Ketosis diet

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Ketosis diet

Postby Tesseracts » Wed May 02, 2018 5:21 am

Today I started the keto diet. This is a low carb, high fat diet designed to make your body burn more fat. Originally it was invented to stop seizures in epileptics and nobody knows why it works for that. Lately it has become a popular way to lose weight. The purpose of the diet is to make your body produce ketones, because ketosis is how your body converts fat into energy. When you eat carbs, you are basically eating sugar because this is what your body turns carbs into. Apparently it can also turn protein into sugar. However this is not the case for fat. Here is a good article on the subject.

After speaking to my doctor I am eating less fat and more protein than the standard keto diet recommends, but it's still an extreme diet. My current goal is to eat 5% carbs, 50% protein, and 45% fat. That means every day I'm striving for:

Calories: 1690
Carbs: 21 grams :shock:
Protein: 211 grams
Fat: 85 grams

21 grams of carbs is almost nothing, and it is a huge shock to go from my previous diet where carbs were 50% of my calories (over 200 grams) to basically nothing. My head hurts just thinking about it. I quickly learned just about everything contains carbs. The good news is you can subtract the fiber from the carbs so it's only the net carbs that matter. So for example, one cup of avocado has 12 grams of carbs and 10 grams of fiber. This means it only counts as 2 grams of carbs.

For breakfast I basically ate a bunch of cheese. I also ate peanut butter (pure ground peanuts, no sugar), some blackberries, and... more cheese. Then I saw my weight doctor and she told me to stop eating so much god damn cheese. After that I had a small Caesar salad (lettuce, cheese, dressing) with some broccoli sprouts and some tea with stevia. That really helped curb my hunger even though it was just a few vegetables. Later I made TVP meatloaf so I would have something to eat for lunch tomorrow at school. Eating out on this diet is really difficult. Even a place like Whole Foods doesn't have many things made without sugar or carbs. I wish they did. It would be easy to make candy and replace sugar with stevia, but no, they have to use coconut sugar or something.

I'm going to be using this thread to talk about my progress on this diet. I will do it for at least 4 weeks because it takes that long to get results. If anyone wants to use this thread to discuss similar efforts you are welcome to as well.
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Re: Ketosis diet

Postby Malfeasinator » Wed May 02, 2018 10:13 pm

Well, it was one of those times in my life when I was moving around a lot. The previous year I'd moved to Indiana and worked on a casino boat as a deckhand. I wasn't used to the harsh winter and being outside most of the day, and I was putting on weight to kind of fight the cold. Our uniforms didn't do jack for us. One guy was talking about how he was so cold he couldn't feel his legs. That's pretty bad.

Later on, around summer, I was moving to Florida and I really, really didn't need any kind of insulation against the cold anymore.

I lost about 30 pounds from May to August. I was still fat but less fat than I used to be, which was a small victory. But I mean, I've gone up and down the scale since then.

I did have one horrible constipation moment but that probably could have been managed with stool softeners or taking fiber supplements.
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Last edited by Malfeasinator on Thu May 03, 2018 8:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ketosis diet

Postby Tesseracts » Thu May 03, 2018 4:00 am

Thanks for the advice. How long did you do it and what were your results if you don't mind me asking?

Today was not a good day. I woke up with a very sore throat. I thought I was sick so I didn't go to school. However it seems like some people get a sore throat as a side effect of ketosis.

For breakfast I ate vegetarian meatloaf with with a large omelette and an avocado. I figured all that protein would help but after, I was miserable. I felt like I was starving to death. I was insanely uncomfortable. I made a Caesar salad because that worked yesterday, and for some reason that worked today also. I don't get it, eating a lot of calories seems to have no impact on my hunger. It seems like the salad makes a difference because it physically fills my stomach. My throat currently feels okay.
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Re: Ketosis diet

Postby jbobsully11 » Thu May 03, 2018 6:36 am

My sister and her husband (and a few of their friends) have been doing keto for a while (with some breaks every once in a while), and they both say they have more energy and feel better than they had in a while. They've also lost weight, but they really didn't need to. Supposedly you feel awful in the beginning, but it gets better over time.
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Re: Ketosis diet

Postby Paradox » Thu May 03, 2018 10:49 pm

I'm doing keto right now for the mental health benefits. There's evidence it helps alleviate symptoms of bipolar disorder.
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Re: Ketosis diet

Postby Tesseracts » Fri May 04, 2018 2:51 am

Day 3: I spoke to my therapist. My therapist specializes in obesity, it was the subject of her dissertation and she has worked with a lot of obese people trying to lose weight. She is very knowledgable about the subject.

I told her about the diet I'm on and she seemed really concerned. She was surprised my doctor at the weight loss clinic was okay with my plan. She said there are risks of heart failure and organ damage, which I was aware of but didn't take seriously because other than obesity I'm a healthy person. She also said she was worried when I started eating carbs again I would overindulge and gain all the weight back. I share that fear also. I'm confident I can lose weight, but I'm not confident I won't gain it back. The thing is, on this diet I'm not really learning portion control. I'm just limiting what I can eat so severely that I get bored before I ever have a chance to overeat.

The more I spoke to her the hungrier I got. All I had eaten that day is a salad. When therapy was over I drove home and ate white corn tortilla chips with hummus. So my state of ketosis is officially over. That brought my calorie total up to about 1300 and I haven't felt hungry since.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do now. I want to speak to my PCP and with my weight loss doctors. Maybe I will resume the keto diet or go on a carb restricted diet that isn't as extreme. Or maybe I will just stick with calorie restriction.

Keto was a lot easier for my friend who was doing it with me than it was for me. He lost a lot more weight in a short period and didn't feel hungry. I'm a vegetarian and I depend on carbs a lot so this might be a bad diet for me.

Another major issue with the diet is I don't see how I can possibly exercise. Keto allows you to eat a small amount of carbs a half hour before exercise, but you have to burn through all of it. This isn't really safe or pleasant.
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Re: Ketosis diet

Postby cmsellers » Fri May 04, 2018 4:31 am

My brother lost a ton of weight on keto. Despite loving meat, I haven't tried it because my understanding is that it's not sustainable long-term (which your therapist's reaction bears out), and because animal protein is expensive.
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Re: Ketosis diet

Postby Grimstone » Fri May 04, 2018 6:55 am

Instead of extreme diets, fasting, calorie restriction, etc. why not just eat a reasonable amount(2,200~ calories?) and add some cardio to your daily routine? For example, start out jogging about one mile everyday. Each half mile would burn over 100~ calories and you could increase this in half mile increments over time while simultaneously decreasing your daily caloric intake(very gradually) as you lose weight.
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Re: Ketosis diet

Postby Tesseracts » Fri May 04, 2018 6:06 pm

Grimstone wrote:Instead of extreme diets, fasting, calorie restriction, etc. why not just eat a reasonable amount(2,200~ calories?) and add some cardio to your daily routine? For example, start out jogging about one mile everyday. Each half mile would burn over 100~ calories and you could increase this in half mile increments over time while simultaneously decreasing your daily caloric intake(very gradually) as you lose weight.

If I ate enough calories to maintain my weight and did cardio to burn calories, it would have the same effect as calorie restriction. It would force my body into a calorie deficit and burn fat cells. You act like jogging a mile is easy and it's not. For someone my weight it puts a lot of strain on joints and leads to risk of injury. It's much easier to eat 200 less calories than it is to burn 200 calories, and it's also very difficult to accurate estimate the amount of calories you burn in exercise. Also when I reach my goal weight I will be eating less calories anyway so I have to reduce calorie consumption at some point.
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Re: Ketosis diet

Postby Grimstone » Fri May 04, 2018 8:50 pm

I'm not 'acting' like anything. If a mile is too much then start with half a mile, a quarter mile, etc. If you can't jog then do some other exercise you're capable of. The point I'm trying to make is that you can start with small steps(cut out 100 calories here, burn 100 calories there, etc) and work your way up instead of jumping straight into some 1600 calorie diet or whatever.
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Re: Ketosis diet

Postby Tesseracts » Fri May 04, 2018 9:09 pm

Grimstone wrote:I'm not 'acting' like anything. If a mile is too much then start with half a mile, a quarter mile, etc. If you can't jog then do some other exercise you're capable of. The point I'm trying to make is that you can start with small steps(cut out 100 calories here, burn 100 calories there, etc) and work your way up instead of jumping straight into some 1600 calorie diet or whatever.

You implied it’s easier to lose weight with exercise than calorie restriction and it’s really not. I was exercising pretty hard recently so if that worked I would have lost weight. If I followed your plan I would lose a pound a month not a pound a week. Exercise shouldn’t be considered a way to lose weight at all. Exercise improves fitness and muscle mass can help maintain weight loss. Sometimes it can suppress appetite. However eating less calories is essential. A 1600 calorie per day diet is not extreme, I would lose 2 pounds per week if I did that. That’s a perfectly reasonable rate of weight loss. The reason keto is extreme is because it puts your body in a constant state of ketosis not because it restricts calories.
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Re: Ketosis diet

Postby Paradox » Fri May 04, 2018 9:36 pm

Keto diet is very satiating.

I don't want to lose weight. I started at 52 kg and got to 49 kg a couple of weeks ago. I don't want to weight less than 50 kg. I'm now adding olive oil and butter to everything I eat and am back to my starting weight. Keto makes it hard to eat enough. I have to monitor my calories to make sure I'm not accidentally having too little.

The mental health benefits are fantastic though. I hate being on antipsychotics because they completely destroy my ability to enjoy anything. Keto has allowed me to lower my dose and still not going psychotic. I'm also much less anxious.

Tess, the first weeks of keto is an absolute nightmare. I'd like to see what you have to report back in a month or so!
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Re: Ketosis diet

Postby Grimstone » Fri May 04, 2018 9:50 pm

Tesseracts wrote:You implied it’s easier to lose weight with exercise than calorie restriction


No I didn't. In both of my posts I suggested using a combination of diet and exercise instead of relying solely on one or the other.
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Re: Ketosis diet

Postby Absentia » Fri May 04, 2018 11:41 pm

I don't know enough about the keto diet to have an informed opinion, but I do want to say that the only people I know who have successfully lost weight by just cutting their calorie intake to some crazy low number weren't eating because they were sick and/or addicted to something. I'm not saying healthy weight loss without exercise is impossible, I'm just saying I haven't seen anyone pull it off.
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Re: Ketosis diet

Postby Learned Nand » Fri May 11, 2018 7:43 pm

Exercise is obviously good for your health, but doesn't have much to do with weight loss. You want to find a diet that contains fewer calories without making you feel hungry all the time. For me, that involved shifting as much of my carbohydrate intake to protein as is feasible.
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