panu blog: ketosis

[a87.pal]

I am sure some of you have read this already, but what are your opinions about his theory on ketosis:

http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2011/2/6/thoughts-on-ketosis-i.html

http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2011/2/7/thoughts-on-ketosis-ii.html

[ys]

he has more of speculation than a theory.  based on his own experience he had difficulty maintaining weight on VLC while doing good amount of physical work.  if anyone has a different experience then his reasoning does not really apply. 

[Josh]

Interesting.

It seems like he was doing fine on VLC and exercising before he started doing physical work for 60 hours a week.

He seems credible, so maybe he did need the carbs.

However, is 60 hours a week a 'natural' amount of physical work? Even when times where bad, you're not going to look for animals or scavenge all the time, perhaps there would be a lot of resting.

If you took a lion and forced it to be active 60 hours a week would it be healthy for example?

So perhaps there's an upper limit of how much meat and fat we can practically eat, and if you have to work all the time, you do need more carbs to fill the energy gap.

However, 'work tolerance and exercise tolerance will be much better' is subjective. It's true in a sense, but maybe better not to have to work that much, and so not an argument for everyone to eat that many carbs if they're not a physical worker.

It's encouraging that he did well on VLC before his change.

Kudos for posting it, interesting to have a credible source giving first hand experience.

[ForTheHunt]

Find it slightly strange he doesn't describe what he was eating.

If he was eating only raw meat raw fat, then I can't say I'm surprised. It can be quite taxing on the digestive system and in the end you just can't fit more in.

Eggs and cream would've been the solution.

Although I agree, I think a small amount of carbs is paramount. If I don't get carbs, my mind just goes down the drain. It becomes very difficult to remember stuff, I become very very aggressive. I get angry about things that I wouldn't otherwise give a second thought.

[a87.pal]

my current opinion about his experience is that there is a difference between ketosis, and ketosis with one meal a day/IF.

for example, (this is all pure speculation) if glycogen regeneration is determined by blood concentration of glucose, then while doing ketosis with 3 meals a day perhaps most of the glycogen gets regenerated but there is still a bottleneck that only higher blood glucose levels will overcome. One way to achieve this increase in glucose is to eat a 400 cal carb meal like he did. However, another method would be to eat all the protein-fat meals in one huge meal. Again this is pure speculation. Either way, it suggests that if you cannot digest huge meals of meat and fat then perhaps you should add a few carbs until digestion improves.

[Joseph_Dantes]

Just want to share my personal history with ketosis.

The standard American diet gives me massive health problems, including but not limited to acne, chronic fatigue, IBS, bipolar, depression.

I knew that ketosis fixed this for a long time, but couldn't maintain it due to cravings. I experimented for years.

Finally I found an easy trick that solved it. A daily meal of ground beef with eggs, in a ratio of 250 g beef to 1 egg, kills the cravings.

Probably due to the delivery of a lot of fat in a palatable, digestible format.

I eat mostly ground beef with the occasional egg thrown in (too many eggs gives discomfort), with no salt or seasonings.

Probably others won't need to go as extreme, I have accumulated a lot of digestive track damage and hypersensitivity, I think.

Anyway this cured all my health problems... which is @#$@% awesome.

But the main useable point for others is that mixing eggs and beef can kill those ketosis cravings.

Here's the link: http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2011/02/20/meat-only-diet-crave-carbs-meat-egg-no-craving/

And my blog, with experiment logs: http://josephsblog.typepad.com/