Friday, September 28, 2012

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD

I have been doing so well that I stopped tracking what I eat and I also stopped monitoring my blood ketones and blood glucose.  But in the past week, I have gained over two pounds and I feel like I've been slightly overeating protein and carbs and undereating fat.

It was my usual habit to have 2 eggs with cream cheese in the morning, then have a fat snack around lunch time and then have only 3 ounces of some sort of protein for dinner along with minimal veggies.  While I was doing this, I was never hungry and never felt the need to snack on anything after dinner.

For the past week, I have been having eggs and sometimes also bacon for breakfast, and then having some sort of snack that contains some carbs around lunch time and then too much protein for dinner along with more carbs than I am used to eating.  The result of this is that I have gained a little weight and I am also experiencing hunger during the day and after dinner.  Most of those days I was eating a snack before bed, like some sour cream or almond butter.

Another thing I have been doing differently is that I have been having a really big cup of tonic water from the golf course bar with lime.  My husband was drinking it one day when I went in there, so I tried it.  It was so good, that I kind of got addicted to it.  After doing this for a couple of weeks, I found out why it was so tasty and why I got addicted to it:  high fructose corn syrup!  I thought tonic water was just seltzer water with quinine added to it.  It turns out that it is also sweetened.  Each time I was having my 16 oz. cup of it, I was ingesting around 20 grams of carbs.  Sigh.  Obviously, I am not going to have any more of it.

This morning, I decided to check my blood just for fun, but it was not fun reading the results.  My blood glucose was always in the mid 70s or low 80s in the morning before eating, and this morning it was 108.  That is not diabetic level, but it is still too high.

The reading on my blood ketones upset me even more.  My average since entering nutritional ketosis has been 2.2.  This morning it was 0.6.  Of course, this would explain why I have been so hungry lately.  Nutritional ketosis will knock the hunger right out of you.  At least in my case, hunger = no ketosis.

I read, or maybe heard, either Dr. Phinney or Dr. Volek say that once you are out of nutritional ketosis, it can take weeks to get back in again.  So even if I had not been eating a little bit too much protein or carbs, this could have happened from drinking all the tonic water alone.

Well, lesson learned, and I am going back to tracking what I eat.  I am going back to where I left off, which is 135g fat, 57g protein and 28g (or less) carbs each day.

I am also going to start checking my blood glucose daily and checking my blood ketones weekly.

Has anyone else who is tracking seen anything like this happen?

15 comments:

  1. I've been gaining weight to as I added fruits into my diet. So I will have to restart in Atkins induction phase on Monday

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    1. It has always been detrimental to me to add back in fruit, which is sad, because I love fruit! But I love been thinner and healthier better! Let me know how you do, Mandy.

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  2. I am tracking, but just started eating this way June 4. I've lost 18.5 pounds and would like to lose 12 more, but I'd take 10. I have not varied my foods; my blood ketones were 1.2 yesterday morning.

    I think I need to incorporate some exercise to move the rest of this.

    THANK YOU so much for your in-depth analysis and your posts here and on lcfriends. You are helping lots of people who don't necessarily respond in print!

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  3. Judith, congratulations on your success so far! Those are wonderful results. Keep me posted!

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  4. Sorry to bug you - I am having thyroid testing done (TSH, FT3, FT4) and I failed to bookmark the video you have somewhere in here where a (I think) naturopath tells the ranges and numbers he prefers to see. It was 2 videos, the first was about 10 minutes +/-.

    If you get a chance would you mind linking that?
    Selfishly,
    Judy

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    1. I'm sorry, Judy, but I looked and cannot locate it. I looked at everything that has a tag on it for Videos, but it is missing in action. It must have been quite a while ago, because I don't remember it. Possibly you saw it somewhere else?

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  5. I just started Nutritional Ketosis WOE last week and have 7 days under my belt. Just tested my blood Ketones today 0.5...can't wait till it is alot higher. I now know why Atkins stopped working for me years ago. I do find that my hot flashes decrease quite a bit when I'm in ketosis! Hoping that they stop completely in deep ketosis. Love your blog.

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    1. It's so funny that you say that your hot flashes decreased. Mine have increased! I am having hot flashes all day and all night and it started when I entered nutritional ketosis!

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  6. I just assumed it was the Ketosis that was contributing to the decrease. It could also be the increase of fish oil. Since increasing my fat, I have been taking 2-3 Tablespoons of fish oil (Carlson's lemon flavored), to keep my ratios of Omega 3/Omega 6 down. I remember in an interview I heard of Louise Gittleman, after her book Fat Flush came out, that the women who took fish oil, instead of flaxseed oil, decreased their hotflashes also. I don't know...but it is nice.

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  7. Thank-you so much for you blog posts. I am considering giving nutritional ketosis a whirl. Have you considered doing a post of "What I wish I would have known before I started". Any helpful tips would be much appreciated---mostly just to take away the fright of starting something new. Also, the "Diet Doctor" did a post on how his ketones were affected by artificial sweetners. Have you experienced anything similar?

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    1. Actually, Allison, there is really only one thing that I wish I had known, and I did talk about that in a few posts: I wish I had known that if I ate too much fat, I would not burn body fat. I started out eating 85% fat, but after not losing and then starting to gain a little, I cut it back to 70% and started losing again.

      As far as artificial sweeteners go, I don't use them, so I could not cut back and see how I did. The only sweetener I use is natural Stevia extract (liquid) and I only use 5 drops per day.

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    2. There is a typo above that it won't let me fix: That should say that I cut back to 79% fat, not 70%.

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  8. So Becca, What is it that you are doing now? I have read through the blog and see you have tried many things over the last year.

    I hope you and yours are all well.

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    1. I am doing nutritional ketosis. To find out more about it, click on the tag to the right that says Nutritional Ketosis, and it will explain what it is.

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