Refeeds/ Recarbs Yes/No?

(Rob Grantham) #1

Ok folks as per the title is anyone into refeeding every now and again? Ive been strict keto for six months but lately ive noticed im really flat, not sleeping well, low energy. I was thinking of adding some carbs at night say from squash, berries nothing too high GI.

I think this could be an adrenal issue… please dont say sodium or electrolytes my fluids and nutrition is on point

Im not going higher than 100g but i just want to experiment with this to see if it helps me sleep and improves my mood

I kow Dr jockers has talked quite extensively about the HPA axis and why keto for some people may result in depleted cortisol…

What you think? Refeed or not? Anyone have direct experience with this?

(Robert C) #2

No direct experience, sorry.

I think it depends on your goals and exercise.

Refeeding on some healthy carbs and then going on 5-mile runs for a few weeks might be a strategy determine it.

If that doesn’t make you feel better then, it’s probably not carbs causing you to have depleted cortisol in your system.

Another thing you might think about is the concept of seasonal Keto. Here in the USA the days are long, warm and sunny. Ancestral eating patterns were sometimes close to Keto in that person’s winter but focused the available fruits and vegetables to fatten during summer. (This is what I have read - I wasn’t there :grinning: .)

(Rob Grantham) #3

Yes the seasonal refeed would make sense. I dont assume that our ancestors would have passed up on the oppertunity to eat raw honey. The tribes in the amazon risk death trying to get the stuff. I mean is this not using the human body to its full potential and more in line with our seasonal ability to store fat and then use it?

I imagined the human body as a battery with the ability to store not only fat but also numerous fat soluble vitamins… which would see us through the long winter.

#4

I’m going on a two-week vacation to the desert Southwest starting next Tuesday and I figure I’m going to be like some nomadic tribesman and eat just about anything I can get my hands on … then fast another few weeks when I get back to my man cave.

(Rob Grantham) #5

Ben fair play i think i will be following a similar plan… as much as i love following Keto there is a lot can be said for the peace of mind of eating whatever the f#$k you want

#6

@Rob_Grantham My wife and I are going to stockpile a bunch of Keto snacks for the trip – boiled eggs, bacon, salami, cheeses, small beef sticks, no-sugar jerky, diet soda (sorry but yes), Mio-flavored carbonated water, Vienna sausage, blackberries – and that should get us through Day 1. :grimacing:

It’s going to be a long drive from Baton Rouge to other L.A.

#7

That could be a deficiency in something like magnesium. Can you walk up stairs easily or feel burning in your muscles. Do you get cramps at night? Easy bowel movements? Concentration?

In my case it caused by low magnesium. Dr Phinney said two thirds of their patients end up needing magnesium supplements. So the odds are against us.

But but … I reckon you should re-examin electrolyte levels. I’ll bet that’s more likely the reason and not an adrenal issue, but that’s just my wild guess.

How about vitamin D? I am as anti-pill as you can get, but I’ve started taking a multi-vitamin, vitamin D and magnesium supplement … it seems my diet wasn’t as great as I thought it was but of course YMMV.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #8

You don’t need an excuse to eat carbohydrate, and you don’t have to justify your decision to do so to anyone. If you think more carbohydrate in your diet will help you, then have it. Let us know how it works out.

Personally, I fear carbohydrate the way I fear alcohol, and for good reason, so I wouldn’t even entertain the choice. The few times I have flirted with disaster by eating increased carbohydrate, or even sugar, I have always felt physically off the next day—or several. Fortunately I haven’t yet gone on a sugar binge as a result, but I’ve come damned close. It scares me.

(Alec) #9

I have a biology question here. On a podcast I was listening to (can’t remember which one), carb cycling was being discussed and it was stated that if you don’t cycle and use carbs for fuel periodically your body loses the ability to use carbs efficiently for fuel (a bit like not being fat adapted, but for carbs, ie not being carb-adapted).

Any opinions on whether this is true? Does the body lose the ability to use carbs efficiently if you fuel on fat primarily for long periods?

(Robert C) #10

I had heard something similar. It wasn’t so much that your body can’t use them - it was more about dosing.

If you were going to run a 5K for time and you didn’t use carbs on similar training runs - how would you know what to dose. Go under and you might lose some of your twin fueled engine advantage - go over and you might be off the side of the road with severe stomach pain.

Maybe you can handle twice as much as you used to, maybe half as much.
Maybe, for an explosive sport, you need to pre-load.

I think the carb effect would change if you are long term Keto so you would want to practice to get both fuel sources to help.

It is pretty easy to load up on carbs - so even if efficiency went down a little - you could still leverage them for the right sports.

(John) #11

I eat squash and berries all the time (not in the same dish). Not sure of the question. I have higher carb and lower carb meals and days. Seems to work out well for me.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #12

This may be a misunderstanding of the physiology in a low-carb state. Fat-adapted muscle cells down-regulate their insulin receptors to some extent, in order to spare glucose for the red blood cells and any other organs that must have it; this is called “physiological insulin resistance” or sometimes “adaptative glucose-sparing.” But the glucose pathways in the muscle cells remain active, as is demonstrated in Phinney’s and Volek’s papers on respiratory quotient.

I haven’t read The Art and Science of Low-Carbohydrate Performance, but I would expect it to be explained there. Also, one of their recent studies just showed that the glycogen reserves of low-carb athletes and of high-carb athletes are the same after about six months (as I recall) on a ketogenic diet.

(Alec) #13

This is interesting. I think this means that although we are fat adapted, the muscle fuelling mechanism essentially remains the same at the muscle end of the process ie the muscle is powered by glycogen. The difference is where the glycogen comes from. Is that right?

I was quite skeptical about the original statement about losing carb adaption, it was my understanding that this carb using mechanism is the default process when carbs are available. What I wasn’t sure about was whether this tends to whither as we become fat adapted.

So, it might appear that carbs are less efficiently used and this is a physiological adaption to a different diet. I guess the question is still open: does that mean we use carbs less efficiently when they are fully available? I am taking from the tone of your answer, Paul, that you think no.

(Rob Grantham) #14

Yeah well i take two teaspoons of salt a day on top of what i put in my food plus 400mg mag and 500mg potassium from lite salt. Vitamin d im getting 4000iu daily. I thik this is enough but of course i could be wrong

(Rob Grantham) #15

Yeah i think for a lot of people this will be the case. I also fear cabohydrates. In the low carb world they have been painted as the devil. Everything that is bad. Im not exactly sure they deserve that title. It is excessive refined carbohydrates that did the damage to us.

Thanks Paul I think like you i also fear that the first sweet potato i put in my mouth may mean i wake up three months later surrounded by chocolate wrappers 20 stone heavier. My name is Rob… im a carbaholic :wink:

I guess I wonder mostly whether we can incorporate carbs intemittantly throughout the year and see some advantage from this?

Im reluctant to find out but im really not sure if its the lack of carbohydrates causing the way i feel or something im doing wrong on keto.

(Rob Grantham) #16

https://blog.virtahealth.com/sodium-nutritional-ketosis-keto-flu-adrenal-function/

Now i found this article by Phinney et al about how low sodium can mimic adrenal issues through the production of aldosterone depletion of cortisol.

Can drinking excess water flush out the sodium you have been drinking somehow? Maybe its a case of too much water to sodium ratio. I mean I take 2 teaspoons but could excess water be flushing this out?

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #17

After fat adaptation, as I understand it, the muscle is more metabolically flexible, having the choice ot fatty acids, ketone bodies (intermediate products of fatty acid metabolism), or glucose. Since hyperglycemia is damaging, even fatal, the muscle must at all times be ready to metabolize a glucose load, but the fact that the process of adaptative glucose-sparing exists shows that the muscles actually prefer to use the fat pathway when possible.

Fat is the endurance fuel, glucose provides explosive power when needed. The fact that explosive power is not needed often, is shown by the low level of glucose and glycogen the body maintains on a low-carb/keto diet. After all, if you are hunting a gazelle, for instance, you need lots of endurance for tracking it and hunting it down, and only a few times during the process will you need to put on a burst of speed.

Again, I think there may be some confusion here. When cells are chronically besieged with glucose, the mitochondria become damaged and inefficient, and the cells become so overwhelmed by having to deal with glucose all the time that they stop producing some of the enzymes needed for fat oxidation.

When we stop with the carbohydrate and the glucose emergency is over, the reason fat-adaptation takes so long is that the mitochondria need time to heal and to produce new, healthy mitochondria, and enzyme production needs to ramp up again. It’s like overwhelming all your firemen with having to put out fires round the clock; when the emergency is over, they need time to get back in the groove of making building inspections and conducting fire safety programs. But once they are back in prevention mode, it doesn’t mean that they’ve forgotten how to fight a fire. (Not a perfect analogy, but you know what I mean.)

My understanding is that adaptative glucose-sparing (physiological insulin resistance) should be considered as being more a choice not to metabolize glucose (when choice is possible), not an inability to do so when necessary. The muscles can lose their ability to metabolize fat, if we go too long without allowing them to use fat, but they never lose their ability to metabolize glucose, because too much glucose is so deadly to the rest of the body.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #18

There was a scientist in New York, a couple of decads ago, known to several of my sober friends from A.A. meetings. A couple of years after I got sober, she made headlines by proclaiming that alcoholics could learn to drink moderately. The last I heard, she was serving time for vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated. That was a long time ago, and she may be out of prison by now, but her example has always stuck in my mind.

It absolutely can. Tim Noakes warns of this. For years, he worked hard to get runners to understand that they would be helped by staying hydrated during races. The sports drink manufacturers got on the bandwagon and pushed “rehydration” so enthusiastically that in the last few years runners have been collapsing from electrolyte depletion during races, and Prof. Noakes says there have even been six or seven deaths. He has been forced to switch to advising runners not to drink too much and currently advises, “Drink to thirst.”

(Ken) #19

Of course periodic carb intake has it’s place. It is for metabolic purposes, not to convert your body back to carbs as it’s primary fuel source. Six months of strict lipolysis is a reasonable length of time for some to expect negative metabolic effects to appear, but that’s really subject to the individual. I was so obese it took me about two years before I experienced any.

Since detrimental readaptation is a matter of chronic glycogen overcompensation, if you occasionally eat carbs the effects will be metabolically positive, as long as you don’t go back to a chronic pattern. The easiest way to do it is to eat your carbs on the Weekends.

(Rob Grantham) #20

Well I’ve been eating keto for roughly 6 months now and I am still experiencing low blood sugars after eating. This was what made me think of carb refeed. I thinkmy body is also somehow being stressed out by this process. I try to eat every 5 hours to lower my insulin levels but about 3 hours after eating I get dizzy and I know I have to eat again. I’ve tried upping fat eating less protein eating more protein.eating meals closer together further apart. Nothing seems to work. I’ve lost weight and now I’m at around 14%bf… I like this way of eating but the hypo symptoms are driving me nuts. The only way I can explain it is like a stress response