Restarting LC/Keto - feedback on what I've been doing?

(Rob) #1

Hi all,

Been doing keto/LC for about a month and have lost about 15lbs. Trying to keep it as basic as possible.

Supplements: multivitamin, fish oil (twice a day - 3000mg total), coq10 (300mg), turmeric, K+D3, ACV.

I take fiber twice a day (generic metamucil - 1tsp morning and night) to keep things regular.

What I’ve been eating: ground beef (hamburger), chicken (grilled chicken, sometimes smothered with cheese), egg white omelets with veggies (spinach, onion, mushrooms, tomato), various cheese, occasional grilled chicken salad. Occasional tuna patty (tuna, egg whites, cheese). Occasional bacon. Occasional order out and get garlic parm wings. To add flavor I sometimes use G. Hughes sugar free BBQ sauce. I use stevia as a sweetener if I need it.

What I’ve been drinking: Diet tea - mostly splenda peel and pour. Water. I don’t drink soda’s (called pop here in Pittsburgh).

I eat twice a day since I hate breakfast. I try to alternate red meat days with white meat days to keep variety.

History - I have made Atkins/LC work for me before. In the 90s I lost about 75lbs. I have noticed that the older I get (and after being on and off LC), that weight loss gets harder. I am 55 now.

I am tempted to try OMAD, have heard good things.

Any thoughts on what I can improve on?

Rob

(Pete A) #2

Sounds like a great start Rob!

(Rob) #3

I’m a little concerned about cholesterol, thoughts on red meat every other day?

#4

Why are you concerned about a nutrient that you literally die without? Please search the forum, no shortage on info here on the (very) debunked myth that cholesterol is somehow bad for you.

Also just FYI, even the mainstream has given up on the fake war on cholesterol when it couldn’t actually link coronary artery disease to dietary cholesterol. The USDA dropped Cholesterol as a "dietary nutrient of concern) way back in 2015. If you remember back when Eggs, Avacados’s and Coconut oil regained their places as “superfoods”… that’s why!

#5

You’re doing fantastic!! And it’s only been one month!! Oh you got nothing but tiiiime. :joy: keep at it the way you are. I’m 2 years 3 months in continuously and I’ll never eat any other way again.

Expect weight loss to slow down though. Slower is better and lasts. It’s ok if the scale doesn’t move for a few weeks. You will probably still be losing in circumference though. You’ll soon start realizing the real benefits to internal healing of your organs and better metabolism and energy. I found that weight loss is the least of all the benefits of Keto because at 58 my body needed a lot of internal healing from the abuse from our food industry and prescription meds, of which I’m off of all of them now.

Red meat is great. Don’t worry about that. All the bogus messages about limiting intake and how it can be bad for you and how to avoid fattier meats is hogwash. The meat and the fat is very healthy for you and has a lot of necessary nutrients too.

Do stay away from Atkins products though. They are not manufactured in a way that is true to the spirit of his diet. (I too was successful on Atkins in the 90s) Those kinds of Keto products are still junk food that screws with our bodies.

(Edith) #6

I would add to ditch the egg whites for the omelets and use whole eggs. The yolk is the part of the egg that contains most of the nutrients. And like mentioned above, if you are worried about the cholesterol contained in the foods, don’t. That dietary cholesterol contributes to high blood cholesterol was debunked a long time ago.

Make sure you are getting enough calories. You don’t want to slow down the metabolism. Also, as we get older we start to lose muscle mass which also contributes to the slowing metabolism. If you are not already, you may want to add resistance training. Resistance training will serve you well, not only for maintaining or even speeding up your metabolism but keeping you sturdy and less likely to fall as you age.

I’ve become quite the advocate for resistance training as I’ve really noticed how frail and even misshapen people, especially women, become as they get older.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #7

Don’t worry about it. Don’t measure your lipids until you’ve been on a keto diet for at least six months. Before then, lipid numbers can go haywire and alarm your doctor.

Be advised, however, that there is a category of people called “lean-mass hyper-responders,” whose LDL-C rises, even though all other lipid markers are good, in particularly triglycerides over HDL. The latter ratio is a much more reliable marker of cardiovascular risk, in any case; LDL-C levels have been shown not to correlate very strongly with cardiovascular risk, if at all.

Many people have been on an all-meat diet for decades and have shown no ill effects.

(Bob M) #8

The link is supposedly red meat has saturated fat; increasing saturate fat causes LDL (the so-called “bad” cholesterol) to go up; higher LDL means higher heart disease.

Each one of these links in this chain is not great. For instance, beef is mainly MUFA (mono-unsaturated fatty acids, like what olive has a lot of), and not saturated fat. But does eating saturated fat actually cause LDL to go up? It’s doubtful. I’ve eaten a lot of saturated fat, and my LDL is (was) relatively low for years on keto. In fact, I’ve seen articles saying it’s impossible for saturated fat to cause LDL to do up. See this, for instance:

As Paul notes above, though, some people (LMHRs) will have their LDL go up, but it’s not because of saturated fat.

Now, does higher LDL mean anything? I don’t think so, but you can find many people who believe so.

Again, it gets complex. When I was fasting 4.5 days, I found my total cholesterol, LDL, and triglycerides went up, and my HDL went down. While eating nothing. One time after a 4.5 day fast, I ate a ton of fat, drank cups of cream. My TC, LDL, and trigs went down, and HDL went up. If LDL is correlated in any way with “saturated fat”, it’s hard for me to figure out how.

And after about 5.5 years (or 4.5?) of keto, I got a coronary arterial calcification (CAC) scan done, which is a measure of atherosclerosis. My score came back zero, meaning no or very little calcification. To the extent that my LDL was modified due to saturated fat, it appears to have little meaning.

(Alec) #9

Overall looks good to me. Here’s what I would tweak (be aware I am a carnivore with one hammer and you look like a nail! :joy:)

  1. I would drop all the supplements except the VitD. If you eat lots of fatty meat, you will get all the nutrients you need without supplementation. VitD is the exception because we should get that from the sun, and our lifestyles often don’t allow enough sun exposure: right now there is an epidemic of VitD deficiency in the general population, and it is crucial to good long term health.
  2. I would definitely not take a fibre supplement (fibre is not required in the diet)
  3. I would never grill chicken: I would cook it in as fatty sauce as I could make
  4. Omelettes and eggs in general always eat the yoke (best part of an egg)
  5. I would try to avoid any kind of BBQ sauce (likely to have seed oils in it)
  6. I would try to avoid sweeteners in general: one useful goal here is to retrain your taste buds to be very sensitive to sweet. You can do this by not eating any sweet flavours.
  7. Red meat and white meat: I would be trying to make this meat as fatty as possible.
  8. I am 59, and I have lost 80lbs on carnivore, and it has now stayed off for 2 years… longest healthy weight I have ever done. No compromise carnivore is the way if you want weight loss.
  9. I have done OMAD, and it’s OK, but I am concerned about getting enough food in in that one meal. So I do 2MAD. Limiting intake is not a good strategy long term. Find a way that you can eat to your hearts content long term. For me, that’s carnivore. My current bodyfat level is amazing to me given I eat fatty meat to satiety twice every day… with lots of lovely fatty creamy sauces.
  10. Do not be concerned in any way about “cholesterol”. As long as you are not eating masses of carbs, your lipoprotein or cholesterol levels in your blood are exactly what they are supposed to be. Your body regulates this quite carefully. High LDL is NOT causative in CVD.

Good luck, and well done on your progress so far!
Cheers
Alec

(B Creighton) #10

I am going to make some suggestions not necessarily because what you are doing is bad, but because my aim is to maximize healthy longevity.

Supplements: multivitamin
Don’t waste your money on cheap synthetic multi-vitamins. I believe there are a couple of things to look out for. About 40% of the population has issues methylating vitamins they need. Unless you have done genetic testing to determine your status, just buy the multi-vitamins with methylcobalamin(B12) rather than cyanocobalamin and methylfolate rather than folic acid. The cheap vitamins virtually always have synthetic forms of the various B vitamins. Unless you get sun every day test your D level, and supplement appropriately. For me that is 10,000 IUs/day or 250 mcg of D3 in the winter time. Multi-vitamins have way too little.

fish oil (twice a day - 3000mg total)
I know it’s a thing, but I don’t like fish oil. Instead I eat wild salmon, and supplement with calamari oil and krill oil which still has its astaxanthin. Astaxanthin is a powerful natural antioxidant coming up the food chain from plankton, which protects the omega 3s from oxidation. Calamari oil has much less danger of mercury toxicity than fish oil, and doesn’t make me burp.

coq10 (300mg),
Nothing wrong with CoQ10, but our bodies make it, although it lessens with age. If you are on a statin I believe it is important to supplement it. I believe it to be an important antioxidant for LDL. However, I believe Ubiquinol is more potent for this purpose, so have opted to supplement it instead.

turmeric
I don’t particularly like turmeric in my food, so supplement with a turmeric/ginger combo

K+D3
I believe I lowered my blood pressure with vitamin K2 at around 150 mcg/day.

I take fiber twice a day (generic metamucil - 1tsp morning and night) to keep things regular.
I have used fiber supplements after rounds of antibiotics which messed up my digestion. Not only does it help clean out unwanted waste, it feeds the beneficial gut microflora. However, I prefer to get soluble fiber regularly from berries and a few other fruits(I am not carni).

What I’ve been eating: ground beef (hamburger),
I believe this is actually beneficial if purchased in low oxidized packaging, and is grass fed. Ground beef will provide some collagen, and grass-fed means it will have an optimal omega 3 profile and maybe some vitamin K2. Grass-fed is more important than “organic.” It can be had at Kroger affiliated stores, Sam’s Club, and Walmarts prepackaged without air. That is optimal.

chicken (grilled chicken, sometimes smothered with cheese)
I like the thighs

egg white omelets with veggies (spinach, onion, mushrooms, tomato), various cheese
Ditto on the other member who said eat the whole egg. Buying egg whites means the egg has been exposed to air on a prolonged basis, and the contents will be becoming oxidized. Nope. Eat fresh - preferably “pasture-raised”

occasional grilled chicken salad
canned chicken is going to be oxidized. Do not use mayonnaise with cheap vegetable oils. I use avocado mayonnaise, because the monounsaturated fats in it are much less likely to be oxidizing the contents.

Occasional tuna patty (tuna, egg whites, cheese).
Sorry to burst your bubble, but canned tuna is a highly oxidized food. Now I eat whole canned sardines instead - preferably Wild Planet.

Occasional bacon.
Cured bacon has nitrites. I buy uncured, sugarless bacon.

Occasional order out and get garlic parm wings. To add flavor I sometimes use G. Hughes sugar free BBQ sauce.
The only BBQ sauce I have ever considered “healthy” was Kinder’s No-Sugar, which had some allulose. All the rest seem to be sweetened with artificial sweeteners like sucralose which are damaging to the gut flora.

I use stevia as a sweetener if I need it.
Consider also xylitol, erythritol/monk fruit, and allulose although I usually use stevia for drinks

What I’ve been drinking: Diet tea - mostly splenda peel and pour. Water. I don’t drink soda’s (called pop here in Pittsburgh).
Sorry, recommend staying away from Splenda. I make my own herbal teas which I may sweeten with stevia.

I eat twice a day since I hate breakfast. I try to alternate red meat days with white meat days to keep variety.
I eat twice a day too, but including breakfast.

I am tempted to try OMAD, have heard good things.
I have been doing OMAD on M, W, and F for the last 3 winters. I do resistance training at the end of each, and pile on the protein. Seems to work for me. It helps supress insulin and mTor until I want them for protein synthesis. It also promotes stem cell generation.

(Geoffrey) #11

I’ll add this about cholesterol and the heart.
So back in April my total cholesterol was 269 and my LDL was 195.
I have a heart condition (Atrial Fibrillation) and I have two cardiologists who are totally amazed at what I’ve accomplished from my lifestyle of eating carnivore. So much so that they have taken me off of my two heart meds and if everything is still good in 6 months one of them is going to drop me as a patient. In his words “You have done more to heal yourself than anything I could do for you,”
As you can see, I’m not the least bit concerned about my cholesterol and neither are my cardiologists.
Carnivore heals, not destroys.

Oh, and btw, eat the yolks, your tossing out all of the nutrition.