On the first day - July 15, 2015 - I did a full day's monitoring of my blood sugar, to get a baseline for the future. Here are the results:
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As you can see, my average blood glucose for the day was only 79, which is great, and the highest it went all day, even after eating, was only 90. Well within optimal range! I also added a chart above that shows what I ate at each meal, so I can see how the macros of fat, protein and carbs impacted my blood glucose. The levels that I ate on this particular day did not cause any problems.
Here is what I actually ate on that day:
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So food is good, blood glucose is good, but what happened to my body composition in the past four days?
July 15, 2015
Neck - 12"
Bust - 36"
Waist - 31.75"
Belly - 39.75"
Hips - 40.25"
Thigh - 22.5"
Calf - 14.25"
Scale weight - 146.2 pounds
Body fat - 52.7 pounds - 36%
Lean mass - 93.5 pounds - 64%
July 19, 2015
Neck - 12"
Bust - 36"
Waist - 31.625"
Belly - 39.5"
Hips - 40.125"
Thigh - 22.25"
Calf - 14.125"
Scale weight - 144.4 pounds
Body fat - 51.6 pounds - 35.8%
Lean mass - 92.8 pounds - 64.2%
In the past four days, I have lost 1.1 pounds of body fat, but I have also lost 0.7 pounds of lean mass. I would rather have lost less weight on the scale in order to have not lost muscle. This muscle loss came after eating only 66 grams of protein for the day. I was basically having only Bulletproof Coffee for one meal and splitting my protein allowance for the day between the other two meals.
The reason for partitioning my macros this way is to make sure that I am eating at least 30 grams of complete protein at each of my two main meals. The idea for this came from Dr. Donald Layman, PhD. In this video, Dr. Layman explains why it is necessary to eat at least 30 grams of protein at each meal in order to achieve protein synthesis. Dr. Layman says that it is necessary to eat three meals per day, with at least 30 grams of protein at each meal, but I am questioning if this is a good idea for a Type 2 Diabetic. Most of the ketogenic diabetes blogs I am following say to eat much less than 90 grams of protein per day to keep high blood sugar at bay. So I am going to experiment on myself with a new n=1. I am going to "sneak up" to eating more protein at each meal, until I get up to the 90 grams of complete protein (this would be protein that contains all the essential amino acids, but not the protein that comes as part of the vegetables that I eat, which are incomplete proteins), or until my blood glucose starts increasing, whichever comes first. So here is my plan for this coming week:
Breakfast (Bulletproof Coffee with whey protein isolate):
437 calories
43.5g fat (89.7%)
10.7g protein (9.8%) of which 10g are complete protein
0.6g net carbs (0.6%)
For lunch and dinner, I will eat whole foods. For each of these two meals, I will budget 30g of complete protein, plus whatever small amounts of incomplete protein are contained in vegetables.
I will budget no more than 5g of net carbs for each meal. If I fall short on carbs at lunch, I will not try to make it up at dinner.
As far as fat goes, I am a little on the fence about it. Part of me thinks that I should hold the fat low in order for my body fat to get burned, and part of me thinks that I should keep fat higher, to make my food more palatable, and to keep more in line with a true ketogenic diet. Two schools of thought. Looking back at my old food and weight loss logs, I see that having more fat did not stop weight loss or muscle gain, so I am not going to restrict fat. I am also not going to force fat in order to get it up to a certain percentage of my food intake.
What I am going to do is eat the amount of fat that seems right for each meal, and let the grams fall where they may. For instance, I am having quite a bit of fat at breakfast. If I eat a salad with protein for lunch, I will add enough oil in my homemade salad dressing to balance the apple cider vinegar I use. That seems to be about 4-1/2 teaspoons of oil for the 4-1/2 teaspoon of vinegar. If I eat protein with a cooked vegetable, I will use a tablespoon of fat of some kind on my meat, and another tablespoon on my vegetables. For "dessert", I will treat myself to one of my fat bombs, which is one of the recipes I contributed to "The Fat Fast Cookbook". (shameless plug)
Lunch (green salad with homemade dressing and some sort of protein):
560 calories
43.9g fat (70.6%)
36.1g protein (25.8%) of which 30g are complete protein
5g net carbs (3.6%)
Dinner (cooked protein and vegetables with butter, oil, lard, etc.):
621 calories
52.2g fat (75.6%)
32.8g protein (21.1%) of which 30g are complete protein
5g net carbs (3.2%)
The total for the day, based on this example:
1618 calories
139.7g fat (77.7%)
79.5g protein (19.7%) of which 70g are complete protein
10.7g net carbs (2.7%)
(Edit at the end of the day) Here is a chart to show how I ate today and how it affected my blood glucose, which is not much!
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My plan for the future is to try to keep increasing protein each week.
Week 1: 70g of complete protein (10 breakfast, 30 lunch, 30 dinner)
Week 2: 80g of complete protein (20 breakfast, 30 lunch, 30 dinner)
Week 3: 90g of complete protein (30 breakfast, 30 lunch, 30 dinner)
By the time I get to Week 3, I should be up to the 30g of complete protein per meal that Dr. Layman recommends that I eat. It remains to be seen if my blood glucose will stay under control doing this.
Oh, I almost forgot...
WHAT ABOUT HUNGER???
As soon as I started eating this way, I noticed that the only time I am hungry is first thing in the morning on the days I have to get up at 4 am but do not have breakfast until 8 am. Why do I wait to eat? Because I just can't eat a full breakfast before dawn, and if I did, it would mean getting up even earlier that 4 am to prepare and eat before leaving for work at 5 am. Not only that, but I am not able to have lunch until I get home around 1:30 pm, and if I ate at 4 am, there would be a 9-1/2 hour break before lunch. So, I have a cup of broth at 6 am at work, then have a cup of coffee at 7 am, then eat the breakfast I brought from home at 8 am.
Calorie reduction makes me hungry. This way of eating suppresses hunger. On the four days a week that I do not leave the house to go to work, I eat around 8 am, 1 pm and 6 pm. I do not snack at all in between, and I am never hungry. Being in a state of ketosis will do that for you!
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I'll try to post again in a week to let you know how it went for the week.
Thanks for reading!
This photo, by the way, was taken by my wonderful husband on our 40th Wedding Anniversary on October 27, 2014.
