My experience with Nutritional Ketosis
My journey to start nutritional Ketosis started around 4 months ago. Well, what lead or motivated me to take this step! Over the past 1.5 years my blood cholesterols were trending borderline high and another important metabolic marker my average HbA1c blood sugar levels were trending upwards though still in the normal range (5.3 to 5.5). To be clear throughout my life I have always maintained a healthy BMI of around 20-22, I don’t smoke or drink.
Generally, I am very strict about my diet and will not eat any junk /processed foods. Old fashioned (not instant) Oatmeal breakfast was my staple diet for years and as taught by the food pyramid used to consume a low amount of sugar, salt & oil/fats. I was wondering why my Cholesterol is not in control, my Triglycerides & LDL (bad Cholesterol) were high and HDL (good Cholesterol) was low.
My doctors advised, me to start regular exercise and cut down on all potential cholesterol sources like eggs, dairy, red meats etc. And asked me to come back for a follow-up checkup after 6 months.
As planned after 6 months I did another blood test, I hoped things would be better as I was doing all the right things which my doctor told. I was very surprised to find that my lipid profile has even become worse than ever before. Looking at my test results my Doctor advised me to go on the Statins. I hate taking medication as all of them have terrible known & unknown side-effects.
I started looking for alternative solutions as I don't want to be on Statin drugs. On the internet I came across a talk by Dr. Mark Hyman M.D, his talk motivated me to try the LCHF diet. I was astonished to find out that Carbs & sugars are the major driver of inflammation in the body leading to higher level of insulin (main fat building hormone). I analyzed my diet and came to know that after eating high carbs (Wheat, rice & legumes) over last 40 years my body is slowly getting Carb intolerant/insulin resistant and my pancreas was not able to keep up with the Carb load which I was feeding on. So all those so called healthy Oats and all the wholesome grains, starchy vegetables (mostly grown underground) and the generous amount of fruits are to be blamed for my situation.
Hence I decided to change my diet by completely eliminating the above-mentioned food items from my diet. It was not easy as almost all Indian food revolved around carbs. I switched my diet to leafy and non-starchy vegetables, very limited amount of legumes (Beans, gram, kidney beans etc.) For proteins, I relied on eggs, red meat, and fish and limited my consumption to 20-25% of my daily diet. I am consuming all kinds of nuts & seeds (walnuts, almonds, pistachios, flax seed, Cashews, hemp seeds, Brazil nuts) except Peanuts.
Since Ketogenic diet involves removal of Carbs to a great extent and forcing the body to switch from being a "sugar burner" to a "fat burner. Now my staple energy source (60-70%) is now Ghee, Coconut oil, heavy cream, lard, extra virgin olive oil, almond /cashew butter etc. Per latest research (I have given references at the end of this note).
I understand that all kinds of commercially available refined oils like (sunflower, safflower, soy, rice bran etc. which are marketed as heart healthy are all contributing to bad heath please avoid them as much as you can.
The initial transition to low Carb was not a very pleasant experience, had some Carb withdrawal symptoms also known as Keto flu (headache, low energy, brain fog, constipation etc). To get over the Keto flu experts have suggested increasing sodium (salt) intake as kidneys tend to excrete high levels of sodium and overall this diet has a diuretic impact hence one tends to lose a lot of fluid mass trapped in cells due to high insulin levels resulting in rapid weight loss, but this is just water weight no fat burning.
It took me around 2 weeks to adapt to this new lifestyle. And after that life is normal as usual. On the high-fat diet, you don't tend to get hungry as I used to be earlier. There is no energy drop/crash at the end of the day. A couple of times I skipped lunch and was running fine the whole day on just breakfast, and the fat stored is getting metabolized into energy, you can feel the difference it’s like you have unlimited supply in your gas tank which does not go empty at the end of the day
After 3 months, I took another cholesterol test the total Cholesterol count remained almost constant, HDL (good Cholesterol) count almost doubled, marginal improvement in LDL (bad Cholesterol), Triglycerides went down within the normal range. Please note every individual is different and results will vary from person to person but it is proven that HDL improves in almost all the cases.
The last 3 months has been a great learning experience for me and made me aware how bad food is impacting my health. The traditional view of all calories are equal does not hold much water, the concept of food being “information to your body” makes sense to me now. There are a lot of research going on in the area of functional medicine as drugs are just treating the symptoms and not the underlying cause of the disease.
I will end with this famous quote - "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food" — Hippocrates, father of medicine, 431 B.C
Here are some of the leading references for LCHF diets which inspired me.
1. "The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living": by Jeff S. Volek Ph.D. and Stephen D. Phinney.
2. "Eat fat get thin" by Mark Hyman,
3. "Always Hungry" by David Ludwig
Youtube Links-
Moderators can move this topic to a new thread as this is not just weight loss diet, it’s a sustained new way of living without sugar.