Disclosure: We received no compensation from MyFitnessPal or Under Armour for this post.

In a previous post, I showed you how to use the MyFitnessPal app to calculate your daily food consumption for a ketogenic diet. For Barbara and me, this app has been absolutely essential to our keto diet success story.

However, shortly after publishing that post, I realized that most of our friends probably use their mobile devices a lot more than a laptop. Unfortunately, the screenshots I used in that tutorial were from my laptop.

So, in order for you to experience the same keto diet success that Barbara and I have had, I thought it would be helpful if I put together a tutorial on how to use the MyFitnessPal (MFP) app on your handheld device too.

When I initially set up MyFitnessPal on Barb’s phone, I thought it would generally follow the computer program, but it didn’t. The phone app is very different than the desktop program.

I’m not completely tech ignorant but configuring this app took a bit of time. Eventually, though, I got the hang of it, and I must say it’s a handy app. If you’re tethered to your phone, then this app is a great way to keep track of your macros.

Since I’m an iPhone user, I will tailor this tutorial to that specific device. I can’t imagine though that the app would be that different on android devices, but I could be wrong.

Download The MyFitnessPal App

The very first thing you have to do is download the MFP app. That means you’ll have to use your email. MFP will send you an email at least once a week. I hate spam as much as anyone, but I kind of enjoy the MFP emails. They’re not pushy on selling things even though they’re run by the clothing manufacturer Under Armour.

While their dietary theory is not always the same as mine, they often have interesting recipes that can be modified for gluten-free, low-carb diets and their fitness tips can be useful at times. They’ll also send you a summary of your weekly progress.

Okay, once you have the app installed, your first step is to enter your personal goals.

Establishing Your Personal Goals

If you’ve already read this far, I assume you know what your ketogenic dietary goals are. But if you don’t, you can click here to see how Barbara and I do it using ketogains.com. Once you have determined those goals, you can then proceed to the MFP app.

The Home Page

When you open the MFP app, it will display the home page. It looks like this.

As you can see, my personal goal of 1500 calories is already set. Again, I established this goal by calculating my daily macronutrient intake on the ketogains.com calculator. Next, you want to enter your personal goals.

Entering Your Personal Goals

In the above picture, on the lower right, is the more button. Tap this button and it will take you to the More page.

Now tap the Goals button. This will take you to the main Goals page.

On this page, you can set some general health and fitness goals. These include goals like starting weight, current weight, goal weight, and activity level. Notice I set my activity level at “not very active”. Since I’m not on my feet all day and I’m not an endurance athlete, I felt that was the right choice.

As you scroll down, you’ll see Nutrition Goals. Don’t set these yet.

Continue to scroll down and you’ll see Fitness Goals. You can go ahead and set Workouts/Week and Minutes/Workout.

Now scroll back up to Nutrition Goals and tap on Calorie, Carbs, Protein and Fat Goals. If you have the free version app, when this screen opens, the other categories should be locked.

Setting Nutrition Goals

Tap the Calorie, Carbs, Protein and Fat Goals button and the following Calories & Macros screen will appear.

Here’s where it gets a little tricky. Calories are easy to set because you can set them at exactly what you want. Just tap on it and set the number you want.

However, if you only have the free version, like I do, you cannot set carbs, protein, and fat by the grams. You must do it by percentages. Again, if you have your macro percentages in mind, this shouldn’t be too difficult.

First, tap on either of the three macros and you will be brought to this page.

You can adjust any of the macro percentages to a percent you desire. I set mine to 5% carbs, 25% protein and 70% fat. This equaled 100% of my daily allowable macro intake.

As you can see, it automatically set my carb consumption at 19 grams. Protein at 94 grams and fat at 117 grams. This is pretty close to the parameters calculated by the ketogains.com calculator. It may not be exact, but it gives a good basis from which to work. Make sure your macro percentage is set to 100%.

Hit the check mark at the top of the screen and your macros are set!

Now, tap the back arrow twice and you’re back to the MORE page.

Now you’re ready to start adding in your daily food consumption.

Adding In Daily Food Consumption On MFP

Let’s start to add in food. In the above MORE page, tap that big blue button with the plus sign. That will bring you to this screen.

Now, tap that big orange button that says food. You guessed that already, right? You’ll now be brought to the Select a Meal page.

You can choose to add food to whatever meal you’d like. Let’s start with breakfast.

Adding Food For Breakfast

Tap on the Breakfast button, and you’ll be brought to this screen.

From this page, you can search for a food. Most of the food we eat is in the MFP data bank. It will also record your recent and frequent food choices. You can see it has kept a whole list of my recent food choices. I was fortunate that the mobile app imported all my food choices from my laptop version.

Okay, let’s first search for scrambled eggs. Type scrambled eggs into the search bar, press search on your device, and a whole list of scrambled egg choices will appear.

Now tap on Large Egg – Scrambled. Subsequently, a whole lot of nutrition information, including macronutrient data, will appear. Eggs are almost the perfect food. Notice their macro data. They have excellent protein and fat and are in low carbs.

If you’re going to eat two eggs, go to servings, tap it, and it will allow you to add more. The macronutrient data will adjust accordingly.

Since I usually eat two eggs a day, I’ll input that data. Once you have added a particular food, tap the check mark at the top of the screen. It will then bring you to the Today page.

As you can see, you can add more food to whatever meal you choose.

Adding More Food

To add more food, just tap the Add Food button and go through the same process.

I’m going to add in one link of Trader Joe’s Sweet Italian Sausage from the breakfast add food button. Go ahead and search for it. See if you can find it. Once you find it, tap the check mark at the top of the page, and you’ll see that the screen has added in the sausage.

Don’t add any more food right now. I want you to look at the top of the screen where it shows a green 1218 remaining. This is obviously the number of calories I can consume for the rest of the day.

Now, tap the green 1218. It will bring you to the Nutrition page.

The Nutrition Page

My app opens to the Macros selection on the Nutrition page first. If yours open differently, tap the Macros selection first. This screen shows you the macro content of the food you have already ingested for the day.

You can see that I’ve already consumed 4g of carbs, 20g of fat, and 23g of protein.

The Total category shows you my macro percentage of the food you’ve eaten and the Goal category is your original daily macro data.

The Total category is not important right now but will become important later in the day as it will show you how close to or how far you’re over your goal.

Now, don’t leave this screen just yet. At the top of the screen, tap the Nutrients button. 

The Nutrients Selection

When you tap Nutrients, this page will pop up.

This page gives you a clearer picture of what’s going on with your food consumption in relation to your macros.

In my case, you see that I’ve eaten 23g of protein. Since my goal is 94g, I can eat another 71g throughout the day. This will allow me to judge what I can include on my menu for the rest of the day.

Carbs and fat are also displayed as are many other nutrients. Oops, you can see that I haven’t eaten any fiber yet. No worries. That will fill up later on in the day. Or, like today, I ate Barbara’s delicious broccoli frittata. I got some fiber there. Some mornings I’ll saute up some fresh spinach — there’s some fiber!

Remember, fiber can be subtracted from your carb totals to lower your theoretical carb intake. For example, one-half cup of kale has 3 g of carbs, but it also has 1g of fiber. Therefore, your total carbs would be 2g.

The forward and back arrows allow you to go back a day or forward a day. You can ignore these for now. You can also ignore the Calories button. We’re not really interested in calories.

Now, tap the X button at the top left of the screen, and you’ll be brought back to the Today (Add Food) page.

Adding Fractions Of A Food

The two foods I illustrated were pretty simple to input. Two eggs and 1 sausage are complete quantities. What do you do if you want to add a food by particular ounces?

Easy peasy! Okay, if I had a broccoli frittata this morning, I would want to include the ¼ cup of broccoli Barbara used to make it.

Let’s start from scratch. From the Home page tap the big blue circle with the plus sign, then tap the red circle that says food.

From the Select A Meal page, choose Breakfast. Now search for broccoli. When the list of broccoli comes up, choose Broccoli, raw. It will be listed as 1 cup chopped. That’s a problem. Barbara didn’t use one cup of broccoli. Now, what!?

Simply tap the Broccoli, raw button. The nutrient page for broccoli will appear. You’ll see there Serving Size and under that Number of Servings. Next, tap the Number of Servings. This page will appear.

From here you can set the serving as multiple cups or a fraction of a cup. Suppose Barbara used ? of a cup. I simply tap ?, then hit the check mark. That will set broccoli at ? of a cup. Then I tap the check mark at the top of the Add Food page and broccoli is added to my Today page.

Notice that broccoli was added as 0.1 cups and not ?. I guess MFP rounds down, but it’s close enough for me. Play around with the add food page, and you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly.

Editing Your Food Choices

Uh, oh. You added broccoli when you wanted to add kale. What do you do now!!!!

Sometimes you may add a food by mistake. For example, here I have some Trader Joe’s bacon that I want to remove.

To remove the bacon, all I have to do is hit edit at the top left of the screen, and it will allow you to delete any food.

Simply chose bacon and then hit the delete button at the top right, and bacon will be removed.

MFP Saves Your Food Choices

The above process seems like a lot of work, but it does get easier. One reason is that MFP keeps track of all the recent and frequent foods you’ve added. In other words, if you added scrambled eggs today, then that food will show up immediately in your recent food list.

As you add more foods, your list will grow. For example, when I want to add a food for any meal, this list will automatically pop up.

These are some of my Recent food choices. I can actually scroll down for many more choices. If I preferred, I could have tapped the Frequent button at the top of the screen, and it would have given me even more choices. All of these foods were added by me in the past.

If you add food using your computer, they will be automatically imported into the app.

Now, the beauty of this list is that you don’t have to constantly search for foods. Also, and this is a great feature, you can add multiple foods at once.

Adding Multiple Foods

Simply tap Multi-add at the bottom of the screen, and this page will pop up.

You simply check the food you want and then hit Add, and MFP will automatically add them to your food list for the day. How easy is that?

These are the basic steps for getting you going with the MFP app. There are some other features you can play around with. You can add your daily water consumption, keep a log of your exercise, and track your weight loss.

Okay, that’s about it. I hope this tutorial will be of help. I wish you well in your health and fitness journey.

We would love to hear your comments. Have a blessed and healthful week.

This article originally appeared on glutenfreehomestead.com.

The post How To Use The MyFitnessPal App On Your Mobile Device appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.

In previous posts, Barbara and I have talked about our goals and successes with the ketogenic diet. In my last post, I showed you the simple strategy we use to configure our macros for the diet. 

You’re now familiar with what a keto diet is and how ketosis affects your body. You’ve established why you want to go keto (e.g.. weight loss, help in treating a specific health condition, or enhanced physical performance). And you’ve solved the mystery of macro calculation.

So now you’re ready to dive right into the keto diet, right? Well, not so fast. Slow down a bit.

You’re not going to just jump into a lake without knowing something about the depth of the water or its temperature. So it is with the keto diet. Even after knowing what your daily macronutrients should be, there are still several other important things about the Keto diet that you need to know.

You might have heard some of the horror stories from people who’ve tried keto. Some report that they experienced the dreaded “keto flu”. Others complain that their strength training suffered horribly, some are hungry all the time, and others complain that they just can’t find good keto recipes.

In this post, I’ll show you how Barbara and I avoided most of the problems associated with the ketogenic diet and how we quickly corrected a very annoying unexpected problem.

First, let’s get some preliminary stuff out of the way.

Preliminary Stuff

Before Barbara and I went keto, we had a complete physical and blood panel. There was no medical reason preventing us from trying the keto diet. Also, even though we wanted the health benefits of ketones, we weren’t using the diet to treat any specific disease.

As I’ve said in the past, if you’re going to go keto, make sure you’re healthy enough to do it. If you’re using keto to treat a specific disease (type 2 or type 1 diabetes, hypertension, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer) or if you’re taking meds for a condition, make sure you do it under the supervision of a doctor who understands low-carb diets.

Okay, let’s get to the important nuances of a keto diet.

What Does High In Healthy Fat Mean?

A ketogenic diet is characterized as a low-carb (<30 grams net) high-fat diet. It’s called high fat because a majority of your macros will come from fat. Fat comprises about 70% of Barbara’s diet and mine.

However, just because a keto diet is high in fat doesn’t mean that Barbara and I can eat any kind of fat we want. Most of our fat comes from meat (grass fed when possible), butter, olive oil, coconut oil, salmon, sardines, avocados, eggs, and cheese.

I’m a big advocate of quality extra-virgin olive oil. I probably enjoy a good EVOO as much as some people enjoy a fine wine. See my olive oil post here.

The fats we avoid like the plague are highly processed seed oils (corn, vegetable, soybean, etc.). See my post on the dangers of soybean oil here.

Most of the fats we eat are saturated. The mainstream medical community still has this perverse antipathy to saturated fats. However, saturated fat is not your enemy.

Crucial Things We Had To Be Aware Of Concerning The Keto Diet

Before Barbara and I went keto we did a ton of research. One thing we were concerned about was the dreaded “keto flu”.

The Keto Flu

Some people who jump right into a keto diet often report experiencing symptoms like fatigue, headaches, irritability, and muscle cramps. These symptoms have become known as the “keto flu”. But this isn’t really the flu. Experts relate that these symptoms are a result of the body moving away from carbohydrate metabolism to fat metabolism.

The transition away from carbs allows the kidneys to work more efficiently whereby they excrete more sodium and water. Also, a keto diet eschews high sodium containing processed foods. If you were consuming a lot of these foods prior to keto, their removal from your diet may contribute to sodium depletion.

A simple fix for the “keto flu”, or to avoid it altogether, is to maintain the proper intake of sodium and water.

Barbara and I never experienced the “keto flu”. One probable reason is that we had a gradual transition to keto. We were paleo for many years, then switched to low-carb, and then to keto. By the time we went keto, we were already somewhat fat adapted. So apparently our sodium intake was adequate.

Also, you have to make sure you get enough water when on keto.Generally, we drink at least 6-8 glasses of water per day. This seems to be adequate for us.

Barbara and I experience this rapid weight loss when we first went low-carb, but not when we went keto. Our weight loss on keto was gradual and sustained.

Let’s explore the recommendations for sodium, potassium, and magnesium intake in more detail.

What Should Your Sodium Intake Look Like On A Keto Diet?

A teaspoon of table salt has about 2.3 grams of sodium. Doing the math means you’ll need at least a little over 2 teaspoons of salt a day.

No, that doesn’t mean you have to dump all that salt onto your food.

You’ll get some sodium naturally from food (pickles, etc.) and some from salting your food. If you don’t think you’re getting enough sodium, you can get even more from bullion cubes or broth.

In my case, and it’s something Barbara finds utterly disgusting, I’ll put some pink Himalayan salt in the palm of my hand and just lick it up. I learned this from Dr. Mercola who said he does it 6-8 times throughout the day.

Caution On Sodium Intake

Some individuals should exercise caution when adjusting salt intake. Individuals with persistently high blood pressure and fluid retention and people taking NSAIDs should be wary of raising their sodium intake until their conditions resolve. See here. Also, people performing heavy work or physical exercise in the heat may need more sodium.

If you’re healthy and concerned that consuming 5 grams of sodium is dangerous, this 2014 study should allay your concerns. After observing 100,000 individuals, it found that the lowest mortality risk occurred at 5.0 grams of sodium per day.

For Dr. Phinney’s sodium recommendations, see here.

Let’s take a look at potassium.

What Should Your Potassium Intake Look Like On A Keto Diet?

Potassium is another important electrolyte to consider on a keto diet. It is generally recommended that you get at least 1000-3,500 mg of potassium daily. If you’re on a well-formulated keto diet, you should get enough potassium from foods like raw spinach, avocado, mushrooms, salmon, steak, and pork loin.

To be on the safe side, occasionally we’ll sprinkle some of this potassium salt on our meat. Caution: it tastes rather blah.

What Should Your Magnesium Intake Look Like On A Keto Diet?

Magnesium is a mineral that many Americans are deficient in. According to a 2011 report in the Journal Nutrition, 45 percent of American adults do not get the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) amount of magnesium from their diet.

Barbara and I were already aware of the importance of supplementing with magnesium well before we went keto.  We were taking 200 mg/day.

Since we were getting 200 mg from our supplements and the rest from our food, we thought we were okay. We found out the hard way that we were very wrong.

Constipation: A Side Effect Of A Keto Diet

After a few weeks on the keto diet, I developed constipation. This was the first time I had this problemsince before going on a paleo diet years ago. Suggestions to eat more fiber and drink more water were not helpful as I was already doing that.

I read that upping my magnesium intake might help. So Barbara and I increased our magnesium to 600 mg/day. Literally, overnight the problem disappeared and never returned. What a relief that was!!! This is the magnesium that we use.

What About Micronutrients?

Since Barbara and I were on a paleo diet for at least 5 years, we were already eating a lot of whole foods and we continued doing this on our keto diet. We eat at least 3-6 portions of above ground leafy and cruciferous veggies daily. This ensures that we get a good supply of micronutrients.

Maintaining A Good Omega-6 To Omega-3 Fatty Acid Ratio On A Keto Diet?

An important nutritional parameter Barbara and I seek to maintain in our keto diet is an optimal omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio.  These fatty acids are essential fatty acids. That means that even though our bodies need them to function properly, our bodies cannot produce them. We must, therefore, get them from our diet.

Omega-3 fatty acids are recognized as promoting healthy cells and having beneficial anti-inflammatory properties. Several studies had been performed that show they help in reducing the risk of heart disease. See here, here and here.

Omega-6 fatty acids are important for maintaining cell wall integrity and providing energy for the heart. However, when the omega-6 level is elevated, they become pro-inflammatory in a negative way.

Increased omega-6s have been associated with chronic inflammatory diseases such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, CVD, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease. See here and here.

More importantly, for health concerns, is the proportion of omega-6 to omega-3 you get from your diet. Here’s why.

Today’s research suggests that a healthy ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 should fall between 1:1 – 4:1. However, with today’s Western Pattern diet this ratio has now increased to between 15:1 – 16.7:1. See here and here.

This ratio does have health consequences. For example, a ratio of 4:1 was associated with a 70% decrease in total mortality, a ratio of 2-3:1 suppressed inflammation in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, and a ratio of 5:1 had a beneficial effect on patients with asthma, whereas a ratio of 10:1 had adverse consequences. See here.

An Additional Supplement To Our Keto Diet

In my last post, I included a sample of what we eat during a typical day. You may have noticed that MCT oil was on that list. MCT oil is not essential to a keto diet, but if you’re looking to up your ketone production, it may help.

MCT Oil

Remember one of the main reasons for us going keto was so that our bodies would be in a state of ketosis. MCT oil is a supplement that is known for increasing ketone production in the body.

It’s a medium chain triglyceride oil that is derived from palm kernel oil or coconut oil. Upon being ingested, MCT oil passes directly to the liver where it is metabolized into ketones.

MCT oil has been reported to help with metabolic syndrome, and to increase cognition in mild to moderate Alzheimer’s patients.,

Also, since your liver converts MCT oil directly to ketones, it won’t store the oil as fat. The newly produced ketones, therefore, are an instant source of energy for our bodies.

Anecdotally, individuals had reported increased clarity and energy after consuming MCT oil. You can add my name to that list.

This is the MCT oil we are currently using. I pour one tablespoon into my 12:00 PM green tea, and I’m good for the day. There is no change in the taste of the tea, but the consistency is a little oily. It is oil after all.

For more on the benefits of MCT oil, see here. It’s important to note that you don’t need to consume MCT oil to be in ketosis.

Some Cautions When Consuming MCT Oil

There’s one more diet tweak I’d like to mention.

Fasting

Many people who practice a keto lifestyle engage in fasting. If you refrain from eating, your body will have no choice but to consume its own fat for energy. Thus you will lose weight. Also, because no carbs are being consumed, your body will produce ketones.

Fasting will also aid in bringing your body into a better state of insulin sensitivity.

However, I have tried prolonged fasting (more than 24 hours), but it doesn’t work for me. I’ve found the stress on my body is too much for me to handle. Barbara coped better with it, but she also found it stressful.

Since we were not trying to lose humongous amounts of weight, we decided not to incorporate it into our keto regimen.

For everything, you want to know about fasting, visit Dr. Jason Fung’s site here.

There’s also some controversy in the keto world about the dangers of a loss of muscle mass when fasting. Dr. Phinney says it’s possible while Dr. Fung says it’s not. The jury is still out on this issue.

While we don’t fast, we do engage in delayed onset eating.

Delayed Onset Eating

While we don’t do prolonged fasts, we do practice delayed eating. We generally finish eating about 8:00 pm and don’t eat again until at least 12:00 PM the following day. That gives us a 16-hour fast period every day. Eating this way should produce better insulin sensitivity and more ketones.

I’m never really hungry until about 12:00 PM so I’ve experienced no problems with this practice. At 12:00, I’ll have a couple of eggs, bacon or a sausage, some greens, green tea, MCT oil, and a scoop of collagen, and I’m good until about 4:00 PM. At 4:00, I’ll have a sardine salad, EVVO, greens, almonds, more green tea, some avocado, and maybe some blueberries. Then at 7:00, I’ll have whatever Barb is cooking up for dinner.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Going forward, we’re concerned with 4 things:

1. Maintaining our waist measurements
2. Increasing muscle mass
3. Optimizing body fat percentage
4. Continuing to produce ketones

In order to accomplish these goals, we’ll stay on a keto diet. We don’t eat a lot of refined carbs, potatoes, or rice so that won’t be difficult. Some keto experts state that when individuals who have been on a keto diet become fat adapted they can up their carb intake.

I don’t anticipate doing that at the moment.

In order to gain muscle mass, I probably will up my protein intake to 0.8 grams per pound of lean muscle mass. That means I’ll consume about 104 grams of protein a day.

I may also slightly increase my fat intake. But I have to be careful here because I still have a bit more body fat to lose.

Barbara is completely ecstatic with the diet. She’s just about hit her target weight and has boundless energy. Keep going, girl. 61 is the new 41. She may up her protein a little, but for now, she is happy where she is.

Do You Strength Train And Walk?

While the keto diet is a healthy diet, it’s not everything you needfor a long, healthy life. Strong muscles and moving often are also important.

If you already strength train, keep getting stronger. If you don’t but want to, here is the easy method Barbara and I use.

And keep walking. It may be one of the best exercises you can do.

That’s it! Oh, wait, no, it’s not. Remember, we have over 50 delicious low-carb recipes for you to check out. See them on our home page.

If you’re someone who needs more keto info, see the ketogains.com Reddit FAQ page here. Also, check out Mark Sisson’s new book, The Keto Reset Diet. It containsa wealth of information on the keto diet.

Okay, that’s definitely it for this post. We love to hear your comments. Have a blessed week!

This article originally appeared on glutenfreehomestead.com.

The post Our Keto Journey Part 5: Important Tweaks We Made For Keto Success appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.

In this fourth post in our series Our Ketogenic Diet Journey, I’ll give you a behind the curtains peek at how Barbara and I configured our ketogenic diet.

The keto diet with its amazing health benefits is finally becoming mainstream. More and more people are turning to the diet as an effective weight loss strategy and as an important means to help in the management of a variety of health problems.

However, a common criticism of the diet is that it’s extremely hard to configure and follow. I read on forums all the time people asking questions like: how many carbs can I eat? What should my maximum protein intake be? I’m eating a high-fat diet so why am I not losing weight?

People want to follow the diet. And they want the health benefits it confers, but they think it’s too complicated to follow and get right. But it doesn’t have to be. In this post, I’ll show you why.

Once Barbara and I decided what our weight loss and health goals were, we discovered an easy and efficient way to configure our macronutrient (carbs, protein fat) intake per day. After establishing those parameters, we followed a simple system that converted our macros into an easy to follow daily food plan. As we’ve shown in the last two posts, our results after following this system have been amazing.

Getting Macros Right Is Important But They’re Not Everything

A proper macronutrient configuration is the basis of a keto diet. However, before I show you how we configured our macros, I’d like to mention a few important things to be aware of.  Since this diet changes the body’s main fuel source from carbs (glucose) to fat, certain physiologic adaptations will take place.

This means that certain dietary considerations other than macros are important in a well formulated ketogenic diet.

In our next post, I’ll show you which minerals and electrolytes are essential for success. Then I’ll reveal some simple but extremely important tweaks we use to deal with some of the common problems people experience.

However, in this post, I’ll be primarily concerned with how we configured our daily macros.

Okay, now with that said, let’s get on with the configuring.

What Is A Ketogenic Diet?

In order to configure a well-formulated ketogenic diet, it’s important to understand exactly what a keto diet is and what it’s used for.

Simply, a ketogenic diet restricts the consumption of carbohydrates to a degree that causes your body to adapt to metabolizing fat for fuel instead of glucose. One adaptation that takes place during this process is the production of ketones in your liver.

When your body is producing ketones, then you’re said to be in ketosis. Keto expert Dr. Steve Phinney states that to be in ketosis, you should have a minimum concentration of 0.5 mmol/l of ketones in your blood. It’s these ketones that researchers believe confer the amazing health benefits of the diet. See here.

However, today not everyone is going keto to treat a specific medical condition. This is important when configuring and adhering to a ketogenic diet.

Why Do You Want To Go Keto?

Many people today are going keto not because they want to produce ketones, but because they want the fat shedding effect of the diet.

But this is important. If you just want to lose fat, you don’t have to produce ketones.

Barbara and I had been on an 8-month quest to lose body fat. Then we stalled. Our low carb diet (100-50g carbs/d) stopped working. So we decided to lower our carbs down into the range of a keto diet (<30g/d ).

By dropping carbs into the keto range, our bodies became more insulin sensitive which allowed fat to be unlocked from cells and made available for fuel. By burning our own fat for fuel, we lost weight and fat.

This means that if you’re going keto just to lose weight, you may not be particularly concerned with being in ketosis. If you slip up one day and go over your carb limit, it won’t have a damaging effect on your overall goal. It also means that you don’t have to be fanatical in checking your ketone levels.

However, if you’re going keto to assist with a medical condition, then producing ketones is vitally important.

A Therapeutic Ketogenic Diet

If you’re going to go on a keto diet for a particular health reason such as help in treating type 2diabetes, metabolic syndrome, hypertension, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, cardiovascular disease, Parkinson’s, and even cancer, it then becomes a therapeutic ketogenic diet.

In this case, it’s very important that your body is constantly producing at least 0.5mm/l of ketones. This means that you must regularly check your ketone levels. The best way to do that is with a device like this one.

It also means that you must strictly adhere to your keto diet. Consuming excess carbs can kick you out of ketosis very rapidly.

Individuals With These Medical Conditions Should Exercise Caution When Considering A Keto Diet

Because of the potent nature of a ketogenic diet, certain people should use caution before jumping into it.

Type 1 Diabetics

Since individuals with type 1 diabetes don’t produce enough insulin to metabolize the glucose they ingest, their bodies will turn to fat for energy. This causes an increase in ketone concentration.  A keto diet may then further increase ketones to dangerous levels (see ketoacidosis). If you’re a type 1 diabetic, don’t do this diet unless supervised by a physician trained in low-carb diets.

Type 2 Diabetics

Keto diets through their limitation of carbohydrate intake lower blood glucose concentrations. Since many type 2 diabetics take glucose-lowering medication, they have to be extremely cautious not to allow their blood glucose to drop to unsafe levels while on a keto diet (see Hypoglycemia). If you’re on glucose-lowering meds, you must work with your physician as you transition off of medication.

Individuals On Anti-hypertensive Meds

A keto diet has the potential to lower blood pressure. This coupled with anti-hypertensive meds could drop blood pressure to unsafe levels. Again, work with your doctor if you go keto and you’re on meds for an illness.

What About Pregnancy?

Is keto safe during pregnancy? Good question. For some expert insight see here and here.

Okay, let’s get to the nitty-gritty of how Barbara and I do the diet.

How We Constructed A Well Formulated Ketogenic Diet

You may have heard the keto diet described as a high healthy fat, moderate protein, low-carb diet. Well, that sounds intriguing, but what exactly does it mean? We now come to the trickiest part of formulating a keto diet: figuring out macronutrient (carbs, protein, and fat) intake. However, once you get the hang of it, it becomes quite easy.

The important thing to remember is that both carbs and protein have targeted amounts.

How We Determined Our Carb Macro

Traditionally, a keto diet requires the consumption of carbohydrates to be kept at or less than 30 grams net. Net refers to total carbs minus fiber. For example, if you consume 50g of carbs and they contain 20g of fiber, your net carbs would be 30g net.

Again, the reason carbs are kept low in this diet is so that your body will shift from burning glucose for fuel to fat. Depending on how adapted your body is at utilizing fat as a fuel, some people might be able to consume slightly more carbs and still produce ketones. On the other hand, some individuals might have to consume less than 30 grams per day.

We set our carb intake to be <30g/day net.

How We Determined Our Protein Macro

Protein consumption must be kept at adequate levels. Protein is extremely important for maintaining, repairing, and building muscle mass and for proper organ function.

The Protein Controversy

Some ketogenic diet advocates like Dr. Rosedale, Dr. Mercola, and Dr. Jason Fung recommend a lower protein intake. Keto expert Dr. Steve Phinney recommends a higher daily protein consumption. His recommendation is to keep protein consumption between 1.5 – 1.75 grams of protein per kg of “reference body weight”. Reference body weight refers to optimal lean body weight. See here.

The people at Ketogains.com, who have successfully worked with many people on a keto diet, recommend protein intake to be from 0.69 to 1.2 grams per pound lean body mass. However, going over 0.8g is only suggested for people doing heavy lifting and endurance training.

In my case, I initially kept my daily protein intake to about 0.7g per lean pound. Since my weight was 175 pounds with about 77% lean mass (23% body fat), my protein intake would be about 94g of protein/day.

Here’s the math.

175.0 x 0.77 x 0.7 = 94 grams of protein/day.

This protein intake is close to that recommended by Dr. Phinney. Now, since I have reached my fat loss goal I will increase my protein intake so as to gain more muscle mass.

In order to determine your lean body percentage or, conversely, your body fat percentage, see our last post here.

Why Did I Choose To Go With A Higher Protein Intake?

I tried using Dr. Rosedale’s recommendation for protein intake which for me was about 67g of protein/day. However, I found that I didn’t feel well, and I also lost a lot of strength.

I seem to feel better and achieve consistent strength gains at between 90g – 100g of protein/day. Dr. Phinney has also pointed out that consuming excess protein provides no extra health benefit and might actually interfere with ketosis. Dr. Mercola has an excellent article on the dangers of consuming excess protein. Note that Dr. Mercola uses 0.5 x lean body mass as a multiplier for protein intake.

For good information on keto and protein, see Marty Kendall’s post here and Amy Berger’s post here.

How We Determined Our Fat Macro

Dr. Phinney recommends eating fat to satiety. What’s important to remember here is thatif you want to lose weight, you must eat fewer calories than your body will burn in a day. 

For example, if your body’s maintenance energy intake is 1400 cal/day and you’re fat consumption is causing your calorie intake to exceed this amount, you will not lose weight. The trick is to get your body to use your own body’s fat for fuel.

Some people feel you have to wildly increase fat intake in order to produce ketones. This is not true. A well-formulated keto diet, with fat eaten to satiety, should provide enough fat to produce a sufficient amount of ketones.

So exactly how many grams of fat should you eat in a day? As I said, Dr. Phinney recommends eating fat to satiety.

However, this didn’t work for me. I love coconut oil, and I was eating it like candy thinking the fat was okay. But it wasn’t because I wasn’t allowing my body to burn its own fat.

I’ve found that the simplest way to figure out my fat limit and my other macros is to use a macro calculator. Barbara and I use this one made by the really cool people at Ketogains.com. Thanks, Luis and Tyler.

How To Use The Ketogains.com Macro Calculator

The ketogains.com macro calculator is a convenient way to set up your daily macronutrient intake. Barbara and I have used it with great success.

The calculator allows you to choose three scenarios according to what your desired goals are. All the scenarios are designed to keep you in ketosis.

You can decide if you want to lose weight, maintain weight, or gain muscle. Remember that not everyone will achieve or stay in ketosis at the same macro intake. But the calculator is designed to keep your carb intake below 35 grams/net.

Barbara’s goals and mine initially were to be in ketosis and lose more body fat. In order to do that, we had to have the right macro balance. Here’s how we used the calculator to achieve that. These numbers are from when we first went keto in August 2017.

I’ll show you how I used the calculator to configure my macros, and then I’ll show you Barbara’s target macros goals.

As I explain how to use the calculator, keep in mind that my specific weight loss goal was to lose 10 pounds of fat around my waist.

John’s Macro Configuration Using The Ketogains Calculator

Here’s a screenshot of step one.

As you see, I first set my current body weight data. The next step was to set body fat percentage (BF%). A quick way to find out your BF%, though not the most accurate, is to compare yourself to some pictures of people with varying BF%s. This method worked reasonably well for my purposes.

Since I sit most of the day, I set my activity level at sedentary. The information in the gray boxes will be set automatically.

The next step is to set my diet goals and exercise data.

Since my goal was to lose body fat, I set my calorie goal accordingly. As you see, my calorie intake will be at a 20% deficit to what my total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) would be to maintain my current weight. I perform heavy strength training for about 20 minutes, 5 days a week, and power walk at least 20 minutes/day.

The next step is to set my protein intake.

As I mentioned before, my protein intake is 0.7g/day of lean body mass. After setting this metric, voilà, my daily macros pop up.

Protein Intake: 94g
Net Carbs: 25g
Fat: 112g

Results After 3 Months On A Ketogenic Diet

After consuming the above amount of macros for about three months, I lost 10 pounds and 2 inches off my waist (37” to 35”). My BF% dropped to 20%. I lost a little strength at first but gained it back within a few months. I had great energy most of the time (some fatigue left over from CFS recovery) and a lot less body fat.

Currently, my waist is under 34.5” so I’ll adjust my macros to start putting on more muscle mass. We’ll see how that goes.

A Note About Quick Weight Loss

People who go keto experience quick weight loss. This is probably due to an initial loss of water. However, after this, weight loss will be progressive and sustained. Since I was already low-carb (<50g of carbs/d) before going keto, I had already lost significant weight, but I had plateaued. Keto allowed me to lose an extra 10 pounds of fat quickly.

What About Hunger?

As I said, this diet left me with a 20% calorie deficit. While this is a significant decrease in calorie consumption, I personally had no problem with fatigue or hunger. If I did get hungry, I’d just eat some healthy fat (EVOO, coconut oil, butter etc.).

Barbara’s Macros

The following are some screenshots of Barbara’s macro breakdown.

Barbara’s daily caloric intake ended up being 1010 daily calories. This is quite low. Generally, you don’t want to be less than 1000 cal/day. But she also had no real loss of energy or hunger problems. If she did get hungry, like me, she added some extra healthy fat.

Barbara’s Macros:
Protein Intake: 61g
Net Carbs: 25g
Fat: 74g

You’re probably now asking, “How in the world do I translate macros into real food intake?” This takes a little bit of work, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to figure your daily macro goals pretty easily.

Enter Myfitnesspal.com

In order to figure out how much food was equal to the grams of macronutrients we required per day, we used a free calorie and nutrient app from myfitnesspal.com (MFP). It’s a handy tool. Once you get the hang of using it, customizing your desired daily macro intake becomes a snap.

Note: These are screenshots from my laptop. The iPhone app is a little different but still easy to use. It took me about 15 minutes to figure out.

Here’s an example of my daily goals.

As you see, my daily nutrition goals are close to those from my ketogains calculator. To set your goals, tap the settings icon and then go to goals. It will also set some micronutrient goals, but we’re not interested in those right now.

Now for the fun part: entering your daily food consumption.

Entering Food On Myfitnesspal.com

When you’re ready to enter food on MFP, from the main toolbar tap “Food” and this page will open up.

You can now start entering food for the day. If you want to add food for breakfast, hit add food at breakfast. You can even add your macros from your favorite Gluten Free Homestead recipes by clicking on the “Recipes” tab.

You’ll be taken to a page where you can search for a food you want, like scrambled eggs. The MFP database is extensive and includes a lot of popular brands. It will also keep track of all the foods you’ve added. Here’s an example of part of my favorite foods.

Let’s add some food and see what my one-day food intake looks like

My One Day Food Intake At 1500 Calories

Okay, here’s a sample of my macro intake for a day at 1500 calories. Now, you bigger fellas out there don’t make fun of my meager calorie intake lol. It worked for me.

As you can see, I came very near to hitting my macros for this day. My net carbs were low at 17 (30 – 13 fiber). I usually keep my carbs low. This is one reason I don’t check for ketones. I know I probably should. However, my carbs should be low enough to produce ketones. The only thing that could knock me out of ketosis would be excess protein, but my protein is what it is in order to maintain muscle.

The major variable here is fat intake. You have to be careful here. Remember if you’re going keto to lose body fat, you don’t want to go crazy consuming loads of fat. But you also might have to adjust your fat intake to make sure you’re getting enough calories for energy.

I like how Luis Villasenor at Ketogains.com puts it.

Consume adequate protein, limit carbohydrates, and use ‘fat as a lever’.

Again, if you are on a keto diet for therapeutic reasons (Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, Parkinson’s or cancer), then checking ketones is a must. However, if your goal is weight loss, then checking your results (weight loss, waist size, muscle gains) might be a better strategy than constantly checking ketones.

Barbara’s Daily Food Intake At 1010 Calories

Some Things To Be Aware Of With Myfitnesspal

When entering some food portions, you might have to adjust food portion sizes. For example, you might select an 8 oz. chicken breast, but you only eat half. So you’d have to enter 0.5 to get your right amount.

Also, sometimes when entering food, you have to weigh out the portion you are going to eat. As you see above, I only ate 1 oz. of sweet potato so I had to weigh it on a food scale.

Remember, it’s hard to get this stuff exact, but you can get a close estimate of your daily food intake. After a while, you’ll get to know what you’re eating, and the whole thing will become a lot easier. After a few weeks, we seldom tracked our food. If you’re very overweight due to poor food choices, you may have to track your macros for a while before you get on the right track.

The MFP free app also has some other features. It will track some key nutrients included in the food you eat. Notice it recorded my fiber intake. Remember, this is very important for determining your net carbs.
There’s also a section for recording your water intake, daily exercise, and some key body measurements.

Okay, that’s about it for configuring macros. Now bring on the bacon!

Next week, I’ll look at what is meant by healthy fat; getting good micronutrients; the proper intake of sodium, potassium, and magnesium; the “keto flu”; and some other important aspects you need to know to be successful on the ketogenic diet.

If you have any questions, let us know. Have a blessed week.

This article originally appeared on glutenfreehomestead.com.

The post Our Keto Journey Part 4: How We Calculate Our Keto Diet Macros appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.

This is part 3 of our series Our Keto Journey. In our last post, Barbara highlighted how a ketogenic diet helped her shed fat and is helping her guard against Alzheimer’s Disease. However, as I mentioned in this post here, not everyone goes keto for the same reasons. Remember, a keto diet is high in healthy fat, moderate in protein, and very low in carbs (<30 net grams /day).

In my case, I wasn’t overweight, but I did have a metabolically dangerous visceral fat issue that required I go keto. Also, since the keto diet has potent anti-inflammatory effects, I wanted to see if it was possible for the diet to get me over the last hurdle of recovering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

Let’s first take a look at my use of a ketogenic diet for my fat problem.

A recent report found that the obesity epidemic in the United States is continuing to grow to unhealthy proportions. This means that tens of millions of Americans will continue to be at a high risk for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, and many types of cancer.

But did you know that there are millions of individuals who don’t look obese, who are technically not overweight, but who are metabolically obese?

Medical researchers label these individuals as normal weight obese (NWO). You may have heard them characterized as having a skinny fat body type.

The problem for NWO individuals is that they are at the same high risk to suffer all the diseases associated with being severely overweight. Now before you think this is some small segment of the U.S. population, some researchers estimate that there may be up to 30 million Americans who fit this profile.

I’ll repeat that for emphasis. Up to 30 million Americans might be NWO.

The hidden danger for NWO individuals, though, is that since they’re normal weight, they don’t realize that they have a serious health problem. In fact, they are harboring a metabolic ticking time bomb waiting to explode into a severe disease at some future date.

As an NWO person, it was imperative that I change my body type. And here’s the good news. You can change your body type and improve health. And it doesn’t matter what age you are.

Read on to see how serious a health threat NWO is and how I defeated it.

What Is Normal Weight Obese (NWO)?

I’ve never been “technically” obese or severely overweight so I was spared the emotional trauma that accompanies this disease. But I did have a very serious problem with excess body fat.

Even though I was normal weight, I had an unhealthy amount of fat on my body compared to lean muscle. Individuals with this body type are termed normal weight obese.

Metabolically, it’s a very dangerous body type. As I mentioned previously, just like those who are severely overweight, we NWOs are at a higher risk for a host of metabolic diseases.

In fact, skinny fat people (the other term for NWO) might be even more unhealthy than overweight persons who have well-distributed weight and good muscle mass.

Do Only The Obese Have To Fear Body Fat?

By outward appearances, I always looked fit and trim. I wore clothes exceedingly well. But what those clothes masked was about 20-25 pounds of fat that resided right around my abdomen. Since that was the only place I was fat, my overall weight was usually normal as calculated by body mass index (BMI).

I also was not particularly lean. I did some weight lifting in my twenties, but at 30 years old I developed CFS. That stopped me from doing any intensive exercise. For the next 28 years, my muscle mass would remain poor in quality and I would even lose some muscle due to normal aging.

That excess fat around my midsection, though, meant that I was a particularly bad type of skinny fat. Now, I know God created me with abs. I believed they were in there somewhere, but for 60 years of my life, I never saw them.

What’s TOFI?

There’s another name that scientists also like to call us. It’s TOFI. That means thin on the outside, fat on the inside.

The problem with excess fat around the abdomen (also called central obesity) is that it’s often indicative of a dangerous type of fat, called visceral fat, deeper inside our bodies. The American Heart Association states that,

Regardless of your height or build, for most adults a waist measurement of greater than 94 cm [37″] for men and 80 cm [31.5] for women is an indicator of the level of internal fat deposits which coat the heart, kidneys, liver, digestive organs and pancreas. This can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.

To complicate matters, with my big gut I had skinny legs and a small butt. This is known as an apple shape skinny fat. Sheesh, the name calling just keeps coming for us NWOs.

Research has shown that thin hips and thighs when accompanied with a large belly are predictive of an even greater risk for metabolic disease.

As you can see, we skinny fatties are a metabolic disaster waiting to happen. The scary thing, though, is that we don’t realize it.

In order to improve my body type and become healthier, I went on a low-carb diet. It helped, but it only took me so far. I still carried around too much belly fat. To get where I needed to be, I had to resort to radical means.

How Do You Get To Be Skinny Fat?

There are basically three things that must be present for someone to become skinny fat.

1. A poor diet – This means eating a lot of refined carbs, sugar, fructose, and seed oils (vegetable, corn, soy, etc.). Basically, it means consuming the standard American diet. Over consume that stuff, and you’ll gain weight, guaranteed.
2. A sedentary lifestyle – Leading the life of a couch-potato or a lack of devotion to strength training usually results in lack of lean muscle mass.
3. Genetics – The third factor necessary to be skinny fat seems to be something we have no control over. Recently, researchers have found that there is evidence that this body type is genetically determined.

That doesn’t mean, though, that just because a large part of this body type is genetic controlled, it can’t be changed. It requires hard work, but it can be done. And the rewards are certainly worth it.

I want to be around for my children’s weddings. I want to be there for my future grandchildren. And I want to enjoy my golden years with my wife. Therefore, my skinny fat body had to be transformed.

Before I get into how well the keto diet performed, let me give you some parameters on how doctors determine if an individual is at metabolic risk because of NWO.

How Do You Know If You’re Skinny Fat?

If a person is NWO and they already have symptoms of metabolic syndrome such as insulin resistance, diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, or cardiovascular disease, they will use the term metabolically obese normal weight (MONW). An NWO person has an increased risk to become MONW but has yet to manifest overt disease.

However, determining what obesity actually is has been difficult for researchers. Classically, it’s defined as having too much body fat. However, the problem is what exactly is too much fat.

Can Body Mass Index (BMI) Determine Obesity?

In the past, body mass index (BMI) was thought to be a reliable indicator of obesity. It attempts to determine your risk for diseaseaccording to your height and weight. A BMI over 30 would place an individual in an obese category. Twenty-five to 30 would be overweight and 18.5 to 25 would be normal weight. You can calculate your BMI here.

However, there are several shortcomings of a BMI measurement. It ignores:

• Body fat percentage (BF%)
• Lean muscle mass
• Weight distribution.

This means that a person who has a BMI over 30 and is considered obese by BMI could theoretically be very healthy if they possess good lean muscle mass and good weight distribution.

On the contrary, you may have a normal BMI but be at risk for the complications of obesity like us TOFIs.

Body Fat Percentage

Medical researchers now focus on body fat percentage (BF%) as a better indicator of health. BF% is the total mass of fat divided by total body mass times 100. While there is no consensus on exactly what BF% constitutes obesity, researchers have proposed some guidelines.

The American Council on Exercise has suggested these parameters as acceptable BF%:

The Obesity Research Center at St Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons used the following BF% guidelines to establish obesity:

Other studies confirm these findings. This study which analyzed 6171 subjects greater than 20 years of age considered a BF% >23.1 in men and >33.3 in women as being NWO.

Another study of 4,489 subjects aged ?60 years (BMI = 18.5 to 25) labeled men who had >25% BF and women who had >35% BF as being NWO.

From these sources, we can safely say that if you have a normal BMI but your BF% is ?25% or greater, then you are considered NWO and thus at an increased risk for metabolic disease.

What Are the Risks Of NWO?

Several studies with large cohorts of individuals have consistently shown that NWO individuals suffer a greater risk for metabolic disease. See here, here, here.

This study of 6171 subjects found that individuals classified as NWO had a prevalence of metabolic syndrome4 times higher than people with normal BMI and normal BF %.

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is characterized by at least 3 of the following conditions: abdominal obesity, hypertension, high blood sugar, high serum triglycerides and low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) levels. MetS is also highly associated with diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The study also found that women with a normal BMI but with the highest BF% (>33%) had about an 8 times greater risk of having metabolic syndrome and a 2.2 times higher rate of dying from cardiovascular disease.

If these results make you concerned about the amount of body fat you’re carrying around then that’s a good thing.

How Do You Determine Your Body Fat Percentage?

The easiest way to determine your BF% is to look at some images of people with their BF% indicated. That’s what I do. It’s not the most accurate but it’ll give you an idea where you stand.

You can also use this calculator here. But again accuracy is limited. These calipers will give you a better estimate of your BF%.

If you want to know your exact BF% you’ll have to have it professionally done. Remember you want it <25 if you’re a man and <32 for a woman.

Waist To Hip Ratio (WHR)

Remember, I mentioned before that I had a particularly bad type of NWO. My belly was large and my backside was small. This meant that my waist to hip ratio (WHR) was poor. This ratio is determined by dividing the circumference of your waist by that of your hips (W ÷ H).

Researchers now believe that this ratio gives a better indication of an individual’s risk for metabolic disease.

According to the WHO, a healthy WHR is:
0.9 or less in men
0.85 or less for women

This study done by researchers from Johns Hopkins University used the following guidelines to determine metabolic health risks associated with WHR.

What Are The Risks Associated With A High WHR And Normal BMI?

In 2015, the Mayo Clinic conducted a study on 15,184 adults concerning mortality risks on individuals with high central obesity as measured by WHR. This study was conducted over a 14 year time period. Their findings were astonishing.

A recent study of 42,702 participants also found that “when compared with the normal weight participants without central obesity, only normal weight and obese people with central obesity [measured by WHR ed.] were at increased risk for all-cause mortality.”

Okay, I think I’ve made it pretty clear. If you’re an NWO individual, if you have central obesity, or if you have a high WHR, you’re playing with fire. It’s not something you want to ignore. Your health risks are too high.

At one time my WHR was almost a 1. That meant I was at a high risk for metabolic disease. I had to do something about it.

My Transition To Keto

Here is a progression of my journey to a ketogenic diet.

My highest weight was 193 pounds. At that point, my waist was 40. This caused my WHR to measure at a whopping 1.05. As I said, I was a metabolic ticking time bomb. I hit these numbers shortly after going gluten-free (GF). At that time, manufacturers were just starting to make tasty GF products (bread, pizza, pasta, etc.), and I was devouring them like there was no tomorrow.

On the paleo diet, I ditched all refined grains (except rice), sugar, industrial seed oils, and processed foods. If I had forsaken rice and sweet potatoes, I probably would have lost more weight.

It was the low-carb diet, though, that caused significant amounts of fat to melt away from my abdomen. However, I eventually plateaued, and that’s when I went keto. You’ll notice that my hip measurement increased by 1 inch. After two years of barbell back squats, my legs have gotten tremendously stronger (for me :)) but I guess I just can’t put any fat on my backside.

Also, notice that I didn’t lose strength during my keto period. Initially, I did reduce some weight on bench press and deadlifts, but within a few months, I regained what I lost.

So, as you can see, in order to really get where I had to be I needed to make the leap to keto. I don’t think staying moderately low-carb would have gotten me there.

It was during the paleo phase that most of the energy I lost because of CFS was restored. A big thanks to Mark Sisson at Mark’s Daily Apple for introducing me to paleo.  That brings me to how keto could help my CFS.

Can Keto Help With CFS?

I developed CFS in 1986. It came on me literally overnight. Within 24 hours I had lost at least 60% of my energy levels. It took nearly 26 years to get back to 90 percent. The three biggest factors that helped me were daily walking, a reduction in stress, and the paleo diet. From what I’ve read, few people heal 100% from CFS. But I wanted to see if I could get to 100%.

Could the keto diet help get me there? I haven’t seen any studies suggesting it might, but theoretically it’s possible. Here’s why.

CFS Is An Inflammatory Disease

For years doctors told me I had inflammation going on inside my body. Like I didn’t know that. The fatigue, muscle aches, and early arthritic joint changes informed me of that every day. The experts said I must have some virus that we can’t detect. Nonetheless, I was chronically inflamed.

Doctors still don’t know what causes CFS, but a study released last year revealed that CFS is highly associated with an increased expression of inflammatory cytokines within the body. The researchers concluded, “Our findings show clearly that it’s an inflammatory disease.”

Now, in my first post in this series, I illustrated the potent anti-inflammatory nature of the keto diet.Would the keto diet be able to quell the inflammation still going on in my body? After being on the diet for 8 months, I can’t give you an empirical answer. But experientially I can say I’ve felt better than I have in 31 years.

CFS And Dysautonomia

About 90% of CFS sufferers have dysautonomia. I happen to be one of them. Dysautonomia is a dysfunction of the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system. Experts are not sure of the exact cause of the dysautonomia but there are 3 suspected ones. It’s either inherited, a result of some form of neurodegeneration, or it’s a result of an injury.

Now we know that a keto diet can help in conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s where neurodegeneration has taken place. Can the keto diet help me with my dysautonomia? The jury is still out on that but I will keep you informed.

That’s my keto journey. In our next post, I’ll walk you through exactly how we do keto.

Thanks for reading. I hope you have a blessed week. Don’t forget to leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you.

This article originally appeared on glutenfreehomestead.com.

The post Our Keto Journey Part 3: Defeating A Skinny Fat Body And Healing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.

In the first post in this series, John presented a 5,000-foot view of what a ketogenic diet looks like. If you’re completely unfamiliar with a keto diet, we suggest you read that post first. In this post today, I’ll share why I went keto. In the next post, John will be sharing his story.

The important takeaway in these next two posts is that not everyone goes on a keto diet for the same reasons. Some go on it to treat a specific illness while some go on it because it may have the potential to prevent certain diseases. Others go on it because they want to lose a lot of weight quickly, some believe it’s a healthy way of eating, and others are seeking enhanced sports performance.

Let me tell you why I decided to go keto and why you may want to consider it too. 

Why I Went Keto

John always jokes that when we first met, every time we’d go out to lunch and I’d always order the big salad. Seinfeld wasn’t a thing yet so I wasn’t copying Elaine.

I’ve been a low-carb eater since I was a teen. Obesity and type 2 diabetes run in my family, and that’s something I’ve fought hard to avoid my whole life.

Preventing weight gain was an ongoing battle for me, and I fought it by limiting carbs.

However, after I had four children, you can guess what happened. Yes, I put on the inevitable extra pounds. Since I was still going low-carb, I lost some of the weight, but there were still 20 stubborn pounds that refused to leave.

When I turned 60, still low-carb and after 3 years of strength training, those pounds had increased to 23. And I just couldn’t lose them. Now, 23 pounds may not seem like a lot to some. But when you’re 5’1” and those pounds show up in the wrong places, you want them gone with a passion. But even more so I wanted those pounds gone because I knew I would feel better and be a better version of myself overall.

So, I needed to take a more radical approach.

That’s why I turned to a keto diet.

Ultra Low-Carb Diets Result In Fat Loss

By now it’s no secret that low-carb diets promote fat loss. When you consume carbs, they’re turned into glucose in your digestive tract which is then sent into your bloodstream. Your pancreas releases insulin which takes the glucose out of your bloodstream and sends it to your cells to be used as energy.

However, if you’re eating excess carbs and your cells have enough glucose for energy, insulin acts as a storage hormone and packs that glucose into your cells where it’s converted to fat.

Now, if you continue to consume excess carbs, particularly refined carbs (like pasta, bread, rice, sugar, and fructose) and carb dense veggies like potatoes, over a long span of time (years), insulin will not only continue to pack glucose into your cells, it will lock it in and you’ll get fatter. This is called the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model of weight gain.

But, here’s a bigger problem. If you continue to eat excess refined carbs long enough whereby insulin is constantly spiked, then it can lead to serious conditions such as insulin resistance, obesity, and type 2 diabetes.

However, if you engage in carb restriction and decrease insulin secretion, then eventually you’ll lose fat. And the stricter your carb restriction, the more weight you should lose in a quicker amount of time.

So, in order to lose the excess weight quickly, I decided to go keto. As John mentioned last week, the ketogenic diet is ultra low-carb (<30 net carbs/day). At this amount of carbs, fat loss should happen quickly.

Before I go any further there’s something important I want to point out that has seemed to confuse many individuals who consider going keto.

If You Just Want To Lose Fat You Don’t Have To Go Keto 

Here’s the thing. If you just want to lose fat, you don’t have to go keto. You don’t have to produce ketones to lose a lot of weight quickly.

Since carbohydrate restriction and lowering the amount of insulin your pancreas is secreting are the important factors in weight loss, you don’t have to be concerned with ketone numbers.

If you have a specific medical condition you’re trying to heal, sure go ahead and strive to produce ketone levels above 0.5mmol. But if you just want to lose weight, it’s not necessary.

If you have a specific medical condition you’re trying to heal, sure go ahead and strive to produce ketone levels above 0.5mmol. But if you just want to lose weight, it’s not necessary.

That being said there was another reason why I wanted to be on a keto diet.

A SURPRISING BLOOD TEST

Right before going keto, I had a blood panel done. To my surprise, my HbA1c (an average of 3 months blood glucose) was borderline pre-diabetic. That was a big surprise!

A high HbA1c probably indicated a certain degree of insulin resistance. How could that be after years of going low-carb? Answer: Maybe for my body, it wasn’t low carb enough.

So, in order to lose those extra pounds quickly and bring down my HbA1c, keto was the way to go. But my reasons didn’t stop there.

A FAMILY HISTORY OF ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE

If you’ve had a family member or a close friend who has suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), you know how horrible the disease is.

My mom, Shirley, developed AD at 72 years old. For the next 10 years, I experienced all the pain and suffering of watching my once happy and vibrant mom have her memories, personality, and life drain away. It was devastating. My mom was my best friend.

Imagine having a conversation with your mom and out of the blue she says, “I don’t have any children.” You reply, “I’m your daughter. I’ll always be your child, and I need you to be my mom.” She responds with, “No, I don’t remember having you.” Whoa, stop, get out the kleenex.

I don’t talk about this much because I get so choked up that I just can’t talk.

The sad thing is I wish I knew then what I know now. When my mom got AD, the doctors told us there was no treatment for the disease, and they had no clue why people got it. That meant that my mom would just get progressively worse.

Today, this is not the case. We now have good evidence showing that a keto diet can be a powerful tool for preventing and treating AD. I wish I’d known this when my mom was suffering from Alzheimer’s.

In order to get a good idea of why ketosis and a keto diet might be effective for AD, it’s important to have some knowledge of what the disease is all about. John wrote the following science section on Alzheimer’s. Since he’s a science geek, it may be a little science-heavy, but the information really helped me understand the disease.

ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE

Researchers are now beginning to discover that AD might actually be a metabolic disease mediated by the brain’s response to insulin. Growing evidence appears to confirm that AD is highly associated with poor glucose utilization and insulin resistance (IR) within the brain itself.

Many scientists are starting to refer to AD as brain diabetes or type 3 diabetes.

The important thing to understand is that AD is a problem of energy deficiency within the brain. The brain is simply not getting enough fuel to sustain its important functions. While our brains only constitute about 2% of our body’s mass, it uses about 20-25% of our total body’s energy. And it needs all that energy to function well.

If fuel is in short supply, brain neurons that work the hardest, those responsible for memory and cognition, will be among the first to suffer decline.

But here’s the big problem. Brain energy deprivation caused by poor glucose utilization and IR could begin in individuals as early as their 30s or 40s. This means that AD might start as a silent process that takes years to eventually manifest. By the time the disease is discovered, it could be too late to treat it successfully.

Below is a summary of the important risk factors for AD. Again, there’s some science here, but if you can get through it, you’ll really understand why ketosis can be an important therapy for Alzheimer’s patients. If you’re really not into science, scroll down to Your Brain And Ketones section.

Associated Risk Factors For AD

ADVANCED AGE

As of 2017, there are approximately 5.3 million Americans over the age of 65 suffering from AD and approximately 200,000 individuals under age 65 have younger-onset AD.Thus AD appears to be a disease associated with old age. However, while symptoms usually manifest in advanced age the disease was probably active for decades.

THE APOE4 GENE

People who carry the ApoE4 gene are 4 to 15 times more likely to develop AD. However, not everyone who has the gene develops AD, and some people who have AD don’t even have the gene. Therefore, the gene is not sufficient to cause AD.

So, why is there an increased risk for AD in ApoE4 positive individuals? Doctors are not sure, but there is some evidence that a high carbohydrate Western Pattern Diet could induce the gene to cause pathology. See here and here.

CHRONICALLY ELEVATED INSULIN LEVELS

A risk factor that seems to play an important role in AD is chronically elevated insulin levels, also known as hyperinsulinemia (see here, here and here).

Generally, when a person goes to their physician for a check-up, the doctor will perform a fasting blood glucose test (FBG). If your FBG is within normal limits, your doctor will conclude you don’t have diabetes.

If you have a really good doctor, they might perform a HbA1c blood test. This is a lot more reliable than a simple FBS.

Now, this is where it gets tricky. As I mentioned before, a high Hb1Ac, but a normal FBG level is evidence of a degree of hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance (IR).

Unfortunately, doctors rarely check insulin levels. Therefore, an individual could have IR for years and never know it. This could mean that diseases closely linked to IR like type 2 diabetes, hypertension, gout, benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH), PCOS, and AD may be in their germinating phase.

We now suspect this was the case with Barbara’s mom. She was never diagnosed with diabetes, but her doctor told her to watch her sugar. Add this to the fact that she was overweight her entire life. She probably had insulin resistance for years before developing the symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease.

There is now compelling evidence that AD is a form of brain diabetes. Like diabetes, AD exhibits altered glucose metabolism, inflammation, and insulin resistance.

AMYLOID BETA (A?) PLAQUES

If you’re familiar with AD, you’ve probably heard that amyloid beta (A?) plaques play a major role in causing the disease. A? is a protein that is often secreted by neurons in response to an injury. Normally, this protein is removed by the glymphatic system.

However, if A? is not removed, it can form plaques that block the synapses between neurons thus interfering with neuronal communication. Blocked signaling between neurons can lead to the symptoms found in AD such as cognitive decline and memory loss.

Here’s where things get interesting. While it’s true that individuals with AD have been found to have amyloid plaques, it’s also true that others who had AD didn’t have them. And some individuals who didn’t have AD were found to have A? plaques. See here.

While A? plaques could make AD worse, they’re probably not the main cause.

Concerning AD and A? plaques, the authors of this study concluded that,

Therefore, low regional CMRglc [glucose utilization] appears to be a very early event in the disease process, well before any clinical signs of dementia are evident, and well before cell loss or plaque deposition is predicted to have occurred.

See also here and here. So again energy deficit seems to be the be the big factor in AD.

BETA-AMYLOID AND INSULIN-DEGRADING ENZYME

As I mentioned before, A? must be removed so as not to create plaques. Insulin-degrading enzyme (IDE) which degrades A is important in this process. However, degrading A? is not IDE’s main purpose. Its main purpose is to clear excess insulin.

So, when an individual’s insulin levels are high, IDE’s main job becomes clearing insulin and its secondary concern, clearing is ignored. This could pave the way for increased A? plaques formation.

Interestingly, people with the ApoE 4 gene appear to produce less IDE.

Okay, what’s the takeaway here? Very simple. When it comes to Alzheimer’s risk, it’s mainly about insulin resistance, energy deficit in the brain, and many times the presence of the ApoE4 gene. Let’s see where the ketogenic diet comes in.

Your Brain And Ketones

As we’ve seen, Alzheimer’s Disease is primarily caused by poor glucose metabolism in brain neurons. Because neurons are prevented from using glucose as an energy source, they are essentially being starved to death.

Now, get ready for some good news. Glucose is not the only fuel your brain can use. It can also use ketones as an alternative energy source. Ketone metabolism by brain mitochondria isn’t impeded by the same factors that hamper glucose utilization.

While your brain will always metabolize some glucose, ketones can provide up to 60% of your brain’s energy. A blood concentration of 0.3–0.5 mMol of ketones, supplies 3–5% of whole brain energy requirements, a 1.5 mMol concentration provides about 18%, and at 6 mMol, they supply about 60% of brain fuel.

Theoretically, this means that ketones can supply a large part of brain energy which could theoretically limit cognitive decline.

But is there evidence that this is the case? There sure is.

A KETOGENIC DIET HELPS WITH AD

A small study of 23 older adults with mild cognitive impairment compared the effects of a high carbohydrate versus a very low carbohydrate diet (<35 grams) over the course of 6 weeks. The low-carb diet was designed to specifically cause ketosis.

Remember that an effect of an ultra low-carb high-fat diet is the production of ketones in the liver. These ketones can then provide the energy needed by the brain.

The researchers found that the low-carb group had improved memory performance whereas the high-carb group experienced no improvement.

This result was even produced at a relatively low average ketone reading of 5.4 mg/dl. This is about 0.5 mMol. Dr.s Phinney and Volek suggest that ketones above 0.5 mMol of concentration in the blood constitute a ketotic state.

The study also found that memory improved as ketone levels increased.

The authors concluded that,

These findings indicate that very low carbohydrate consumption, even in the short-term, can improve memory function in older adults with increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

MCT OIL SUPPLEMENTATION HELPS IN AD

MCT (medium chain triglyceride) oil is a fat harvested from coconut and palm kernel oil. It has the unique ability to pass from the digestive tract right to the liver where it’s metabolized into ketones. These ketones pass into the bloodstream where they can be used for energy by the brain.

These two studies (here & here) found that MCT raised ketone levels sufficiently so that improvements in AD and mild cognitive impairment were observed. The best results occurred with higher ketone levels.

However, there’s a caveat to these studies. Both studies found that individuals with the ApoE4 gene did not fare as well as those without it. This could be because both studies did not control for a low-carb diet and were only interested in MCT results.

Remember, as I mentioned in the risk factors above, individuals with the ApoE4 gene do much better on a low-carb diet than a high-carb one.

COCONUT OIL

Coconut oil contains about 60% MCT oil. The consumption of coconut oil should, therefore, produce some increase in ketone levels in the bloodstream.

Watch this to see a remarkable video on how Dr. Mary Newport treated her husband’s Alzheimer’s condition. The remission of his symptoms was astounding.

Interestingly, even though Mr. Newport was ApoE4 positive and not on a low-carb diet, he still experienced significant improvement from coconut oil alone.

As time went on, Mr. Newport was enrolled in a study that tested a relatively new medical food called a ketone ester. This improved his condition even more.

KETONE SALTS AND ESTERS

Ketone salts are precursors to ketones manufactured in a lab. When taken orally, they raise ketones in the blood quickly and to a high level (approx 6 mMol). They can be purchased commercially, but there has been some controversy concerning their use.

Ketone esters are also manufactured in a lab and they can also raise ketones quickly.

This study, which included Mr. Newport alone, showed that ketone esters can produce significant improvement in AD patients.

Since ketone esters are still relatively new products, there are still some questions concerning their use in the general public. They’re quite expensive, and users say the taste is absolutely horrible.

For more information on ketone esters, listen to this podcast with Dr. Ben Greenfield and Dr. Richard Veech here. Dr. Veech was the doctor who administered ketone esters to Mr. Davenport.

Note that while MCT oil and exogenous ketones like ketone esters can create ketosis, in order to be effective they have to be constantly administered. A keto diet, on the other hand, will cause ketones to be constantly produced.

However, a keto diet may not raise ketone levels to the degree exogenous ketones will. But unless you’re treating an active disease, this may not be necessary.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Back to Barbara.

Well, we covered a lot here. A ketogenic diet can cause rapid weight loss and be healthy at the same time. In a future post, I’ll describe how I lost 23 pounds in a few months on the keto diet.

In the treatment of AD, research has confirmed that creating ketosis through a keto diet, MCT oil, or ketone esters is an important therapy. And ketosis is also being used to treat Parkinson’s, epilepsy, and many other diseases.

If you have a family history of AD or have the ApoE4 gene or some of the other risk factors, then going keto could be an important preventative tool.

I don’t know if I’m ApoE4 positive. I asked my doctor to do the test, but she didn’t do it. She didn’t think it was necessary. Not necessary? I have a family history of AD and diabetes. And if I have the ApoE4 gene it could increase my chances of AD by 15 times. It’s a constant battle trying to educate our physicians (remember, I had to demand a HbA1c be done). Next time I’ll demand an ApoE4 test.

To guard against AD and to continue to lower my HbA1c, I try to keep my daily intake of net carbs to less than 30 net grams. Am I in ketosis every day? I don’t know for sure, but it’s not necessary to check ketones at this point. However, my blood did test positive for ketones.

So there you have it. What do you think? I encourage you to join in the conversation. Comments are awesome?  In our next post, John will share why he went keto. Then we’ll show you how we’re doing it.

This article originally appeared on glutenfreehomestead.com.

The post Our Keto Journey Part 2: Getting Rid Of Stubborn Pounds And Guarding Against Alzheimer’s appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.

Now throw into the mix that we’re never hungry and it sounds like the perfect diet, doesn’t it? Well, no diet is perfect because we are all individuals with different needs. But if you need to lose weight, want to heal from a particular illness, or are an athlete looking to fuel your body in a more efficient way, the keto diet might be for you.

Barbara and I have similar but also different reasons for going “keto”. In this series of posts, I’ll tell you why we’re following a keto diet and how we’re doing it.

In upcoming posts, I’ll also detail how we configure our daily macronutrients (carbs, fats and, proteins), our experiences with the diet, and some practical things we learned that you must do if you’re going to go keto.

I’ll also answer questions like:

• Do I have to check my ketones every day?
• How much fat can I eat?
• Will too much protein throw me out of ketosis?
• Can I still lift heavy on this diet?

In today’s post, though, let’s take a 10,000-foot view of the ketogenic diet.

The Ketogenic Diet Is Hot

The ketogenic diet seems to be the newest fad diet. However, doctors have used it to treat epilepsy for over 100 years.

Today, nutrition experts are recommending the diet as a healthy way of eating. Several leading researchers like Doctors Westman, Phinney and Volek have written best selling books showing how the keto diet can be used to treat a number of physical ailments and also provide a healthy diet for millions of people.

Even longtime primal lifestyle blogger Mark Sisson recently released a “how to” book on the keto diet (it’s excellent by the way). And if you browse Amazon’s nutrition bestseller list, you’ll see several keto cookbooks there.

The keto diet is hot — no question about it. But what exactly is it?

What Is A Ketogenic Diet?

Simply put, a ketogenic diet is a diet that puts your body into a state of nutritional ketosis. Wow, that didn’t tell you a lot, did it?

Okay, let’s make it simpler. Nutritional ketosis is a condition where your body uses fats and ketones rather than carbohydrates (glucose) as an energy source. This metabolic state happens when your intake of carbohydrates is sufficiently limited to the point where your liver begins to convert fat tissue and dietary fats into organic compounds called ketones. These ketones can be used for energy in other parts of your body especially your muscle and brain.

Contrary to what has been taught for decades fat and ketone metabolism is a much more efficient source of fuel for your body than carbohydrates. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Carb metabolism produces more reactive oxygen species (free radicals) than fat. The less of those disease causing free radicals floating around your body the better.
2. Ketone body metabolism produces more ATP (energy) within mitochondria and less damaging free radicals.
3. Less free radicals mean less tissue inflammation
4. Energy-wise fat yields more bang for your buck. Carbs yield 4 calories per gram while fat yields 9.
5. Carbs are burned more quickly than fat. Therefore, if your diet consists of predominantly carbs you will need to continually eat carbs to continue fueling your body. However, since carbs are broken down into glucose, constant consumption of glucose will spike your blood glucose levels. In turn, this will signal the constant secretion of insulin which can lead to insulin resistance and subsequent disease. Fat on, the other hand, doesn’t induce insulin secretion.

Mark Sisson compares the burning of carbs to fat as burning kindling as compared to a slow, long burning log. You’ll get quick heat from the kindling but the log will keep you warmer a lot longer.

Switching To Fat Burning

A keto diet causes your body to switch from burning carbs for energy to fat. This fat comes from two possible sources. One is from the fat you consume. The other is from your own stored fat reserves. Yes, that’s that dreadful stuff hanging around your belly and thighs. In the process of fat burning, ketones are produced.

So far, we have seen three very important aspects of a ketogenic diet. First, your carb intake is kept low. Second, fat is your body’s primary fuel. And three, in the process of fat metabolism, ketones are made in the liver.

I would like to add here that being on a keto diet does not mean that your body can be fueled by any dietary fat. It’s strictly limited to healthy fats (no processed industrial seed oils, margarine, etc.).

Let’s take a look at why someone would want to go on this insane, healthy diet.

Reasons For Going On A Ketogenic Diet 

There are some good reasons for going on a ketogenic diet. Some are better than others. You’ll see what I mean later on.

1. Managing Epilepsy

Traditionally, a ketogenic diet has been used to treat epilepsy. Doctors find that it has a remarkable ability to lower or even eliminate seizures in epileptic children. See Charlie’s story.

Physicians believe it’s the ketones that produce the amazing results in epilepsy, but they’re not sure how.

2. Possible Management Of Other Diseases

Many people are experimenting and finding success with the ketogenic diet for conditions such as:

1. Migraines
2. Parkinson’s disease
3. Alzheimer’s disease –— There have been several studies done showing the positive effects of increased ketone levels and improvement in memory and cognitive abilities in individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease. See here, here and here. Researchers are not sure why they see improvements among patients with Alzheimer’s Disease when on a ketogenic diet. One theory is that Alzheimer patients often have impaired glucose metabolism in their brains. Therefore, energy from ketones is more efficient. Two other reasons are the possibility of reduced hyperinsulinemia and reduction of inflammation.
4. Multiple sclerosis
5. Cancer
6. Type 2 and type 1 Diabetes
7. PCOS
8. GERD
9. Cardiovascular disease (CVD)

An important note here is that some of the above conditions such as Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s Disease, CVD, PCOS, as well as gout, hypertension, erectile dysfunction, benign prostate hyperplasia/hypertrophy (BPH), vertigo, tinnitus, and Ménière’s Disease seem to be driven by hyperinsulinemia.

Since a ketogenic diet is extremely low in carbohydrates, insulin levels should fall. Thus the success of the keto diet for these conditions may be more related to lowering insulin and not necessarily to the higher ketone levels.

This means that if you were using the diet to solely correct hyperinsulinemia, you wouldn’t have to go crazing trying to constantly check your ketone levels. You could actually go out of ketosis and still derive health benefits by lowering insulin levels. In which case, you may not even really need to be on a ketogenic diet but simply an adequate carb restricted diet.

3. Reduction Of Inflammation

Inflammation is not always a bad thing. It’s our body’s way of responding to pathogens, tissue damage, and irritants so that our body can heal itself.

However, when inappropriate chronic inflammation gets out of hand, disease can occur. Chronic inflammation has been associated with several diseases such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, MS, Alzheimer’s Disease, some cancers, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s Disease, hypertension and, obesity.

The Ketone Inflammasome Connection

In 2002, researchers discovered that a structure within human cells called an inflammasome is responsible for initiating the cascade of inflammatory effects. When an inflammasome recognizes a threat such as toxins, bacteria, viruses or even too much glucose, it binds to caspase-1 and triggers the release of cytokines. These small proteins continue to mediate the inflammatory process.

However, if an inflammasome (there’s only one per cell) remains abnormally activated, then cytokines can run wild causing a chronic inflammatory state and even some of the diseases I mentioned above.

Are you with me so far? Good. Here’s where it gets interesting.

Researchers are now doing studies to see if targeting the NLRP3 inflammasome can help in reducing chronic inflammation and thus disease.

Researchers believe that modulating the NLRP3 may help in the treatment of type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and insulin resistance, rheumatoid arthritis, epilepsy, and some neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s Disease, ALS and, MS.

So you might be saying, “What does all this have to do with the ketogenic diet?” There is evidence that one of the ketones produced by a ketogenic diet, beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB), can reduce inflammation by modulating the effect of the intracellular NLRP3 inflammasome.

Researchers from this study came to these conclusions about BHB,

These findings provide insight into immunological functions of metabolic signals such as BHB and suggest that dietary or pharmacological approaches to elevate BHB, without inducing the generalized starvation response, holds promise in reducing the severity of multiple NLRP3 mediated chronic inflammatory diseases.

Here is another study suggesting the same effect of BHB on the NLRP3 inflammasome and inflammation.

Okay, since, a ketogenic diet increases the ketone (BHB), and BHB reduces the activation of NLRP3, then it’s possible that increased ketones in the body can reduce the chronic inflammatory response associated with the above conditions.

On to the next reason people go on a ketogenic diet.

4. Fat Loss On A Ketogenic Diet

A big reason individuals go on a ketogenic diet is for its ability to promote fat loss. Here’s the rationale.

Since a keto diet is extremely low in carbohydrates, insulin levels will drop dramatically allowing fat to be released from fat cells. Now, because you are not burning carbs for energy but fat, excess fat stores can be used for energy. Thus, you lose fat and weight.

This process is in accord with the hormonal theory of weight gain that suggests obesity is primarily due to the prolonged over secretion of insulin.

The Hormonal Theory Of Weight Gain

After you consume refined carbs and sugar, your digestive process converts them into glucose. This glucose then enters your bloodstream.

When your body recognizes the glucose in your blood, your pancreas secretes insulin which removes glucose from your blood and transports it to cells for immediate energy. If the cell has sufficient energy, the cell will convert the excess glucose into glycogen or fat as a store for future energy needs.

If you continue to over-consume carbs, insulin will continue to pack glucose into muscle and fat cells where if it’s not needed for energy, it will be converted to triglycerides (fat). This means you get fatter.

If you continue to over-consume carbs for a long time (I’m talking about years here), insulin will stay chronically high which will have the effect of locking fat into cells. This means you get even fatter.

Insulin Resistance

If insulin stays chronically high, your cells may develop a resistance to insulin. This can lead to all kinds of problems like type 2 diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome. If insulin resistance continues long enough, your cells may resist the effect of insulin to store glucose. This means that excess glucose may end up in your liver. Eventually, your liver will convert the glucose first into glycogen and then into fat and then presto chango you have fatty liver disease.

This is a simple explanation of the hormonal theory of weight gain. If you’re a biochemistry nerd like me and want to discover the detailed science behind the theory, see this excellent series of posts by Amy Berger of Tuitnutrition.com.

Now here’s something I mentioned before. If you have insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, or metabolic syndrome, then a ketogenic diet will help with these medical conditions. But since the goal here is to reduce insulin levels by reducing carb intake, the thing that’s making you better is carb restriction, not ketones.

As they say over at Ketogains.com, if your goal is to lose fat you’ll want to chase results, not ketones. This means that your success will be measured by inches, pounds, blood glucose, and insulin numbers.

So if you want to use a keto diet to lose fat, you don’t have to go crazy making sure you’re producing at least 0.5 mmol of ketones per day. However, if you’re concerned with the adverse inflammatory effects caused by hyperinsulinemia, you may want to make sure you’re in ketosis.

5. The Elimination Of Brain Fog

Many people who go on a keto diet say they experience increased clarity of thinking. While this evidence is anecdotal there are two scientific theories which may support the claim.

Excess Ammonia

It is known that excess ammonia in the brain can cause brain fog and other cognitive problems. It is also known that glutamine synthetase cleans up excess ammonia in the brain.

This study shows that ketosis increases the production of glutamine synthetase. Therefore ketosis increases glutamine synthetase which reduces ammonia in the brain which reduces brain fog.

Neurotransmitter Imbalance

An imbalance between the neurotransmitters glutamate and GABA within the brain can cause neurodegeneration. This study showed that ketosis can bring these two chemicals into balance by clearing glutamate and increasing GABA. This is also a proposed reason why a keto diet works for epilepsy.

Now, if you want the ketone benefit of a ketogenic diet, there are some important things to know.

How Can You Tell If You’re In Ketosis?

Keto diet experts Dr.s Phinney and Volek state that a person reaches a state of nutritional ketosis when the concentration of ketones in your blood is at or above 0.5-3.0 mM. Here’s the rub though. The only way to know that you are absolutely in ketosis is by using a special meter that tests your blood.

This is somewhat invasive as it means you have to draw some blood from yourself similar to what a diabetic does when they check their blood glucose levels. Personally, I have never done this nor do I plan to.

A less accurate way to tell you’re in ketosis is by using a urine strip. However, this will only tell you that you have some excess ketones but not how much. More on ketone levels later.

How Do You Get Into Ketosis?

Dr.s Phinney and Volek recommend eating <50 grams of carbs and a moderate amount of protein daily to achieve nutritional ketosis. However, these recommendations can vary according to the individual. Others keto advocates recommend that net carbs (carbs – fiber) be kept to a maximum of 30 grams.

Some people can achieve ketosis with slightly more carbs though others may need less. Also, individuals may not see ketones in their blood immediately. For those who have not already been on a low-carb high-fat diet, it may take 1-2 weeks for ketosis to begin.

Protein and fat intake are variable, depending on the goal of the dieter. I’ll go into more detail later on what comprises a well-formulated ketogenic diet (macronutrient and micronutrient content).

Going Into Ketosis Without Consuming Fat (Fasting)

If you consume no food, you will eventually burn up your stored glycogen reserves. Once this happens, your body will then turn to its own stored fat for fuel. This will eventually produce ketones. This is one goal of those who practice prolonged fasting.

Increasing Ketones Through Supplements

There are supposedly two ways to increase your ketone levels with supplements.

1. Consume exogenous ketones. I haven’t had experience with these and I don’t know how effective they are.
2. Consume MCT (medium chain triglyceride) oil. MCT oil is broken down directly into ketones in the liver. I do take MCT oil, and I’ll give more on my experience with that in an upcoming post.

Who Shouldn’t Be On A Ketogenic Diet?

If you have any kind of debilitating disease you should always consult with your doctor before beginning a diet. That being said some individuals should be cautious before entering into a keto diet.

1. Pregnant women, women who are breastfeeding and children. Because of the differences in caloric intake necessary in these populations a strict keto diet might be contraindicated. See here, here and here.
2. Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetics must be careful of going into ketoacidosis. Since a keto diet increases ketones this is a concern. Type 2 diabetics must be cautious on any low-carb diet because the limitation of carbs in conjunction with insulin-lowering medications can cause hypoglycemia. See here.
3. Hypertensive Individuals. Low-carb diets are effective for lowering blood pressure. Therefore people who go ultra low-carb and are on antihypertensive meds should guard against low blood pressure. See here.

There it is. I know I promised you a 10,000-foot view of a ketogenic diet, this was more like a 5,000-foot view. I know there are still a lot more questions to be answered concerning the ketogenic diet. In my next post, I’ll go into some detail as to why I had to go keto.

Thanks for reading. Let me know your thoughts below, and have a blessed week.

This article originally appeared on glutenfreehomestead.com.

The post Our Ketogenic Diet Journey Part 1: Keto Is Red Hot! Here’s Why appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.