Thanks for providing several specifics. I'm going to respond to your various points, and sometimes, I have very strong opinions, but I recognize that each guy needs to decide for himself in terms of what information he has, what weight he gives that information and balancing how much time he has to research further. I have some visceral reactions, but it seems that I frequently either don't know enough about what you are doing or how to suggest a better way.
Quote: (07-21-2016 09:13 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:
Quote: (07-21-2016 05:05 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:
Before going on this second keto session, I planned out my menu on an Excel spreadsheet.. net carbs and calories. I can easily lose track of how much I eat, so I need some planning to make sure I stay within the limits. I am trying to maintain an 800+ kcal deficit per day whilst in ketosis.
I can become quite nerdy when it comes to these kinds of keeping track things too, and I agree that one of the ways to hold yourself accountable and to stick to a kind of outline is to be fairly rigid with yourself, detailed and even later down the road, you can become more flexible within your own rigidness, but at least you have attempted some levels of controlling for a large number of variables.
Such methodology can be compared with the elimination diet in which the person may chose to eliminate anything that can be causing issues (allergies or whatever) and then after confirming that the issue went away, then person can slowly add back in various food items and even narrow down the culprit of what is causing the issue.
Having said all that, I do think that the calorie framework and the calorie mindset is nearly completely flawed, and you seem to be describing what you are doing in terms of creating a calorie deficit. I think Gary Taubes explained these flaws best in his two books 1) Good calories bad calories, and 2) why we get fat and what to do about it.
Taubes may not be completely correct in terms of one of his points about exercise does not matter for losing weight.. I kind of consider exercise as a form to increase endurance and stamina and tone of muscle rather than some kind of effective method of actually losing weight.
When you talk about attempting to create a calorie deficit, you are getting into underlying ideas of the law of thermodynamics of what goes in and what goes out and that it all has to add up, and it makes very little sense in reality, and it's really problematic thinking... like as if over 30 days you are going to lose 3 lbs if you cut your calories by 350 per day, or something like that... it is pure nonsense, even though mathematically it adds up to losing 3,500 calories every 10 days, therefore 3 lbs in 30 days.
Looking at your various ideas about keto, it is as if you are recognizing that some foods are more nutritious than others, but you are still stuck with part of a calorie counting paradigm that kind of assumes that all calories are equal, yet you are mix matching and attempting to take the good parts from each system to create a better methodology (that is still flawed by some of this calories bullshit).
Instead of being so negative, let me attempt to se if I can phrase this matter in a more positive way, which I am probably repeating what i had already asserted, and that is that the kinds of food matters more than than the calories in the food, and if you are eating the right kinds of foods, it is very likely that you can eat as much as you like because you are most likely going to get full and/or not have hunger cravings when you are feeding your body with nutritious foods (fat has one of those qualities to satiate and you can eat as much as you want and you are going to stop eating and not want to eat anything else, and carbohydrates have a kind of opposite quality to cause you to crave food.. and therefore, carbohydrates need to be largely eliminated, except to the extent that they are needed to feed some of your healthy gut flora... .
Quote: (07-21-2016 09:13 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:
The non-meat & dairy is mostly green veggies (mixed salad, green beans, asparagus, leeks, swiss chard). I need veggies in my diet.
I don't know if anybody "needs" veggies, but the leafy ones may not really hurt guys too much, and they could probably be o.k. for feeding gut bacteria.. yet I don't think that legumes such as green beans really fits into a category as a good source of nutrition (though likely in very small does would not hurt too much).
You may be getting into some misinformation ideas about need for ruffage and fiber in your diet, and sometimes you calculate your net carbs based on fiber offset, yet I don't think that these kinds of carbs are actually "needed" even though they may be o.k. for flavor and enhancement of food in some circumstances, and the nutrients of most vegetables are better absorbed with fat, to the extent that there are any nutrients in them. Fat could be an offset for some vegetable type carbs, and sure fiber can slow digestion of some carbs, so that slowing of the absorption can be a good thing, but it does not decrease your number of carbs, just the rate of absorption which is good to control sugar spikes and inflammation.
Quote: (07-21-2016 09:13 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:
Right now I am one or two (one if I am desk bound that day, two on weekends when I am active with my building projects) protein shakes per day. The shake is mixed with two teaspoons of coconut oil. Each shake is 258 cal and 10 grams net carbs).
These various protein shakes don't sound very good or necessary..
what's in there? Are they natural food? Probably not. Do they have Wey protein, and what are the other supposed "healthy" ingredients?
I am definitely not opposed to being liberal with the coconut oil that you add to any kind of food that you eat, but think about the shakes themselves, they are not very likely to be natural foods and whatever is in there is likely artificial and likely going to be absorbed into your system fast and probably causing sugar spikes.. or similar other bad and unnatural effects when you eat too much protein powders and maybe even strange ingredients.
Why not just eat real food, such as eggs? I mean real eggs. Then you get fat too. Eating eggs without the yoke is not very good, but eating eggs with the yoke is nutritious... or maybe just eat the yokes..... I eat the whole egg.. what the fuck, because otherwise I would not know what to do with the whites. you can boil eggs and other ways to prepare eggs, but bacon and eggs or pork bellies and eggs would be very good to eat you can cook bacon and carry it around all day and eat it as snacks (higher fat is better)... In any event gotta get some fat going in with the protein that you eat, and if you stick with the protein shakes (which don's seem good, at least adding more coconut oil could offset them a bit more, but I don't know if it fixes the problem of potentially bad ingredients and gluconeogenesis)
Quote: (07-21-2016 09:13 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:
I have one regular meal today which is between 700 to 950 kcal and about 15 - 25g net carbs. I use high fatty nuts and legumes like pecans and cashews as snacks.
I don't think that there is a problem with just eating one or two meals a day, yet I question those kinds of snacks that you are having, and you are talking about legumes in your snacks which are probably not good..and maybe you already know that some nuts have more carbs than others and less fat than others... Nuts are generally a combination of fat, protein and carbs, and the portions vary, but overdoing nuts, is not very nutritious because of gluconeogenesis. Sure some nuts are better than others, yet you can eat sardines too... for snacks, and get better fats.. or have some kind of avocado or coconut oil..
Maybe I just don't know enough about the various nuts that you are eating, but a combination of protein shakes and nuts does not seem so great for ketosis, and I remember you said that you are measuring ketosis through urine, which is not very accurate way of measuring ketosis compared with blood measurements (which i think are not really very available). I don't measure ketosis, and I am thinking more about the nutrition of the food that you are eating and maybe the frequencies, quantities and absorption, and it just gets me thinking about the problematic nature of snacking and why you may not feel satiated from whatever meal that you ate that would thereafter cause you to want to snack.
Quote: (07-21-2016 09:13 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:
I also use heavy cream in my coffee. Max from the cream and the snacks is about 100 calories with maybe another 10 or 15 grams net carbs. I try to keep the carb intake averaging 50 grams or less daily, though some days I do go over a bit.
I agree that any kind of dairy should be attempted to consume in the highest fat form, and I understand it is difficult to get raw dairy.. but heavy cream is generally pretty good (as opposed to any low fat variations), because the high fat really offsets much of the carb affect.
Quote: (07-21-2016 09:13 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:
I am not doing paleo, so I do eat dairy beyond the heavy cream. I use good quality cheddar (Cabot is a great brand for cheese), romano, and manchego, adding it my my dishes for calories and fat. I also use pine nuts to raise the fat content up.
The cheeses should be high fat, but still probably in moderation because of gluconeogenesis - through the lactose.
I don't have a lot of nuts in my diet, but as I already mentioned, besides fats, most nuts have protein and carbs in varying ratios, so you may be getting more gluconeogenesis effect than you expect through the nuts.
Quote: (07-21-2016 09:13 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:
For oils I mainly use a combination of olive oil and butter. Mixing them while cooking keeps the butter from scorching.
my understanding is that olive oil has a very low smoke point, and should not be used for cooking, hardly at all... butter has a little higher smoke point than olive oil, but maybe it is just for light cooking.
coconut oil is good for cooking, and so is bacon grease and animal fats such as those rendered from beef or pork.. if you cook your pork bellies, then you can save the excess oil from that, and it will keep for months in the fridge without any loss of quality.
Quote: (07-21-2016 09:13 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:
I do use 'bad fat' hydrogenated lard for a few items (browning pork chops, coating a ribeye which help me sear it on the grill, and making panned spinach). Its use though is pretty minor compared to the olive oil, butter, and the coconut oil in the protein drink.
this use of hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils is totally unnecessary in any guy's own cooking.
I understand that guys may ingest some of these kinds of fats when we go out to restaurants and when others cook for us, and in those cases, we should just assume that those foods had been made by use of inferior oils to cook (unless we ask, which is not always socially appropriate), but there is no excuse to use these hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils in our own cooking, especially if you value nutrition.
Quote: (07-21-2016 09:13 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:
Meat is beef, pork (my wife makes an awesome pork belly), duck, chicken, let of lamb, salmon, shrimp, mahi-mahi, sea scallops, squid, crab meat, clams, oysters, etc. I am an amateur gourmet cook of sorts (useful skill when dating women back in my 20s).
I think that any of those meats are good, and the higher the fat in the meat and in the cut of meat, the better. Buy meat with the fat on it, and even buy cuts of fat when offered, and don't trim the fat and you get a variety of fat sources from a variety of meats.
In your meat list above, Chicken is over rated, but if the chicken is free range and eating bugs, then the fat is better than the industrial raised chickens. Canned tuna and sardines can be good meat sources too, for good fats.
Quote: (07-21-2016 09:13 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:
As for the sleep issue... on nights that I work out, I sleep like I am dead. Just heavy sessions of REM after my wife's alarm goes off and draggy as hell trying to get out of bed. Just like I get from certain allergy meds. Its a minor issue, though on occasion I do dream with my eyes open, which is a really surreal experience. That is something I used to do all the time as a kid.. Happened to me twice now during this keto round.
Sounds like you are associating better sleep with gym work outs, but you are still attempting to figure out the bad sleep occasions. could be your kinds of activities before you go to bed, you have not described that... I doubt the solution is to exercise every day, but maybe there is something connected with your activities on days that you exercise (besides the mere fact that you are depleting your energy) that causes you to sleep better on those days..
Quote: (07-21-2016 09:13 PM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:
As for sugary drinks... none.. not even fruit juice. It is pretty much water and unsweetened ice tea. I do use sugarless breath mints as I do get keto breath and have that gawd awful metallic taste in my mouth at times that comes with keto.
Sounds like you have the sugary drinks under control, and the breath mints are likely kind of
de minimus in their affect on your blood sugars.
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