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(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #42

Surely that depends on the degree of insulin-resistance, no? “Insulin-resistant” means that it takes more insulin than it’s supposed to, to get our glucose under control. Just because our insulin is still able to make our blood sugar behave, it doesn’t mean we’re not insulin-resistant. At the beginning, glucose is still controled, even though it’s taking more and more insulin to make it happen. At some point, however, the glucose levels start to show signs of the breakdown of the control (increasing insulin-resistance), and finally, at some point, fasting glucose reaches the threshold for a diagnosis of Type II diabetes.

Our obsession with glucose is the result of historical accident. Type I diabetes has been with us forever. It’s an autoimmune disease. Type II diabetes was rare, and was only found in the rich, so long as sugar and flour were difficult and expensive to refine. The diabetes epidemic began with the advent of cheap refined sugar and cheap refined flour, which brought the price of those commodities within reach of everyone. And given that insulin hadn’t been discovered yet, all they had to focus on was the blood glucose.

And that focus on glucose is wrong in both cases. Type I diabetes is about an immune system run amok, the glucose in the urine is merely a result. In Type II diabetes, the usual glucose sinks—the muscles and the adipose tissue—are tired of having glucose foisted on them, so the insulin has to work harder and harder to make them behave. We should be diagnosing Type II as soon as insulin starts to have to work harder, not waiting until the glucose finally gets out of control. It’s like a classroom of teacher-resistant kids: a first, the teacher can should loud enough to make them behave, but eventually the kids will become so rowdy that the teacher can’t shout loud enough to force proper behaviour, and the kids will stop listening altogether. Do we really want to wait until that point to admit there’s a problem?

(Bob M) #43

That graph shows insulin, not blood glucose. This is my blood glucose from a 2 hour test:

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This is blood sugar and insulin:

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They were supposed to take blood sugar and insulin at one hour also, but did not.

I think what happens is complex. If you overproduce insulin, it should decrease the “height” also of the peak, which makes it look better. But insulin could be quite high. My level of 41.2 after 2 hours is a bit high, but I also did not do any carb loading beforehand.

This one discussed both glucose and insulin:

It would be interesting to do another of these, with 30 minutes, 1 hour, and 2 hours.

(Alec) #44

Hallelujah!!

#45

This is all very interesting. But since my ketones were always at least 0.2 or 0.4 while I was doing my keto mojo glucose measurements, doesn’t that imply my insulin was not spiking? I was measuring glucose and ketones at the same time.

(Joey) #46

This makes sense on its face. What @PaulL and others are saying is that one cannot be certain about insulin resistance vs sensitivity without directly measuring insulin.

I guess this seems intuitive enough, but practically speaking, it’s close to useless advice for the masses. If you’re not eating any meaningful amount of carbs + your glucose levels do not spike wildly + whatever modest excursion in measured glucose comes back down in short order = you’re not likely insulin resistant. At least that’s what I keep inferring. Perhaps I’m mistaken.

And if you were insulin resistant, the solution would be to not eat any meaningful amount of carbs. Solution = solution.

Can you be more certain by testing insulin levels? Sure.

At the risk of being a little flip, you can also be more certain of a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s upon autopsy. But that’s not a very practical test for the masses, either.

#47

Hunger and Satiety mean nothing for a huge amount of us. If I ate to my hunger they would have cut me out of my house by now, and when I destroyed my RMR with fasting I was eating around 1500cals below were somebody my size at the time should have been and I was losing muscle mass like a champ and not fat.

When I first started to fix it I was eating with the average of every calculator I could find told me and was still not losing, even when lowering it I wasnt’ losing. After getting it actually measures I learned it was around 1000cals below where it should have been, I dropped to a 20% deficit of that number after months of failure and starting losing again.

I came back in the 1700cals range at that point, after a while of rebuilding and putting most of my lost muscle back on my follow up RMR had me around 3400cals, which is more around where I should be for my body composition. Many places also do deals on combo RMR and DEXA scans which is handy.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #48

Only with the caveat that time on keto is relevant here. My impression is that insulin resistance doesn’t reverse itself overnight.

#49

Hi Wendy!

I haven’t read all the replies, so perhaps this has already been said. Keto isn’t a diet to lose weight. Many members here don’t lose any weight on it. Many have lost some weight at the beginning, but haven’t lost any in a long time. Even some of the forum members who know the most about the diet didn’t lose all the weight they “needed” to lose on it. So, it isn’t that you don’t know how to do it. It’s just that losing weight on keto may be one of the side effects, but it isn’t what the diet is for.

Keto helps people like me, who have some disorder related to insulin: either not producing enough, or the body doesn’t use it as it should and ends up producing too much… until it doesn’t. Keto is also for some children with epilepsy who don’t do well on medicines, though I’ve never read about the controling epilepsy benefit of it, since it isn’t a problem I personally have.

There’s annedoctal stories of people who solve all sorts of problems with keto, but it is probably placebo effect, unless it was something related to insulin issues.

It is also very incomplete: on the one hand, we’re told grass fed beef can give you everything you need, on the other, every other keto related thing is selling you supplements the keto community is telling you that you need to take.

So, in your case, with so little weight to lose, and since if I understood well, you don’t have an insulin issue, I’m not surprised you can’t keep the weight off with keto.

People who do lose weight on keto are doing so by controlling their insulin-related illness and by eating less than they used to, since the diet cuts out the foods people usually binge on: potatoes, fruits, grains/cereals, sweet drinks, etc.

If the weight you’ve put on isn’t directly related to an insulin problem, keeping insulin down won’t solve it.

Many menopause problems resolve with time. Perhaps if you just wait, your weight gain after menopause will resolve itself. You could add more exercise, like walking more, and just cut some processed food from your usual diet (before keto, I mean) and with the years, it could perhaps be enough.

As we get old, many things change and it is difficult to accept. We go through a bit of a denial phase. The weight gain is one we think we can control and that makes many people concentrate a lot on the issue. But thinking too much about it is just something else that will make us feel unhappy, or stressed. And stress won’t help us with anything.

Now, if you are determined to keep eating low carb, I’d suggest you don’t do it half way. By all the things I’ve been reading, doing it half way is dangerous for your health. Our bodies can perhaps deal with the high fat diet IF we don’t eat carbs. If you mix fat and carbs, you may be damaging your body. How many grams of carbs is too much, I don’t know. I think it is a very delicate balance between fat and carb and each person will have a different threshold.

I’ve been tweaking my keto diet to find that threshold to control by blood sugar, since too low carb (including 0 carb) didn’t work for my blood sugar as I thought it would, meaning, it was creeping up, instead of down. It is nerve wrecking, because I’ll only know how damaging whatever I did/I’m doing is, if I’m getting it wrong, many years from now, after the damage was done.

Keep an eye on your kidney markers.

Good luck!

#50

I don’t think it’s necessarily true… People stop eating (or just in super tiny amounts) a lots of potentially or factually bad items while they probably raise the amount of proper food… At least if they do it right, surely one can do keto in a horrible way too.
Let’s look at my below 20g carbs keto (i.e. carnivore-ish. I ate way more carbs on my original keto) vs my previous diets. I (mostly) stopped eating plants and started eating meat. My overeating pretty much stopped too though it wasn’t very serious since I left high-carb. These all are pretty good for me. I feel as healthy as on high-carb personally as I am a healthy type and young enough that my nutritious and “could be worse” high-carb diet couldn’t overpower my genes, my lifestyle was so-so… But these are big enough changes to matter A LOT to someone else. Some of my diet changes affects insulin but not all.
And I did a quite big change while just a bit lowering my carbs but I am sure not everyone ate so much good protein pre keto if they filled their stomachs with carbs. Adding more meat and eggs may be important, not just taking away the carbs.

#51

This is a very good point.

Hi @Corals! In truth, my head has been all over the place with respect to why I’m doing keto. I guess one of the many reasons is that I don’t want to feel hungry all the time. I often feel uncomfortably hungry, even in ketosis. I snack too much, which I’m sure affects my weight. I used to be able to fast easily (in my 20s…), but now, I can’t even make 24 hours. I’d like to be able to comfortably eat two meals a day. I have yet to figure out the proper combination of foods that allows me to do this (with no snacks!).

(Robin) #52

Eavesdropping here. The eventual loss of cravings is probably number 2 on my keto top ten list. That alone allows me to slow down, listen to my body, not just eat without thinking. in fact, I believe many of us turned to eating to AVOID thinking. Anyhoo… another top contender is that when you start eliminating foods, it’s incredibly easy to identify which ones are giving you issues like lethargy, swollen achy joints, gut or bowel problems. You can know just what you ate and what the results were. Then you can eliminate or limit or whatever works for you.

And suddenly you’re in your happy place! plus, you will almost surely lose weight. Many of us came for the weight loss and stayed for a zillion other reasons. You do you, restrict your carbs, relax. You got this.

(Allie) #53

This combined with the 1300 calorie diet seems to be your body / metabolism screaming out for more fuel and holding on to what it has because it thinks there’s a shortage.

#54

Well, in all honesty, this was wishful thinking (LOL). I’m closer to 2000 per day. But I have no doubt my meals aren’t large enough. The reason has more to do with not having enough main course meat items in my fridge and ready when I prepare my meals than a conscious choice to keep the calories low. I need to plan better and not supplement with snack-like foods.

(Allie) #55

Yes, planning is the key to making this work long-term. I try to always have food prepped as an easy go to.

#56

After two years of experimentation with eliminating and putting back certain foods, I feel like I know less than when I started! I haven’t identified consistent patterns. It is so hard to truly identify cause and effect with n=1.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #57

Try eating more at meals, so you will be satisfied between meals. The fewer occasions you stimulate insulin secretion, the more easily you will be able to shed excess fat.

But it’s not enough to keep insulin low. Our experience is that trying to deliberately restrict calories can signal famine conditions, which will keep the body hanging on to its reserves. You will see many posts on these forums from people who found that their fat loss didn’t begin until they started eating more, not less.

(Allie) #58

When you eliminate foods, how long are you keeping them out of your diet?

#59

It varies but here are examples:

  1. As expected, I’ve been eliminating flours and grains for two years now on keto. (I’ve had occasional cheats.) Lately, I’ve done a few experiments with “healthy” grain products. I felt no difference at all in satiation, digestion or joint pain. 2. I cut out avocados for about a year and recently added them back. No difference I can tell. 3. Tomatoes and other nightshades, I’d say I stopped for at least a month and eat them very minimally now. I just don’t see any difference.

Joint pain, energy and digestive issues change anyway, so it’s easy to think at first that what you did before reflects a cause and effect relation. But then time goes on, symptoms return, and you realize it was just coincidence. Another way n=1 plays tricks on us is that we tend to make a change when we are at our worst. The usual pattern is you get better anyway (regression to the mean), but it’s easy to think what you did before was the reason.

Edit: ok, I thought of two clear causal associations: eating more than an ounce or two of cheese by itself causes constipation, and my primal defense brand probiotic taken two days in a row makes it go away. I’ve done many, many challenges of these two items and the causal relation is clear.

(Mark Rhodes) #60

Do you snack between meals?
Do you use alternative sweeteners?
Is you keto strictly home cooked or do you use keto products?

These are three big culprits to a lack of success that I have seen over time. Especially the sweeteners. I suspect it has more to do with gut health than insulin although a cephalic response can never be ruled out.

Do you have any body or joint pain? These point to some type of autoimmune issue normally. This requires stricter compliance. It has been hypothesized that some autoimmune issues are really connective tissue disorders and you quite possibly could be functionally lean and the body fat is dysfunctional in that it cannot be accessed.

To this end have you done any extended fasting? Is it easy? If so you have functional body fat. If not there is a good chance you need to look into other modalities, i.e. carnivore, very low carb keto ( suggested earlier by @SomeGuy )

My wife after 6 years of keto had stalled at 200. Last year we did various versions of ADF and she lost another 20 and again stalled. She would test positive for Epstein Barr then Not. test positive for Lupus then Not. We found she has a great deal of heavy metals in her blood and since I don’t it is not likely our well but her amalgams which we will remove via a SMART certified dentist. We also have a Ehlers Danlos diagnosis and I believe stage 2 Lipedema. Therefore it is very likely that her body fat cannot be accessed explaining her recent aversion to Extended Fasting, Fat Fasting, ADF etc.

For my wife the carnivore diet proved to be helpful. No measurable weight loss but I suspect she gained some lean…we will know in April when we take our next Dexascan

(Robin) #61

I get it. Make sure when you eliminate a food that you wait long enough to see how you feel without it. Weeks sometimes. None of this is a fast fix, except for those lucky folks who find their groove and lose weight and get all the good results quickly. They’re out there.
But many (most) of us take a longer path. Maybe it has something to do with how many years we abused our bodies, or just lucky genetics. Who knows.
Patience is key. And try not to change your tactics frequently. Give it time.