Threw myself off the meat wagon on purpose - a blueberry ice cream experiment

[FrankoBear]

The experiment: A blood glucose curve over 2 hours testing an n=1 response to home-made blueberry ice cream.
The Aim: N = 1 and some conversation about experiment design, repeatability, results, confounding etc. But in the leap off from the meat wagon, to land comfortably in the keto eating safety net (not nett carbs).
Hypothesis: My blood sugar will go up a lot. It might stay up. I’ll be knocked out of nutritional ketosis.
The protagonist: Frank Bear, 6 foot 5, over weight, carnivore WoE follower. Lives in the woods.

Online Dictionary:

meat wagon 1. slang - An ambulance, especially on its way to a gruesome incident. I had to sit there and hold my own guts in place while we waited for a meat wagon to arrive. They loaded up the poor guy into the meat wagon , his leg barely attached to his body anymore.

In my carnivore parlance “meat wagon” is our version of the “band wagon”, or as vegan practitioners may call it, the “banned wagon”. It’s a purposeful fall. More of a leap from a way-of-eating. To test an idea.

Materials:
Home-made blueberry ice cream: 125g/4.4oz of local blueberries (start of the season), frozen. 50ml/ a large dessert spoon scoop of double cream, refrigerated. Add cream to blueberries. The frozen blueberries create ice cream from the already thick, refrigerated cream.

Blueberries (100g): * Water: 84%,* Protein: 0.7 grams,* Carbs: 14.5 grams, of which * Sugar: 10 grams,* Fiber: 2.4 grams,* Fat: 0.3 grams (https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/blueberries#nutrition)
Blueberries (125g = THE DOSE): * Carbs: 18.1 grams,*of which Sugar: 12.5 grams
Double Cream:

Double cream in Australia is a term that’s not as strongly regulated as it is in the UK. But generally, double cream will have between 48% and 66% milk fat. Double cream in Australia is something you can occasionally find in the supermarkets, but it is more of a British term. In the UK, double cream is a legally-defined term. To bill something as double cream, it must have at least 48% milk fat. Other creams have boundaries, too. For example, clotted cream needs to be at least 55% milk fat.

• In 100g Total Fat (g) 56
• Saturated Fat (g) 37
• Sodium (mg) 18
• Cholesterol (mg) 0
• Total Carbohydrate (g) 3
• Dietary Fibre (g) 0
• Sugars (g) 3
• Protein (g) 2

I used 50g. So Total Carbs = 1.5g + 18.1g from the Blueberries = 19.6g for the blueberry ice cream test bowl. 14g of which are sugar.

Method:

1. Make ice cream
2. Test blood
3. Eat ice cream
4. Test blood at regular intervals for 2 hours

While on the carnivore way of eating (now will have to be called ‘dirty carnivore’ with this blueberry stain), I consistently have morning, high fasting blood glucose measurements that would, over time, put me in the pre-diabetic zone. Breakfast was at 12 noon of bacon and eggs. Test was at 3pm. Fasting (but post coffee) blood glucose before breakfast was 5.8mmol/l (106), and blood ketones 0.2mmol/l. Blood glucose at 3pm, before eating the ice cream, was 5.2mmol/l (94), and blood ketones 0.3mmol/l. I had had a short walk and a swim at the beach in the morning.

So, how do you think things went?

Results: Threw myself off the meat wagon on purpose - a blueberry ice cream experiment

[Fangs]

Razz up the carnivores who get excitable if one of us eats some fruit,

In the bitter end no one cares what one eats. In the end it is all you.
If you did fab on it, more power to you and let’s see the long term more carb creep ya get, or body aches/pains adding back on but that is a personal journey for each of us and if you don’t, into Keto land you go. nothing wrong with that.

I find that food useless truly. Now that is me, if one does well and loves it, go for it as one sees fit.

Next you make alot of assumptions. You don’t know you will go prediabetic longer term. Guessing the future can screw up the daily for sure.

You have alot of info WHY numbers seem higher on our lifestyle. Tons of more research one can access also. Again another assumption this is ‘wrong or can be bad’ but off all carbs, there is NO studies to the level on requires for accurate info but there is reasons why this event happens to many, and long term carnivores, 10-20 yrs got this issue and ain’t got no problems so ??

you do you FB whatever your journey turns out to be for you.
You will EAT FOR YOUR LIFE, like RuPaul says, don’t F it up! weeee

[ctviggen]

I’ve noticed that many carnivores experience higher morning fasting blood sugar levels than “ideal” or “normal”, even those who don’t eat any fruit or barely any carbs.

Can’t tell whether the initial blood sugar was taken after the exercise or not. If after, exercise causes blood sugar rise.

As a non-carnivore, mine is also “high” in the morning:

As to @FrankoBear, you’re going to have to test every 15 minutes. This is the night before Thanksgiving:

Ice cream pie just before 9pm, blood sugar is normal within an hour.

That doesn’t show the curve as well as this does, which was Thanksgiving (the next day). We ate just before 1pm, potatoes, bread, stuffing, see the 9.7:

The bump after that (starting just after 14:00) is dessert, which I think was cheesecake.

But if I was to take blood just before eating then an hour later, there would be no difference. Another hour later, no difference. I’d completely miss the peaks.

If you’re T2, it might be different.

[robintemplin]

Ah, thanks for sacrificing yourself to the meat mob. Hopefully they are good and razzed.
I applaud your n=1, as it looks quite tasty.

[Shinita]

I didn’t even finish reading but must comment.
I am minimally curious about the experiment but I do enjoy your style immensely
Epic. It was so, so good, a pleasant surprise and I know your style so my expectations aren’t low at all

And IDK what is razzed but I will look it up.

(Ah blueberries. I don’t have them as they require a different soil. But I’ve heard some banana peels can help with that - and of course I would buy the right soil when planting it. I only ate blueberries in sweetened yogurt as a kid. And bought it once frozen, it was tiny and tasteless. But I know good blueberries are good and maybe I want them in my garden. I am a fruit collector.)

So it’s not even 20g sugar? I would imagine I would have stayed in ketosis or if not, I would go back soon enough so it wouldn’t matter. But I can’t measure BS and I don’t even care much… Only about feeling good.
Oh and there was exercise? Even less reason to go out of ketosis but what do I know…?

[FrankoBear]

Results:
Taking “normal” as < 5.5mmol/l (100mg/dl) as a guide
Time ‘0’ Baseline: 5.2mmol/l (94mg/dl), and blood ketones 0.3mmol/l
+30 min: 6.1mmol/l (110)
+45 min: 6.8mmol/l (122)
+1 hour: 7.4mmol/l (133)
+90min: 5.9mmol/l (106)
+2 hours: 5.3mmol/l (95), and blood ketones 0.6mmol/l

[islandlight]

Pardon my ignorance, but the results are … good? Or bad?

[FrankoBear]

I’m not sure. I think it’s good to be back at baseline by 2 hours after a carbohydrate test.

Kraft test graphs may provide a comparison guide to the results. The Kraft test uses a standard 100g glucose dose. I used a 20g carb dose/ 14g sugar dose, as that was a good size bowl of blueberry ice cream, and the blueberries are packaged in 125g packets at the farm.

Low-carb Lab Testing — Part 7 — The Kraft Test (Hyperinsulinemia)

[PaulL]

I believe that Pattern V is the one that indicates normal insulin sensitivity; the rest of the patterns all indicate what Dr. Kraft called either “occult diabetes” or “diabetes in situ.” In other words, they all indicate insulin-resistance and hyperinsulinaemia.

It would be nice to know not just your glucose response, but also what your insulin response was during the test. Unfortunately, that can’t be tested at home.

[FrankoBear]

I look like pattern 1.

[ctviggen]

You can’t tell the pattern without insulin. I saw results from someone who had great blood sugar results in a Kraft test, but terrible insulin results. Horrible, as insulin was very high hours later.

I don’t think those Kraft test graphs are correct. For V, you’re starting at about 80 for glucose…and ending at 20? Ah, what? All of them end at blood sugar levels that normal people don’t have. The lowest I ever saw – an official blood draw – was a 62 – after 4.5 days fasting.

This was what I saw during an actual 2 hour Kraft test with 75g glucose:

A little over 2 hours (edit: more like 3 hours), and I was down at “normal”, which let’s say was 4.8, which is 86. Not 20.

Those graphs should end where they start for blood sugar.