Carnivore/Keto

Corn chips are particularly bad and potato chips not much better. One reason these can be viewed as worse than raw sugar is because of how easy it is to overeat chips of either kind vs raw sugar, however full sugar soda is right up there with chips with how easy it is to over-consume and how bad it is on blood sugar spikes.

Diet soda is a reasonably easy substitute for most, but chips can be a little harder. In that case, adding fiber can help blunt blood sugar spikes. It's one of the ways you can have bread (generally very high in total carbs) wind up being 0 net carbs. Adding protein or fat with those carbs can also have a blunting effect, though the mechanisms are different.

Just like it appears that you can shift your body to better utilyze fat for energy, there's at least some anecdotal evidence that the same process can make eating processed/refined carbs more impactful in terms of how they feel and weight gain/loss. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing so long as you can sustain whatever it is that you are doing.

FWIW - If you look at nutrition labels and do the math for the Recommended Daily Allowance for carbs, that # is still close to 300g/day. I looked a little deeper into that and that amount is based on someone with moderate activity. For sedentary people I'm seeing ~130-180g day is the RDA, but many times it's the sedentary people that are consuming > 300g/day.

I usually have no problem keeping mine at 100g or less, and when I want to drop a few pounds I reduce it to closer to 50g for a few days. A number of people would have problems with this since a single food item (i.e. bagel) can exceed 50g. Keep in mind though that I'm talking about Net carbs as far as my personal consumption #'s. The RDA for carbs is based on Total and not Net carbs. There can be a very big diifference.

Likewise. It's the only way I can see to get a meaningful relative weight difference because of water weight fluctuatiuons.

Also I always use a dry weigh, nude first thing in the in the morning.

Same here!

Someonescoming - In practice, I'm not sure I've seen that be the case for me. I have had days where I lost weight after eating ice cream the day before, but it's so hard to tell because weight can change so much due to water weight.

I do notice that when my carbs get much above 50g/day that it is very likely I will gain weight, but again, eating carbs will make you hold onto more water.

It's not a bad thing to eat semi-badly once in a while. The bad thing is when you fall off the wagon then sit there and watch it ride off into the sunset.

I was talking to a friend that lost 60 lbs on Atkins over a 2 year period. He put all that back on and then some. I asked him what happened. He said, "One day, I ate a cracker" and paused. I knew exactly what that meant.

He felt so deprived for so long that he ate the whole box of crackers and then felt hopeless and went back to eating the way he did before Atkins.

Oh wow a public square shaming.. what time and can we help the wife with whatever she needs!

hey we all do it.. its what some weekends and grandkids do to us.. self control slips .. but yes its so good!

Now off to Gym and then Pickleball matches!

mayham - on the pizza crusts, try cauliflower. It is becoming common to at least have one size available. It is real good if they put a little cheese on the bottom to give it an extra snap of flavor

My resting pulse has always been low (55-60), When I'm near sleep, it gets <50.

I thought my BP was going up but realize that I wasn't getting the BP cuff on just right. Made some adjustments and it was 122/71 this morning. Not super low, but decent.

While I'm not officially doing keto and certainly not carnivore, I am eating a high protein low-carb diet. By low-carb, I mean something under 100g for someone my size. Some days that # is below 50g.

Anyway, I'm curious to hear what people have seen and can maybe expect for health markers/indicators. As an example, my fasting glucose has gone down 7 points since last year's and something called BUN (Blood Urea Nitrogen) went up. This is expected on a high protein diet.

Ironically in my case, my LDL levels dropped 11 points. I don't think this is the norm, but I'll take it. My triglicerides went up but are still 40% below the borderline threshhold. My HDL (good cholesterol) is higher than the high side of the threshhold. All good.

Breads in general are my Achilles heel.
And my lovely wife loves, loves, LOVES baking.
We even grow our own wheat, gather, thresh, winnow and grind it to flour for all her various breads, rolls, buns, cookies and cakes.
And I’m over here chewing on chicken drumsticks or cheese ????

When I do indulge I tell people it’s like a hangover that lasts for a few days.

While I do allow myself an occasional indulgence, now that I'm tracking my weight against what I eat, it is pretty eye opening. I've been bouncing around between 208 and 210 the last past couple of weeks or so. We had the kids over and they wanted pizza for lunch. I hate throwing away food so had a slice of left over Sal's meat-lovers from a 19" pie for dinner last night.

I did also have it with a chopped salad with chicken breast to try to meet my daily protein goals. This morning my weight was closer to 212. It's not the first time these little weight bump "coincedences" have happened. I really do need to experiment with some of the keto pizza crusts as pizza is kind of my kryptonite, but I don't do it often.

The thing is, there are so many decent alternatives to some of the bad food that the only excuse is being too busy or lazy. Will power becomes so much easier when you can just eat a healthier version of something you want to eat anyway.

Don’t you love to see it? Lol!
Well, we do. I’ve been saying the same thing to people in my life for a while.
Everyone I say it to nods, they know but still consume it. Was recently told “I NEED the variety and flavors, I can’t do keto” I just tell them nothing tastes as good as skinny feels lol.

peghey19 - "I also incorporate intermittant fasting, which I also love, as I freaking hate to cook."

I do intermittant fasting as well, but mostly because eating soon after I get up turns my stomach. I normally only do lunch, dinner and snacks and roughly follow 16:8 IF, so basically only doing 2 meals a day. The hard part for me is getting enough protein in. It's just something I need to be aware of and my snacks tend to be high protein snacks.

Both the Mrs and I cook fairly well and do get some enjoyment out of it, particularly the Mrs. We both like that we can make things as good or better than what we can buy pre-made. If it involves something on the grill, that is 99.9% me.

From what I understand, the norm for Carnivore is only 2 meals a day as well, and in some cases, only one. That would be the ultimate I'd think in ketosis time.

I am on the other end of the keto spectrum - as I rely heavily on low/glycemic plants and MUFAS and PUFAS for my diet. I also eat mostly on plant protein, although I do eat pastured eggs and some other grass-fed/ pastured meat, fish and seafood.

This seems to be a nutritional plan that works well for me. I love how I feel in ketosis, although the plan I follow is based on metabolic flexibility rather than almost constant ketosis.

I also incorporate intermittant fasting, which I also love, as I freaking hate to cook.

I do keto, though I’m not sure if that is an effective endorsement of the program or damning evidence against it lol.

My lovely wife is vegan.
Different strokes and all that lol.

Yes! A whole other conversation, but one also related to chronic, systemic inflammation from poor nutrition, poor sleep, lack of exercise - the whole shebang.

Statins are the devil for some and lifesavers for others, and the kind of statin can also make a difference. You can't just make a blanket statement about them.

What everyone needs to know its a more complete picture of their lipids - not just three values - and whether they are collectors of plaque; what we do know is that plaque begets plaque, so if you have it, you need to take more drastic steps to control it. Family history is a pretty good indication of risk, and there are now several reliable genetic tests that can help you determine what you got from whom.

A great and cheap test is a coronary calcium scan, which will cost about 100, but will tell you if you have calcification and where. That should help you and your physician to determine whether you need a statin or not.

One of the evils of statins are that many physicians that think the lower your cholesterol, the better; no one should have a total cholesterol under 150 - maybe even 200, because the brain needs it to function properly.

Also remember that all sat fat is not created equal - it is what we also surround it with: the French(for example) eat many more veggies than we do, have historically had much less processed food, no A1 dairy, fewer pesticides and herbicides, the list goes on...

The bread most of us ate most of our lives would not even be considered edible in France.

Statins are the devil. Took myself off it and felt noticably better. Will never take one again.

Someonescoming - "The new contention is that the fear of high cholesterol is wrongly placed."

I have known for a while now that elevated LDL alone is an incomplete picture. At a minimum, you'd want an LDL particle size test as a next step to see if it's even close to being an issue. If you have a lot of small dense LDL particles, those are the ones commonly associated with causing issues and I at least would be a bit more concerned.

What I am concerned about though is how quick doctors are to precribe a statin. The drug companies use relative % comparisons to show an elevated benefit to taking a statin (and that's what they feed to doctors), but then use absolute % comparisons to downplay the side-effects. The fact that they present the data that way should already be telling that they are trying to hide things from you and/or persuading you using shady tactics.

IMHO a large part of how doctors do things these days are to minimize the risks from litigation if something bad happens.

Exactly ... read the "Great Cholesterol Con".. with the GVTS own studies and how they LIED and Covered it up.. we are fine with ours in the 250/ 275 range.. your body, cells and brain needs it. If NOT you will get dementia and other brain diseases. its all FACTS with studies to prove it!

Its a RX and scam even our heart Dr said same however until our teaching medicine changes and is fueled by Big Pharma.. it will not change!

Its always about the money.. pass it on to those who argue including May.. we blocked him during his Covid nonsense!

I'm still on the fence about grains. Many talk of the positives of oatmeal, as an example. Years ago when my cholesterol was creeping up, I switched from bacon & eggs to oatmeal for breakfast for 6 months. My LDL actually went up and it was the worst lipid profile I ever had.

As a lot of people have discovered, so much of what we have been told about the optimal diet was BS. It seems even saturated fat has been vindicated to a large degree.

Pace of life and processed food being cheap has contributed to it being so prevelant. It really doesn't take much longer to cook a healthy meal from scratch. but many that don't know how to cook perceive that it does.

The problem with fat, even when properly sourced is when the rest of the diet is highly- inflammatory: processed foods, sugar, high-glycemic carbs, grains and conventional dairy, for example. Following a plant- heavy keto diet will generally help lipid-related biomarkers, once inflammation is under control.

I give credit to the guy doing the Youtube for making me aware of the study, which I found very interesting, but I always tend to follow up on my own and one thing I appreciate is true unbiased presentations.

A small nit with the Youtube author is that he points out that the US Department of Agriculture puts out the US dietary recommendations, then mentions a conflict of interest with a bias towards vegetable-base product subsidies (corn, sugar). I'm not sure why he thinks there would be a bias. It sort of makes it look like he had an axe to grind and didn't realize "Agriculture" also includes livestock/meat.

Good dialogue below! A couple thoughts - On cholesterol Most is made by your body and dietary contribution is minor.

Idea for protein snack - pickle some eggs