Okay, I missed that about the testosterone cream. There's a later post where he shows his testosterone levels as being up, along with a lot of other tests he had done, but he doesn't mention hormone therapy there. Looks like he probably went to something more effective.
http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/...y-241-270/17905
Quote:
Dr. Galvin noted my PSA was fantastic, but my DHEA was a little low with that 190.2 reading. He suggested I take 50 mg DHEA in an effort to raise my levels to 500 ideally noting that this will improve my mood (hey, I’m a pretty happy guy already!) and shed more belly fat. Hey, I like that one! On the testosterone front, he said my levels are in the normal range but could certainly be enhanced by some hormone replacement therapy that is a lot more customized to my specific testosterone needs than the cream I was probably using previously. This also could contribute to even more muscle growth and fat loss in my final push to get my body where it needs to be to operate optimally and quite frankly look as good as it can. WOOT! I’m excited to see what will happen once we can get these things going. Stay tuned!
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On the protein requirement thing, I think the whole model is wrong. Increasing activity to marathon or IronMan levels greatly increases protein requirements. A high-intensity, low volume exercise program of the type popular with low-carb and paleo types, doesn't increase protein requirements, it decreases them. Or if you walk a marathon instead of running it, if all else is equal, the walking won't cause you to burn nearly as much protein as the running.
The way I hope things work, if I'm not getting enough protein in, my body will let me know. If I go a full day without any protein, just eat fat, at the end of the day, a can of dry tuna tastes delicious. Any other time, it's really unappealing. If you're managing to keep blood glucose in a normal range, say in the 70s and 80s, I sort of suspect you might be getting enough protein--because once you're protein-deficient, it would be logical for the body to depend increasingly on ketones, making glucose from protein would be kind of wasteful in that scenario. But that's just a suspicion, and even if that's the way things are supposed to work, we can't always trust our bodies to work properly.
One thing I do is a bicep measurement, I carry very little fat on my arms, so if that goes down it's probably muscle. Last time I lost weight (when I did the fast) I lost about a half-inch on my biceps. This time it's stayed steady.
I tend to lean heavily towards believing Dr. Bernstein's numbers. He'd probably notice if his diabetic patients (or he himself) were wasting away. It might be different for athletes, but there's probably nobody out there with a clinical history of precise control of protein intake such as that he has with his patients.