"Life Without Bread"

dugdeep said:

Hi Snofla,

The amount of body fat you have is really not relevant - if you have any fat to burn, and you always do, your body will burn it when it needs energy. So if you're lacking energy, for some reason your body isn't able to access the fats it needs.

Further to what Turgon said above, if you're still stimulating too much insulin release through excessive carb and protein consumption, you may have difficulty getting into fat burning mode when you need it for physical exercise. Insulin prevents fat burning.

I would lay off the fruit and maybe replace it with non-starchy vegetable (green beans, kale, sauerkraut, salads, that sort of thing) so that your insulin isn't rising sharply to meet with the demands sugars make on the body, (natural fruit sugars or otherwise). I would also start restricting protein more and INCREASE THE FAT.

I was going through similar issues when I switched over to an all meat diet, and it was simply because I was eating too much protein (and probably not enough fat). It pays to weigh out how much protein you're eating so you have an accurate idea of what you're consuming. I know it seems like a pain to be measuring things at meals, but if you're suffering from these symptoms, it's likely you're still doing too much protein/carb which is causing too much insulin release and preventing fat burning.

You could also try adding L-Carnitine as a supplement. It helps to get the fats into the mitochondria to be burned for energy.

Hope this helps :)

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Thanks for the info dugdeep. Although I am on a strict ketogenic diet, I have been losing some weight lately and I can't seem to figure out why given that until recently my weight was pretty stable at around 62Kg while I'm now at 55Kg. I'm not sure if my weight loss is due to eating too little protein, fat or both?. My body fat went down by less than 1% so I'm worried that I may be losing lean tissue. I do keep to the 1.0 grams of protein per Kg of body mass and eat plenty of fat. I also do two very short resistance training sessions per day (10-15 mins in the morning and afternoon) and I do feel a lack of energy compared to how I felt before losing weight. At this point I'm really unsure as to whether I'm not eating enough protein or if I'm eating slightly too much which prevents my body from burning fat? (I'm not really putting up any fat though).

Also, does eating too much or too little fat affect your muscle mass when in ketosis, or is that just related to protein consumption?

Eboard10, it's hard to give a conclusive answer, but from what you wrote, this is my best guess. 1 gram per kilogram of body weight per day can't really be considered too much or too little, it seems just about right if the mTor pathway consideration is taken out of it. And being in ketosis actually preserves lean muscle quite well. However, doing resistance training twice a day, every day, seems to me to be overkill. THAT may make 1g/kg of protein too little, but I'm not 100% sure I can make that a categorical statement. It seems very likely to me.

So one thing to try is to do resistance training for 20 minutes once in the afternoons with two to four days off in between each exercise day. That should be plenty of resistance training, especially if you use very heavy weights so that the repetitions are low (and start with the most weights where you can only do like 3 reps, and then reduce and do 5 reps, etc. in each set).

Try to have 70% to 85% of your daily calories as saturated animal fat. That should pretty much make everything fall into place once totally keto adapted, with any specific supplements you may need, especially digestive ones if you have digestive insufficiency of some sort. L-Carnitine certainly helps during the first few months, but there's plenty of it in meats of all kinds so, again, if your digestion is pretty good, eventually it may not be needed, but as usual you can experiment to see if it helps. I hope this helps with some ideas to consider.

Eboard10 said:

Thanks for the info dugdeep. Although I am on a strict ketogenic diet, I have been losing some weight lately and I can't seem to figure out why given that until recently my weight was pretty stable at around 62Kg while I'm now at 55Kg. I'm not sure if my weight loss is due to eating too little protein, fat or both?. My body fat went down by less than 1% so I'm worried that I may be losing lean tissue. I do keep to the 1.0 grams of protein per Kg of body mass and eat plenty of fat. I also do two very short resistance training sessions per day (10-15 mins in the morning and afternoon) and I do feel a lack of energy compared to how I felt before losing weight. At this point I'm really unsure as to whether I'm not eating enough protein or if I'm eating slightly too much which prevents my body from burning fat? (I'm not really putting up any fat though).

Also, does eating too much or too little fat affect your muscle mass when in ketosis, or is that just related to protein consumption?

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It may be that you're not eating enough fat. Even though you say you're eating plenty, the cultural programming on fat consumption affects us all at a very deep level so that, at least at first until you can break the programming, you often have to force yourself to consume enough. And yes, if your body isn't getting enough calories, it will start to cannibalize lean tissue.

I know people are resistant to the idea, but it's worthwhile to measure out what you're eating a couple of times to get an idea of where you stand. A lot of times, once things are weighed out, we realize that we weren't doing near the proper amount when relying on just eye-balling it.

What I would do is calculate what your ideal daily caloric intake is. This is really just a rough estimate because a lot of things need to come into account, but it's usually around 2000 calories. Then I'd take what percentage of that will be taken up by the protein you're eating (sounds like it's around 60 grams for you, which would be 240 calories). The remainder should be filled in with fat (around 1760 calories from fat in this example; close to 200 grams of fat) and a perhaps a small amount of carb. Note that this example yields a need of about 200 grams of fat. As an example so you can visualize it, that's about half a pound of butter per day!

I don't know for sure if this is what's going on with you, Eboard, but I find that quite often people simply aren't doing enough fat on this diet, so I thought it would be worth mentioning :) I hope it helps.

SeekinTruth said:

...Try to have 70% to 85% of your daily calories as saturated animal fat...

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It is important to be aware of how words are used differently in different places and contexts. What ketogenic dieters refer to as "high" in saturated fat often means simply "normal" amounts of saturated fat relative to what our ancestors consumed, and "high" only in the context of a modern era in which saturated fat has been demonized by various commercial interests.

"Healthy" fats tend to be composed of a naturally-occurring blend of saturated, monounsaturated, and unsaturated fats, of varying chain lengths. If you alter the blend too much, you may be asking for trouble. One area of concern that I am aware of is that too much long chain saturated fat in your diet could lead to problems. Other molecules can use it to hop a ride and go places they shouldn't be able to go.

If you were using KD to, for example, control epilepsy, there might be good reason to experiment with high concentrations of saturated fats, and the benefits might outweigh the risks. There might even be good esoteric reasons for trying it. Don't do it, however, just because somebody else is doing it, and be sure if you do do it that you are prepared with detailed personal knowledge of what you are doing.

I think it is also a good idea to have at least one person in your life that can help you see if symptoms develop that you don't see. I do have such a person (she does low-carb, not KD, yet), and no such symptoms have appeared, but when I was losing weight the traditional way, years ago, I was fortunate to have friends that warned me that I just didn't look right. Traditional starve-it-off dieting burns muscle protein and organs, and doesn't do your brain any good either, and I simply didn't see the problem developing until others pointed it out.

None of that happened this time, on a KD, and my weight now is where it was when my friends were warning me before, so I think this is a much safer approach. But every individual responds differently to a diet and it is good to have in-person support, just in case.

Megan, could you clarify your point in the above post? I'm getting the feeling I'm missing something important in what you're trying to say.

It goes without saying that any type of saturated fat also contains different non-saturated fats (I think that's common knowledge). And that's another good thing about saturated fats - they protect the other unstable fats such as omega-3 and omega-6 that tend to go rancid quickly AND you don't need to supplement so much omega 3's if you eat lots of grass fed animals' saturated fat.

So, I'd like to know what you mean by:

Megan said:

"Healthy" fats tend to be composed of a naturally-occurring blend of saturated, monounsaturated, and unsaturated fats, of varying chain lengths. If you alter the blend too much, you may be asking for trouble. One area of concern that I am aware of is that too much long chain saturated fat in your diet could lead to problems. Other molecules can use it to hop a ride and go places they shouldn't be able to go.

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Can you maybe also give some examples of what you wrote to make it easier for me to understand the potential problems?

SeekinTruth said:

Megan, could you clarify your point in the above post? I'm getting the feeling I'm missing something important in what you're trying to say.

It goes without saying that any type of saturated fat also contains different non-saturated fats (I think that's common knowledge). And that's another good thing about saturated fats - they protect the other unstable fats such as omega-3 and omega-6 that tend to go rancid quickly AND you don't need to supplement so much omega 3's if you eat lots of grass fed animals' saturated fat.

So, I'd like to know what you mean by:

Megan said:

"Healthy" fats tend to be composed of a naturally-occurring blend of saturated, monounsaturated, and unsaturated fats, of varying chain lengths. If you alter the blend too much, you may be asking for trouble. One area of concern that I am aware of is that too much long chain saturated fat in your diet could lead to problems. Other molecules can use it to hop a ride and go places they shouldn't be able to go.

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Can you maybe also give some examples of what you wrote to make it easier for me to understand the potential problems?

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I could be clearer if only the issues were clearer to me. The phrase "high in saturated fat" probably does not mean what it says. When I was doing traditional starve-it-off dieting, as well as low-fat cooking, I learned to avoid foods that contained more than 30% saturated fat (if I remember correctly). Above 30% was "high." Much lower was "good." Any normal, natural blend of various types of fat of the sorts that our ancestors ate was "bad." From this highly warped (but widely accepted) doublespeak perspective, then, "high in saturated fat" is indeed what we, here, want to eat.

The main thing we can do to control the "blend" of fats is to consume a variety of traditional fats, including bacon and duck fat, butter, ghee, and pastured eggs. That is where I get mine, along with organic, minimally processed coconut oil, sometimes, and a limited amount of aged cheeses (having protein and carb content similar to butter, which is to say almost none).

This approach results in a "blend of blends." Each fat is itself a blend of different free fatty acid and triglyceride chains, and consuming several forms of fat further evens out the balance. If you have to restrict foods because of, for example casein allergy where even butter and ghee are not tolerated, then the remaining natural fats that you consume might contain a higher concentration of saturated fats. In that case it might be worthwhile to research those particular fat sources so that you know more about them.

The other thing I know of that changes the "blend" is processing. The most common example is seed oils, which must be extracted by pressing or using industrial solvents (preferred because it is cheaper). These are unnaturally low in saturated fat (in doublespeak they are "good" fats), and highly prone to oxidation as you know. They can effectively turn into trans fat just sitting in the bottle, from what I have read. Trans or not, oxidized polyunsaturated fats are toxic.

There are other processed fats such as MCT oil. I am not familiar with the details of the molecular analysis of MCT oil, and whether it contains high concentrations of saturated fat, but I do know that consuming large amounts of it as part of a therapeutic ketogenic diet can produce a variety of side effects (depending on the individual) that must then be "managed." I don't go near the stuff myself. This is the kind of issue you potentially face if you somehow artificially increase the proportion of saturated fat in your diet.

The more you study the research, the more you realize that much of the research doesn't tell you much of anything about what is going to happen in your own body (as opposed, for example, to lab rats fed crap-in-a-bag "chow"). Personally, I try to stay with traditional dietary sources of fat, particularly the fat that is found in the food itself, with minimal processing. Those sources are neither high nor low in saturated fat. They are just good food.

Ahh, ok. I didn't realize you were commenting on the "doublespeak" in that part of your post. I use the term saturated fat for any fat that is solid at about room temperature. I think that's a pretty common definition. The mix of fats will vary from source to source, but the overall amount of saturated fat in the mix will make it be solid and not a liquid oil at room temperature and will of course become a harder solid if cooled.

After reading many times that people new to low carb eating might not be getting enough animal fat, it finally hit me that I might not be getting enough. So last night I had about half a cup of melted bacon and breakfast sausage grease with one breakfast sausage cut into bits. I think it was too much too fast. I didn't feel nauseated right away, it was maybe an hour or two later, so it might not even be causally connected. I do know I felt good again after doing full EE.

hlat said:

After reading many times that people new to low carb eating might not be getting enough animal fat, it finally hit me that I might not be getting enough. So last night I had about half a cup of melted bacon and breakfast sausage grease with one breakfast sausage cut into bits. I think it was too much too fast. I didn't feel nauseated right away, it was maybe an hour or two later, so it might not even be causally connected. I do know I felt good again after doing full EE.

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When I started increasing my fat intake, I overdid at the beginning and felt nauseated too. So there might be a connection there. If that's the case, I found that some vinegar with my fatty foods helped with digesting the fats. I personally like the taste of vinegar. For those who don't however, another alternative can be digestive enzymes with HCL and ox bile (they might have to be 2 different types of enzyme capsules) with every meal, until the body adapts. Sometimes the liver has to be supported as well during this transition, so some milk thistle might help too. If you do a forum search for "liver" or "sluggish liver", there's a lot of info around. I am not saying that this is what is going on with you, but offering it as another aspect for you to investigate/experiment with, to find the root.

I am confused what constitutes dairy. Since ghee is made from butter, and butter from cow milk, and cow milk is dairy, should I avoid ghee and butter as dairy? Does non-organic goat milk count as dairy (I cannot find organic goat milk)?

I have taken a simpler approach to the Nourishing Traditions recipe of making beef bone broth. I let the bones sit in the pot with water and half a cup apple cider vinegar for an hour. I brown half a pound of stew meat and add it to the pot. I chop up 3 onions and add to pot. I use a press on a lot of fresh garlic cloves and add to pot. I boil on high, and skim the impurities off the top. This step removes a good amount of onion and garlic and fat, but I think it is more important get rid of these impurities. When it looks like most of impurities are gone, then I simmer for at least 12 hours. My final step is straining the whole thing and keeping only the liquid as bone soup. The taste is fine, not bad at all.

hlat said:

I am confused what constitutes dairy. Since ghee is made from butter, and butter from cow milk, and cow milk is dairy, should I avoid ghee and butter as dairy? Does non-organic goat milk count as dairy (I cannot find organic goat milk)?

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Ghee is considered the only dairy product advised, but even then, some people might be so sensitive that they cannot eat it. As you heal your gut through the diet and detox, some find they can tolerate ghee and butter safely.

These foods are mostly fat and should contain trace amounts of casein, if any, especially ghee butter.

Goat milk on the other hand, has a lot of casein.

I experimented with it. Whereas I can tolerate butter just fine, goat cream gives me a high of some sorts. And goat cream has even less casein and dairy proteins than goat milk.

Hope this helps :)

hlat said:

I am confused what constitutes dairy. Since ghee is made from butter, and butter from cow milk, and cow milk is dairy, should I avoid ghee and butter as dairy? Does non-organic goat milk count as dairy (I cannot find organic goat milk)?

I have taken a simpler approach to the Nourishing Traditions recipe of making beef bone broth. I let the bones sit in the pot with water and half a cup apple cider vinegar for an hour. I brown half a pound of stew meat and add it to the pot. I chop up 3 onions and add to pot. I use a press on a lot of fresh garlic cloves and add to pot. I boil on high, and skim the impurities off the top. This step removes a good amount of onion and garlic and fat, but I think it is more important get rid of these impurities. When it looks like most of impurities are gone, then I simmer for at least 12 hours. My final step is straining the whole thing and keeping only the liquid as bone soup. The taste is fine, not bad at all.

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Generally, butter and ghee would be considered dairy. But the main thing is that anything that contains casein is dairy, so ghee would have practically none (would be 99% pure fat and some water). You have to eliminate and then reintroduce these to see if you have any negative reactions. Many seem to be able to do alright with butter, but you have to test to see, and it may be after a while of healing the gut that there will be no negative reactions.

I didn't eat butter for around 8 months and then reintroduced it with no problem and have been eating quite a lot of it for quite a while. Oh, and goat milk products would also be considered dairy, but some people can tolerate goat dairy products better than cow's milk products.

Added: just saw your post Psyche.

Megan, what was the name of the high quality coconut oil you used to buy at Whole Foods? I will look for Dr. Bronner's brand too. I'm trying to make a check list of attributes to look for in coconut oil. Organic, virgin, unrefined, not in a plastic container.

Megan said:

JGeropoulas said:

Laura said:

...
I don't like the taste of coconut oil. Nasty.

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The coconut oil made by "Buried Treasure Liquid Nutrition" (buriedtreasureln.com) has no taste whatsoever and is standardized to 60% (1 tsp = 5 grams saturated fat, 4.75 grams MCT). I buy it by the case and swig it out of the bottle during the day . Makes a great skin conditioner for chapped hands and calloused feet too.

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It should taste good, although the taste of the oil alone is muted. Different people taste the same food different ways, though, and a "nasty" taste could conceivably indicate a need to avoid it altogether. Sensitivity to coconut oil seems to be uncommon, from what I can tell, outside the forum anyway.

I was buying a high quality organic coconut oil at Whole Foods Market until they discontinued the brand. Their customers seem to want organic crap, not too expensive, so that they can delude themselves into thinking "organic" somehow equates to "healthy." Now I buy Dr. Bronner's coconut oil, which also has proven to be quite good. So far the store has only discontinued the large size jar of that, again, presumably because it was "too expensive" even though the smaller jar actually costs more per unit volume, but some customers can be pretty dumb -- maybe the vegans? If it is the vegans, at least they are taking in some fat if they consume coconut oil. (When I was a vegan, I was taught to shun oils.)

OK, finished venting. I guess it's time to start ordering coconut oil in quantity by mail.

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hlat said:

Megan, what was the name of the high quality coconut oil you used to buy at Whole Foods? I will look for Dr. Bronner's brand too. I'm trying to make a check list of attributes to look for in coconut oil. Organic, virgin, unrefined, not in a plastic container.
...

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It was so long ago that I don't remember. At least they brought back the large-size jar of Dr. Bronner's, several months later.

Last time I had coconut milk, I had huge abdominal pains for 2 days, i think it was the guar gum.....