This all feels so unreal - I can eat Bacon?

(Graham Robinson) #1

Hi all, newbie here. I have read about Keto and sort of understand what it’s all about but honestly being able to have Bacon, Eggs,Sauasage etc sounds so unreal. All my favourite foods are no longer offline. I need to lose weight and i have type 2 but can i really have bacon & eggs etc for breakfast?

(Ellen) #2

Yes you can! It’s amazing isn’t it?

(Anderson Herzogenrath Da Costa) #3

Why not? One of the healthiest breakfast choices.

(Jack Brien) #4

No. Bacons bad for you. You have to be vegan and eat air

(Graham Robinson) #5

Lol, well i will probably o.d on fryups now. Thanks to all for the replies.

(8 year Ketogenic Veteran) #6

Not just bacon kiddo. Take a stroll through this epic forum thread of ours :heart:
What did you Keto today?

(Allie) #7

You can yes. Be careful to read ingredients on sausages though as most are loaded with wheat and / or other fillers that could harm your progress.

Enjoy :grin:

#8

Hi, I’m a newbie also. I’ve been doing the Keto lifestyle for almost 3 months now. I was diagnosed diabetic back in 2015. My A1C back then was 6.9. I hadn’t had it checked since then, so have no idea what it was before I started Keto. But in November, I had blood work done, and it was 6.2. And everything else was just about perfect. My daily fasting blood glucose readings are usually under 100 mg/dl. And I have bacon and eggs every day for breakfast, sometimes for dinner too! It’s wonderful! I’ve lost over 30 pounds on diet alone, no exercise! I still have a ways to go, but this is the only way of eating that is sustainable for me. I have tried the “watch my calories” and exercise the sweat out of me! All I got was a feeling of starvation and finally gave up. I still watch my calories, but I can eat so much more now that I don’t feel hungry anymore. When I get down to goal weight, I’m going to have a t-shirt made saying “Body By Bacon!”

(Jack Brien) #9

Remember overeating is a temporary measure to get you over the initial transformation and eating to satiety is a better habit, presuming you can do that (I have great difficulty with it)

(Consensus is Politics) #10

@Nogger @Jabarnes

Newbies listen up. Especially Type 2 diabetic. Mainstream dieticians, the ADA, and most doctors will (in my humble opinion) out right lie to you about what you need to eat.

I’m normally VERY long winded, so I’ll sum this up.
29 Aug 2017, I was Diagnosed Type 2 diabetic. My HBa1c was 11.7%. That’s not just bad, it’s deadly bad. Worse still I didn’t even know anything was wrong.

So I go to the few diabetic classes the hospital had to introduce myself to my new life. A life of getting fingers pricked, and worrying about going blind or losing my feet to neuropathy. “Remember to check, INSPECT, you feet everyday” oh my gosh.

Nutrition class. I learned that the recommended diet for T2D was basically a normal diet with a very slight tweak to carbs. Limiting them to 45-60 grams per meal. I laughed. That’s easy least, I said. I used to do less than that per day when I was Keto! They had no clue what I was talking about.

6 weeks later my Blood Glucose (BG) wasn’t going below 200. I was getting pissed off. Their diet, their meds, basically keeping me on a downward spiral. Not getting better, just not going as bad as fast, but still going bad. So I took my life into my own hands and researched a few things myself.

High priority was what is T2D? In short, my body isn’t processing sugar as good as it should. So I figured, why even stress my body with it? On 17 Oct 2017 I went full on carb cold turkey. I went ZERO CARB. Well, technically not zero, but that was my target. I suppose it could be said that even bacon could have carbs because it’s somtimes cured in sugar. So it might have one or two grams of sugar per package. I can live with that.

Within 2 weeks, or by 31 oct 2017, I had lost 40 pounds. Indeed, that’s a lot. And I felt great. 18% body mass. I was 245 and went down to 205. I can’t wear half of my pants anymore, just make me look like a kid wearing his dads clothes😂.

I keep close track of my BGs everyday. After going full on ketogenic my BGs have been between 80ish and <120. I make the occasional mistake of eating too much protein which spikes my glucose, and stops me from burning fat. And then there is the occasional extra carbs that sneak in and cause my BG to spike to 150ish. That’s rare, and I’ve been doing really well. Doing some napkin math I figure that in Jan 2018 when I go back for my follow up my HBa1c should be less than 5.5. Lower than pre diabetes. Back in The healthy range.

Bacon is a staple. I try to have at least three packs in the fridge at all times. I buy the 70% hamburger, for the extra fat. I don’t drain it when cooking with it, but to me it does seem a bit too much at times. I found adding cream cheese to it seems to make it more like a creamed stew. I’m also not a very good cook, still learning🙄

Don’t even bother counting calories. Not in the normal sense anyway. You want to make sure you get your minimum in at least. Yes, I said at least get your minimum calories in. Don’t worry too much if you are eating too many calories. In the big scheme of things it isn’t even worth worrying about. Without the carbohydrates there to screw with your insulin, you can burn most of those calories right away.

Ok, now I’m starting to go long… :wink:

Find and listen to the “2 Keto Dudes “ podcasts. Start with episode one. You are on a journey you won’t believe, but you can believe it. Alice, you didnt step through the looking glass, you just woke up.

(Graham Robinson) #11

Thanks to all who replied ,some great info & links in there i will follow up.

@Robert_Johnson , your story is very similar to mine in terms of the 'professional’s ’ approach. popped me on a 'Weight Management Course last January, was 6 months before i got to actually see a ‘professional’ and she turned out to be a ‘Psycologist’! i dont have ‘Pysological’ issues (far as i know :slight_smile: ) and after 11 months still not seen a dietician so just pulled myself off the course.

I will try Keto and see what it can do for me, i need to get my Hba checked soon, i can’t actually recall the last reading but i remember it was higher than the previous one despite them putting me on Metformin. Hopefully in the next 3 months that will have gone down. I need to lose loads (i mean loads, i’m 317lb) and at my age (63) the arthritis is creeping in, carrying this around is doing my knee in which makes it hard to exercise so it’s a double edged sword. I guess i should continue to keep taking the Metformin, at least until the next blood tests. just had my second fry up in 3 days, cant wait to see if there’s any change in the next few weeks

Graham

(Keto in Katy) #12

Graham: it sounds like you are on the right path — well done and good luck to you!

The first critical thing, I think, is to self-educate on some basic biology and metabolism here. You have already learned that the “experts” (docs and dietitians) don’t have a clue and cannot help you.

As Larry Lustig here put it very simply about the ketogenic diet: you replace the carbohydrates in your diet (sugars, starches, grains) with fat. That is it in a nutshell.

These forums are a gold mine of valuable science and many success stories. I think your journey back to good health is underway. Keep Calm and Keto On!

#13

We have all been lied to our entire lives on nutrition. Thankfully you found information to make an informed decision and are seeing results. Amazing.

The hard part is next… Spread the word to those in your life you see struggling as you had been. Friends or family will notice, and might need a “push” / convincing… Just keep living by example. You will influence others with your results and together we can … “dare I said it? Change the World!” (Bill Nye credit!)

#14

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm BACON!

Hubby got me a 2lb Double cream Brie cheese wheel for Christmas. I’m going to have some with BACON!

(Consensus is Politics) #15

Something I think everyone should know, and it’s something I only learned recently is the effect insulin has on our bodies.

Doctors constantly prescribe anti inflammation meds. Could be cured by lowering insulin levels.

Clogged arteries and heart disease is caused by insulin. (Probably not all heart disease, but the heart disease associated with diabetes for sure).

Weight gain (from fat), again, insulin plays a major roll in that. More so than even lack of exercise. When I lost my FORTY POUNDS [edit: IN TWO WEEKS], I was doing no exercise. I was doing the exact opposite. I was a full time computato. It wasn’t until shedding that excess weight that I felt like doing anything again. I pulled my stationary bike off the back porch where it had spent the last four years collecting dust, cob webs, and even some mice moved into it. I cleaned that sucker up and got it working again. I’m an electronics technician, so i was looking forward to the challenge.

Back to weight gain effected by insulin. Insulin is used to shuttle sugar into out cells to be used as easy energy. In my opinion, that’s why the body uses it preferentially to ketones. It’s fast and easy to use sugars. Moreover, sugar build up in the blood causes so many problems. Burning it off as fast as possible (or converting it into fat and then storing it) is how the body gets rid of this toxin (again, my opinion, but the evidence speaks for itself). In that same vain, insulin blocks fat from being used as a fuel. Off the top of my head, I don’t remember how this function works, but the effect lasts longer than insulin lasts in the blood. I’m sure it’s a hormonal effect. Insulin being a hormone triggers a switch in the biology of our fat, that prevents it from being oxidized for a certain amount of time, even after the insulin is long gone. If I remember correctly, insulin itself doesn’t last in the blood very long. Probably only minutes once production of insulin stops. The free insulin has a very short half-life measured in minutes.

So, as it goes for weight loss, of fat anyway, eating 5 meals a day, such as my dietician suggested, is a recipe to gaining a weight, at probably the fastest way possible.
Inversely, eating one meal a day, or intermittently fasting, will keep your insulin levels very low for long periods of times, allowing the body fat to be used as fuel. And once your body gets used to the Keto diet, eating one meal a day actually feels normal. I typically eat a late breakfast or early lunch, and that’s the only meal I eat.

There is so much more as well. But I think that is something really worth mentioning because most people, pretty much everyone I know, have never heard any thing like this.

Good luck!

Keep calm and… we’ll, you know🤠

#16

Send all of your bacon to me.

(Graham Robinson) #17

Well done , 30 lbs in 3 months, i can but dream . I am so sick of getting on those scales and not budging an ounce, and that after trying to eat just the ‘right’ things . Well i will give it a couple of weeks or so before my first weigh in and fingers crossed it’s in the right direction. If i manage to get my weight back on course i might just buy one of those T-Shirts :slight_smile:
Good luck

(Graham Robinson) #18

Thanks Bob, i’m an Electronic Tech too so i’m usually tied to a keyboard or my electronics bench. It must be the disease for Electronics Techs :slight_smile:

Just had another boost this morning when i discovered my favourite friends Jack Daniels and Tequila are also still online , life’s getting better already

(Consensus is Politics) #19

Yes, but don’t get to friendly with them two. They will take advantage of you in a heartbeat.

(Graham Robinson) #20

Hi all
I said i wasn’t going to weigh myself until after 14 days but i’m weak and i caved in after 9.(that was on Tuesday 2nd . I have been sticking around 22st 8 (317lb) for months no matter what i did to lose weight so i was very happy to see the scales stop at 22st 4 (312lb).

Brilliant and it made my day to have just lost something. This morning at 14 days i jumped back on hoping for another decrease but no, still at 22st 4 :frowning:

I have been trying very hard not to eat anything i shouldn’t, so maybe this is normal ? Maybe i should be happy that after 14 days i have lost 5 lbs . Also i have continued to take my Metformin and BP tablets (currently 1000mg Metformin and working up to 1500

So i will stick with it and see if there’s any improvement to come, i do feel different though, maybe its in my head but i don’t feel as bloated (although i still look huge) and lets just say my bathroom visits are now every few days instead of every day :slight_smile:

Let you know more in a few days.

Nogger