I need help with KETO, please

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doodles
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I need help with KETO, please

Post by doodles »

I'm not seeing a forum specifically for keto on this site, so I need help with the following:

1) Am I understanding correctly that full keto is less than 50 carbs a day?? Or around 75% fat, 20% protein, and 5% carbs..is that right?

2) Then help me understand what mild keto is as far as carbs per day?? I have read 60-65% fat, 20% protein, and 15-20% carbs. Then what is the total amount of carbs for mild keto as compared to the stated "<50 carbs" for full keto??

3) When it comes to 12 hours of fasting, plus stopping eating 3 hours before bedtime, do the "12 hours of fasting" INCLUDE the 3 hours you stop eating before bedtime, or do those 12 hours of fasting start AFTER you refrain from eating/going to bed??
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TheresaB
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Re: I need help with KETO, please

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doodles wrote:1) Am I understanding correctly that full keto is less than 50 carbs a day?? Or around 75% fat, 20% protein, and 5% carbs..is that right?

2) Then help me understand what mild keto is as far as carbs per day?? I have read 60-65% fat, 20% protein, and 15-20% carbs. Then what is the total amount of carbs for mild keto as compared to the stated "<50 carbs" for full keto??

3) When it comes to 12 hours of fasting, plus stopping eating 3 hours before bedtime, do the "12 hours of fasting" INCLUDE the 3 hours you stop eating before bedtime, or do those 12 hours of fasting start AFTER you refrain from eating/going to bed??
Full keto is when your body makes ketones. Every body is different with respect to how many carbs a person can eat and still produce ketones. That's why it's important to test to verify that you are making ketones.

A more indepth discussion can be found in our wiki Ketosis and Ketogenic Diet.

When it comes to fasting, a longer overnight fast is recommended for ApoE4s, 14-16 hours. But to answer your question, the 3 hours after you've stopped eating before bedtime is included.
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Re: I need help with KETO, please

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doodles wrote: 1) Am I understanding correctly that full keto is less than 50 carbs a day??[/b] Or around 75% fat, 20% protein, and 5% carbs..is that right?[/b]

2) Then help me understand what mild keto is as far as carbs per day?? I have read 60-65% fat, 20% protein, and 15-20% carbs. Then what is the total amount of carbs for mild keto as compared to the stated "<50 carbs" for full keto??

3) When it comes to 12 hours of fasting, plus stopping eating 3 hours before bedtime, do the "12 hours of fasting" INCLUDE the 3 hours you stop eating before bedtime, or do those 12 hours of fasting start AFTER you refrain from eating/going to bed??
I concur with TheresaB. Some people are very metabolically compromised and will need to really restrict carbs to get into ketosis.

Also, what is your objective? Weight (fat) loss, ketones as an alternative brain fuel, keeping insulin low (presence of ketones is a proxy for low insulin) and so on?

Also may require fewer carbs to encourage the body to adapt. I adapted in 2009. There were relatively few keto resources then. I knew Dr. Atkins "induction phase" (20g/carbs/day) for a number of weeks would likely put me in ketosis, hence that is what I did. It is an abrupt start, but it worked. Today, and for a long time, I generally eat between 100-200g carbs a day and test >= 0.5 mmol/L on a morning test. I also fast 16 or more hours a day on most days and do periodic extended (5-7 day) fasts.

Yes, the fasting time starts when you stop eating and is inclusive of the time before bed.
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Re: I need help with KETO, please

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doodles wrote:I'm not seeing a forum specifically for keto on this site, so I need help with the following:

1) Am I understanding correctly that full keto is less than 50 carbs a day?? Or around 75% fat, 20% protein, and 5% carbs..is that right?

2) Then help me understand what mild keto is as far as carbs per day?? I have read 60-65% fat, 20% protein, and 15-20% carbs. Then what is the total amount of carbs for mild keto as compared to the stated "<50 carbs" for full keto??

3) When it comes to 12 hours of fasting, plus stopping eating 3 hours before bedtime, do the "12 hours of fasting" INCLUDE the 3 hours you stop eating before bedtime, or do those 12 hours of fasting start AFTER you refrain from eating/going to bed??
Hi doodles, I’ll offer my experience here too. When I was first trying to adapt to a ketogenic diet, I had a difficult time generating ketones even with severely restricted carbs, 20-30 grams per day. My readings were .3-.5 and it didn’t seem like I could get above that.
Finally , after months of this of low carb eating and still having ketones lower than I wanted , I did a 3 day water fast, and that seemed to “flip the switch”. My ketones went up to 1.7. Since then, I have been able to stay in ketosis pretty easily, and have been able to be much more lenient on my carb intake than I was in the initial days of trying to achieve metabolic flexibility. Fats are probably about 75% of my daily calories. When I am very active, I can increase my carb intake and stay in ketosis. Hope that helps!
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Re: I need help with KETO, please

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TheresaB wrote:
A more indepth discussion can be found in our wiki Ketosis and Ketogenic Diet.

When it comes to fasting, a longer overnight fast is recommended for ApoE4s, 14-16 hours. But to answer your question, the 3 hours after you've stopped eating before bedtime is included.
Thanks TheresaB. I will check out the link. I also hope to find out what mild ketosis means.
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Re: I need help with KETO, please

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I just did my first use of the keto mojo. After fasting overnight for 11 and a half hours, my keto result was .3 mg/dl. From everything I see, I should be above .5. is that correct?? Why was I only .3? Yesterday evening

And my glucose result was 104 mg/dl. Now I have to explain that I've been under a lot of stress the last few months, and thus my autonomic nervous system has been overreactive. And I woke up with excess adrenaline this morning. The way I know is that I have palpitations going on when I do. And adrenaline/epinephrine will raise glucose. I'm doing my best to deal with the stress better. But it's a process. I also just found out I have a bit of insulin resistance, but am not pre-diabetic.

Now as far as my GKI: I went online to the Keto Mojo calculator and see 19.26 mg/dl and 346.67 mmoL/L. I'm assuming I go by the mg/dl when I use the graphic at the bottom of the page: https://keto-mojo.com/glucose-ketone-index-gki/ But if I do, I am far from being in keto, is that right?? NOT happy if I'm correct...and confused. Yesterday's dinner was totally keto. But breakfast wasn't totally keto and for a reason, which I'll explain in a post after this. And I remember eating a handful of macademia nuts inbetween breakfast and dinner. I don't remember what else I ate. I'm in the process of all this.
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Re: I need help with KETO, please

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doodles wrote:I just did my first use of the keto mojo. After fasting overnight for 11 and a half hours, my keto result was .3 mg/dl. From everything I see, I should be above .5. is that correct?? Why was I only .3?.
Hard to say, so many variables, here are the ones I can think of:
Are you keto adapted?
How long have you been keto adapted?
Are you insulin sensitive?
How many carbs did you eat?
Did you consume excess protein?
Did you exercise?
How long did you fast?
How well did you sleep?
Are you under stress?
What time of day did you measure?

You're making ketones, that's a good thing.
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Re: I need help with KETO, please

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TheresaB wrote: Are you keto adapted?
How long have you been keto adapted?
Are you insulin sensitive?
How many carbs did you eat?
Did you consume excess protein?
Did you exercise?
How long did you fast?
How well did you sleep?
Are you under stress?
What time of day did you measure?

You're making ketones, that's a good thing.
Theresa, glad to know I'm making ketones at .3 for my first test. But do know I'm fairly new to all this and doing baby steps. So I doubt I'm truly keto adapted. My baby steps process so far is as follows:

When it comes to food and those baby steps:

1) I removed most all bread products about 6 weeks ago or more.
2) I've always been a sugar-holic, and have greatly lowered sugar intake the past 6 weeks or more. But I'm not yet totally off.
3) Most of my breakfasts are low carb with protein like eggs scrambled in olive oil, occasional bacon. I eat berries with several of them. Twice I've had almond flour pancakes with lots of eggs in them, once coconut flour with eggs in them, sprayed with butter product
4) I'm using a keto food service in order to slowly understand the taste and way of high fat/lower carb meals.

Fasting:

I've been doing 12 hour fasts almost a month, sometimes 13 hours. I've had no problems with it.

Insulin

Got my blood results back via Apollo. I do have slight insulin resistance. But not even pre-diabetic. I've been told to use Berberine and two others I'm not remembering at the moment.

When I did the keto/insulin test:

It was this morning and after fasting over 11 hours.

Stress

Yes, I'm under stress. Mentioned that above.

Sleep

My sleep is compromised because my autonomic nervous system is a little wonky at night due to all the stress I've been under this year. Stated above that the stress probably contributed to the glucose reading of 104 at the 11th hour of fasting.

And here's a kink in all this:

I have a digestive enzyme problem. I don't make enough amylase to break down carbs. I have to take it with any and every carb. But I know I haven't been taking it each and every time the last week, even if other times I was! So after being VERY busy for three days in a row, I had a major glycogen crash Saturday night. When I do, it takes days to get rid of the fatigue I feel, which may mean it takes day to build my glycogen stores back up, and which I'm still in the throes of. And I'm saying that, being VERY new to all this, because I think I lowered my carbs too much, too quickly, not understanding that I may need to approach even mild keto much slower after a lifetime of eating carbs.
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Re: I need help with KETO, please

Post by davidrluck »

We need help with Keto, too! My wife is apoe4 positive (heterozygous). So we started the Mito diet (recommended by the Institute of Functional Medicine) a year ago. After about 6 months of no ketosis, we started really cutting out the carbs and politely lost some weight. Now my BMI is 19.8 and hers is 19.2. We haven't really started fasting longer than 12 hours yet because we want to gain weight. Everything we read about Keto diet is "Lose weight". What if you want to gain? Can you eat two meals a day and gain weight?
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Re: I need help with KETO, please

Post by doodles »

davidrluck wrote:We need help with Keto, too! My wife is apoe4 positive (heterozygous). So we started the Mito diet (recommended by the Institute of Functional Medicine) a year ago. After about 6 months of no ketosis, we started really cutting out the carbs and politely lost some weight. Now my BMI is 19.8 and hers is 19.2. We haven't really started fasting longer than 12 hours yet because we want to gain weight. Everything we read about Keto diet is "Lose weight". What if you want to gain? Can you eat two meals a day and gain weight?
Just add more food of which is acceptable, in my mind. And I'm very impressed with this guy's ideas as far as keto: https://www.marksdailyapple.com/where-i ... .facebook
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