Why we stall

(aircraftwelder) #41

So…besides eating different than usual, do you think something you were eating before was causing the stall? Are you going to add back each food slowly to see which one is the culprit? What do you think is going on? I’m down 60lbs with 10 or so to go on a 6 month stall. I know you lift hard, so do I, congrats on your 6 lbs.

(8 year Ketogenic Veteran) #42

I wasn’t in a stall. I wasn’t even in weight loss mode. The originator of this thread was stalled. @richard is only making a point with what was happening on my current 30 day steak challenge I am conducting on this forum. I was eating on average 2 and a half pounds of fatty steak a day and started losing weight!
800 grams of fatty ribeye a day is 176 grams of fat and 192 grams of protein. Lol

And that’s no exaggeration of what I’ve been eating the first week.

(Kathy L) #43

Is there a “sticking out tongue” emogie here anywhere?? :tongue: I’m jealous (cuz I’M counting -or at least want to be counting!!).

(Kathy L) #44

Ok - I’m going to change it up!! Ribeye sounds delish!

(Andrea Johns) #45

I am down a total of 75 lb. The 1st 60 came off over 2 years as a result of gastric band surgery. 2 years ago the band came out after it tore through my stomach wall during a fall. Not fun! After the band came out I slowly gained 20 lb in the next year and a half. I need my right hip replaced and my doc won’t do it until my BMI is below 40. Not knowing anything about Keto I began restricting calories and lost 25 lb. I need to lose 30 more to get to the Magic BMI. BUT…I am stuck. It sounds like, from all the info I found from the podcasts and this forum, that I have dropped my BMR from all the calorie restriction. I said all that as a background to this question…to get my metabolism to restart I should just start eating? Limit carbs to < 20, limit protein and pile on the fat? Just typing that freaks me out I am so desperate to have the surgery. My hip is so bad I’ve basically become an invalid and my life has gotten much smaller. I don’t ever want to be where my mom was, physically, at 86 but right now I’m more limited at 62 than she was at 86. I need to get back into my pottery studio and get my hands back into the soil in my gardens. I can’t stand TV and you can only knit and crochet so many hours a day. I’ve learned a lot on this site but I could sure use some hand holding.

(Andrea Johns) #46

I should also note that I’ve successfully reversed my diabetes…my A1c is now 5.5. It was above 7 four years ago. My average blood glucose is 90 so I have seen improvement in my health. Blood lipids are all good. I’ve worked hard to get my health back. Frustration over the hip limitations are weighing (pun intended) on me the longer the stall goes on.

#47

I just started eating a little bit more on a daily basis and worked my way up to adding an extra 500 calories per day without gaining weight, however, I was intermittent fasting and doing light exercise throughout the process and I was already at a normal body weight and normal basal insulin levels. In 1998 I started out morbidly obese with T2DM, but that was reversed in a couple of years even though I used calorie restriction combined with reducing carbs which eventually resulted in keto many years later.

Stalls are most likely caused by elevated basal insulin because it inhibits the release of fatty acids from adipose tissue through the insulin resistance that’s still present even when the A1C is normal.

The quickest way to reduce basal insulin is fasting and doing this in combination with feasting when not fasting should help the reduced BMR.

I use the term “feasting” since it intrinsically discourages calorie restriction, but speaking to the forum in general, doesn’t mean drastically over-eating either.

There’s a thread where we’re discussing the Fast/Feast cycle with insights and personal experiences.

(Richard Morris) #48

I wouldn’t indiscriminately pile on fat, I would restrict carbs, make sure you are getting your protein needs (1-1.5g/kg LBM) and fat to satiety.

Satiety should tell you when your body considers it has adequate energy for current needs. Practice mindful eating, make it your goal to never put any food in your mouth without considering it. “How does this taste?” “Am I starting to become full?” and most importantly enjoy your food - we are built to enjoy the process of fueling our bodies.

Speaking of mindfulness I would also eat only when hungry and reject the idea of meal times - go “off the reservation” and eat when your body tells you it needs energy.

@BillJay is right about basal insulin blockading access to body fat. There are some strategies for reducing that.

It might be useful at your next check up to get a fasting insulin and fasting glucose test to get an idea what you are working with.

Get plenty of sleep, wake with dawn - I am awful at following this one as my diurnal cycle is a unregulated disaster - but it can reduce chronic insulin exposure.

It sounds like your exercise options are limited but you really don’t need to exercise to lose weight. It’s just that using your large muscles draws down some stored glucose which will make a hole for new glucose to take it’s place and that process uses up some of your basal insulin.

I would consider talking to you doctor about taking metformin to reduce your insulin resistance. When I don’t take metformin my fasting insulin is 19.8 mIU/L, when I took low dose metformin that dropped to 13.7 mIU/l.

Finally I would try some meditation to reduce stress in your life. Stress will have a direct and indirect effect on chronic insulin levels.

(Andrea Johns) #49

Thank you for sharing your experience. I’ll never know unless I try. And if that doesn’t work I’ll tweak it. Keto on!

(Andrea Johns) #50

Thank you, Richard, for your insight. I learned about 2ketodudes from a YouTuber named Christina. She was very complimentary about the level of support and information available on these forums. I am pleased to report she was absolutely correct…that is also my experience.

(Richard Morris) #51

Thanks Andrea - we’re just trying to pay it forward for people who helped us reason our way out of the box that Diabetes was leading us into.

(Andrea Johns) #52

I went to the Dr today and discussed my frustration with weight loss. We talked about using Metformin. She thought it was a good idea to use it in my weight loss efforts. I got the Rx. I take 500mg 1x/day. Hopefully, this will reduce that basal insulin and make the fat more available for fuel. I’m cautiously hopeful.

(Barbara Greenwood) #53

I was prompted to come back to this by episode 63, in which @richard said that fat cells take ten years to die. Please tell me I don’t have to wait ten years till I reach a point where my fat cells work better and maintaining my lower weight becomes easy…

I’m interested in the idea of a stall being a good thing in people with T2D. My first 6 months on keto I improved my BG’s massively (of course) and lost 4 stone/56lb/25kg by eating pretty much whatever I wanted as long as it was keto. But from New Year the weight loss just… stopped. I bobbled around within a three pound range.

The past week it has started moving again… but I think that’s probably because I made a conscious decision to stop snacking, and stick with two meals within a 6 hour window. I am so stuffed at dinner… a bit of anxiety maybe about the fact I won’t be eating again until lunch tomorrow. But, morning after morning, the scale is going down again.

(Richard Morris) #54

Well 10% of your fat cells were born 9 years ago so they’ll all be retiring to a well deserved apoptosis very soon and you’ll have a new batch of youngsters. And another 10% were born 8 years ago … etc

That’s the worst case scenario, it could take 10 years to fully turn over all your fat cells. But you can still empty the ones you have which it seems the intermittent fasting is allowing you to do. It’s that 18 hours of the day where you aren’t making insulin in response to a meal that is helping I reckon.

KC&KO :slight_smile:

(Richard Morris) #55

BTW Interestingly we found out how long fat cells live (10 years) and how often they turnover their triglycerides (6 times in 10 years) by measuring radioactive carbon from nuclear weapon tests appearing in the fats we store.

Will you go off piste for Christmas?
(Barbara Greenwood) #56

… or more often, if you’re prone to weight cycling, perhaps?

Between Jan 2012 and July 2013 I lost 7.5 stone (105lb) in weight through a lowish fat wholefoods diet and insane exercise… but over the following 3 years, succeeded in finding 6 of them again. So at least some of the contents of my fat cells is not as old as the rest of it!

6 times in 10 years… whirr, click… once every 20 months, then. I’ve read that fat cells also store hormones and toxins. If you clean up your diet so you’re taking in less processed crap, additives etc, that gives you a ballpark of how long it might be till most of the crap has left your body, maybe?

(Mark) #57

Congrats on the 150lb loss! That’s great!!! View some of Dr. Ron Rosedales videos on youtube where he
talks about MTOR and cancer. Reducing your protein is most critical! :slight_smile:

#58

The thought that adipose tissue now has a 10 year life expectancy is far different than the prior teachings that fat cells stick around forever. To me, that never made sense, as in why would the body create new fat storage containers with no purpose.

The reason I am posting here (in a somewhat dormant thread) Richard, is that I would like you to consider a making podcast specifically on this topic. It seems to me that you and Carl and I and Jimmy Moore all seem to be in somewhat the same situation. At 58 years old and 6’ tall, I ballooned to 352 pounds going through my divorce. Then, 32 months later, I got down to 192 pounds, 26 BMI, and perhaps 26% Body Fat. Since then (August 2015) I have yo-yo (pretty much) keto dieted down to 174 pounds, but also back up to 217 pounds and 26%+ to almost 22% BF. To me, this seems clearly related to Leptin and body weight set point or settling point, which is not very well understood or researched and not very much discussed in the ketogenic diet world. I personally do not believe that Insulin is the Master Hormone, and instead believe that the brain controls things, and Insulin is just a signaling hormone, the same as Leptin and Ghrelin, etc.

I also believe that a ketogenic diet is useful for facilitating a young man to get down to an athletic 15% BF level. From what I’ve read, perhaps for us old guys, a 23% BF level is the equivalent to that 15% BF level from younger days. Unfortunately, that seems to belittle the status of Mark Sisson, Luis Villasenor and other lower BF% older guys… All things considered, what I see most often is the creation of skinny-fat people who balloon quite quickly from following the ketogenic diet.

I too have done a LOT of research in this area. And while I appreciate your recipes and weekly status reports, what I do not see is a challenging goal in mind. To me, it was clearly beating the criteria associated with Metabolic Syndrome. I never ate much fruit, which might have kept me from full blown T2D like you, and recovery from that condition is indeed most important. However, next, it should be noted that the Work Health Organization defines obesity as being over 25% BF as a man, so that does diminish the value of weight and BMI. In addition, the next goals for a man of having a (correct) waist measurement of less than 1/2 of height and a Waist to Height ratio of less then 90% have proven elusive to me thus far. I would personally prefer to travel this path with you and Carl if you had such a goal in mind, and not simply riding your bike, coding, and cooking some keto meals. :wink:

So, it seems to me that Jimmy Moore’s pushing around a tractor tire behind his chicken coop, any your riding your bike around the lake are not enough for us (formerly) obese guys to join the likes of Mark and Luis. Like many posters here (and on Reddit/keto) I have been overweight and obese and morbidly obese for most of my life. I have been under 25 BMI and under 23% BF for about 2 years out of the last 48 years, so it is clearly time for me to get a grip. I guess I just think that I would personally benefit if you two would also try to move to the next level and provide guidance and motivation, as I am getting angry at seeing Brenda kicking our collective keto asses…

(Richard Morris) #59

Luis is 5’ 5". He may not be looking for advice, but I have an approach that he could follow to be taller … and I should know because I am 5’11" so obviously I am doing something right. All he and anyone else who aspires to be 5’11" needs to do is eat EXACTLY what I eat, and do EXACTLY the same exercise as I do, and then chose parents more like mine - Simples!

See that’s the one factor that we often forget about when trying to measure ourselves against others - genetics. My father played representative Rugby (Queensland) and I inherited his build. My genetics gave me a body that is strong, but also dense. I have for example never been able to naturally float, even in the dead sea which is extremely salty and when I was at my most obese (and least dense).

My lean mass is 80.38 kg. At my height my ideal body weight should be 59kg to 79kgs. So if I were somehow able to reduce my body fat to an impossible 0% I would still be 1.38 kgs overweight. Clearly BMI and ideal weight for height models are ridiculous. That just isn’t how humans are built.

Currently I have just under 22% body fat. Which on a 52yo former diabetic may be a reasonable amount of body fat, although as a diabetic it is all central, my legs are 9% BF. My 22kgs of body fat allows me to ride for 4-5 hours without worrying about fueling, I can fast with relative ease when I want to to lower my insulin.

And that there is my primary goal, reducing Insulin exposure not body weight, not even increasing lean mass. My fasting insulin is currently 18.7 mIU/l, I would gladly exchange 10kgs of lean mass if I could get my fasted insulin below 4 (yes I know that is not how it works). I would even be satisfied gaining back every one of the almost 100 pounds of body fat I have lost, if I could reduce my insulin - because THAT ultimately is what exposes us to cardio vascular disease and all the microvascular complications of diabetes.

The good news is 2 years ago my fasting insulin was 30 … and incidentally I have never been lighter in 30 years than I am right now … so keeping calm and ketoing on is a strategy that is working for me, even if that does not make for exciting radio … errr … podcasts.

(VLC.MD) #60

That’s interesting and clear.
what surplus have you used ?

I see men do really well on Keto. I see you did well on Keto. I see you have a lot of muscle. Is muscle mass a key to your formula ?