Tag keto

THINK Yourself Thin … Maybe?

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THINK Yourself Thin … Maybe?

Winery

Couple of guys thinking themselves thin at Mission Hill Winery, in BC. Looks like it’s working! 🙂

Yesterday’s post on the Glycemic Index, the Glycemic Load Index, and the Insulin & Satiety Indices triggered a few questions. I wasn’t suggesting that any particular index was the right way to build a weight-loss diet. Nor was I saying that the indices were worthless for doing that. I was trying to explain the confusion went through, leading up to my decision to eat potatoes as part of my diet. The potato was a good example of that decision making process when measured against the four indices we talked about.

Despite the amount of science behind many of the diets out there, there still isn’t enough information to create one, clear, simple, diverse & satisfying diet that will work for everyone. No matter the diet we choose to follow, we will all tinker with it. We’ll add a little of this & a touch more of that, to suit our own taste. I think that’s okay. The greater the variety, the better the chances that we’ll stick with it.

To simplify yesterday’s thought process. The Glycemic Index, the Glycemic Load Index and the Insulin Index ALL suggest that I shouldn’t eat potatoes. The Satiety Index suggested otherwise so I tried it periodically, sometimes for 2 or 3 days at a time, over several weeks. It worked on most attempts, I ate potatoes, felt very satisfied, & I lost weight. That’s a good result but it’s not the end of the confusion.

Imagine being on a very low-carb keto diet. With this, I’m trying to stay in ketosis by reducing the carbs. Some keto regimens recommend carb days periodically but still require longer periods of very low-carb eating. While I totally believe in the weight loss potential of the keto regimens, I just don’t want to eat that way all the time. I think it works. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And it’s okay to experiment with alternatives. It probably won’t be a ketogenic diet any more but if we lose the weight, do we really care?

Sometimes, I think Grandma maybe had it right … everything in moderation.

EXCEPT those things that we know do us damage. And we should probably eat more of the stuff that doesn’t. Even if it isn’t keto-friendly!

PS … Wine is an essential component of a healthy diet too, isn’t it!?!

No Fails with a Fast!

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No Fails with a Fast!

Coffee

Imagine you’re on a ketogenic diet. You have just one little cookie. You feel like a failure, don’t you. You’ve hit reset. It’s just a big No-No. The ketones immediately run & hide. It’s over. The cycle is done for. Finished. Let’s start again next Monday.

The great thing with intermittent fasting is that it’s impossible to fail. There aren’t as many fasting programs out as there are diets but there’s enough variety that just about everyone can find one that suits. I embrace them all. Going for a 48 hour fast, but you decide to eat lunch the 2nd day? Congrats! You’ve just successfully completed a 42 hour fast instead. Enjoy your lunch!

Fasting, an ancient practice, is the new diet du jour. And there might be something to it. I’m trying to get my head around something more than a one day fast. My ideal one day fast is spending a total wake cycle without food. Though I do add a little heavy cream (35%) to my coffee, I limits my fluids to coffee, tea & water. Since I’m well practiced at not eating breakfast, I won’t have breakfast next morning either. That really turns my one day fast into a 42 hour fast. If I make it to dinner time, I’ve accomplished a 48 hour fast. Bonus points!

The worst case scenario is that you finish dinner at 7pm today. Then you have breakfast at 7am tomorrow. Congratulations again … you’ve completed a 12 hour fast. While doing this every day probably won’t contribute a lot to weight loss, at least we haven’t destroyed a diet “prescription” that we’ve given ourselves. There’s no feeling of having to binge for the rest of the week, while we wait for Monday to roll around before we begin again. You can always start the next fast right away, immediately following breakfast. Or you can go through to dinner time & start over then. The whole diet isn’t shot. There are no big regrets. And you haven’t lost the “rest of the week”. It’s still there to be taken advantage of. When you’re ready.

About the only thing that does mess with my head, while running my infrequent fasting routines, is the scale. I know, I know, we should only weight ourselves once a week. Forget that, I’m on the scale at least twice a day! And that can sometimes show unpredictable results. I don’t have a scale that is calibrated to a standard or anything but it seems pretty repeatable when I load up a heavy weight on it. It’s on a hard, even floor. I’ve even positioned it far away from the vent, so that heating & cooling draughts don’t influence the outcome. Despite that care & attention, it sometimes says that I didn’t lose any weight after a fast day. But then it surprises me with a loss a feast day. What is that about!?!

This is not a consistent thing. I’m really not sure why some fasts give me an immediate result, while others don’t. And why would a feast day, sometimes a pretty wicked one, give me a pleasant surprise?

I don’t know the answer &, frankly, I don’t care too much. I enjoy the pleasant surprises every now & again. The message is to not give up on your fasting regimen too soon. Let your scale play it’s little games & see if the results work this way for you.

The Last Word on Potatoes

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The Last Word on Potatoes

Red Wine

It’s probably not the last word on potatoes. After all, we still have to address the health benefits of French fries! I’ll use the name of the day to more easily explain the sequence of what happened. On Wednesday evening, I carried on exploring the effects of potatoes on my blood sugar. This time, I managed to avoid my sugar-laden dessert. I knew that wasn’t going to be easy so I decided to have two full-sized spud dinners to combat the urge. We’re not talking seconds here, we’re talking two full dinner-sized portions. The first was leftovers from Tuesday, the potato & Brussels sprouts combo. The second was again made from boiled & cooled potatoes, pan fried in olive oil. Then drizzled with more olive oil because they just don’t bring any fat to the party. I added the usual chopped onion, herbs & seasonings. This one also got a shot of store-bought Jalapeño-Lime Aioli. Which I probably shouldn’t have done, but it’s just so good! And I also melted three slices of Jarlsberg cheese into each serving. While potatoes have some protein, the cheese adds more of that, along with some excellent texture & flavour. I was probably a little below my protein requirement on both days but not enough that I worried about it. And it’s only for a couple of days.

From Tuesday’s eating, it took ’til early afternoon Wednesday to get back down to 5.6 mmol/l (101 mg/dl). Remember that I had that sweet dessert on the Tuesday though. The numbers aren’t really all that bad but I’m used to being lower, and faster getting there, on low carb days. Was that difference in glucose decay caused by the sugar in the dessert? Or the fact that I had been low carb for the week prior & my body needed to readjust to handling the carb load again? Am I over producing insulin in reaction to that? And is that insulin just helping transport it out of my blood & into muscle for use? Or is it driving all the excess to my belly for storage as fat!

I don’t know. None of the readings were serious enough that I’m worried so I’ll just ignore it for now. Just before dinner on Wednesday, I was back in my happy zone, at 5.1 mmol/l (92 mg/dl). Pretty much immediately after the hour long feast, it hit 7.1 mmol/l (128 mg/dl). One hour later it was 7.2 (130 mg/dl) & it was back down to 6.3 mmol/l (113 mg/dl) at the two hour mark. By the three hour mark, it was down to 5.8 mmol/l (104 mg/dl). On Wednesday, with the potato binge only & no dessert, the glucose decay was much better, & faster. From a blood glucose perspective, I’m okay including the occasional potato binge.

From a weight loss perspective, the story doesn’t necessarily end there. Potatoes may trigger a greater insulin response than the blood glucose number would suggest. So does that mean that I’m getting fatter while I overindulge on them?

Not according to the scale on Thursday morning. Phew!

Think I’ll have to check the impact of wine & beer with that little glucose meter too! 🙂

More Spuds Please!

Paul - The Wry Eye Guy 1 Comment

More Spuds Please!

Rabbit

Rabbit looks happy on a Plant-based Diet!

I’ve been doing this for years, no … decades, but the more I delve into the world of diet & weight loss, the more I think I’m just following Alice into some surreal place of delusion & horror. Pick any dietary regimen you like, say the ketogenic diets for our purposes here, and then do an internet search for something like the “benefits of keto diet”. That brings up about 6.9 million hits. Looking for the “dangers of keto diet” only brings back 353 thousand, or about 5% of the first lookup’s total. Now try something that most would think contrary to keto: search for the “benefits of plant based diet”. That kicks back 15.6 million results. Doing the opposite: “dangers of plant based diet” yields a list of 784 thousand items. Again about 5% against. I know, I know, I could have used an alternative word to “danger” but the point is that there is huge support for just about any semi-reasonable dietary philosophy out there. And a very similar push-back ratio to both, quiet different, programs.

Just for fun: “plant based vs keto diet” provided 3.5 million results, with most on the first couple of pages favouring the plant based diet.

Let try one more. A couple of searches on the benefits of fasting vs the dangers of fasting produced 463 million on the positive side, with 1.7 million on the danger side. Only 0.4% were negative.

Now this is awfully loose data so we can’t call it science, but it does suggest some questions …

  • Why is fasting, with that massive 463 million hits, that much more interesting to people?
  • And perhaps most importantly, is fasting better than the other diets because of that high interest AND that low negative response rate?

Now I’m not making my dietary decisions on these seagull-in-the-sky views of unexplored data but I think it’s tough to argue that there isn’t just a little lack of clarity out there. There’s a lot. Though regardless of the program, there seems to be a lot of optimism among supporters that it’s the right one. Could there be more than one right one?

Despite the enjoyment I get from reading about nutrition, diet & weight loss, sometimes, I think I’d rather just be thin & get on with my life! I have this horrible, teeth-grinding suspicion that the words of my grandmother will ring true one day & that I’ll then be preaching that old parable … everything in moderation! Though likely with one significant difference … the foods in my fridge & cupboards are not the same as were in hers back then.

And now I’m wondering why plant-based positives had almost two & a half times the number of keto!!! Oh Boy, here we go again! 🙂