I like the Bulletproof guy, and I like my coffee with coconut oil Apparently, ketosis is hot enough to reach the vegan world: but once again, these folks are playing a game they cannot win.



Vegetarian is far more doable because you are getting animal foods, just not meat or fish. However, my n = 1 led to the discovery that I am on the high end of carb sensitivity, and the low end of extracting stuff from vegetables. I did badly on vegetarian despite expert coaching. Vegan would probably outright kill me.



Personally, now that my body is not being bombarded with so many bad things that I can't tell what is upsetting it, I have developed a fairly good ability to notice when something is making my body unhappy. This is how I dropped gluten, am currently without vegetables in my diet, and experience unhappy reactions from seed oils. I really am genetically designed to not be plant-based. While others may have a much better fit with lots of veggies, as Dr. Wahls Protocol urges, they can be a barrier to ketosis if not managed carefully.



This is what really messed me up with my vegetarian efforts: protein. I seem to be a protein monster. I am reading all the time about watching the protein and not eat too much, but that doesn't hold true for me. Any attempts to restrict my protein levels to the "suggested" limits and I don't feel as well. This might change as I get better, but right now I can only assume I need those amino acids, and plenty of them.

I keep tabs on the vegan world because, despite their pious declaration of "ethics," they are trying to kill us all with their disdain for science and their messianic fervor. Fortunately, there are professionals dismantling their arguments out there, and I like to read them.

I was listening to a podcast from the Low Carb Cardiologist and he interviewed someone who is following vegan keto. It's working for that person. If I recall, it was Dr. Carrie Diulus.

I suspect that for the majority of people, vegan keto would be extremely difficult and probably unhealthy. However, if you have access to the right resources, as Dr. Diulus does, it's doable. So long as your body gets along with plants.

It was already so long I didn't mention her as a good example. But dang: that's a lot of work. I'm happy for her, but I know it's not for me. The more I delve into the enzymes and genetics of individual food choices, the more sense it makes that there is no one diet that is best for everyone: but there is one diet that is worst for everyone!

And that's vegan.

Dr. Carrie Diulus aside, the sheer amount of juggling involved indicates that this way of eating is the total opposite of anything "natural" to humans.

One of the things I love about the way I eat, my very low carb paleo (now referred to by most as keto but adopted by me long before keto became popular) diet is how simple it is. That's what helps make it sustainable.

I don't spend anywhere near as much time fixing meals now as I did when I was eating 'healthy' low-fat. And the food tastes much better!

I was always hungry on low fat.

This morning I had leftover sirloin steak with sauteed bacon and mushrooms, with a sprinkling of blue cheese crumbles. Nothing I ate on low fat could compare!

She's an interesting lady. I follow her on Twitter. She's a type 1 diabetic herself and prescribes keto for her patients to reduce inflammation (she's an orthopedic spine surgeon). I tried vegan keto myself and my cholesterol dropped quite a bit (230's - 160's) - not that I think it matters. So, I asked her about her numbers out of curiosity.



I think it's the difference in saturated fat. I'm not sure what else it could be. Another experiment for Dave Feldman? Some hyper-responders quit keto because they get a little nervous about their high cholesterol.

I’ve been reading a lot about how high cholesterol is protective as we age. Triglycerides should be low, but total cholesterol is completely misinterpreted.

Numbers that low, according to many researchers, are actually alarming:





These are the kinds of studies which get ignored by statin supporters. I don’t think we know enough to make such blanket decisions.

When the topic of cholesterol comes up here I often make this comment. I stopped getting my cholesterol checked over a decade ago. I know my diet is a healthy one so why bother with numbers whose meaning is unknown and whose importance is probably over-exaggerated?

You have made this comment, and now that I'm done experimenting with my own lipids by taking tests under various conditions, I am embracing the Jean approach by not getting any more tests. I have such little confidence in the widely assumed risks of lipids, particularly cholesterol levels and especially LDL risk assumptions, that I believe we've been living in a fantasy world for many years. Until someone can directly, with incontrovertible scientific evidence, link blood lipid levels as the sole cause of CVD and other diseases, I will continue to interpret it as a modern version of "The Emperor's New Clothes."

I'm another one who has no confidence in the lipids testing results as being meaningful. At 72 years old, I'm at the age where higher numbers seem to be healthier - in spite of the researchers that keep trying to explain why that can't be.

I'm 70 Dodger. I believe higher numbers might very well be healthier, or that lower numbers are unhealthy.

I had that podcast in my iPad already, so I went ahead and listened to a very interesting episode. But Dr. Diulus is not your usual vegan dieter. She had a severe virus which affected her digestion, plus she’s a type one diabetic. So she has access to complete protein supplements and various testing facilities that keep her able to stay ahead of her nutritional requirements

I'm not against vegan keto because I'm all for people trying to make the best of the bad decisions they insist on making. I mean, nuts and avocado and olives and some soy or protein powder aren't going to be worse than granola, corn chips and agave syrup.

I don't like the use of "plant based" when applied to keto. People argue that most successful diets on the planet are "plant based," and then use that as an argument for vegan--but while most people might eat mostly plant, vanishingly few are actually vegan. The qualitative difference between vegan and getting say 25 grams of protein from fish like the Kitivans, is enormous, both for protein and for b12, choline, creatine etc. People being healthy while eating minimal amounts of animal foods doesn't say that eating zero animal foods would be healthier or even still healthy at all.

The whole subject makes me Über-Cranky. Because it is now a religion among its adherents, and subject to all the distortions that tend to happen when people get either fanatical or imprecise.

On the fanatical side, we have the Vegans who ignore science, facts, and common courtesy and are determined to force terrible policies on the entire population through their relentless marketing and political pressure. Which would be bad enough, but they are trying to force all the wrong ideas as part of dealing with climate change, which is an emergency, and thus, the power of life and death over people.

In addition, they wish to mess with my food supply, which is a life and death issue for me in particular.

This extends into messing with the heads of the general populace, who are nutritionally uninformed in the best of times, and create bizarre ideas like being vegetarian means they only eat meat a few times a week, encourage children to eat junk, and put lives in danger.

In my lifetime I have seen my parents attitude, which was encouraging children to eat their meat and vegetables and not serving such was neglect, to the current state of affairs, where parents freaked out by fear of meat feed growing children nothing but Frankenstein chicken nuggets, sugared yogurt, and Cheerios.

All encouraged and probably funded by the processed food industry, who dream of the day when we all get people chow, just like the rodents in the labs.