cells experience a hysteresis if they are running on glucose, there is not a gradual change over to fat, you have to get your blood glucose and insulin pretty low in order to get the cells to switch over. But going to burning glucose takes much less to trip back over the other way, so to a certain extent you could consider your cells holding out for glucose once signaled to do so by insulin and other hormones. This is a reason that many T2D and IR folks take longer to get fat adaption than the average somewhat normal person(I think most all of us are screwed in some way shape or form).

Hope this helps keep asking the questions, sooner or later I will hit my knowledge wall, you have been bouncing along the edge of it.

KCKO