In this case, the wagon, when I fell off it.
One disadvantage of the ketogenic
diet is that there really is no cheating. Your body favors glucose as fuel, and
it will use it first. (The same is apparently true of alcohol: your body will
work through the alcohol before it gets going on the glucose.) Anyway, the
bottom line is that if you eat too many digestible carbohydrates, your body
will start burning and storing them and stop making ketones. You go out of
ketosis and have to start over. You won’t start producing ketones again (and
working on your fat stores) until you’ve used up all of the stored glucose.
As you might imagine, this is my
way of saying that I fell off the wagon, and I fell hard. My friend had a
birthday party. I brought a bunch of cheese to share, but after a couple of
glasses of wine (which I had planned for), I decided to dig into the sourdough
and the delicious Asian coleslaw. At that point, I just said, “Screw it, I’m
just going to eat everything,” and I did. In addition to the delicious coleslaw
and sourdough, I ate a fruit crisp and ice cream. (Both were sugar-sweetened.)
It was delicious and I had a wonderful time, but it was not wise. I had the
worst headache within an hour of leaving. I felt uncomfortably full, and did I
mention the headache? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a headache from eating. It was pretty much exactly like going through serious caffeine withdrawal combined with that "why did I eat the entire pizza?" stomach upset. I
think the moral of the story is that I should continue to avoid sugar. (That was the
first time that I’d had more than a taste of refined sugar in three weeks.) Or
maybe the moral is that I should just stick to the initial plan and pay
attention to what I eat and stay on the wagon in the first place.
Anyway, the plan was now to get back
into ketosis ASAP. I was most definitely out. The Ketostix tell me that I was not
peeing ketones. There were a few options here:
1. Fasting. The benefit of fasting
is that your body will go straight for its energy stores. You might go into
mild ketosis overnight, unless you are the sort of person who eats carb-heavy
meals. Obviously, after a major carbing, you wind up storing more. Apparently,
the liver can hold onto something like 100 g. of glucose. That’s a lot of glucose.
You’d need to go for at least a full day (probably more) to go through that,
which is not especially high on most people’s list of priorities. (More on IF
later, perhaps.)
A happy medium is a short fast. Extending
your typical overnight fast slightly works. Stop eating a bit earlier. (Don’t
go back for leftovers at 8 or 9 or midnight.) Start eating a little bit later.
(Wait awhile before you eat breakfast.)
This is fairly painless, except for people who eat very small meals and
those who are highly sensitive to disruptions in routine. Basically, don’t do
this if you’re under the age of 8.
2. Exercise like nuts. Your body
will need extra fuel for a serious workout. Your muscles, like your brain, are
happy to use glucose. A hard workout will encourage depletion of your stores. I
did a moderate workout. I was trying out a new leg routine, so I did not hit it
too horribly hard.
3. Do an Egg Fast. I did this,
and it’s pretty much what it sounds like. During a Fat Fast, you aim to get 90%
of your calories from fat (as opposed to the usual 70% or so). The Egg Fast
also has you getting more fat than usual, but it also allows for more protein.
You can eat one oz. of cheese per egg that you eat. Besides eggs and cheese,
you can have heavy cream, butter, olive oil, coconut oil, and non-caloric
condiments.
Today, I had three two-egg omelets
with cheese and three deviled eggs. Two of the omelets had cheddar cheese (one
had both Camembert and cheddar) and one had mozzarella. I put hot sauce on all
of them. Because I’m trying to get more unsaturated fat, I used olive oil to
cook two of them. Tomorrow, I’m probably going to try something else. Maybe
I’ll make a nice cheese crunchy thing and try to turn it into a taco shell and
have a scrambled egg taco.
I do not like the egg fast, but I
want to get back into ketosis and have my better-than-usual mood back ASAP. I
literally had 4 or 5 carbs today. I am going through some milder transition
symptoms. (I had the worst brain fog before; it was like I was drunk or
sleep-deprived. Very bad.) I hope I’m back at it by Monday; the lunches that I
made are a little bit more carb-heavy.
Additional
reports as the situation develops.
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