Problems with understanding

#1

Maybe a dumb question, but why does it matter if you have sugar so long as your total carbs are at an amount which keeps your body generally in ketosis. If I have 2 tablespoons of nut butter for 6 grams of net carbs, and I have a couple servings of vegetables for 6 net carbs, in theory I could have not had either and simply had a chunk of fatty meat and a handful of grapes, for example.

Or if to be in ketosis I need 50 grams or less of carbs a day, why can’t I eat 2 apples and no other carbs?

Is it simply a matter of time in ketosis, or is there actually a number of carbs needed in a single meal to elicit the metabolism’s using glucose instead of fat for energy? If i have 12 net carbs from nuts and vegetables, will my body somehow not use those carbs for energy and temporarily leave the ketogenic state?

Example: I eat 99% of my carbs (50 grams for this example) in fruit. This spikes my blood sugar and I’m out of ketosis for 4 hours (or whatever). Or, I eat 4 meals over the course of the day with 12ish grams of carbs each coming from nuts and vegetables- along with the meat/eggs.

How is this different? In the first scenario I would be out of ketosis for longer, but it would only happen once a day. In the second I am out 1/4th as long, but it happens 4 times. So it is equivalent… does it not work like this?

This is relevant because I absolutely cannot sleep on keto. So my idea is to have something like an apple and a banana, or a bowl of rice, sweet potato, whatever, before I go to sleep.

Did keto for 2 months in the past and quit because of sleep issues. Have now been keto 5 weeks and having same issues.
165 lbs, cycle/run frequently. Not much weight training as I’m unable.

Can’t sleep. Eyes dry. Don’t feel great.

What I ate yesterday:

Small shrimp salad with olive oil, romaine, green bell pepper, small amount cheese MAYBE 1 serving. 3-4 ounces shrimp
approximately 350-400 calories total

Large patty pork sausage 200 cals, 20ish fat, 18 protein
2 eggs 140 cals 10 fat, 12 protein
3 piece bacon 210 cals
small breakfast pork chop (2-3 ounces) 75 cals
600 cal total

snack:
approximately 1.5-2 cups of asparagus with 2 tablespoon of olive oil
250 cals

snack:
2 tablespoons sunflower seed butter
2 tablespoons peanut butter
400 cals

dinner:
pork sausage patty, 200 cals
cup green beans
1/4 cup red onion
2 pieces bacon, 140 cals
1 pork chop, 75 cals
covered in olive oil. probably 3 tablespoons if not 4. 360+ cals

Everything I eat is covered in “lite salt” which is 10% sodium and 10% potassium requirement per serving. I put a tiny amount of lime or lemon juice in a 24 ounce bottle, 3-4 drops of stevia, and about a serving of the lite salt/k product in it. I drink this 3-4 times a day. Otherwise I have plain water. I take a magnesium supplement and a fish oil supplement.

I bike for around 20-40 minutes a day, could be light could be intense. It is generally something like 10-20 minutes steady or lighter, followed by intervals. Running is almost never more than 2 miles. My usual workout is a 30 minute bike and a 1 mile run immediately after. I might do some pullups a few times a week but I have physical issues which inhibit my strength training.
165 lb male

(TJ Borden) #2

It depends on your goals, but if you’re looking to burn fat, then ketosis is just the first phase. The next phase is to become fat adapted. It’s at that point that your body looks to stored fat for energy and your appetite generally diminishes.

50 carbs a day, especially in fruit, can be enough for your system to continue waiting for more carbs and not become fat adapted. You might still loose some weight, but if you’re limiting carbs (your body’s preferred fuel source) without reaching fat adaptation, then essentially it’s a modified calorie restriction diet, and that will eventually screw up your metabolism and backfire on the weight loss.

When the carb intake is super low, it generally goes to replenish your glycogen stores and doesn’t end up causing much, if any, insulin response.

Again, it depends on your goals. If you are looking to be in a state of ketosis for other benefits (not weight loss), then many can increase their carb intake to 50-100g and remain in ketosis.

Also, I’d be careful about adding lite salt to everything. Potassium is crucial, but you also don’t want to over do it.

(Alan Williamson) #3

For sleep, I would recommend a supplement that has magnesium like this Coral Calcium: https://www.wellnessresources.com/supplements/coral-calcium. I use this. I get great sleep and wild dreams. It is awesome. Potassium is also good. It calms the body.

For most people, the key to losing weight is to lower insulin. After insulin is spiked, it takes 4 hours to get to the level it was prior to the spike. It also will block fat cells from releasing energy. There are several strategies for diets in lowering insulin. Keto is just one. It isn’t magic. Fasting, intermittent fasting, and eating one meal a day work well too.

#4

I added some info. I’m 160-165 pounds with maybe 12% bodyfat. Not interested in losing much more. I like keto for the mental clarity and not having to deal with sugar cravings and insulin crashes. The bottle says a serving is 10% of the daily requirement. Let’s say I’m having 30 servings (I’m not). That’s 3 times what I need. Someone who is having very infrequent and low intensity insulin activity and therefore “flushing” electrolytes in conjunction with sweating profusely every day would hardly have an issue with potassium? The potassium inherent in the foods I consume maybe makes up another 100%. 4x the daily recommended intake of potassium for a carbohydrate deprived person sweating daily is too much? I didn’t know anything about electrolytes the first time I did keto and would wake up feeling like I was having a heart attack, the abeyance of which quickly followed ingesting some salt water.

I guess I wonder if I’m burning 4-500 calories from exercise a day, of which 60%? 70%? more? is glucose, do I need to have a higher carb meal at some point in the day to offset that? I don’t actually have the glucose, but in theory the activity I am performing burns a certain % of glucose relative to fat. Not being able to sleep and having extremely dry eyes all the time is ONLY a factor for me on a low carbohydrate diet. Doesn’t exactly inspire this lifestyle to be one through which I can thrive

(Garry (Canada)) #5

You have to find what works or doesn’t for you. For me, I keep a couple of personal discipline rules to my eating choices/regiment.

  1. If I’m having berries or any high carb food, I always make sure to add plenty of fats to it in order to try and slow the stomach from absorbing a sugar rush.

  2. If I plow though a heavy carb salad for dinner as an example, I always have fried eggs and cheese for breakfast to break the carb intake cycle.

  3. My daily carbs intake is calculated based on using a mental 24hr clock, not by using calendar days. (Big carb dinner and breakfast= no carb lunch for example.)

PS…my sleep has always been erratic even before keto, so I’m not much help there.

I’ve found these little “self rules” work for keeping me in tune…

(Candy Lind) #6

Something no one has mentioned is FRUCTOSE and the effect it has on the brain, especially for those of us who are sugar-addicted. When you’re LCHF or keto, you are getting your carbs from glucose, which does not have the same effect and which does not have to be processed by the liver. Those are two very big differences. If you have liver function issues (calcification, NAFLD) or might be sugar addicted, it definitely makes a difference what kind of carbs you ingest.

Watch This video: Fat Chance - Fructose 1.0 to see what sugar and particularly fructose can do to you.

If you are not in the liver-impaired or sugar-addicted classes, I congratulate you and suggest that those grapes might not hurt you on an occasional basis, as long as you eat them mindfully and watch for adverse reactions. Our hunter-gatherer predecessors most certainly collected and ate fruit in season, but it WAS seasonal, and they weren’t dealing with fruit bred to maximize the fructose content, either.

(Liz ) #7

Eating lots of meals a day will spike your insulin each time, this is not ideal. Try to get all you need to feel satiated in 1-3 meals a day with no snacks. If you are hungry between meals you did not eat enough fat at the previous meal.

(Chris W) #8

I had night sweats and trouble sleeping the first month when I was getting fully keto adapted, and in the sense I was not sleeping but I was also not tired when I did get up. After a few months I tend to think this was caused by the potassium in the veggies I was eating. So I would cut out the supplement of potassium for a while and see what happens. Also how much water are you in taking for a while I was gong through a solid gallon a day and I was not exercising to any great extent.

#9

How is eating one or two large meals different than eating 4 or 5 small meals? The larger meals will result in a larger insulin response. A larger insulin response means more time back to baseline. The smaller meals will result in smaller insulin responses.

Explain how a larger insulin response twice a day is more “ideal” than several smaller insulin responses over the course of the day?

#10

Ok? So I can eat rice, potatoes, or any number of foods with little fructose. Little fructose because no carb you are eating has zero fructose unless you’re consuming pure dextrose. Irrelevant.

Also to the guy who recommended cutting back on electrolytes while exercising and following a severely carb-restricted diet: No

(Chris W) #11

Currently I exercise as much as you do, I am about 15 pounds heavier mostly fat and I do not supplement potassium unless I am not taking in veggies like fasting. You are only slightly more restricted than I am, and it seems to be on the protein end I don’t count calories I count grams. When I do have too much potassium I get really warm, and I tend not sleep well(again I lay awake but not tired). When I don’t have enough potassium I feel lethargic and cold. I do supplement salt everyday now since they act together. Fructose goes directly to the liver I am not sure it actually gives a insulin response like starches would.

(Candy Lind) #12

Not necessarily true. Additional insulin will only be released if it’s needed. And a high fat meal will induce a far smaller insulin release than a high-carb one.

(Candy Lind) #13

Now assume you are on a keto diet plan with a max of 20 net carbs per day. (I am now assuming you’re a troll and are on a SAD diet or worse.)

1/2 cup of potatoes or rice is is over your 20 net carbs for the day, with very little nutritive value.

To contrast, you could have a large serving of collards laced with bacon bits and bacon grease (next to your rib-eye cooked in butter), plus a large salad with romaine, celery, red cabbage, and tomatoes (with Roquefort dressing) and a TON of vitamins & minerals for less than half of your daily net carbs. When you sub just the collards & greens for the potato in this meal, which appeals more?

(Candy Lind) #14

Not if you’re doing keto right. You should be burning fat for energy quite freely if you’re adapted. Have you ever heard of Jason Wittrock? Visit his YouTube channel and see what he thinks of keto.

(Allie) #15

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(Liz ) #16

Dr Jason Fung explains why eating in a window (90 minutes) and reducing the number of times you eat each day is ideal for insulin management. He starts to discuss it here:
https://idmprogram.com/perils-snacking-hormonal-obesity-xiii/

He explains in one of the Obesity Code podcasts that if you spread 1500 calories over a whole day., eating every few hours, you will slow your metabolism and keep your insulin high (insulin doesn’t drop immediately after it’s pulsed out, it drops over hours, even longer for those who are insulin resistant).

But if you eat the same 1500 calories in one or two meals you are exposing your self to less TIME at an increased insulin level. And all that time you are NOT eating your insulin has time to get lower and lower. This allows your body access to body fat for energy and keep your metabolism humming along.

Also even if you are not overweight, too much insulin all the time in your blood stream is not good for your body. Richard explains in The 2 Keto Dudes podcast how it can lead to heart disease.

#17

Lol there have been numerous studies down showing nutrient timing is irrelevant regarding metabolism. Once a day, 5 times a day. Same amount of calories = break it up anyway you like, doesn’t affect metabolism. That’s a broscientist myth by people who simply regurgitate things they’ve heard on the internet. There are doctors who claim eating extremely low fat, extremely lowprotein, and extremely high carb is optimal for preventing virtually every type of disease which afflicts humans. Presumably you wouldn’t agree with a doctor who said that. There are plenty of dumb quacks who say things based on poor research and science. Metabolism is not affected by frequency of meals. And again, smaller meals elicit a smaller insulin response. Larger meals, larger. I don’t care if eating small meals often keeps some level of insulin coursing through your veins. The point is that the large meal makes the insulin spike much larger- while you’re not continuously causing an insulin response with meals, the massive spike from a single meal causes the exact same amount of insulin to be released as if you had cut that meal in half over two sittings. For illustrations sake if you have 100mg/L of insulin in your blood after a large meal, and after an hour you have 50mg and after another hour you have 25mg, etc., that is not different than having 25mg/L after a small meal, then 6 hours later another meal, etc. The insulin load is going to be the same. This is the same kind of argument people used to make about eating all or most of your calories early in the day so you can burn them off, when in reality the timing is irrelevant. If you eat 3,000 calories in the first hour of a 24 hour period or 3,000 calories in the 10th hour, you are going to store the same amount or lose the same amount of fat. You don’t get to violate the first law of thermodynamics in either context.

#18

Read the rest of that paragraph. Taking things out of context makes a fool of us both.

(Liz ) #19

I believe Jason Fung, you don’t have to, that’s fine.

#20

You believe his claims about a physiological process based on what? His word? Where are his sources? Where is the research ?