Protein, gluconeogenesis, & fat-adaptation

(KetoCowboy) #1

Please direct me to the best materials that would support or refute this hypothesis:

The over-consumption of protein is more likely to lead to gluconeogenesis in glycolytic metabolisms than in lipolytic metabolisms.

The basic idea is that if I’m already burning sugar, then my body wants to keep burning sugar. If I suddenly deprive myself of carbs, my liver gets so many requests for glucose that it sees converting protein into sugar as a PRIORITY. But if I’m burning fat (and my body is accustomed to that metabolism), then the liver isn’t inundated with demands for sugar, so it uses the protein for all sorts of odd jobs and only converts it to sugar as a LAST RESORT.

I understand that protein is used to repair muscle tissue whether a person is glycolytic or ketogenic,

What I’m hypothesizing is that a sugar burning metabolism that is being dragged kicking and screaming into ketosis might decide that the protein is more valuable as a source of energy than as a repair material in CERTAIN non-critical circumstances.

I ask because I remember how much I wanted tuna without mayo when I was fat-adapting. The craving felt to me as if my body was simply going after anything that it could turn into sugar. (That feeling could have been a product of my psychological distress about gluconeogenesis; not sure.)

However, I’ve been following some carnivores lately (@Dread1840 on this forum & Amber O’Hearn on Twitter). Along with Ted Naiman and Shawn Baker, they’ve inspired me to have quite a bit more protein than I allowed myself for the past 8 months.

The extra protein doesn’t appear to be having any noticeable effect. No weight gain; no bloating; no extra energy. It just seems irrelevant in a way that it probably wouldn’t have been if I had consumed this much protein in the beginning.

Or maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference then either.

(Chris) #2

Great discussion starter, cowboy! Also, @amber is a member here.

(Carola Fuertes) #3

Sadly I don’t feel knowledgeable enough to support nor refute the theory but I find it really interesting. The amount of protein to eat while keto is always controversial and I’d really like to find some science that allows me to be comfortable with my choice of an amount of it.

I’ve been keto since June this year and have lost about 8kg. I would like to lose a couple more but more importantly put on muscle, so the scale is really not a good kpi for me. I need to lower my body fat % since it’s rather high and mostly in my midsection so I’m still in a risk category by waist (or lack thereof) perimeter. My estimation is I have 50kg of non fat body mass so that’s the amount of protein I aim for. I’ve been told in other forums that it’s too low and that since gluconeogenesis is demand driven it shouldn’t be a problem if I’m fat adapted.

My question is, do I really need to up it to put on muscle? Will I not put on muscle if I get those same calories from fat?

I’m sorry for hijacking your post… I confuzed…

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #4

My understanding is that the brain needs a certain minimum number of calories from glucose, so that if you’re not consuming any carbohydrate at all, the body would have to make that minimal amount of glucose from the protein in your diet, even though the primary need for protein is to provide materials for repairing and building new lean tissue.

Dr. Phinney says that the glucose load from eating a quantity of carbohydrate constitutes a metabolic emergency, since hyperglycemia is toxic, and this is why the body metabolizes glucose so readily—to get it out of our bloodstream before it causes problems.

Dr. Phinney also says that an excess or a deficiency of protein is equally a problem, which is why he recommends a moderate amount of protein in the diet—neither too much nor too little. In the lectures I’ve watched, he generally recommends somewhere between 0.8 and 1.5 g daily per kg of lean body mass.

(Chris) #5

Bumping a bit here I guess. My protein cravings skyrocket on lifting days, I can eat pounds and pounds of beef before sated.

#6

I don’t have much to add to the main part of the discussion, but I think that what you describe above (“being dragged kicking and screaming”) is pretty accurate: if we’re sugar burners and our fat-burning mechanisms are dormant, when our glucose levels drop, the body is in crisis mode. When in a panic, it will burn available protein willy-nilly because low glucose levels without available (or usable) ketones is really dangerous for the brain, and in those moments sparing lean muscle is just not a high enough priority. (Which is why some studies DO in fact show a loss of lean muscle on keto and a raise in cortisol. I think they usually use 3 weeks-ish, so not nearly enough time to adapt! Argh…)

I think it’s great that some folks can manage the transition from HC to keto from one day to the next, but especially when you throw exercise into the mix, it can be pretty taxing on the body until it’s figured out how to use fat stores.

Anyway… I’m curious to watch this thread. Interesting discussion!

(Chris) #7

Well, I don’t think that the body would switch over to protein in the absence of dietary fat as long as the person was fat adapted and has bodyfat. I’m 150lbs with 30lbs of fat on me right now, 20%ish bf. That’s 105,000 calories worth of fat to use up before proteins get used for energy.

#8

Right - I was talking about before someone’s fat adapted (which unfortunately is when a lot of studies are done!).

(Chris) #9

I’m all muscles and no brain, pay me no mind :stuck_out_tongue:

(KB Keto) #10

I love this topic.

  1. I dont know the answer… one thing I do know for me personally … If I eat too much protein in one sitting it does have a negative effect on my ketone reading the next morning (slightly but not significantly higher glucose numbers as well). What is too much? Anything over 40g of protein in one sitting from chicken or 60ish grams of protein from beef is too much.

  2. I plan on doing some self testing next year on the effects of protein… from supplementation of protein to BCAAs to eating a lot in real food variety. I’ll be sure to share my results here when I start doing that.

2a) why not start now? well… it’s getting to that season of great beer and while I will drink far less Christmas Ale, I will drink Christmas Ale… I look at it like this - throughout history our ancestors at the diet available to them. If something was in season, they ate it… it just so happened that it was a mostly ketogenic diet because that was what was best, so the modern caveman in me says when Christmas Ale is in season, drink Christmas Ale because it makes me happy. Great Lakes Christmas Ale is amazing… anyways … so in order to not skew my experimentation

(Ken) #11

IMO,

The whole point is to get to where your body burns either carbs or fats with equal efficiency. I’m to that point. Since a lipolytic pattern is my baseline, I occasionally eat carbs, primarily for metabolic purposes, but I have gone as long as ten days eating a Carb based pattern with no weight gain. I used to experience an energy drop when transitioning back into lipolysis, but after a few years that ceased.

Now, I can clearly tolerate many more carbs, but as long as I don’t adopt a chronic pattern there doesn’t seem to be any negative effects. I have not regained any fat in over 15 years.

(Steve Stephenson) #12

@amber wrote a blog post about this:

In brief

  • Gluconeogenesis is a slow process and the rate doesn’t change much even under a wide range of conditions.
  • The hypothesis that the rate of gluconeogenesis is primarily regulated by the amount of available material, e.g. amino acids, has not been supported by experiment. Having insufficient material available for gluconeogenesis will obviously limit the rate, but in the experiments we reviewed, having excess material did not increase the rate.
  • We haven’t found any solid evidence to support the idea that excess protein is turned into glucose.
  • More experiments are needed to confirm that this still holds true in keto dieters.

Eating fatty meat (1:3 by weight) just to satiety should be OK; perhaps optimal for a wide range of people, from sedentary to bodybuilders.