Running Time: 01:46:00
Download: MP3
Here's the transcript of the show:
Jonathan: Welcome to the show everybody. Today is the 23rd of February and my name is Jonathan and I'll be your host for today. Joining me in our virtual studio from all across the planet are Doug, Erika, Gaby, Tiffany and Adam; we have a new guest host with us today. He is going to be giving us some good information on exercise and ketosis.
So our topic today is a continuation of last week. We'll call this The Ketogenic Diet Part II. First we are going to go into some of the news from the week and Erika has some of those topics for us. Erica, I know you had a few interesting stories, would you like to cover those?
Erica: Yeah sure! So last week the top health and wellness news was More Mad Science as the Feds Approve the New GMO Apple. Basically it was announced on several websites including politico.com who stated on February 13th, "An arm of the US department of agriculture said that they will be rolling out an arctic apple in Golden Grannies variety." The apple isn't in grocery stores yet.
The last regulatory hurdle was overcome; the company is waiting for the conclusion of a voluntary review by the FDA which basically means that the FDA is going to go ahead with it. The interesting thing about the reason they genetically modified this apple was because they wanted to stop the browning that happens when the flesh is exposed to the air damage; kind of a weird creepy thing.
The apple's approval is a test case and more people are interested in doing this kind of thing. It's really interesting timing considering how all this controversy over labelling in different states is coming out and how people are really against GMO's and are learning about their toxic, unhealthy, non-scientific based safety.
You can read the article on the SOTT page, and what was interesting about it was that it's becoming a tougher sell in the United States to do things like introducing GMO apples so they are talking about going to countries like Brazil to continue this work where the regulatory environment is not as difficult.
More on that should be coming out. Again, as I said, the health and safety of GMO foods are a concern for people and for some reason the Feds keep rolling out new GMO products. A couple of weeks ago it was the Plenish soybean oil and this week it's the apple that doesn't brown.
Doug: Which is really actually ironic because it's such a stupid thing to do. The browning of apples is really like.... who cares? Honestly it's not like everybody is like "Oh if only my apple didn't brown. This is so terrible that this happens, such imperfect design by nature!" It's just so silly. It really makes you realize that they are just really trying for complete ownership of the entire food chain.
By making these stupid little tweaks to the genetic code suddenly they have the complete rights over it and any apple that gets sold now is going to benefit the biotech companies. It's such a stupid thing to do.
Erica: I agree.
Gaby: Everybody is so against it and they keep pushing it no matter what.
Erica: It was interesting how the article was written because it was really not touching on the fact that these products are being denied by more and more people. There is a push in states to label these kinds of foods and it's almost like the intention is to get as many products on to the market before people become educated. This is just another example of that.
So the next interesting article is Fun Fat Facts, Fatty Foods that are Great for your Health. I shared this one because it kind of ties into our topic today. Basically it's on AlterNet and it's written based on the book The Big Fat Surprise, Why Butter, Meat and Cheese belong in a Healthy Diet. The author goes through and states five reasons to love fat. What really sparked my interest was that she lists the four different types of fat - monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, trans fat and saturated fat - and then goes on to say guacamole can make you healthier.
She talks about avocados being a good source of fat, then fats found in the Mediterranean diet. She lists omega 3, omega 6 and then trout, salmon and herring, nuts, almonds and sunflower seeds. Then the final sentence is "cooking oils such as soybean and corn" which just completely sent me for a loop! Especially now that Plenish soybean oil is now on the market.
Then she goes into how bad trans fats are. We have all read about that over the last couple of years. She only mentions coconut oil as a healthy saturated fat. So completely leaves out any animal fats at all, and the importance of animal fats in a healthy, especially keto, diet. I just thought that was interesting, how these articles are coming out but they're still not going there on how saturated fat is good for you or how animal fat is good for the brain, any sort of things like that.
It's kind of like you were saying last week, Doug, this whole movement of healthy eating without mentioning animal fat.
Doug: Exactly, the programming goes very, very deep on this.
Gaby: They don't have any idea what they're doing because there are even government agencies who are reconsidering dietary advice including limiting cholesterol for example. Since last year, 2014, it's official, fat was actually not the problem; animal fats. Then you have articles like this which show complete disregard and complete ignorance of what is actually going on. Even with their own scientists! Go figure!
Doug: It's kind of like the holistic health movement where the hippies took over at point and at first they were all promoting the plant based diet and they can't seem to get out of that mode of thinking. Even if you do eat meat and things like that, you want the majority of what you're eating to be plant based. Despite all this stuff that's coming out, they're coming around and saying "well actually it turns out that saturated fat isn't that bad, so you should eat coconut oil."
It's like, well no! Sure eat coconut oil, that's fine but it shouldn't be your main fat source. We really need the fats that are coming from animal fats, particularly like lard, tallow and all these sorts of animal fats. Like you said Erica, that's what we need for our brain.
Jonathan: Not just for your brain, that saturate fat being needed for the proper assimilation of protein. That gets completely overlooked.
Doug: Yeah.
Erica: Exactly. Leading on from that is another article for the week, The Government wants Americans to Adopt a Plant Based Diet, this is from Washington Free Beacon. It basically says that the federal committee responsible for nutritional guidelines is calling for the adoption of a plant based diet, taxes on desserts, trained obesity interventionists at work sites and electronic monitoring of how long Americans sit in front of the TV.
Jonathan: Ludicrous.
Doug: It just goes to show that they are not basing these decisions on the latest science. Like Gaby was saying, there is so much science coming out right now and even some other government agencies [are changing their views], so it shows that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing in a lot of cases. They are reconsidering their recommendations on cholesterol and animal fats and things like that and here you have a mandate that Americans need to adopt a plant based diet. Hello!!??!!
Erica: Exactly. They say in the article that the major findings regarding sustainable diets was that a diet higher in plant based foods such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds and lower in calories than animal based foods is more health promoting and in association with less environmental impact in the current US diet. The report says, "All of these dietary patterns are aligned with lower environmental impact and provide options that can be adopted by the US population."
Current evidence shows that the average US diet has a larger environmental impact in terms of increased greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, energy use compared to the above dietary patterns. This is because the current US population's intake of animal based foods is higher and plant based foods are lower than proposed in these 3 dietary patterns.
Going back to our vegetarian myth discussion, that can all just be discredited, the agra based approach to growing these kinds of foods. It's just completely insane.
Doug: We should send them The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Erica: So those are some of the exciting informational health topics for last week, you always have to take it with a grain of salt and read between the lines. Thanks for the commentary from SOTT editors who really keep the discussion going in the right direction and pointing out the flaws in these topics that people are putting on the internet.
Adam: I found one from last week or so and it was a comparison of lifestyle changes. Exercise was compared to drug therapy for different diseases; including Parkinson's. Exercise was found to be just as effective as all the drug therapies. It's just really interesting the kind of stuff that comes out that never really gets any kind of media attention or gets put into policy. Even though all the science is right there.
Jonathan: No kidding, there are so many natural modalities that are available, like simple exercise and regulating your diet and it seems like when you bring this kind of topic up, especially with certain medical professionals and other people who are on that train, the diet is somehow a separate thing.
It's like you don't need to change your diet for that, you just take this. It seems like it's something that is outside of the realm of treatment. Then treatment being a diet is this radical idea which just seems really strange.
Adam: It seems really strange because they've got the recommendations that they've got. The majority of the population are following along with it so when the doctors are looking at people's diet and saying "OK I see you've got all these whole grains here and a bunch of fruit so that's obviously not what's wrong". Because they've been trained to think that this is good for them so they don't even see it as being within the realm of something that needs to be changed because according to them it's right.
Jonathan: Right.
Doug: Yeah, I think I might have had this story on the show before but I met a guy at a family get together at one point and he was telling me about how he went to the doctor and his cholesterol was really high and the doctor said to him "You know you could change your diet and you could start exercising or I could give you this pill and it will do the exact same thing, so why don't you just take the pill?"
Gaby: Oh God!!!
Doug: That's the kind of mentality.
Adam: Don't take responsibility for yourself or your actions, just take this pill.
Doug: Exactly
Jonathan: Exactly.
Gaby: They have to study for 15 years to arrive to that conclusion basically; not to promote health. 15 years just for that.
Doug: Exactly, don't promote health, promote medication.
Jonathan: Along those lines I'd come across an interesting topic this week regarding the ketogenic diet and ketones specifically. I was listening to another podcast and the guest on the show was Ken Ford who is the founder and chief executive officer of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition.
He has personally been in ketosis for something close to 8 years. He had many good things to say about it. He also did exercise on the ketogenic diet and he brought up that DARPA has been doing research into this for some time now. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
I did a little bit of searching on this and found that indeed, the army had contracted a professor of physiological biochemistry at Oxford, Kieran Clarke, head of the Cardiac Metabolism Research Group. The army had contracted her to develop a drink that's basically a ketone-ester drink so that you can trick your body into burning fat without having to change your diet and switch the liver over into a ketone producing state. That seemed like it was along the same lines as what we were talking about, you don't need to work at it just take this drink!
They are specifically recognizing or have recognized the benefits of the ketogenic state, not necessarily the diet but the physical state of ketosis, and are working on this for soldiers in combat zones so that they can have longer lasting energy sources without having to weigh their packs down with a bunch of extra MREs (Meals ready-to-eat).
Adam: Why don't they just take MCT oil?
Gaby: Program for the easy way out. For the easy-peasey solution.
Jonathan: This is going to be coming out on the market soon. Another thing Ken Ford said was that he wouldn't be surprised if within the year, we saw ketone drinks that were available. We've already seen ketone pills that you can take. Doug, you had mentioned raspberry ketones and now that is something that I've seen online as well.
Doug: Yeah, that was really big a couple of years ago, Dr Oz mentioned it at one point so it kind of blew up as this weight loss miracle where you just take these raspberry ketone pills and suddenly your weight will just start falling off. From talking to people who have actually done it, it really doesn't seem to be the case.
Adam: Like we had mentioned, it's not necessarily that having the raspberry ketones isn't a helpful modality for weight loss, it's that the studies that were used to support raspberry ketones as a way to lose weight showed they made up a very significant portion of their diet. Supplementing your diet with raspberry ketones, "take one or two of these pills and it'll suddenly melt the fat off", that's not exactly what happens, you'd have to take bottles a day!
Doug: I think the studies on it were rat studies and it was like 20-30% of their diet; something along those lines; it was an insane amount of this raspberry ketone stuff; it would be at least bottles.
Adam: I could see that being at a gym, "get your raspberry ketone smoothies".
Jonathan: Exactly. Some of the highlights in this article that I was looking at in the Daily Mail regarding the ketone-ester drink say that it can help with certain diseases like epilepsy, Alzheimer's and things like that but they also say "don't worry about side effects". That makes me nervous, especially when you are doing anything that is trying to trick the body into a certain state of metabolism without actually adjusting the system accordingly.
They're basically offering a quick solution. I can attest in my own experience that switching over to the ketogenic diet was and is kind of a painful process. There are certain transitions that you have to go through and I certainly wouldn't want to try to trick my body into that state because it's unpredictable; I have no idea what's going to happen.
Gaby: I would rather just do it naturally because Rome was not built in one day so to speak. We are talking about a lifetime of eating carbs which ages you and inflames and you just cannot switch to an anti inflammatory state overnight. No pain no gain!
Jonathan: Once something like this catches on are we going to see things like people's livers shutting down because they are trying to simultaneously produce ketones and glucose at the same time; having their metabolisms utterly confused to the point where it just stops working? I don't know that but there is such a wide array of unpredictable results to this kind of thing.
Doug: I often wonder if a lot of these people who are looking to lose weight and would be looking for these miracle solutions are going to be generally pretty insulin resistant and probably have metabolic syndrome and all these other kinds of conditions. How is the body going to react when it is in this insulin resistant state and suddenly taking in a bunch of ketones as well?
Gaby: An insulin resistant state is not promoting a natural state of ketosis. I think the problem is that then people in general will blame the ketogenic diet when it's not the case. We really have to be careful and be very critical about these new products.
Jonathan: Along those lines, Doug do you want to give us a quick recap of where we were at last week for our listeners who might not be familiar with what we were talking about and then we will transition into Gaby who had some mention of the health benefits of the ketogenic diet.
Doug: Yeah, definitely. Just to recap quickly what we were talking about last week, the ketogenic diet which we keep referring to here is basically a diet where you get yourself from a state of burning mainly carbohydrates, which is essentially sugar, to mainly burning fat; it's switching your body's fuel sources.
You do this by lowering your carbohydrate intake dramatically to generally 30 grams or so a day. Some people actually have to go lower than that and there is actually nothing wrong with going to a zero carb intake because the body can survive fine without taking in any carbohydrates.
By doing that you switch the body over into the fat burning state, suddenly your body will have access to its own fat stores so weight loss is very common if you need weight loss of course; not everybody does. It really is the ideal state for the body to be in; burning the proper fuel for it. I think that pretty much covers it but if Gaby wanted to go into some of the benefits?
Gaby: We know that a ketogenic diet is being researched with good results for Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, several neurological diseases and also it seems to be the best diet for cancer because cancer cells are starved from sugar when the body uses ketones for fuel. There have been reports of tumors shrinking or people going into remission and having their cancer disappear or having an increased life expectancy.
There are lots of diseases, even odd diseases and people have even reported better eyesight when they go on the diet. For general health benefits even the average person can benefit. I have a list here, it's very nice, from Keto Clarity written by Jimmy Moore who has been on the ketogenic diet for quite a while now. He wrote this book last year.
The list consists of the same things that people on the SOTT.net forum have reported -
● Natural hunger and appetite control
● Effortless weight loss
● Maintaining mental clarity, which is a big one
● Sounder and more restful sleep
● Normalized metabolic function
● Stabilized blood sugar and restored insulin sensitivity
● Lower inflammation levels
● Feelings of happiness and general well-being
● Lower blood pressure - that's a big one, people have come off of prescription medicines.
● Increased HDL cholesterol and reduced triglycerides which is the best lipid profile if you want to be protected against heart disease
● Lowered or eliminated small LDL particles which is really inflammatory, it's really the bad cholesterol
● The ability to go 12 or 24 hours between meals without having any issues at all
● Use of stored body fat as the fuel source
● Endless energy
● Eliminated heartburn - which is a big one, most people think that eating fat and meat is so bad for your digestion while on the contrary people eliminated heartburn.
● There is better fertility
● Prevention of traumatic brain injury - that's one of the research fields in which the ketogenic diet is being used after trauma of the brain because it has such an anti-inflammatory effect on the brain.
● There is improved immune system function, people get sick less.
● Slowed aging
● Free radical reduction
● Improvements in blood chemistry in general
● Optimized cognitive function and improved memory
● Reduced acne breakouts and other skin conditions
● Heightened understanding of how foods affect your body
● Improvements in metabolic health markers
● Faster and better recovery from exercise
● Decreased anxiety and mood swings.
So that's a small list of the benefits and people have reported these, especially having more energy and feeling more stabilized; like your brain really works. That's really a big one for the average person.
Adam: It's interesting that a lot of those benefits that we see from the ketogenic diet from a lot of the longevity studies that I've seen, most of them were animal based studies, but all the longevity markers, insulin sensitivity and improved cholesterol levels, all of that was improved by caloric reduction. Take a 2000 calorie diet and cut it in half and you are going to live longer, or you could go ketogenic.
Doug: It's interesting, it seems like with a lot of those studies on calorie restriction it actually turns out that the fat doesn't actually come into that. You could just reduce your overall calories but if you keep your fat high, fat actually doesn't interfere with that fasted state. You can keep your fat high, reduce your protein and your carbohydrate and get the same benefits as if you were reducing all your calories in total. It makes sense that rather that walking around hungry all the time, you just eat more fat.
Adam: Going along with that, it seems to me that in the longevity studies, the reason why all these animals and the people were able to live longer and had improved markers was because their insulin levels were lower. What do we know that spikes insulin? The major problem is?
Carbohydrates!
Doug: Carbohydrates!
Gaby: That's an interesting example because when animals get sick they refuse to eat. We humans usually have the same instincts but we keep feeding a sick person like "you must eat to get better". "Well actually I'm not hungry".
Adam: Saltines, saltines.
Jonathan: I remember that from when I was younger, it was saltines and warm Coca Cola.
Adam: Warm Coca Cola? I've never heard of that.
Jonathan: It was warm; it must have had something to do with the carbonation; I'm not sure exactly why. So Doug, do you want to go into some of the points that you were talking about last week? We went over transitioning a little bit and then we didn't have quite enough time to get into troubleshooting, I know you had some stuff to cover on that.
Doug: At first transitioning with the diet can be a bit tricky, there is a certain inertia that has been developed from being in a sugar burning state for the majority of your life. Switching your body over to the fat burning state can take some time. People go through a transition period that can sometimes be referred to as the low carb flu where you don't feel so good; low energy and bad mood. Those kind of things are pretty common just because your body isn't getting the carbohydrates that it's used to and it's not switched over into this fat burning mode so you aren't getting the energy that you really need.
It takes some time for your body to start developing the proper enzymes and just get used to depending on fat. Cravings are pretty common during this period again because your body is craving energy essentially. There are a few things that you can do to help with this transition and make it go a little bit easier.
First off, assisting your digestion at this point is pretty vital. Your body is just not used to taking in the amount of fat that you need to take in. Ox bile can be very helpful; this is essentially just a bile supplement. Bile is necessary for emulsifying fats so that they can be digested properly, so an ox bile supplement is very recommended during this time. Just to assist your body in breaking down these fats. Your body will get used to it and it will start developing the enzymes and the bile itself but [it's useful] in the transition period. I'll even still take it every once in awhile if I have a certain meal that maybe doesn't feel like it's being digested so well; ox bile can be very helpful.
HCL - hydrochloric acid, not HCI incidentally, a lot of people misspell it as HCI, it's HCL. It comes in the form known as betaine HCL when it's being supplemented. That's another thing that can be very helpful during transition. Acid in the stomach is what helps to denature proteins so that they can be digested so on a carbohydrate based diet you don't tend to produce as much stomach acid but when you are taking in animal proteins you might need to take in some of this HCL just to help you in the short term.
Vegetarians particularly tend to have low stomach acid so if you are transitioning from a vegetarian diet to a ketogenic diet, that is definitely something that you would want to supplement.
Gaby: That is why apple cider vinegar is very helpful. It's basically the same concept.
Doug: Anything acidic can be helpful but apple cider vinegar in particular, lemon and those sorts of things can be helpful as well. Also zinc is needed for stomach acid production and a lot of times when your stomach acid is low you have difficulty chelating minerals. You may not be absorbing the minerals from your diet that you need so zinc is very good because it's necessary for stomach acid production.
Other minerals as well, magnesium and potassium can be very helpful as well. They are needed for muscle relaxation. A common side effect of the transition can be muscle cramping and it might just be that you don't have the levels of magnesium and potassium that you actually need.
Salt can also be very helpful at this point. The whole salt myth can probably be a show in and of itself. As long as you are taking in the proper kind of salt, a natural salt that is not the refined salt, it's actually very good for you and very necessary during the transition to ketosis. One thing that tends to happen is that you are eliminating more water from your body when you switch over to fat metabolism so salt is very necessary; where salt goes in the body, water follows. So you will be eliminating a lot of salt and you really need to be replacing that so a good Celtic sea salt or Himalayan salt or Real salt, any of those types of salts where they still have the full mineral profile and they haven't had a lot of additives put into it. Those are really things that you need.
Jonathan: Would it be fair to say that a trace mineral supplement would help with that transition as well in helping with the water disposal so to speak?
Doug: I actually personally think that a trace mineral supplement is always a good idea. Just to make sure that you are getting all those minerals that your body needs for all the different processes and biochemical reactions and enzymes and all those sorts of things. Trace mineral supplements are always a good idea but during transition, absolutely.
One last one here, carnitine is an amino acid that's needed for shuttling fats into the mitochondria. So in order for it to be able to burn fat your body needs to be able to have this carnitine to be able to shuttle that fat into the little power plants in the cells called mitochondria. That can also help with cramping.
As I was mentioning before with water, staying hydrated is very important. A lot of people need to up the amount of water that they are drinking. More than they might be used to just because you are eliminating a lot of water. One thing that is really noticeable when you first transition is that you lose a lot of water weight. Some people might think that they are actually losing fat right away, they lose 5-10 lbs right off the bat as soon as they get themselves into fat burning mode. What that really is, is just losing water weight.
The population that is in this carb burning mode is basically walking around bloated all the time from holding onto this extra water. When converting yourself over to ketosis you suddenly eliminate a lot of that water weight. That being said, you want to make sure that you are staying hydrated so increasing water consumption is a good idea.
Gaby: I just want to mention that people who have had the highest ketone blood levels measurements, around 7 which is very high, usually is because they're not drinking enough water. It happened to me for example because I was doing a lot of exercise at the same time. By just drinking more and more water and taking enough minerals my blood ketones stabilized to within normal range which is within 1 and 3.
Doug: That's great.
Jonathan: The key appears to be more fat, more water in general.
Doug: More fat is definitely a big one and we covered this a little bit last week, people really need to be aware that they probably aren't doing enough fat. People really resist the idea of doing calculations and measurements and figuring out how much of everything that they need but I actually find that it's good to get a marker of how much you actually need. Because if you're just having your pork chop and throwing a scoop of fat on there and thinking "that's got to be enough because there's so much fat here", chances are it's not. You really do need to be taking in at least 80% of your calories from fat, and that is a lot of fat.
We were mentioning last week that a couple of helpful things for getting those fat levels up were getting fatty drinks; butter tea, butter coffee, butter cocoa; any of those things can be very helpful. You can use ghee if you're not good with butter. The fat bomb recipe that we did last week is very helpful for getting those fat levels up. If you're not taking in enough fat, then those low carb flu symptoms are just going to continue.
Gaby: If you're not eating enough fat, you're going to overeat protein and that's really bad. You really don't want to do that. It over taxes your uric acid levels, your kidneys. The ketogenic diet can even be used to heal kidney problems but just as long as people moderate their protein consumption.
Adam: Going along with not getting enough fat, something that we mentioned when we were talking just before the show was that one of the reasons why people don't eat enough fat is because in our society where we are not used to eating fat, we have no kind of context to put it in. When someone is going through the transition and they've not eaten a lot of fat before, to them a couple of tablespoons of butter might be like "this is so much, this has got to be enough". Yet in actuality when you plug in the numbers to see how much you really need, you need 3 or 4 times that per meal. Again because we don't have the context to put it in, it's just not something that they are aware of.
Doug: I think that the low fat programming has really affected us as well. Even though you might do some reading and do the research and realize that fat isn't bad at all, it's amazing how that kind of mentality can still stick with you. I do think that getting a good guideline of how much fat you actually need is a particularly good way to start.
Jonathan: Along those lines, we have a caller who has a question about transitioning. Let's go to the caller. Hi caller, can you tell us your name and where you are calling from?
Bahar: Hi, I am Bahar and I am from the Netherlands.
Jonathan: What is your question that you had today?
Bahar: Say you are in ketosis for a long time and for a couple of days you have a lot of carbs or too much protein, I was wondering, what's the best way to get back on keto? Which supplements should you take and which kinds of food can help with that?
Adam: Carnitine
Doug: I think that best thing that you can do is fast. That is probably the fastest way to get your body back into fat burning mode because when it doesn't have high blood sugar anymore and there's no carbohydrate available, particularly if you have been in the ketogenic diet for a long time, your body will quickly transition back into burning fat stores. Doing a day or even a half day fast is a pretty good way to get yourself back on track. Also like Adam said, carnitine is definitely a good one.
Bahar: Carnitine, OK.
Adam: Once you have completely fasted, adding in something like bone broth or bulletproof coffee or something that won't affect the insulin levels will help jumpstart you back into ketosis.
Doug: Yeah, that's true.
Bahar: Well, thanks a lot!
Doug: No problem.
Jonathan: Thanks for calling Bahar!
Bahar: Ok, thanks for the show!
Adam: Along those lines, Doug, when you say fasting, what's an approximation of how long that would take? Say I do a 1 day fast, am I back in ketosis after a day or is it taking 2 or 3 days? Or do I need to fast first and then start eating fat and then it's going to be a couple of days? What do you think about that timeframe?
Doug: I don't think that there is any hard and fast rule with that. I think that people are very different. I would say that if you're hungry then your body is pretty quickly going to start releasing fat stores and you will start burning your own fat. It might only take about half a day, something along those lines.
Like Adam was saying, you could eat fat at that time and that certainly does make a fast much easier if you are doing what is called a "fat fast" where all you are eating is fat so it's not spiking your insulin levels and you are kind of still in a fasted state; your body is still producing ketones and that sort of thing. Maybe if you did a butter tea or something like that and decided you're only going to stick with that for a half day or a day; or a fatty bone broth, that's another good one. I think you would get yourself back into a ketogenic state pretty quickly.
During transition that might not be the case. If you haven't been on the ketogenic diet for very long, then your body isn't really used to being in that state and it may take you a bit longer.
Adam: That's the difference between ketosis and keto adaptation. You'll go into ketosis pretty quickly but whether or not your muscles are still keto adapted is very much dependent upon how long you were in a ketogenic state before you kicked yourself out.
Gaby: Maybe upping your caloric intake is a good idea once you are keto adapted; in your natural state of ketosis. Even to overeat once or twice per week and that would be done with intermittent fasting and it comes naturally, you will eat a lot one day and the next day you will not feel like eating much at all. It's generally a good idea to keep up with a good metabolism code so to speak. Some people overeat protein, others do a little bit more carbs, but that's the concept, if you eat a lot one day, you will not be hungry at all the next day.
Adam: It's good for weight loss to do something similar to that called calorie cycling. If you are trying to lose weight, you don't want your metabolism to suddenly drop as a means to hold on to the body fat that it has. So once or twice a week you'll up your caloric intake, preferably through fat, and that will keep your metabolism from dropping and help you to lose weight as well as keeping your sensitivity up.
Doug: I was just going to say that I think it's kind of natural that you can't be so strict that you're 100% on the diet all the time. There's social events, there's family events and these kinds of things where you're probably not going to be able to stick with the diet as closely as you would if you were just at home doing your own thing. I think it's important not to stress too much about these things as well, you just kind of get back on track as soon as you can and try and take some of this advice and get yourself back on track.
Jonathan: I think that during a keto adapted state and during these scenarios - you're eating with your family and they don't have the same diet or you're at a business lunch and there's nothing else - you could just not eat but we all know that there are certain situations where you want to be polite and things like that. You might have a salad that might have a few things in it that might have a higher carb content; are you better able to handle that in a keto adapted state?
Gaby: Let's say yes because their insulin is much more sensitive so it can handle those indiscretions better. Plus, what you usually add to a salad doesn't amount to much more than 40 grams of carbs. I have seen this tendency in people when they do the ketogenic diet where they actually over-estimate it and do it very strictly. You can do a little bit more carbs you know! That's why it's a good idea to have a keto meter for a general guideline to know how much ketones you are producing.
Adam: You can eat a whole pound of broccoli and it's only going to give you 20 net carbs. A pound! So it's not as drastic as some people like to think, "oh, I had one little broccoli, one little piece! I'm certainly going to be out of ketosis!" It's not exactly that.
Gaby: That's my experience too.
Doug: I think that there are certain foods that you should never do. You certainly shouldn't go back to grains. Just because you are at a birthday party, don't give yourself free license to have the cake. Those things are actually quite damaging.
The carbs are one thing, your body can probably handle a little bit more carb every once in awhile but I would still stay away from things like sugar and grains and legumes and those sorts of things because they have a more dramatic effect on the body.
Gaby: I think that's a very important concept; toxic food. You have gluten, you have lectins that we have covered in the previous shows. If people are going to choose carbs, then choose them wisely; vegetables that people tolerate. Avoid foods that are very high in toxic load. Definitely grains should not be there when you choose carbs.
Jonathan: I've got to ask while we are on the topic, what do you guys think about blueberries? During blueberry season that is my weakness.
Gaby: They are very low in carbs and they are very nutritious but some people are so sensitive to carbs that they cannot do any fruit at all because once they start with one blueberry for example it's the next one and the next one and that's when you are craving ice cream and sodas!
Adam: Then you have not just carbohydrate sensitivity but also the effect that fructose has on the body. It's not good. It's not exactly bad to have some raspberries or blueberries or strawberries every once in awhile; that's not a big deal, you just don't want to make it habitual because then you're going to run into other issues.
Jonathan: Yeah, not to overindulge and certainly I would imagine to be physically active during that time so you aren't eating a full head of blueberries and then just sitting on the couch.
Adam: Actually, in terms of high intensity exercise, your body really doesn't use a whole lot of glycogen and what glycogen does get used for high intensity exercise can be replenished by the body without a whole lot of carbohydrates in the course of 24 hours so it's better to be physically active if you're having a lot of something like that but it's not necessary and I would avoid using that as an excuse; "I can just work out later and be fine".
Gaby: You could do it like what was nutritionally available just like in ancient times. Ideally during the summer when your body is in a state of "it's reproduction time, it's summertime and there's lots of fruits". But in winter time we shouldn't really be doing so many carbs; the keto diet is usually a better state for hibernation, just like other animals.
Jonathan: Adam, what you said there brings me to my next point which was to speak a little bit about the protein myth that I think you just touched on and some topics about exercise and ketosis. Do you want to go through that for a minute?
Adam: Sure, there are a couple of things that I wrote down during the discussion so far. I thought it was interesting that I was reading a study on humans and they found that people on a regular diet, a standard American diet, who supplemented with L-Carnitine had actually increased their fat oxidation independent of other variables. They didn't have any increase in protein synthesis and it didn't stop protein catabolism, but it did increase fat oxidation so I thought that was really interesting and I wanted to bring that up as an interesting little point. Especially for someone who goes out of ketosis for a little bit; it's something worth knowing I think.
As well we were going over supplements that are good for people on the ketogenic diet; starting lipase. You mentioned ox bile; it's wonderful stuff. A component of that would be lipase, lipase being the enzyme that the body produces to break down fat. You could supplement with hydrochloric acid but that's mostly used for protein in terms of breaking it down. If you are wanting to specifically target the ability to break down fats, then lipase would be a really good enzyme to have on hand for whenever you've got a fat bomb or something like that.
The last little thing that I wrote down was vegetarianism and low hydrochloric acid, I just want to talk about that for a second. An interesting anecdote; when you are eating a vegetable your body produces - in your saliva - the enzymes necessary to break it down. So it's not exactly necessary for your body to have a whole lot of hydrochloric acid when it's already pretty much broken down by your saliva. But what seems to happen is because of the ways that certain foods are made - like Doritos for instance - you can't just sit there and do 30 chews per mouthful of Doritos. It's literally like "one chip swallow", there isn't really any digestion going on in the mouth like it should be.
I just wanted to throw that in there as something that I thought was interesting as to why people would have problems going from vegetarianism to a ketogenic diet that is high in fat because their body is used to producing all the salivary enzymes necessary to break down their foods so they don't need the hydrochloric acid that's necessary on a ketogenic diet. I just wanted to throw that in before I jumped into all the protein stuff.
With regards to supplements and exercise, talking about sodium, potassium, magnesium, chromium and stuff like that; you've got sodium requirements, so when you're exercising you're going to be sweating a lot and then when you are sweating you're also excreting sodium as well as potassium, magnesium and so on and so forth. If you are going to be physically active I would definitely suggest you have at least 3 grams of sodium per day and at least 1 gram of potassium per day and going up from there depending on how physically active you are.
Then going on to proteins and stuff, it kind of depends on your goals for going onto the ketogenic diet as to how much protein you really need. If you are wanting to build muscle or you are wanting to lose weight or if you are wanting to live as long as possible; it's all going to play into this but there has been absolutely zero evidence of needing above point 6 grams per pound of protein.
So if you get into an exercise regimen, you can look at magazines and there will be supplement ads that say "you need at least 1 gram per pound of protein" or you need at least 2 grams or 3 grams per pound and that is just such a farce. It is all about them selling more supplements. So for all those listeners out there, there is absolutely no need to go beyond point 6 grams per pound, unless you're on steroids.
Doug: Adam, I just wanted to say one thing, you are recommending at least one gram of potassium. That's actually a very high amount of potassium as far as supplementation goes. You will find that most supplements are only 99 milligrams so that would be 10 caps per day or something like that. You can find some professional brands that go as high as 250 grams but just be aware that you won't find a 1-gram pill of potassium; it is quite a bit so just keep that in mind.
Adam: My way around that has been to getting some potassium citrate or some LoSalt as a means of getting the extra potassium in. I know personally because of my activity levels; I feel better when I have upwards of 2 or 3 sometimes. It depends and varies but I understand what you are saying and I think that is a really good idea and a good point to mention. You can do potassium citrate for instance. I take that because I have kidney stones and I use it to help lower my risk.
Getting back into protein, another thing that I wanted to mention that is rampant in the ketogenic forums online is this idea of gluconeogenesis being completely supply driven. We know that we don't need more than point 6 grams per pound and I've gone a little bit above that but I've not seen a whole lot of change. There is this idea that any excess protein that you have beyond what your body needs instantly turns into chocolate cake, so to speak. It's not exactly the case.
I've looked at a couple of studies, and a particular study done in 1936 had an idea that 50% of protein turned into glucose and so what they did was they had people eat 160 grams of protein in one sitting, which according to their theory should have equaled to the same insulin spike as 80 grams of glucose.
What actually ended up happening was that when they supplemented with the 80 grams of glucose they got this huge insulin spike but when they did the 160 grams of protein, it was more or less stable. I thought that was really interesting. You do have to watch your protein because you get into other issues but it's not necessarily a problem with blood glucose levels suddenly shooting up through the roof because you had an extra piece of bacon or an extra sausage.
Jonathan: I just have a quick question about this. If we are talking point 6 grams of protein per pound of body weight and say I weigh 200 pounds, I should need 120 grams of protein per day; that's my base level right?
Adam: That would be the maximum protein that your body could essentially assimilate. The study that I got that from was suggesting that because it was only an upper limit that the people within the study were able to utilize. They had an extra 2 standard deviations as their upper limit. The point 64 is actually not a starting point, it's an end point.
Jonathan: An end point? That makes a little more sense because let's say approximately a quarter pound of ground beef is going to be approximately 20 grams of protein so I'm actually looking at my high end being 3 pounds of ground beef a day. That's quite a bit, I certainly don't eat that much; although I probably could!
Actually I take that back, it would be a pound and a half, sorry; miscalculation there. So we are saying for me, for a 200-pound person, my essential max of useful protein would be a pound and a half of ground beef per day.
Adam: That would be if you were wanting to build as much muscle as quickly as possible. If you were just trying to maintain your body weight and you didn't really care about adding any muscle, you can drop down to about half that and that would be fine.
Jonathan: Sure, interesting. I didn't mean to interrupt your train of thought there.
Adam: As far as where the starting point is, that's a little bit less clear. It depends on your goals and what you are doing in your life. I think the recommended daily allowance given by the FDA and all them is a little low. I'm pretty sure that if you are in a catatonic state or if you are in a coma then you don't need more than about 50 grams a day but for anybody who actually gets up and goes to the bathroom and goes to work, you're going to need a little bit more than that.
Doug: I think it's important to notice that those figures are influenced a lot by how much aid they are giving to countries that are essentially starving; they need food shipped in. So they are calculating the absolute bare minimum needs, as far as protein is concerned, for those countries.
So take it with a grain of salt that that protein requirement is what the average active person would need.
Adam: Since we are talking about the ketogenic diet, when you are on the ketogenic diet and your body's producing all these ketones, the ketones are protein sparing. Both in terms of the body's metabolism - getting energy for fuel and stuff - and also protein sparing in the sense that the ketones will actually be utilized in terms of repair. Your physical activity isn't necessarily a requirement for a huge bump in protein.
Point 8 grams per kilo is a pretty decent recommendation for people to use as a starting off point. If you're not very physically active or if you've got a desk job and you don't really exercise or have any physically active hobbies, then I think that's a pretty good recommendation. Because of your lack of physical activity, you're not going to need a whole lot of protein to rebuild your body.
Gaby: It's also a good number because that's the requirement for people who have kidney problems and kidney failure. Eating no more than point 8 grams per kilo is usually what it's about for people who want to restore their kidney function and practice the ketogenic diet for health. It's a good number for that.
Adam: Yeah, I think so too. Then I think in terms of physical activity, to gauge where you should go from there, if you are starting off from point 8 grams per kilo and then the absolute limit is 1.4 grams per kilo. I'll give people an idea to what that really relates to. 1.4 grams per kilo, that would be for novice body builders, so somebody who doesn't really have a whole lot of muscle but wants to get into natural bodybuilding for whatever reason; they want to build more muscle.
If you have not done any exercise training before then that would be the kind of person that needs that amount but as you become more muscular and as you become more acquainted to performing certain movements and become more economical on those movements, your requirement for protein starts to go down. Where you might start of needing 1.2 - 1.4, after a year or two you're only going to need maybe 1 gram per kilo or 1.2 grams per kilo.
It's just this idea that in our society because at fats are so demonized and on a ketogenic diet you can't eat a lot of carbohydrates and be in ketosis it's like "where am I supposed to get my calories from? Protein!" Well not exactly.
Gaby: Fat!
Jonathan: We were just talking about this this morning at the house and we were saying that we have a nice big jug of organic olive oil and that has quite a bit of calories. It was 120 calories per tablespoon which is pretty heavy. I had heard a recommendation elsewhere which I hadn't tried yet which is to basically blend olive oil and grass fed butter together to create a creamy butter sauce and use that as a supplementation with meals to get more calories from fat.
Adam: Well actually in one of Phinney and Volek's books, I can't remember if it was The Art and Science of Low Carb Living or Low Carb Performance, but they analyzed the different fats. They looked at the different percentages and levels in mono-saturated and saturated fat. They had olive oil and butter and stuff like that and actually found that a mixture of half olive oil and half butter was essentially the exact same thing as human body fat.
Jonathan: That's interesting
Gaby: Wow!
Adam: So that's really interesting and it's actually pretty tasty.
Doug: I wonder if they looked into lard at all.
Adam: It was pretty close but olive oil and butter for whatever reason was just on point; it was right on the nose.
Gaby: I just remember reading this study on lard, it was done on animals; I think it was mice. And it had an anti-inflammatory effect on the mice. There is a lot of research on omega-3 from fish oil but nobody wants to touch lard so to speak. The study did show that it had an anti-inflammatory effect.
Doug: I believe that.
Jonathan: I know that at least here it's hard to find good lard. They do have lard at the store but it's got BHA and BHT.
Doug: It's a nasty preservative, you really don't want to be eating that at all.
Gaby: Yeah, the commercial lard that you buy is white; almost like Crisco. It's best to just save your bacon grease in a jar and use that. Somebody in the chat room is asking about coconut oil and mid-chain fatty acids. Do you have a word on that? Because some people are sensitive to coconuts and they don't tolerate it very well but for those who tolerate it well, it is a very good fat because it promotes ketosis so for keto adaptation it is actually suggested to have medium chain triglycerides as a supplement; MCT supplements just to induce that state of keto-adaptation.
Adam: For those that can't do the coconut derived MCT oil, butter actually has a pretty high percentage of MCTs in it.
Gaby: That's true, people forget about butter, they think about coconut oil but butter is supposed to have MCTs.
Jonathan: I had heard something very interesting recently from David Asprey who is the bulletproof coffee guru and he is extremely knowledgeable in what we call Bio-hacking and understanding the ins and out of the different aspects of what you are eating but he brought up that it is very important to pay attention to what kind of coconut oil you are getting because some of it is made through a process of fermentation where they basically throw all the coconuts into a pit, allow them to ferment and then scrape the oil off the top and so it can actually contain mycotoxins if it's not extracted in the proper way. I don't know if you guys had heard that?
Adam: No I hadn't heard that.
Doug: You want to look for one that's been expeller pressed or centrifuged which basically means they are either squeezing the coconuts to get the fat out of it or they are putting it into a centrifuge which basically spins it and all the fat gets spun out of it. Those are both low heat ways of getting the fat out of the coconut. It's much better in terms of rancidity and mycotoxins and that sort of thing. The better quality coconut oils will say on them that they are either expeller pressed or centrifuged.
Jonathan: Sure, so it's best probably not to get the $5 for a pound container from Walmart unless they say that it's cold pressed. Well there has been a lot of great information here today, I think if you guys are down with it let's take a little break and go to Zoya's pet health segment. She's going to continue what she was talking about last week regarding emergency situations with pets with a little more information on that regard. Then we will come back and talk a little further and then we have Caesar soup for our recipe today, it's a very fatty soup. Let's see what Zoya has brought to the table today.
Zoya: Hello and welcome to the natural pet health segment of the Health and Wellness Show. Last week we talked about signs that pets may have in case of emergency situations. These are situations that may require you to take your pet to the veterinarian as soon as possible but sometimes you are unable to do due to various things or can't take them immediately.
Maybe your car is broken or maybe you live too far away or maybe 5 feet of snow has blocked the entrance to your house. Unfortunately, due to the upcoming ice age and recent extreme weather, this scenario is very real so let's talk about various situations where you yourself can provide the basic emergency care.
Let's take note that I am still a student and the advice I offer you is based on my own research and studies but that it is also based on the so-called East European school and some of the substances that can be found in every household here may not be found in most American households for example. Hopefully the following information can be useful anyway.
If it's a bee sting or a wasp sting and you can see your dog being restless or maybe even crying in a lot of pain, first of all what you can do is remove the sting and then for 20-30 minutes apply a cotton wool tampon drenched in either alcohol, peroxide or to be exact hydrogen peroxide to be exact or potassium permanganate. Then after that apply iodine solution and also apply something cold.
If it's a snake bite you may see that your dog may cry in pain and could be restless. There may be swelling and redness in the place of the bite, your dog may also be vomiting or there may be hyper-salivation. What you need to do is to remove as much blood as possible from the wound and then apply a cotton wool tampon drenched in vinegar. Also maybe apply iodine solution. If the bite is one of the extremities, then you can apply a constrictor for 30-40 minutes to prevent the poison from spreading. But then in many cases you need to try to get your pet to the veterinarian as soon as possible.
If it is a tick bite and you can actually see the tick, try to remove it, but don't remove it by force. If you can't remove it easily then put a bit of oil or alcohol or petrol on the tick; ticks are supposed to fall by themselves. If it didn't happen then try to remove it by twisting it on its axis and that should help.
Now let's talk about foreign bodies or specifically foreign bodies in the throat; maybe your dog has swallowed something, something sharp or maybe a bone. My advice is to never give cooked bones, especially bird bones, to the dog. Only raw bones. If it's a larger bone, then it's ok but in the case of a chicken bone for example you would preferably give it to them raw because otherwise they can be a real emergency case if it gets stuck.
In such a situation the dog can be restless, there can be helpless salivation and there can be vomit mixed with blood. First of all, hold your dog and then try to open his mouth, take a spoon and apply to the root at the base of the tongue and keep it down and then with both of your fingers try to remove the object. If you still can't remove the object easily and there is respiratory distress, then you should try to get to the veterinarian as soon as possible.
If the foreign object is in the eye or you can see your dog's eye tearing up or red, or the dog is scrubbing it and trying to remove something. Then take water that was already boiled but not hot, maybe warmish or cold, or maybe you have some permanganate solution, try to rinse the eye but don't scrub it in the process.
If the foreign object is in your dog's ear and you can see your dog shaking his head and using his paws to try to remove something from his ears, if there is something that you can't remove by yourself then take your pet to the veterinarian as soon as possible. But maybe you can try to remove it by yourself. If it is an insect, then put 5-10 drops of vegetable oil into the ear and try to remove the object by yourself.
If its water, put your dog on its side and shake his head so maybe the water will be removed by itself. Maybe try to remove it by using a cotton wool tampon. I hope that you will be able to notice that there is nothing extraordinary about these emergency situations or emergency first help, because it's really logical so-to-speak and if it can be applied to humans then it can be applied to pets as well. You just need to be careful and understanding with your pets. You can't talk to your pets and explain to them what is happening so you basically need to hold them tight or try to relax them a bit so that they will be more easily handled in such situations which are already stressful for both the pet and you.
If it's a splinter, then you may see your dog trying to remove it or he may lick his paw too much. What you can do to remove the splinter is to apply iodine solution or maybe alcohol to the place and then apply a gauze bandage. If it is a complicated or serious situation, then you can surely take him to a veterinarian as well.
Next let's talk about various wounds which can be as a result of a cut or something else. Considering the situation in the US where police are shooting dogs almost every day, this information can be really useful for you. First of all, if you have a wound, you can do something like this: either shave or trim the fur or coat around the wound; you can use scissors for this. After that you need to take hydrogen peroxide solution and clean the place around the wound, then apply iodine solution to the wound. All of this is basically intended to disinfect the wound.
Then what you can do is, if it's a small wound, apply an adhesive sticking plaster to it. If it is a cut wound then even in an emergency situation and if you don't have anything else, you can stitch the wound. You can apply a bit of instant glue and then you can bandage the wound and try to get to the veterinarian as soon as possible.
In case of bleeding or hemorrhaging, what you need to do is to basically clean the wound in the way which was already described and then apply a tight bandage with one or two layers. If there are two layers with the bandage you can put a piece of ice in between the layers. If the bleeding or hemorrhaging is happening in one of the extremities of the dog, then you should put the dog in such a way that the wounded extremity will be up. Remember that if there is a very strong bleeding, for example from the artery, you need to apply a constrictor above the wound. You should then relax the constrictor every hour for one minute while still applying pressure to the artery above the wound with your finger.
After the bleeding stops you need to give your dog - even by force - a bit of warmish tea or coffee, perhaps even sweet warmish tea or coffee. There is a logic to this because your dog would have lost a lot of fluids and before you get to the veterinarian you need to replenish the supply of glucose. Basically as is in humans, after a serious shock you give them tea or something for the heart like a coffee stimulant. You can do the same for your dog.
In the case of burns, there are different types and the treatment depends on the nature of the burn. First you need two basic things, water and neutralizing solution. If for example the cause of the burn is acid, you need to create sodium bicarbonate solution to neutralize and treat it. Sodium bicarbonate solution can be made with one teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate in one glass of water.
If the burn was caused by alkali, then you need to create a vinegar solution; one teaspoon of vinegar in one glass of water. If the burn was caused by quicklime, then you need to apply some kind of vegetable oil to the burn. If it is an extremity that is burned, then you can put the burned extremity in cold water for 20 minutes.
Of course there are other emergency situations and we are going to finish talking about them in another show. We will also talk about basic things that you should have in your house. For now, thank you for listening and I hope you found this information useful.
Jonathan: Ok, thank you very much Zoya. That was Zoya with the pet health corner; some great information on how to treat emergencies with your pets. Now that we're back, I think that we have a topic that we still wanted to cover a little bit today; Doug has some information on troubleshooting the ketogenic diet and specific difficulties that people might be having, and how to deal with and identify those. Doug, do you want to go over that for a little bit?
Doug: Yeah, I'll try to be quick because I know we are coming up on the end here. There are a couple of things that people tend to run into on the ketogenic diet so I just wanted to go through a couple of those and offer some possible solutions for it.
The one thing that you hear fairly frequently is that people tend to get sick from eating too much fat; it's not too much fat, it's just more fat than the body is used to handling. So during transition in particular, people can feel a little bit nauseous or something like that after eating a big fatty meal. It is important here to support your digestion. I think that ox bile is really good and as Adam was mentioning earlier, lipase; those things are just things that can assist your body in breaking down the fat. Until your body is used to taking in that much fat these kinds of things can be very helpful.
HCL can be very helpful as well, not necessarily for fat but it will help to denature the proteins so that they can be broken down and it does release some of the fat from those protein matrixes. Another thing with the whole feeling nauseous thing, sometimes people are actually eating too much of the connective tissue from meats, particularly in things like ribs. You have this connective tissue that surrounds the bones and it gets really tasty when you are slow cooking and it gets all gelatinous but eating too much of that can sometimes really overwhelm digestion. HCL can help with that but maybe just not eating too much of it can be helpful as well.
If you do find yourself in a state where you have eaten more than your body can handle of fat or this protein matrix, then you can always try something like peppermint tea or ginger tea. They can be quite helpful in curbing nausea.
There is also the issue that some people find that they are losing too much weight on the ketogenic diet and this is particularly a point for people who are naturally thin; they go on a ketogenic diet and suddenly they are shedding more weight and can start to panic because they are basically wasting away. The answer to this is to increase your caloric intake by taking in more fat. Resistance exercise can also be very helpful with that.
You also want to check in with your digestion too and make sure that you are digesting and absorbing everything properly. Digestive aids can help with that; digestive enzymes, ox bile, HCL, all those sorts of things can be helpful.
For other people who might be a little bit heavier and find that they are not losing weight, it is important to check your protein consumption. I think that Gaby was mentioning earlier that when people aren't getting enough fat and they don't really realize how much fat they are getting; the tendency is to up the protein; because you still need to be taking in more calories. So you really need to be checking your protein consumption and check with your fat consumption. If you are doing a lot of protein you may find that your weight loss is stalling so just check in with that.
You also need to make sure that you have removed all inflammatory foods from your diet, taking in anything that you are sensitive to. A lot of people tend to be in denial about these kinds of things. They are like "oh, I'm OK with dairy products" but really if you haven't taken them out for a good couple of weeks and then re-introduced them to see if you are actually sensitive to them then you probably don't know. It's probably a hidden sensitivity. If something in your diet is causing inflammation, that can certainly lead to holding onto weight.
Other inflammatory problems like sleep; make sure that you are sleeping properly and sleeping in a completely dark room. Use natural sleep aids if you need to; like melatonin or maybe some herbs that can be helpful for that like passion flower or Kava or something along those lines. You might want to check on toxicity or heavy metals and those sorts of things. If you are toxic, then you might find that you're inflamed.
Intermittent fasting can also help with weight loss, we have given the idea a couple of times that for breakfast, when you first wake up, not actually breaking your fast by eating protein or carbohydrates but instead sticking with fat in the mornings. What that does is extend the amount of time that you are fasting for so if you just fasted all night while you are sleeping and you extend that by doing something like a butter tea in the morning instead of jumping right into a big breakfast then that can be helpful as well because you are forcing your body to burn its existing fat stores.
Other issues are that some people run into blood sugar regulation issues. If you are noticing symptoms of blood sugar swings like crashing mid-day, getting really, really hungry and finding that you are what is sometimes referred to as "hangry" where you are hungry and angry at the same time; you have these terrible bad moods that kind of come over you, then the chances are you are still having blood sugar swings; you might not even be in ketosis. Your body might be producing ketones but your body might still be relying on carbohydrates and insulin spike to be able to get the fuel that it needs so again - probably too much protein or too much carbohydrate if you are still eating carbs. Just check in with your ratios and up the fat if you can.
Another problem that people tend to have is diarrhea, often what is the case in this situation is that people are overwhelming their body's ability to digest the fat so again going with the fat digestion aids can be very helpful. Another thing that could be leading to diarrhea is that people are using a lot of sugar alcohols like xylitol or erythritol and those sorts of things. They can cause digestive upset if you overwhelm your body's ability to take them in so maybe easing back on those things can be helpful.
It also could be that you just don't have the proper balance of bacteria in the digestive tract so taking a probiotic and eating fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi and things that are a natural source of probiotic bacteria. Both those things can be helpful as well.
On the opposite end of the spectrum there is constipation, some people find that when they switch to this diet they are constipated. It's important to establish whether or not you are actually constipated because if you are going extremely low carb and you don't have much fiber in the diet then you actually will be going to the bathroom a lot less. So if you are assessing that you are constipated just because you are not going as often as you used to then it might not actually be constipation, it might just be that all the protein and the fat gets broken down and absorbed so there is not a heck of a lot for you to eliminate. There are obviously still things like products from bio-chemical processes in the body so there are still wastes and there is still a lot of dead bacteria that get eliminated that way so you should obviously still be going but you might decrease in frequency quite a bit. If you are actually constipated and you can feel it, you feel bloated and you feel like you have to go but you can't then again the answer is often more fat. When you take in fat, the body releases a neurochemical called CCK and that actually increases motility in the digestive tract so if you are not doing enough fat then that might be part of the problem.
You might also have come from a point where your body is very reliant on fiber. Fiber is actually a stimulant in that it stimulates the digestive tract. It's actually an irritant so it will force you to go when you weren't maybe necessarily ready to go. People in the holistic health scene like to load up on things like flax seeds, chia seeds and psyllium seeds; those things actually have a negative effect and your body actually become reliant on them so resist the urge to resort to a fiber supplement. I know that in a lot of cases fiber supplements are encouraged on the ketogenic diet because the assumption is that you need this fiber but the human body is actually perfectly capable of functioning properly without any fiber at all, so I would say resist the urge to supplement with fiber. Maybe in the interim you could do things like enemas or something along those lines just to try and get things moving.
With regards to cravings during transition, a lot of times when you are craving things like chocolate cake or bread or something like that I think that part of it is probably the addictive qualities of wheat; we have covered that in our show that was on wheat. It might also be that you haven't transitioned completely and your body is just craving energy. One solution to this is to take in something like MCT oil or coconut oil; MCT stands for medium chain triglycerides and they are fats that go directly into the mitochondria so it's a quick hit of energy. They don't require the same amount of breakdown or any breakdown really that longer chain fats do. If you are having a craving or something like that, a spoonful of coconut oil or a spoonful of MCT oil will often curb the craving. To some degree during transition it also requires some willpower, just keep your goals in mind and keep on track.
That's what I had for troubleshooting, I don't know if anybody had anything to add for that?
Adam: No I think you covered it pretty well.
Jonathan: I guess my only question about that came from when you were talking about bowel movements; we're all adults, we can talk openly about that. Would you say that the nature of the movements might change? Like their size or their shape might change as well? Something that might indicate that you are constipated but instead it's just a different way that the body uses to expel waste? Like as opposed to having one large bowel movement, you might have recurring smaller ones or have you had a different experience with that?
Doug: Well again, it's a pretty individual thing but I think when you make a radical change in your diet you are bound to see some changes. At first things seem like maybe they are not quite on track and things seem a little bit off, a lot of times over time it just takes some time to transition and for your body to adapt and things will regulate themselves. If it does go for an extended period of time, then you might have to start doing some more troubleshooting and looking into some other possibilities.
Adam: Something that I noticed along those lines was that if I am not getting enough salt then I've noticed that I don't have to go to the bathroom as much and not in a good way so salt could be an issue there as well.
Doug: Yeah, absolutely.
Jonathan: For myself, I have noticed the "hangry" effect that you have mentioned from time to time and I think that based on what you said that I might be having too much protein and not enough fat and a higher protein ratio than I need.
Doug: Yeah, it could be.
Adam: There was a study on people in ketosis - granted they were only in ketosis for a week - and there is a stimulation to insulin from protein. So if you have a protein heavy meal without enough fat then that could lead to the hangry issues. Whenever I would go above the 1.4 grams per kilo then I would start to have hunger pains like I haven't felt since I was on a standard American diet.
Doug: I found the same thing. When I was first doing this diet I was eating great big steaks and it was a big protein meal.
Jonathan: I think we may have lost Doug.
Adam: I can go off of that, I had a meal that was almost a one-pound steak and there was some fat on there but it wasn't as much as was needed to be on there to limit the insulin effect. Definitely, if you are having hunger pains or "hangry" issues then I would say cut back on the protein, up the fat and see how you do.
Jonathan: Great advice. Along those lines, I guess we are coming down on our time here so let's finish up with the Caesar soup recipe. This is another great way to get more fat into the diet; last week we did the fat bomb which is a little bit more of a sweet treat as you are adding the sugar alcohol xylitol or erythritol or stevia and making more of a custard, this is more of a savory dish.
We have approximate measurements here but not exact so you can go ahead and play around with this and do your own measurements but basically you want:
● Butter
● Coconut cream
● Onions
● Garlic
● Shrimp
● Scallops
● Salt
● Pepper
● Cinnamon
● Saffron
● Herbs such as parsley, chives or tarragon
Our process here is to take about 500g of butter which is about 1.1 pounds; if you are in the Western system just grab a pound of butter, melt that in your pot and then cut the onions and garlic and put that into the butter. Let them cook very well and then when they have thinned down enough, add in some coconut cream; approximately 2-3 cups.
Now when that heats up and everything melts together then throw in your scallops and shrimp and you can let that cook for as long as you want. You can gauge that while you are cooking it if you like them al dente or if you like them a little more well done you can see how long they should cook in the fat.
Basically you are looking at butter and coconut cream. So you cook the garlic and onions down in the coconut cream, add your shrimps and scallops and then when those are done, add in a pinch of cinnamon, some salt and pepper and just a very little pinch of saffron. Saffron is quite a potent spice so you don't need very much, so just see what you like. You can also play around with this and add other things too like turmeric or ginger; whatever else you want to add to your own taste.
If you can't do the seafood thing, if you can't do shrimps and scallops or you don't want to then I would personally recommend adding something like bacon or chunks of beef to this to round out the flavor. I know that in the states we have an issue with shrimp right now. Especially with the issues that went down in the Gulf. Unless you can get shrimp that you know where they came from and they are clean, but if you can then by all means.
If you can't handle the shellfish or the seafood for whatever reason then try adding pork or beef to this to round out the flavor or just go with the butter and the spices and then chop up some parsley, some tarragon, some chives or green onions, toss that in there and you have a very filling, very fatty soup that's a great way to get the dosage of fat that you need on the ketogenic diet.
Adam: It sounds very good and I'm looking forward to trying it with ghee. I know that they had it here at the house a few days ago and when they went to get the leftovers and it was pretty much just one gelatinous blob; in a good way!
Jonathan: In a good way! That's interesting because Adam, you said that you can't do butter right? So you were trying to look for things that had no milk solids whatsoever?
Adam: Yeah, it's interesting because the milk proteins in butter give me anxiety attacks; it's weird.
Jonathan: Are you able to make your own clarified butter or is there still too many milk solids in there for you to handle?
Adam: I can handle homemade ghee to an extent but I can't do it a whole lot without having any panic or anxiety attacks. I can tolerate a little bit, I'm going to experiment with it and see; maybe do half ghee and half lard.
Jonathan: Sure. I know that I had made the ghee at home for a little while but it's hard to get all those milk solids out. You're basically just spooning them off the top unless you have some sort of a centrifuge or a processor that you can use.
Adam: I just use a bunch of paper towels.
Jonathan: Alright! Well that's our show for today. Thanks to everybody who participated. Adam, thanks for coming on with us, that was great.
Gaby: Thank you Adam, you had a lot of great information to share. That was really helpful.
Adam: You're welcome.
Jonathan: Doug, I see you're back here, I'm sorry we lost you. Is there anything else that you'd like to add before we call it a day?
Doug: No, I think I pretty much covered it. Sorry about that, my internet connection seems to be a bit wonky today.
Jonathan: No problem. Right well, thanks guys! I think that was a really great show and thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in and we will be back next Monday; same time; 2pm Eastern. So be sure to tune back in.
Reader Comments
to our Newsletter