Ketogenic Diet - Powerful Dietary Strategy for Certain Conditions

[Nico]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

I experienced the same lately with fruits, with the summer coming and the sun being more present, I found oranges to be very delicious whereas I used to feel nauseous after eating them.

I have so far stick to a vegetables/greens, butter and meat diet, and there was always something stressful from the belly, eating berries and fruits seems to lessen the stress hormones as Keyhole said. I read from naturopathic book, that they have to be taken separate from meal, only one specie, and in proportion with the amount of sunshine in the day. Kruse said they help with free radicals generated by sunlight (though I don't know about the process).

And if I listen Keyhole about butter, I have eaten so far large amount of PUFA, because I was not able to find 100% grass-fed meat. So maybe fruits might help with regulating hormonal homeostasis...

 

[Oxajil]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

Around the time I started eating more meat and fat I started having quite intense fruit cravings. Including fruit I never really liked, like apples and oranges. I found this to be interesting because I never liked fruit much before (I was more of a chocolate person ) The thing is that adding fruit to my diet enabled me to tolerate high animal fat and meat content much better. Vegetables didn't do it for me: I always have them with meat anyway and there was no difference to the sluggishness.

That's interesting. My experience is quite the opposite! I never craved fruit when I was on the ketogenic diet, I also didn't crave sugar (either glucose or fructose). I actually did quite well on meat and fat alone. However adding veggies in my case did help bring some variety to meals. In my experience, fruit can be quite inflammatory. Having said that, in my case, having berries, cherries (preferably the sour the better) and some blueberries do not affect me. Bananas are probably one of the worst for me. Apples are okay-ish. In small quantities and once in a while (especially during warmer periods), fruit is ok. But inflammation wise, it's not a good idea for me to have it often or in large quantities, even though sometimes it's hard to resist (I'm currently Paleo), but it doesn't go without some inflammation! I guess it shows that there is no 1 size that fits all. :)

 

[Ant22]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

Around the time I started eating more meat and fat I started having quite intense fruit cravings. Including fruit I never really liked, like apples and oranges. I found this to be interesting because I never liked fruit much before (I was more of a chocolate person ) The thing is that adding fruit to my diet enabled me to tolerate high animal fat and meat content much better. Vegetables didn't do it for me: I always have them with meat anyway and there was no difference to the sluggishness.

That's interesting. My experience is quite the opposite! I never craved fruit when I was on the ketogenic diet, I also didn't crave sugar (either glucose or fructose). I actually did quite well on meat and fat alone. However adding veggies in my case did help bring some variety to meals. In my experience, fruit can be quite inflammatory. Having said that, in my case, having berries, cherries (preferably the sour the better) and some blueberries do not affect me. Bananas are probably one of the worst for me. Apples are okay-ish. In small quantities and once in a while (especially during warmer periods), fruit is ok. But inflammation wise, it's not a good idea for me to have it often or in large quantities, even though sometimes it's hard to resist (I'm currently Paleo), but it doesn't go without some inflammation! I guess it shows that there is no 1 size that fits all. :)

Given the benefits reported on the forum I'm totally jealous of anyone who can handle the ketogenic diet straight away Oxajil! I'm currently on holiday at my grandparents' place and I discovered that I can tolerate much more meat and fat than during my previous visits. Which makes my mom and grandparents happy cause they never liked my silly vegetarian habits. Well, I should have listened to my momma! ;)

My diet is paleo with very limited grains but I've noticed that I need less and less carbs with my meals so maybe for me fruit is some kind of a keto adjustment enhancer or something.

We seem to be dietary opposites Oxajil as I don't like sour fruit, I'll have berries as long as they're sweet. :)

(...) I have so far stick to a vegetables/greens, butter and meat diet, and there was always something stressful from the belly, (...)

Yup, well said. That's pretty much for full blown keto made me feel when I attempted it.

 

[Konstantin]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

Around the time I started eating more meat and fat I started having quite intense fruit cravings. Including fruit I never really liked, like apples and oranges. I found this to be interesting because I never liked fruit much before (I was more of a chocolate person ) The thing is that adding fruit to my diet enabled me to tolerate high animal fat and meat content much better. Vegetables didn't do it for me: I always have them with meat anyway and there was no difference to the sluggishness.

That's interesting. My experience is quite the opposite! I never craved fruit when I was on the ketogenic diet, I also didn't crave sugar (either glucose or fructose). I actually did quite well on meat and fat alone. However adding veggies in my case did help bring some variety to meals. In my experience, fruit can be quite inflammatory. Having said that, in my case, having berries, cherries (preferably the sour the better) and some blueberries do not affect me. Bananas are probably one of the worst for me. Apples are okay-ish. In small quantities and once in a while (especially during warmer periods), fruit is ok. But inflammation wise, it's not a good idea for me to have it often or in large quantities, even though sometimes it's hard to resist (I'm currently Paleo), but it doesn't go without some inflammation! I guess it shows that there is no 1 size that fits all. :)

What Oxajil said relates also to me. I'm also better on a keto diet. Last few months noticed that I also need less food. I'm eating 2 meals per day. One at 7:30 am and the second at 17:30 pm. So they are 10 hours apart. Nothing between them. Just a one or 2 cups of tea.
Sometimes I take one small part od some fruit. Like a small piece of apple or some non-sugary fruit.like a 1/8 of some small apple for example.
In Summer I like wild fruits that grow in forests like berries. And those small parts of fruit that I eat occasionally I eat them usually after my second meal in the evening.And this is not on a regular basis, just from time to time.
I guess you are right saying that no 1 size that fits all. Every person is different and have a different needs.

 

[Oxajil]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

Given the benefits reported on the forum I'm totally jealous of anyone who can handle the ketogenic diet straight away Oxajil!

Oh, but I used enzymes that helped break down the fat. There is a guide that helps people to slowly adapt to the keto diet, as going straight into it can be a 'shock'/stress to the system. And people went through different things as can be read in this thread. But eventually I didn't need the enzymes anymore. I'm currently doing Paleo also, and my goal is to decrease my carb amount. When my carb intake is high, I get all kinds of problems, including a jaw infection not too long ago. But Vit C water helped me get rid of it eventually.

I'm currently on holiday at my grandparents' place and I discovered that I can tolerate much more meat and fat than during my previous visits. Which makes my mom and grandparents happy cause they never liked my silly vegetarian habits.

That's good!

Sometimes I take one small part od some fruit. Like a small piece of apple or some non-sugary fruit.like a 1/8 of some small apple for example.
In Summer I like wild fruits that grow in forests like berries. And those small parts of fruit that I eat occasionally I eat them usually after my second meal in the evening.And this is not on a regular basis, just from time to time.

Yeah, I can also tolerate a small piece of a fruit, or a small fruit, from time to time.

 

[Ant22]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

Given the benefits reported on the forum I'm totally jealous of anyone who can handle the ketogenic diet straight away Oxajil!

Oh, but I used enzymes that helped break down the fat. There is a guide that helps people to slowly adapt to the keto diet, as going straight into it can be a 'shock'/stress to the system. And people went through different things as can be read in this thread. But eventually I didn't need the enzymes anymore. I'm currently doing Paleo also, and my goal is to decrease my carb amount. When my carb intake is high, I get all kinds of problems, including a jaw infection not too long ago. But Vit C water helped me get rid of it eventually.

I do take digestive enzymes: ox bile, betaine HCl, pancreatin, protease, lipase and amylase. I'm on holiday at the moment and I clumsily didn't pack them but despite eating 60-70% meat/fat for the past week I still feel pretty good. I wonder to what extent eating lots of home made pork jelly with chunks of meat 'drowned' in apple cider vinegar helps my digestion.

The iodine thread took me 4-5 months to get through so this one will take me a while as well since it's even longer - but I'll get there :) Also, I guess it wasn't very smart of me to jump straight to the end of it though

(...) What Oxajil said relates also to me. I'm also better on a keto diet. Last few months noticed that I also need less food. I'm eating 2 meals per day. One at 7:30 am and the second at 17:30 pm. So they are 10 hours apart. Nothing between them. Just a one or 2 cups of tea. (...)

Thanks Konstantin, of all benefits of the ketogenic diet this is the one I'm looking forward to most :) My default setting seems to be 'hungry' despite the fact that I'm constantly grazing on something, whilst I just cannot seem to be able to put on weight. My boss once overheard a colleague asking me when I was planning to have my lunch and he replied for me: "She has her lunch from 9 to 5" :(

I guess you are right saying that no 1 size that fits all. Every person is different and have a different needs.

I came across this thread when I was trying to understand why eating meat / fat only was making me feel like I had mud in my tummy so yup, I'm going to agree :)

On a different note, I wonder if my inability to go full keto is linked to my body trying to limit iron intake. I have hemochromatosis and it looks like my iron levels have been steadily creeping up. I searched for hemochromatosis in this thread and it only returned 2 results, here and here, and they don't shed too much light on this issue.

 

[Foxx]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

On a different note, I wonder if my inability to go full keto is linked to my body trying to limit iron intake. I have hemochromatosis and it looks like my iron levels have been steadily creeping up. I searched for hemochromatosis in this thread and it only returned 2 results, here and here, and they don't shed too much light on this issue.

Have you checked out the "Hemochromatosis and Autoimmune Conditions" thread? https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,20265.0.html

That thread has a lot more information on Hemochromatosis than this thread.

 

[Ant22]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

On a different note, I wonder if my inability to go full keto is linked to my body trying to limit iron intake. I have hemochromatosis and it looks like my iron levels have been steadily creeping up. I searched for hemochromatosis in this thread and it only returned 2 results, here and here, and they don't shed too much light on this issue.

Have you checked out the "Hemochromatosis and Autoimmune Conditions" thread? https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,20265.0.html

That thread has a lot more information on Hemochromatosis than this thread.

Thanks Foxx, I did in fact read that thread a while ago. I searched through this thread because I was specifically interested in the relationship between hemochromatosis and the ketogenic diet.
Given how much more data I have now compared to when I first read it maybe it would be a good idea to read it again :)

 

[mcb]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

In any case, high palatability - low satiety foods appear as though they may pathologically disrupt brain mechanisms, an observation that is not lost on the processed food industry.

Is high palatability - low satiety only processed foods, or does high palatability - low satiety also include foods from nature?

The worst of the low-satiety foods tend to be processed foods that are specifically designed for high palatability. Most natural foods will produce a "stop" signal after a while. Guyenet's book talks about hunter-gatherers consuming large quantities of honey, and honey would seem to be low satiety, but I find that I don't need to have a lot of it before I don't want any more. For quite some time. Some processed foods, however, can trigger gorging in some people. That's low satiety!

Satiety is personal. A person with a genetic defect that inhibits leptin synthesis will eat virtually non-stop. There is no stop signal because the signaling pathways are broken. Fortunately, that condition is very rare.

There seems to be a complex relationship between palatability and satiety. The book The Dorito Efffect goes into quite a bit of detail on this subject. In the livestock feed industry, "palatants" are added to the food to help fatten the animals. In the processed food industry, these same chemicals are euphemistically called "natural and artificial flavors," and they serve the same purpose. There is no distinction between the natural and artificial ones, other than that the natural ones must be produced from foods, and the artificial ones can be synthesized more directly. The chemical end result is the same.

When palatants are added to food, they signal the sense of taste that the food contains important nutrients. It may be that when we eat food that has been tampered with in this way, we are driven to eat by the taste, but we are not satiated because the foods may contain very little actual nutrition, and the actual nutrient value is part of satiety.

But wait, there's more. Our senses of taste are not hardwired to detect nutrients. Instead, we detect trace chemicals that our tastes become trained to associate with nutritious foods. In experiments with laboratory animals, it is possible to associate "good" taste with things that are not good to eat. Outside the lab, we are the animals and the food processors capitalize on the way our tastes are already trained. They add chemicals to their processed, nutrient-deficient crap that they have identified in natural foods and that serve as taste triggers. We eat, thinking the foods are nutritious, and then we eat more when they fail to deliver.

The Dorito Effect dwells a lot on chicken. The kind of chicken you find in stores has been bred to mature quickly and produce lots of the kinds of meat that people want (or at least have been taught that they want) to buy. Along the way, the taste has largely been bred out. As foods become more nutrient-deficient, they tend to become more tasteless as well. No problem, though. It's Ranch Dressing to the rescue. Loaded with palatants, of course. With just the right combination of certain key ingredients, such as salt, fat, and sugar, and preferably an unhealthy dose of palatants, we can be happy to gorge on food that is nutritionally almost worthless. And more importantly, cheap to produce.

It is important to become aware of how your reward pathways work. Books like these can help, but we also need to self-observe, both to the learn the general principles and how the pathways look and feel (so to speak), and also to discover our personal quirks, both the detrimental ones and those that can be useful for conscious control.

This isn't just about food. Reward pathways influence many things, from buying behaviors to making minute-to-minute choices about how we use our time. Becoming more (and more) aware of what's going on with this in our brains (as well as of who is trying to influence it externally) can be key to changing behaviors and moving on.

 

[beetlemaniac]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

Thanks Konstantin, of all benefits of the ketogenic diet this is the one I'm looking forward to most :) My default setting seems to be 'hungry' despite the fact that I'm constantly grazing on something, whilst I just cannot seem to be able to put on weight. My boss once overheard a colleague asking me when I was planning to have my lunch and he replied for me: "She has her lunch from 9 to 5" :(

Hi Ant22,

In my experience I think that grazing is not a very good strategy. It trains your brain (think the reptilian brain) to expect food every so often. So habituating it this way seems detrimental, and you may find your self control slowly slipping away.

Could it also be that the work environment, including the emotional climate (people), lighting, ergonomics, air quality, and your own specific triggers are creating undue amounts of stress in your body, which then translate into an unhealthy eating habit? Also, this stress (if it is the case) could be a hampering element in your efforts to transition to a fully ketogenic state.

Body awareness helps a lot for hidden stress, since we are normally very desensitized to our bodies when working a desk job.

Maybe it would be advisable to have a moderately sized carb + protein meal for lunch to keep blood sugar levels stable, as the blood sugar may be getting eaten up by the juiced up stress response, at least as a stop gap measure for the grazing habit? Just a suggestion based on my experience.

I am personally still trying to figure out an adequate amount of carbs for lunch, and I find myself gravitating towards more vegetables. There is a lot of rice-based food available, but I find it makes my energy somewhat depressed and I feel sleepy a little later, likely due to the blood sugar swing from the high carb load. It could also very well be a seasonal type thing, where you need carbs once in a while. I also regularly have carbs at night - but I'm finding that eating too late is a no-no, but night time eating is a little hard for me to discipline -- I have to consciously be aware of the urge to eat something after coming back from work, which is kind of a slog! However, going to sleep in a semi-starved state is dangerous as blood sugar can crash in the middle of sleep, depending on how well your body manages blood sugar. Doing yoga after work helps with cravings for me. I suppose any sufficiently deep body awareness exercise will help with addiction problems in general.

 

[Ant22]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

Thanks Konstantin, of all benefits of the ketogenic diet this is the one I'm looking forward to most :) My default setting seems to be 'hungry' despite the fact that I'm constantly grazing on something, whilst I just cannot seem to be able to put on weight. My boss once overheard a colleague asking me when I was planning to have my lunch and he replied for me: "She has her lunch from 9 to 5" :(

Hi Ant22,

In my experience I think that grazing is not a very good strategy. It trains your brain (think the reptilian brain) to expect food every so often. So habituating it this way seems detrimental, and you may find your self control slowly slipping away.

Could it also be that the work environment, including the emotional climate (people), lighting, ergonomics, air quality, and your own specific triggers are creating undue amounts of stress in your body, which then translate into an unhealthy eating habit? Also, this stress (if it is the case) could be a hampering element in your efforts to transition to a fully ketogenic state.

Body awareness helps a lot for hidden stress, since we are normally very desensitized to our bodies when working a desk job.

Maybe it would be advisable to have a moderately sized carb + protein meal for lunch to keep blood sugar levels stable, as the blood sugar may be getting eaten up by the juiced up stress response, at least as a stop gap measure for the grazing habit? Just a suggestion based on my experience.

Wow bm, I haven't thought about it before but bringing up the "reptilian brain" is more than enough to convince me to do something about my grazing habit.

I think you may be on to something. My job is fast-paced at times but I wouldn't refer to it as very stressful. However, the interpersonal dynamics in the office does have very noticeable draining traits.

As for things like lightning, ergonomics, air quality and such, I moved to a new desk right before my current holiday and when I get back on Monday I will definitely pay attention to the environment and it's impact (or lack of it) on my grazing habits.

(...) I am personally still trying to figure out an adequate amount of carbs for lunch, and I find myself gravitating towards more vegetables. There is a lot of rice-based food available, but I find it makes my energy somewhat depressed and I feel sleepy a little later, likely due to the blood sugar swing from the high carb load. It could also very well be a seasonal type thing, where you need carbs once in a while. I also regularly have carbs at night - but I'm finding that eating too late is a no-no, but night time eating is a little hard for me to discipline -- I have to consciously be aware of the urge to eat something after coming back from work, which is kind of a slog! However, going to sleep in a semi-starved state is dangerous as blood sugar can crash in the middle of sleep, depending on how well your body manages blood sugar.

Eating too late is a big no-no for me as well and so is going to sleep with a very empty stomach so I make sure I have my last meal around 7pm. If I eat something later than 7pm I struggle to fall asleep or I keep waking up at night. A perspective of a poorly slept night and being sleepy the next day is enough to discipline me ;)

Also, I've noticed I need less grazing if I have a huge breakfast before I leave the house.

Doing yoga after work helps with cravings for me. I suppose any sufficiently deep body awareness exercise will help with addiction problems in general.

I'm waiting for my first yoga coursebook to arrive so I'll make sure I do it when I'm back home.

It's interesting that you compared grazing to an addiction. I never looked at it this way but it totally reframed it for me and it needs to be dealt with!

 

[beetlemaniac]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

It's interesting that you compared grazing to an addiction. I never looked at it this way but it totally reframed it for me and it needs to be dealt with!

Hi Ant22,

To be clear, I wasn't explicitly referring to your habit when I mentioned addiction. It could very well be that you need the nutrients that your grazing habit provides, I just thought it would be wiser to do it in a more controlled fashion. Your having a big breakfast reducing the grazing habit also speaks to this being the case.

 

[Ant22]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

It's interesting that you compared grazing to an addiction. I never looked at it this way but it totally reframed it for me and it needs to be dealt with!

Hi Ant22,

To be clear, I wasn't explicitly referring to your habit when I mentioned addiction. It could very well be that you need the nutrients that your grazing habit provides, I just thought it would be wiser to do it in a more controlled fashion. Your having a big breakfast reducing the grazing habit also speaks to this being the case.

Thanks for clarifying this bm. I'm back at work after a two week holiday now and this week I noticed that my grazing is in fact more of a habit than hunger. If I have a big breakfast before leaving the house I'm not really hungry until early lunchtime. It just feels like there's still space in my tummy so I start munching on whatever I have leftover in the fridge. Then I buy more snacks during lunch time. I also noticed that those snacks are mostly carbs

Surprisingly enough it wasn't very difficult to reduce the snacking to almost nothing once I decided to address it.

I also discovered that I felt better during my holiday in my hometown when my meat / fat intake was much higher than now (mostly due to my mom's fabulous meat cooking skills). I guess that speaks for itself in terms of what's good for me.

 

[Turgon]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

In any case, high palatability - low satiety foods appear as though they may pathologically disrupt brain mechanisms, an observation that is not lost on the processed food industry.

Is high palatability - low satiety only processed foods, or does high palatability - low satiety also include foods from nature?

I'm interested to know this too. My first thought was that fruit may fall into this category as most are high in fructose but contain less nutritional elements than vegetables.

I disagree with this, lainey. If you look at the composition of orange juice for example, it is packed full of magnesium, potassium, salicylic acid, and many others. Also, the high content of fructose suppresses the insulin response, and also does not require insulin to be transported into the cell. Fructose is a massive stimulator of glycogen synthesis, which when utilised, supresses cortisol and other stress hormone-related muscle tissue breakdown for energy.

Additionally, vegetables usually contain many anti-nutrients, and often have to be prepared to be suitable for consumption. On the other hand, fruits are literally designed by nature to be eaten as they are. This says a lot to me. Of course, I don't think overdoing it is advisable. But likewise, to say that fruit contains less nutritional value and could not be part of a healthy diet is probably incorrect IMO.

Keyhole's post made me think of my own experience with the ketogenic diet and fruit. The ketogenic diet was a bit of a failure for me: I seem to feel better with a certain amount of carbs in my diet as meat/fat based diet makes me feel sluggish. At early stages of my diet change I was doing fat bombs to maximise my fat intake and too much fat would make me feel sick, sluggish and in general 'meh'.

Around the time I started eating more meat and fat I started having quite intense fruit cravings. Including fruit I never really liked, like apples and oranges. I found this to be interesting because I never liked fruit much before (I was more of a chocolate person ) The thing is that adding fruit to my diet enabled me to tolerate high animal fat and meat content much better. Vegetables didn't do it for me: I always have them with meat anyway and there was no difference to the sluggishness.

This may be anecdotal evidence but I suspect fruit did have quite a bit of a role to play in my diet adjustment. The Cs did say that the ketogenic diet may be tough for some initially and for me adding fruit meant a massive improvement.

I cannot be sure if there are some epigenetic factors at play in my case, or my experience is just an exception, or being hardcore vegetarian until early 2016 affected my ability to cope with the ketogenic diet so FWIW :)

I guess it also matters what kind of vegetables and fruits you're eating. Blue berries, raspberries, apples (in small doses) and green leafy vegetables like kale especially seem to work fine for me. But banana's and strawberries cause serious heartburn and mushrooms, onions and garlic don't seem to sit well either. Although I'm not even sure if I'm ketogenic anymore. I haven't tested myself in a while but have increased my protein and carb load on the days I include rice while still eating a lot of fat and it seems to be working. I just eat two big meals a day until I'm satiated without measuring anything out anymore and sometimes have bone broth w/fat to tie me over if I get hungry again. But even if I'm Paleo and not keto, I don't notice much of a major hunger difference like when I used to be a carbivore but I've also stopped limiting my meals to 4 oz of meat, etc. Except in the mornings I get hungrier more quickly then before.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?

FWIW, I used fruits from my orchard as a way of raising my carbs up to about 45 grams during the hottest months a few years ago (went from just a few grams of net carbs - no "added" carbs at all, i.e. only what you get from eating meat/fat, eggs, organs, etc.). It seemed to work quite well. Recently, I tried eating all sorts of things I don't normally eat for a couple of weeks just to see what happens. Not much happened, though it wasn't a controlled experiment. I estimated that I may have reached above 60 grams of net carbs on a few days (like 70 or 80), but never felt like I got kicked out of ketosis. I'm pretty sure that if I switch to sugar burning, I'll start feeling hungry. Since February 2011 when I went keto, I've never felt hungry except when I started the high dose iodine (after a few weeks I was feeling hungry during the day for a while). Also, during the informal recent experiment, I ate a bunch of low gluten grains, including rice, and didn't notice any reactions at all in terms of feeling inflamed and the like. I did have a splitting headache I woke up with for the first week or 10 days that sometimes lasted for hours, but it started even before the experiment was really under way (I suspect it was something to do with being on an airplane just before the headaches started). Again, FWIW.