Hi again. Actually, the total calories I get from the ratios. You multiply the grams (protein and carb by 4, and fat by 9) to get the calories per macro, then add them together for total calories. You're really working more on not eating too much protein, a problem I have, or too many carbs. The fat, as long as your protein and carbs are low, isn't an issue.

Hope this helps.

Thank you both. I've been restricting my calories so long that I just have trouble believing I can eat that many calories and lose. But we'll see. I've let them creep up to 1600-1800 range following the ratios for the past few days. I'm not gaining... time will tell.

Hey -

it takes a lot more glycogen than 50-60g a day to fill stores - unless we are talking about the liver only perhaps?

I do much better with less vegetables, but also better with a few select than none (confusing I know but something I've been experimenting with). Maybe there is something to the potato idea.

"Creep up" describes it perfectly. That's how it happened to me, too. Since I track everything in my Health-Fit Counter daily, I could see it happen. 1500. 1600. 1700 - and the first time I hit over 1900 I just stared at it. When I went to bed that night I was depressed, sure I'd blown it. I dreaded getting on the scale, but I do it every night/morning anyway, because if something is going really wrong I want to catch it early. I gingerly stepped on the scale (if I could have closed my eyes without knocking something over I would have) and looked down, not believing it. I'd lost weight.

The proof that you are too is the fact that you're not gaining, even with the higher calories. So the scale may not be moving down yet, but you're probably already losing stored body fat. Yay! :)

Lisa

I'm not sure, but the Slow Burn book mentioned the 'tank' and I believe they said it was very small.


There must be. I can't believe I'm eating them and not blowing up like a balloon.

Lisa

On average 300g glycogen in the whole body - I guess that number would vary with how much muscle you carry. There is another theory that a certain amount of glucose is needed to completely metabolize fatty acids for energy. This might explain why some people don't lose body fat on a high fat diet if carbs are too low. HOwever, some people, if this theory is true, manage to make enough glucose out of surplus protein to burn the fatty acids. Those would be the zero carbers who are successful. Just a theory though. Incompletely metabolized fatty acids are ketones - but ironically a lot of people don't seem to be able to lose fat on a keto-driven metabolism. Dr K's diet, because of the carbs, could be called a fat-driven metabolism, which is different. It may be easier to lose weight - especially it seems for females, on a fat driven metabolism and not a ketone-driven one. These are ideas that have been discussed on a yahoo group I'm part of.

Oh that 300g number I read on another forum - so I'm not 100% sure about it.

Ok I started my experiment yesterday.

Here's what I'm eating on this experiment.

I made a mix of dried potato powder and whey & egg protein powder (vanilla flavor and stevia sweetened). I make it so there is 70g carbs and 90g proteins, which are my Dr K. ratios. Then I add boiling water to it until it reaches the texture of mashed potatoes. The result of this mixture is lightly sweet tasting mashed potatoes. It is very palatable, so I don't have any problem eating it.

This meal is what I am left to eat for an entire day. :( I am fortunate enough to be able to ignore hunger completely when I want to. Otherwise, I don't think I would be able to sustain this.

Plus I continue taking my supplements.

- Vitamin D3 5000iu/d
- Magnesium 300mg/d
- Omega (swiss labs) 2400mg/d
- B 100 complex/d
- The Right C 1000mg/d
- Norwegian Kelp 1500mg/d (1.5 mg iodine)
- Maca pills (don't remember amount)
- Glucosamine Sulfate 3000mg/d

I don't know if it is related or not, but I was down 0.7 pound this morning.

I'll keep you posted.

Patrick

I'm just curious which Yahoo group that is. Note: I see there *is* a group there dedicate to the Optimal Diet:
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/grou...Healthy_Eating/

But it only has 17 members. And hasn't had any new posts since July 2008!

Hi Debbie -

no the group is called SaturatedFatForHealth. The action comes in fits and bursts, but what is discussed is very interesting. Lots of people taking BG measurements and experimenting with different % of fat/protein/carbs.

Optimal Nutrition p45 says "If a person doesn't eat carbohydrates at all, he can still create the necessary amount of them from glycerol and protein. However, to avoid forcing your body to do that, it is best to supply it with a slight quantity of carbohydrates in food." On p38 it talks about how when protein is broken down the body has to get rid of the nitrogen and "While expelling nitrogen, the body necessarily loses a lot of hydrogen, which is an excellent fuel. For every atom of nitrogen a body gets rid of, it must also lose 3 atoms of hydrogen in ammonia and another 2 atoms of hydrogen in urea. This gives the liver in kidneys more work to do. Therefore protein consumption should be kept low. 50g of protein a day is enough for a healthy person on the OD, as long as it is animal protein."

I can understand why we wouldn't want to eat huge amounts of excess protein, but is eating 90g instead of 50g really that hard on the body? He does not touch on this question in either of his books. How much work is turning 40g of protein into 20g of carbs compared to the work required to produce the insulin to deal with 20g of carbs from wheat flour or potato, which elsewhere he describes as foods to avoid???

On p102 he says diabetics should limit themselves to 50g +/- 15g (35-65) carbs to keep them out of ketosis. 35g takes me out of ketosis, so do I really need more?

Now renamed FatForHealth. About 88 members.

I'm not surprised. Lots of metabolic science has come down the pike since then, and although you might have no difficulty eating 90g of protein on a LC diet (like Atkins or PP), that just means you don't have the BCAA metabolic defect.

Folks that do, like me, cannot eat normal levels of protein IF we also eat modestly high fat diets -- like Atkins or PP, for instance. If we do, our bodies convert that additional 40g of protein into glucose by way of insulin production. In other words, for people like us, eating that much protein makes us more, not less, insulin resistant. There's no way JK could have known that way back when.

Dr. Bernstein must have had an inkling though, since in his seminal work on diabetes his prescription for what to do if you stall on a regular LC diet (one of the symptoms of BCAA metabolic defect) is to keep up the fat - but continue to lower protein until you begin to lose weight again, however slowly.


You? Probably not. But because of what BCAA does to people who can't process protein properly - which is intimately tied into what our bodies do with carbs and protein via gluconeogenesis -- we must eat the higher carb levels.

This probably explains the many posts on this forum over the years from people who said they were stalled no matter what they did, but upping carbs finally moved them past it. What we don't know is whether or not upping carb calories also meant (for them) reducing calories via protein a little. Or keeping protein the same but reducing fat a lot. That's because the metabolic defect apparently only 'manifests' itself when eating lots of fat.

Which is what drove me to K to begin with --- it was either lower protein and up fats and carbs, or go back to a low fat WOE where I could eat all the protein I wanted. I don't want to do that, so here I am - and it's working. :)

Lisa

Hmm, are you saying he says *wheat flour and potato* are foods to avoid? Now that is really confusing me, :lol: I mean I agree totally about wheat flour, I avoid it like the plague. And I'm not all that crazy about potatoes so am rather indifferent to them.

But many of the recipes posted on the Australian Homo Optimus site, and in the Calculus Victus program, all have quite generous amounts of wheat flour and/or potato in them.

From the context, he seems to be saying that they're foods to avoid as staples of the diet, the way most people eat them. On the other hand, if we're trying to choose where to get our small amount of carbohydrate, they're considered to be better than the alternative sources (i.e., fruits, fibrous vegetables, and concentrated sugars), which he considers to be even worse.

This is reminiscent of the "don't eat fat and carbohydrates together" rule, which can be also be confusing at first reading. It's intended as a general principle about how we should provide fuel for our bodies, and he's already put it into effect when he created the diet. If we're following ON, then our fat:carbohydrate ratio is high enough that our bodies won't see it as mixing the two.