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nutritional ketosis

Thursday Keto Corner 21 June : My Day in the Nutritional Ketosis Zone

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Over the past several months I’ve been asked nearly every day by friends, family, and coaching clients how life has worked for me while in nutritional ketosis, even though I’m just in my 10th week of NK currently.

Everyone who queries gets more or less the same quick story (maybe it’s not so quick), which includes a brief touch on the following main points.

My day typically starts at about 6 when I awaken naturally without setting an alarm; that’s about the time of late that the eastern sky lightens in our neck of the woods this time of year. We’ve also been working hard around our to camp to improve our approach to restful sleep, and typically I’ll have slept 8 hours +/- 30 minutes by that 6 AM start.

Almost every early morning I pour a big glass of cold-brewed coffee, with either a bit of cream or full-fat coconut milk to soften it just a tad, along with one scoop (10 gm protein) of collagen powder. Otherwise, for months now I’ve been implementing the WHEN principle when it comes to eating, not consuming anything else until When Hunger Ensues Naturally, very easily (and initially unintentionally) accomplishing another goal of ‘painless’ intermittent fasting.

I then work in my home office for several hours, typically stopping mid to late morning for a workout (fairly high intensity resistance 2-3 days per week, sprinting one day, and walking or hiking 5 to 6 days per week). It’s then back to the desk for another 1-2 hours of work until somewhere between 1 and 2 when I feel the first real urges of the day to eat.

Lunch for me, the first food intake of the day, is most often cold, leftover grilled or roasted chicken, pork, steak, occasionally a hamburger patty or a high quality salami; often a few olives or quick dill pickles are included, though I personally often don’t consume any more than just a handful (or less) carb grams at lunch. If the day’s planned menu is lean on fats, I might have a spoon of coconut butter or a fat bomb with lunch as well.

It’s then either back to the desk or out for errands, finishing up work and communication tasks, taking several stretch and quick walk intervals; the protein and fat rich lunch provides all the fuel I need to remain sharp and productive, with no post-workout or post-meal crash at all.

Given my wife’s work schedule (area manager for large national retail chain) we most often consume our largest meal of the day in the early evening – typically a grilled protein (steaks, pork chops, tenderloin, or pork shoulder, coldwater fish in the spring, summer and fall) with one of the many coleslaws or salads we enjoy (including several cauliflower and broccoli-based), or another grilled, roasted, or raw vegetable.

We then relax with a short walk, reading or writing (that novel is taking forever), or chase little bass with a fly rod on several local ponds, and are usually crashed in bed by 10, getting ready to get sleep well, and get another day started.

Four Plus One Key Tips Before Starting Your Nutritional Ketosis Run

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Given the success I’ve personally had with my nutritional ketosis (NK) run, I’m asked almost every day by folks considering an NK trial for tips, tricks, hacks, and cheats to potentially “make it easier” to succeed with nutritional ketosis. Here are several tips I share with friends and clients who are contemplating or just starting a nutritional ketosis trial…

Nutritional Ketosis Tip No. 1: They’re Aren’t Any Simple Hacks to Get the Results You Want

As an aside, count me among the many who despise the term ‘hacks’ and the pursuit thereof. There are some things in life you can obtain by using cheats or shortcuts, but the most critical benefits of nutritional ketosis (and many other things) simply can’t be earned that way.

Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about to the right; one of my email accounts is used for a popular fly fishing blog and has been in use for years, so unfortunately a fair amount of spam email oozes around the filters and into my inbox.

What’s been the most popular spam topic the past few weeks? How to cheat your way into ketosis without cutting your carbs.

There are host of great reasons to try a nutritional ketosis run, the principle being you want to turn your body into a fat-burning machine. That takes a bit of time and attention to truly accomplish, and despite the claim that celebrities know hacks to cheat their way into NK, they don’t.

Nutritional Ketosis Tip No. 2: Lay the Groundwork First Over 2-3 Weeks BEFORE Starting

Stepping into nutritional ketosis is a relative piece of cake if you’ve done some preliminary diet “housekeeping” to begin with. The most important dietary housekeeping is sorta’ve along the lines of cleaning the most obnoxious things out of your house – one, getting rid of grains and heavily processed carbs, including sugar in all its forms is one, and the second essential dumping the toxic, industrial-processed seed oils that are commonly stocked in pantry and restaurant around the world.

If you’ve been enjoying a LC/MP/HF eating plan for a while, your probably ready to start your NK run; if not, take 2-3 weeks (or more) to transition from the standard American diet to a low carb model (before going very low carb with NK).

Nutritional Ketosis Tip No. 3: Plan to Stay the Course for at Least Six Weeks

No matter how you’ve been eating before, truly starting nutritional ketosis will cause your body to make some adjustments as you preprogram your metabolic machinery. I agree wholeheartedly with those who suggest you make at minimum a 6 week commitment to the process, promising yourself you’ll wade through whatever adjustments come your way. And as your body adapts to fat-burning, there are several breakthrough windows that are exciting to watch and feel – though for most that’s territory that occurs in week three and beyond.

Nutritional Ketosis Tip No. 4: Mind Your Macros, at Least When Starting

Two of the most common challenges faced by those starting a trial of nutritional ketosis are 1) consuming too many carbs, and 2) consuming too much protein, the excess of which is converted to glucose via gluconeogenesis and either utilized or stored.

Plan to spend at least a few days early on charting your daily food intake in a detailed record and using FitDay or other tools (you can do it by hand too!) to track your macros, shooting for roughly 7% or less of daily calories from carbohydrate, 20-25% from protein, and the remaining 68-73% from good fats, at least when starting out, though pending your personal results you may want to dial back the carb and protein contributions as you progress.

Nutritional Ketosis Tip No. 4+1: Consider Monitoring Urinary Ketones When Starting

There are tools available to everyday consumers that allow monitoring for the presence of ketones/ketone related products in urine, blood, and breath; the three methods vary considerably in terms of ease of use, cost, and accuracy among other things.

When starting out, I personally recommend that NK adventurers if so inclined test for urinary ketones (the urinary chemical we’re testing for is acetoacetate); the testing strips are (relative to the others) cheap, readily available, easy to use – you just pee on the stick, and the results are typically glaringly easy to see.

Of note – as one becomes more keto-adapted / fat-adapted (can happen to some very quickly – even as early as 7-10 days), urinary ketones disappear, and some folks can be in NK and not test positively on the strips.

Testing of any sort carries a real risk of creating an obsession with the data (and changing your approach based on data manipulation primarily); I encourage my clients to pursue a less rigid, more intuitive approach (more on another day).

My Keto Report Card 7 June 2018: Week Seven

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Last week I shared a bit in terms of introducing my personal journey in Nutritional Ketosis, including a very quick overview of the why’s behind my decision to give a genuine ketosis run a try.

I’m now in week 8, loving what I’m feeling and seeing, and enthused to keep up the routine indefinitely at this point.

As noted last week, my typical day starts climbing out of bed fairly early (between 530 and 6) after 8 hours of sleep on average; of note, I never set an alarm and am geared to awaken then with the earliest light of day.

Though not a new feature for me personally with being in nutritional ketosis (NK), I’m never hungry in the morning and typically drink a cold brewed coffee with a bit of cream and a tbsp of collagen powder (2 grams carb, 10 of protein, and 7 of fat) and work for several hours, with very functional mental acuity right off the bat.

To be fair, I’d been gravitating toward a compressed eating window / intermittent fasting during the several months prior to my starting NK, choosing to tune in and eat WHEN (when hunger ensues naturally).

I typically workout mid to late morning (pending how work tasks are progressing), fasted, consuming water only before a three times per week HIIT workout, with a walk/hike 5-6 days per week in addition, with a short, very focused sprint workout weekly if I’m feeling in prime shape.

On most days, hunger hasn’t pushed me to eat until sometime after the noon hour, and as often as not, nearer to 2.

It’s then time for errands and back to the desk for the afternoon’s work, calls, correspondence, etc, with a family dinner typically somewhere between 6 and 8pm.

Some Interesting Metrics Closing Week 7 of Nutritional Ketosis

Up until starting my NK run, I’d lost 100 lbs without tracking a single calorie consumed over the 15 months window we’d been eating a fairly compliant LC/MP/HF diet around our camp, though of note been in a weight loss stall for several months (Dec-Feb).

I did however, principally at first as a learning tool, and later in part due to my medical training induced affinity for objective data, track a fairly specific diary of my daily carb intake (net carbs), which from the get go were always under 100 per day, and most often under 60 gm/day.

Again, largely as a matter of intellectual curiosity, when starting my NK run, I decided to track, as closely as possible, daily intake of carbs, protein, and fat, and to calculate my total caloric intake and deficit against my estimated BMR (adjusted for activity), as well as the percentages of carb / protein / fat contributions to my total calories.

Over the seven weeks thus far, the rolling averages of my intake and caloric accounting include –

Daily Carb Grams: 28.5 (114 calories)
Daily Protein Grams: 90.3 (361.2 calories)
Daily Fat Grams: 124.4 (1115.5 calories)

Average Total Calories per Day: 1602.8
Average Calorie Deficit per Day: -1487.2

Average Carbs as Percent of Total Calories per Day: 7.1%
Average Protein as Percent of Total Calories per Day: 22.4%
Average Fat as Percent of Total Calories per Day: 69.7%

Of note, for the past 4 weeks in particular, my daily average intake of carbs and protein have been drifting lower (protein approaching 80 gm/day for the past three weeks), with daily intake of fat drifting slightly higher. This has happened without conscious intention on my part, eating to satiety at every meal and snacking judiciously as desired.

Weight loss during the 7 weeks in NK so far has been 16.5 lb; with one day of hunger noted worthy of mention in my workout dairy.

Energy levels have been excellent with no dip in performance whatsoever, and in fact performance gains have been noted in every aspect of my workout routine. Sleep has improved, though I have noted more vivid dreams several days per week (not interrupting the sleep cycle).

My Nutritional Ketosis Week Seven Bottom Line: Hot Damn!

From the perspective of one of my critical goals at the start of my NK journey – break through a weight loss stall – so far it’s been a rousing success in average roughly a 2 and 1/3 lb weight loss per week, eating to comfortable satiety every day, with enhanced mental clarity and plentiful energy for the daily routine and workouts. All with no hunger. Making staying in nutritional ketosis a no brainer at this point.

More to come in a month or so.