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My Personal Nutritional Ketosis Report Card 10 January: Through Week 36

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It’s been a few months since I shared my personal perspectives while engaging with a run of nutritional ketosis; my last update was here (15 August 2018), and here’s my post outlining why I wanted to give NK a run.

My Nutritional Ketosis Report Card at Week 36

Once again, for the most part, I’m pleased as punch overall after spending now slightly over eight months in nutritional ketosis, though for at least two weeks (one over the holidays), I’m sure I was drifting in and out of NK during the week.

My schedule is for the most part the same as I outlined in the 15 August post linked above, save for altering my walking routine due to a fairly impressive plantar fasciitis and calcaneal stress fracture (dammit).

A Closer Look at a Few Metrics

As noted in my last personal NK update, I have continued tracking a fairly close estimation of my macronutrients –

Up until starting my NK run, I’d lost 100 pounds 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.

Please note this point about tracking data: I still don’t recommend that most folks I work with track their intake as obsessively as I have been; it’s simply not necessary to make nutritional ketosis work for most. If you’re a data nut like me, go for it. Over the 36 weeks in NK thus far, the rolling averages of my intake and macronutrient accounting include –

Daily Carb Grams: 22.9 (91.4 calories)
Daily Protein Grams: 81.5 (326 calories)
Daily Fat Grams: 122.9 (1106.1 calories)

Average Total Calories per Day: 1525
Average Calorie Deficit per Day: –1565.7

Average Carbs as Percent of Total Calories per Day: 6.0%
Average Protein as Percent of Total Calories per Day: 21.4%
Average Fat as Percent of Total Calories per Day: 72.5%

Of note, without any conscious effort on my part, the trend of eating less protein and less calories overall continued most weeks, and several weeks I’ve dropped my carb grams to less than 20 g/day just to mix things up a bit, with no change in cognition, energy levels, exercise tolerance, hunger, or satiety.

Weight loss during my 36 week run now totals 59 pounds, fairly consistent with what I noted previously.

My Nutritional Ketosis Week 36 Bottom Line: Let’s Make It a Year

Overall I’ve been extraordinarily pleased with the results of my NK trial, especially in the context of my daily ability to engage with my life tasks, consistently and impressively improve my personal fitness, and chip away at the primary goals I originally outlined.

At this point, barring any unforeseen changes, I plan to ride the keto train to complete a full year in nutritional ketosis. Another report to follow in April.

My Keto Report Card 2 August 2018: Week 15

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Back on the Seventh of June I shared a quick post detailing my personal experience in a fairly diligent nutritional ketosis run; the week before I’d shared a short post explaining why I’d chosen to do the work (in retrospect, it’s been shockingly easy) to give keto a try.

Without rehashing all the why’s I laid out back then, I was interested in pushing through a weight loss stall first and foremost, though wanted to play a bit with seeing if being in NK would really improve mental clarity and my overall reserve of daily energy.

My Nutritional Keto Report Card at Week 15

For the most part, as summarized in the image to the right, overall I’m still pleased as can be with what life looks and feels like in nutritional ketosis.

My schedule hasn’t changed much; I’m still out of the sack between 530 and 6 (after 8 hours of sleep on average), still waking up without an alarm clock with the earliest light of the day. I typically still drink a cold-brewed coffee (still with a bit of cream and 10-11 grams of protein in the form of collagen powder), though due to the scorching heat during this Texas summer, almost every day I head out for a 2-3 mile walk while it’s cool.

Then it’s back to the desk for several hours of fairly intensive cognitive work, typically with very good energy and creative juices flowing, then I’m either doing a HIIT workout 3x/week, walking again or cycling again most days, with a sprint workout thrown in every 7-10 days as well.

Trying hard to eat WHEN (when hunger ensues naturally), typically lunch is somewhere between 1 and 2, with a family dinner then following (after the afternoon’s work) most often around 730 or 8.

We did make a run to Montana (to see a new grand-baby!) a few weeks ago, with a few days on the road challenging my keto compliance; interestingly my weight loss continued, though with a bit less satiety during travel and interestingly the week after.

A Closer Look at a Few Metrics

As noted 8 weeks ago, I have been tracking a fairly close estimation of my macronutrients –

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.

I still don’t recommend that most folks I work with track their intake as obsessively as I have been; it’s simply not necessary to make nutritional ketosis work for most. If you’re a data nut like me, go to it. Over the 15 weeks in NK thus far, the rolling averages of my intake and macronutrient accounting include –

Daily Carb Grams: 25.3 (101 calories)
Daily Protein Grams: 88.1 (352.3 calories)
Daily Fat Grams: 121.7 (1093.5 calories)

Average Total Calories per Day: 1552.5
Average Calorie Deficit per Day: –1537.3

Average Carbs as Percent of Total Calories per Day: 6.5%
Average Protein as Percent of Total Calories per Day: 22.6%
Average Fat as Percent of Total Calories per Day: 70.5%

Of note, without any conscious effort on my part, I’ve been gradually eating less per day overall over the 15 weeks (eating WHEN to satiety), with the percentage of carbs dropping over time, and fat increasing. Over the past 4 weeks, I’ve dropped carbs under 20 g/day just to make things interesting…

Weight loss during my 15 week run now totals 30.5 pounds, fairly consistent with what I noted during the first 7 weeks.

My Nutritional Ketosis Week Fifteen Bottom Line: Still Hot Damn!

All in all, I couldn’t be more pleased and feel better than I have since my late 20’s; at this point I’m guessing I might make this a 6-month run. We’ll see in a couple of months when I report again…

Foundation Series: Fitness Secret Weapon No. 1 – MOVE

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I had an interesting conversation over the weekend with a good friend from Montana.

He’s a very successful businessman with a loving family; though his principle business interest is commercial (multifamily) real estate, he and his two sons run an impressive grass-fed cattle operation in Montana on three fairly large land plots (they call them ranches up in that part of the world).

We’ve known one another for a lustrum or better now, and he’s been impressed enough with my body composition (and other) changes over the past eighteen months to himself jump on the Primal bandwagon. Working on his seventh decade of a very active life, he’s still out in the field six of seven days per week, though spends the bulk of his time behind a desk. He and his clan have additionally weathered a heart-wrenching tragedy this spring with the loss of a daughter-in-law.

After a rapid and for the most effortless weight loss for the first four months as a Primal guy, he’s been stalled now for the last two months and change. Even more frustrating to him was the fact that he felt his overall fitness level hadn’t changed radically since the New Year. So he called me Saturday afternoon, feeling just a bit defeated, and looking for some answers.

Time for a Bit of Long-Distance Detective Work

The first half hour of our conversation was spent with me mostly listening, prompting with a question here and there, but gradually a consistent story began to take shape, focused around two things.

One, and of lesser importance in the big picture, my friend had been consuming (too much) fruit (mostly South American in origin) on a near daily basis during the long Montana winter, which, pending where you happened to live in the state, persisted via a snowy, cold spring until late April or early May this year. This is another story for another day, but suffice it to say that fructose has been the undoing of many a concerted weight loss attempt.

Two, and perhaps most critically, my compadre hasn’t been moving enough. Yes, he’s busy, some days putting in 15 hours between desk, truck, and tractor, but we pretty quickly came to the same conclusion – he’s been far too sedentary coming out of winter and having dealt with the issues they faced as an extended-family unit this spring.

Back to the Basics with the Secret Weapon of Movement

One of the first things we did together was agree that movement – general, everyday, functional-task linked movement is a critical cornerstone for good health (and the Primal lifestyle). I reminded him that the movement we’re talking about here, the essential, get-off-your-butt and just move stuff, isn’t really what most would call targeted exercise or higher-level training (Sisson speaks to the distinction ably here), but really ought to be something we all think of as an essential, pretty much non-negotiable part of our day.

While for many a goal of 10,000 steps a day is ambitious, my friend noted that much of the tasking that he does “around the place” could be easily accomplished on foot instead of from the seat of a four-wheeler, truck, or tractor. Given the trials of the spring, and a generous spring runoff, he’d not be fly fishing much, though had two excursions involving hiking set up for this week (dang, that sounds like fun).

We chatted about ways to incorporate quick walks into his day, like a quick walk breathing in those glorious summer Montana mornings before settling in for the day’s work, a 10-minute stretch every two hours (or less) during the desk day, a 20-30 minute walk after dinner, and rewarding himself with at least one 2 hour or better hike each week to fish his favorite waters on the Big Hole River near his home.

We agreed that for him, a rational, baseline goal for moving in some form of low level aerobic activity (it works for most of us, too) would be in the 5-7 hours per week range, shooting for at least an hour per day or better (in a addition to his HIIT and resistance workouts he’s been fairly diligent with so far).

Bottom line, moving more is something we all can fairly easily incorporate into our day; it may take a bit of effort and reprograming and old habit or two, but the results build in quickly.