don't go paranoid over ketosis

[rubenhan]

Hey, guys,

I've been doing CKD on and off for two years, and to tell you the truths, when I was doing CKD, I was always paranoid over the magical 30g carb limit and being in ketosis.

But as I've been doing CKD and read more about CKD, I’ve learned you shouldn’t fret over 30g carb limit and being in ketosis. Why? Here are my reasonings.

1. The so-called Keto Guru Lyle Mcdonald says so.
Ok, I know Lyle is not a nutritionist god, and not everything he says is 100% true. But I think he is one of the few reliable nutritionists who gives due diligence when he claims some theory. His arguments most always come up with scientific researches. And a lot of the basis of the popular ketogenic diet methods is based on his book The Ketogenic Book, so his opinion should carry some weight.
.
In this link, Lyle Mcdonald reviews a research where they compare ketogenic low-carb diet vs nonketogenic low-carb diet. According to the research, there is no significant different in fat loss between those two diets as long as the calorie intake is in check. Obviously, as his review mentions, there might be other reason for a dieter to stay in ketosis. For me, I feel incredibly better in terms of mood and energy stability, so I try to stay in ketosis. But in terms of fat loss, there is no real difference.

www (dot) bodyrecomposition (dot) com/research-review/ketogenic-low-carbohydrate-diets-have-no-metabolic-advantage-over-nonketogenic-low-carbohydrate-diets-research-review.html

In this link, he talks about required amounts of carbohydrates. As you can see, he argues that usually 100g of carb is the threshold for ketosis, a lot higher than the popular 30g theory. He mentions this in his book The Ketogenic Diet and other articles in his website as well. Obviously, individual mileage will vary as with all other nutritional theory, but people should note 30g of carb is not a law. He mentions that 30g of carb may be required in order for the Ketostix to be able to detect ketone but as you may all know Ketostix is not a reliable tool.

www (dot) bodyrecomposition (dot) com/nutrition/how-many-carbohydrates-do-you-need.html

Ok, since I set the basic ground with an expert’s theories, I’ll add my reasonings as a layman now.

2. Even if you get kicked off ketosis, you are still losing fat.
Let’s say you get kicked off ketosis because of some particular food, chemical compound (sodium nitrite), or supplement.That doesn’t mean your diet is done for and your waist line will bulge. Most likely, you will be very careful with your carb intake and other compounds that might kick you off ketosis. So even if you make a mistake and you take enough amount to kick you off ketosis, that doesn’t mean the world is over. It simply means you are in non-ketogenic diet. You are still burning fat as long as you are in calorie deficit and your metabolism is good. Ketosis is not a requirement to lose fat. Caloric deficit is.

3. Even if you get kicked off ketosis, you’ll get back into ketosis soon enough.
Let’s say you make a mistake as I mentioned before, and now you are off ketosis. That doesn’t mean your entire effort to get into ketosis in the beginning of the week is futile. Unless you gorged yourself with ridiculous amounts of carb, which is highly unlikely for a keto dieter, your liver glycogen level will not be that high. More than likely your liver glycogen level will go to keto level in a matter of few hours, or in the worst case, after your overnight sleep.
Think about it. After your carbup during the weekend, even with ridiculous amounts of carb in your system, you can easily get into ketosis after an overnight sleep or two if your carb intake is limited. Then it should obviously take much less time to get back yourself into ketosis if you accidentally booted yourself off ketosis. Will you really worry the heck out of yourself just because of that few hours? (Btw, more than likely you’ll still be burning fat. And even if you aren’t, you didn’t lose a chance to lose a pound of fat. More than likely, you didn’t burn a few grams of fat). Just relax. Mental sanity is much more important IMHO rather than nitpicking over something that have minimal effect, if it even exists.

4. When you think you were kicked off ketosis, it may not even be true.
According to the above-mentioned articles, the threshold is 100g. Although I admit individual mileage varies, but you have to understand just because you don’t see ketone in your ketostix that does not mean you are off ketosis. It just may be your ketone level is not in detectable level. And even if you were, as I have mentioned in 2 and 3, more than likely your fat loss hasn’t stopped and you’ll get back into ketosis soon.

Conclusion: I know a lot of dieters are bunch of paranoids (me including) freaking out over the smallest thing. And when it comes to keto diet, people fret over carb amount and ketosis like their lives depend on it. But they really worry so much. I know my reasonings could be hard to trust considering my lack of nutritional credential. But at least I urge to read up on what Lyle has to say about this topic. And if you read his articles, you’ll agree that you were worried about something that really doesn’t deserve your attention.

Thank you for reading this article, and hopefully my arguments were clear.

[TrentArena]

As first time Keto dieter this really put me at ease! Good information!

repped

[blong4133]

Hey, guys,

I've been doing CKD on and off for two years, and to tell you the truths, when I was doing CKD, I was always paranoid over the magical 30g carb limit and being in ketosis.

But as I've been doing CKD and read more about CKD, I’ve learned you shouldn’t fret over 30g carb limit and being in ketosis. Why? Here are my reasonings.

1. The so-called Keto Guru Lyle Mcdonald says so.
Ok, I know Lyle is not a nutritionist god, and not everything he says is 100% true. But I think he is one of the few reliable nutritionists who gives due diligence when he claims some theory. His arguments most always come up with scientific researches. And a lot of the basis of the popular ketogenic diet methods is based on his book The Ketogenic Book, so his opinion should carry some weight.
.
In this link, Lyle Mcdonald reviews a research where they compare ketogenic low-carb diet vs nonketogenic low-carb diet. According to the research, there is no significant different in fat loss between those two diets as long as the calorie intake is in check. Obviously, as his review mentions, there might be other reason for a dieter to stay in ketosis. For me, I feel incredibly better in terms of mood and energy stability, so I try to stay in ketosis. But in terms of fat loss, there is no real difference.

www (dot) bodyrecomposition (dot) com/research-review/ketogenic-low-carbohydrate-diets-have-no-metabolic-advantage-over-nonketogenic-low-carbohydrate-diets-research-review.html

In this link, he talks about required amounts of carbohydrates. As you can see, he argues that usually 100g of carb is the threshold for ketosis, a lot higher than the popular 30g theory. He mentions this in his book The Ketogenic Diet and other articles in his website as well. Obviously, individual mileage will vary as with all other nutritional theory, but people should note 30g of carb is not a law. He mentions that 30g of carb may be required in order for the Ketostix to be able to detect ketone but as you may all know Ketostix is not a reliable tool.

www (dot) bodyrecomposition (dot) com/nutrition/how-many-carbohydrates-do-you-need.html

Ok, since I set the basic ground with an expert’s theories, I’ll add my reasonings as a layman now.

2. Even if you get kicked off ketosis, you are still losing fat.
Let’s say you get kicked off ketosis because of some particular food, chemical compound (sodium nitrite), or supplement.That doesn’t mean your diet is done for and your waist line will bulge. Most likely, you will be very careful with your carb intake and other compounds that might kick you off ketosis. So even if you make a mistake and you take enough amount to kick you off ketosis, that doesn’t mean the world is over. It simply means you are in non-ketogenic diet. You are still burning fat as long as you are in calorie deficit and your metabolism is good. Ketosis is not a requirement to lose fat. Caloric deficit is.

3. Even if you get kicked off ketosis, you’ll get back into ketosis soon enough.
Let’s say you make a mistake as I mentioned before, and now you are off ketosis. That doesn’t mean your entire effort to get into ketosis in the beginning of the week is futile. Unless you gorged yourself with ridiculous amounts of carb, which is highly unlikely for a keto dieter, your liver glycogen level will not be that high. More than likely your liver glycogen level will go to keto level in a matter of few hours, or in the worst case, after your overnight sleep.
Think about it. After your carbup during the weekend, even with ridiculous amounts of carb in your system, you can easily get into ketosis after an overnight sleep or two if your carb intake is limited. Then it should obviously take much less time to get back yourself into ketosis if you accidentally booted yourself off ketosis. Will you really worry the heck out of yourself just because of that few hours? (Btw, more than likely you’ll still be burning fat. And even if you aren’t, you didn’t lose a chance to lose a pound of fat. More than likely, you didn’t burn a few grams of fat). Just relax. Mental sanity is much more important IMHO rather than nitpicking over something that have minimal effect, if it even exists.

4. When you think you were kicked off ketosis, it may not even be true.
According to the above-mentioned articles, the threshold is 100g. Although I admit individual mileage varies, but you have to understand just because you don’t see ketone in your ketostix that does not mean you are off ketosis. It just may be your ketone level is not in detectable level. And even if you were, as I have mentioned in 2 and 3, more than likely your fat loss hasn’t stopped and you’ll get back into ketosis soon.

Conclusion: I know a lot of dieters are bunch of paranoids (me including) freaking out over the smallest thing. And when it comes to keto diet, people fret over carb amount and ketosis like their lives depend on it. But they really worry so much. I know my reasonings could be hard to trust considering my lack of nutritional credential. But at least I urge to read up on what Lyle has to say about this topic. And if you read his articles, you’ll agree that you were worried about something that really doesn’t deserve your attention.

Thank you for reading this article, and hopefully my arguments were clear.

Well said.

repped.

[DustyChicago]

Great post and I completely agree with your sentiment.


I will say, however, that when I started on a CKD for the first time, ketosis and the registering of ketosis became a way to ensure that I was sticking to what I had planned as my diet. So I agree that ketosis isnt really a big deal for fat-loss it can become helpful, rather than harmful, when psychologically trying to stick to the diet.

[g5tran]

Do you have an opinion of why someone should use ketosis over a regular diet for cutting fat? I wanted to preserve muscle and the description of a muscle sparing fat burning diet is what hooked me at first.

[rubenhan]

Great post and I completely agree with your sentiment.


I will say, however, that when I started on a CKD for the first time, ketosis and the registering of ketosis became a way to ensure that I was sticking to what I had planned as my diet. So I agree that ketosis isnt really a big deal for fat-loss it can become helpful, rather than harmful, when psychologically trying to stick to the diet.

I completely agree with you. YOu are talking about being in control of your diet. I just wrote this post because I see so many cases where diet is in complete control of the person driving them crazy. As long as the person is in control of the diet, not the other way around, I find it very healthy.

[blong4133]

Do you have an opinion of why someone should use ketosis over a regular diet for cutting fat? I wanted to preserve muscle and the description of a muscle sparing fat burning diet is what hooked me at first.

Keeping it simple, when you go on a restricted calorie diet, your body pulls energy from all over the place: muscles, carbs, fat etc. when you're body's main sorce of energy is fat, it will be a lot more reluctant to go to muscle for it's energy source. You can take in a ton of carbs, and if your body doesn't use them, they get stored as fat. If you're not in ketosis, and you run out of carbs, your body can pull from wherever to get it's energy source. When you get your body to go into ketosis, you have higher fat content in the foods you're eating, so the most readily available source is the fat, which is what the body will start burning. Once you get into ketosis, your body uses the fat for it's energy, rather than if you're following a normal restricted calorie diet, in which your body just burns whatever it can. When you run out of fat from your daily cals, your body doesn't have to switch to using muscle for it's energy, it will just keep burning the fat that is stored throughout your body.

There's really no sourced I have for that, but that is what makes the most sense for me. I've done regular restricted cal diets and a huge chunk of the weight I lost was muscle. Part of it was probably not from eating the right macros, but I have no trouble dropping weight while keeping my muscle while on keto.

[rubenhan]

Do you have an opinion of why someone should use ketosis over a regular diet for cutting fat? I wanted to preserve muscle and the description of a muscle sparing fat burning diet is what hooked me at first.

I recommend reading the FAQ in this forum and go to Lyle Mcdonald's website and read his articles since he is much better at explain pros and cons of it. Or maybe get his book The Ketogenic Diet. It's a great book with tons of valuable information on general nutrition including the Ketogenic diet.

[g5tran]

Thanks for the explanations guys, I've read through the ketogenic diet by Lyle Mcdonald and have a pretty solid grasp of the concepts like it was explained here. I just imagined ketosis provided much more fat loss compared to a normal calorie restriction so that was kind of mind boggling.

Like you said though, the most important thing for me is it's muscle sparing effect. I'd hate to lose hard earned muscle, and that's more than enough for me to keep up with it.

EDIT:

I was thinking about it a little more, if the diet is protein sparing, with no carb source, the body would have to pull its energy from fat like you said. With a calorie restriction under a normal diet, the amount of fat burned should be less than the amount of fat the body uses in keto because the body only has body fat to draw from. I just can't wrap my head around how the amount of fat burned is about the same in both diets assuming an equal calorie deficit.

[katja333]

I just can't wrap my head around how the amount of fat burned is about the same in both diets assuming an equal calorie deficit.

Cos the body always takes the easiest route in term of metabolism. If you are feeding it fat, then it will be in fat-burning / using fat mode, so then will burn more easily into your stored fat as the process is already going (the body doesnt have to switch fuels). If you are feeding it carbs, it will choose this over fats then to get into fat burning mode will require more effort... I think!! Is this what you mean??

[katja333]

and thanks for your post - i have been getting somewhat paranoid about carb grams seeing as only day 16 on keto - the first few days the sticks changed but after carb up and back to keto they are hardly changing colour! -it's driving me nuts!!! i MUSt be in keto.. stupid stix!

[alex2363]

dude thanks for this, im going to start the keto soon and now im not scared about losing mucle...u got repped too

[Dirty Shoez]

I tell myself I'm not paranoid, but still go through 3-4 sticks a day sometimes. Pisses me off when those things won't change color.

Then again--and I hope I'm remembering this right--if your deficit is low enough (800-1000+ calories), sometimes you won't register Ketones at all....because your body is going insane trying to keep up. If every ketone created is used up for fuel, none can go to waste...aka you won't be pissing any out in the first place. (Correct me if I'm wrong here??)

Good post. Will try to rep (if I can)