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Note to readers: This post was written in September of 2012. PLEASE do not ask me why I eat ‘this’ or why I don’t eat ‘that’ — as what is shown here does not necessarily reflect what or how I eat today (or more importantly, how you should eat). My diet evolves constantly, due to my constant tweaking and self-experimentation. Over time, I’ll share it here and there, but what I eat is not at all the focus of this blog. I ask that you refrains for asking questions about what I eat your comments.
For reasons I don’t fully understand the most read post on this blog is one I wrote very quickly and with very little thought. I wrote it in response to a question I’m asked all the time, “What do you actually eat?” The post, aptly titled, What I actually eat, has more than twice the traffic of the next three most read posts combined. Go figure.
After a full year in “strict” (i.e., no “cheat” days) nutritional ketosis I wanted to experiment with other eating patterns. I had been reading about intermittent fasting (IF), and had a few discussions and exchanges with Mark Sisson and Robb Wolf about it. Though I don’t know Brad Pilon or Martin Berkhan personally, I’d also read a few interesting things they had written.
Why the change?
My curiosity was sufficiently piqued to break a golden rule – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
I was very happy after a year of nutritional ketosis, but I did wonder if I could improve on a few things. For starters, as my cycling season was about to ramp up, I wondered what it would be like to weigh 75 kg (165 pounds) instead of my steady-state weight of about 78 kg (172 pounds). I know 3 kg does not sound like a lot, but it can make a huge difference when riding up Mount Palomar, assuming one can preserve power output. I also liked the idea of not spending so much time eating. As you probably know, I’m pretty obsessive about how I utilize the 168 hours in each week and resent anything that takes me away from my family, my work, and my training. (This includes sleep, which I wish I could figure out a way to thrive without.)
In the end, I think Mark Sisson finally just egged me on enough to agree to at least give it try – even just one day per week. And with that, I embarked on the next phase of my nutritional odyssey.
I decided, in early May, to start with the following protocol: one meal per 24 hours, twice a week. On the other 5 days I consumed my usual keto-diet. On the two IF days I would just eat one meal at around dinner time. I still consumed normal amounts of liquids (water, coffee, tea) and supplements (see list below), with one exception – on fasting days I doubled the amount of sodium I supplemented via bouillon from 2 gm per day to 4 gm per day.
Like all nutritional changes, this one took some getting used to. Because I exercise in the mornings, on fasting days I would get pretty hungry by about 10 or 11 am. Interestingly, though, by about 2 pm, as my blood glucose levels would be between 60 and 70 mg/dL, I would start to feel completely fine. In fact, by about 5 or 6 pm, just before eating my meal, I found I wasn’t really hungry. This may have been due to the fact that my B-OHB levels were usually above 3 mM by this time of day.
Why do I call it “IFIK?”
Not surprisingly, after eating 100 gm of protein and 40 gm of carbohydrates in one sitting, my B-OHB levels would fall, often below 0.5 mM, the practical threshold of nutritional ketosis. Usually within 24 hours I’d be back to my normal levels, generally between about 1 and 2 mM. But, the cycling in and out of ketosis was new to me, hence the phrase “intermittent fasting, intermittent ketosis,” or “IFIK.” I guess you can see why I didn’t end up in marketing – “if-ik” doesn’t really have a nice ring to it.
The purpose of this post is not to provide a detailed overview of IF or ketosis, but rather to address the following common questions I often get asked in response to the original post on what I ate:
- Question: Peter, why do you eat so much dairy? Answer: I don’t. That was a year ago. I did eat a lot of dairy, and seemed to tolerate it quite well. I realize that’s not true for everyone. Regardless, I seem to eat much less today.
- Question: Peter, is ketosis for everyone? Answer: Of course not. Besides oxygen and water, few things are.
- Question: Peter, why do you eat so much meat? Answer: I don’t. In fact, some days I don’t eat any. Other days I do. I obviously don’t think there is anything harmful with eating meat (read this post for a refresher), but I’m quite happy eating lots of non-meat items, too.
- Question: Peter, how can anyone possibly do anything athletic without carb loading? Answer: It’s easy. Anyone can do it, if they are just patient and let their body adapt.
- Question: Peter, you eat like a freak (ok, not really a question!) Response: And your point is?
What happened after several months of IFIK?
Interestingly, I did lose weight. After briefly hitting 163 to 164 pounds, I settled out at where I am right now, about 165 to 166 pounds, right at my 75 kg target. I have not yet repeated a DEXA scan to confirm, but I suspect I lost a bit of muscle, along with more fat, probably at about a 1:2 ratio. My last DEXA measured a body fat of about 9%, and I suspect I’m about the same, though my waist is half an inch smaller than when I started, so I may be closer to 8%.
Why do I think this happened?
In the IF community there are really two (maybe more) theories on why I lost weight. I won’t describe them here in any detail, but will do so in subsequent posts. One hypothesis is that I’m simply consuming fewer of the same high quality calories than I did before. The other hypothesis is that the physiologic response to IF (rather than the response to prolonged fasting) is to increase my REE during the period of IF, possibly through the up- and or down-regulation of various hormones. Of course, it could be a combination of these, or something entirely different, too.
Drumroll….
Before getting to the part that folks who are still reading probably care about, let me point out a few differences between what I eat today and what I ate a year ago.
- I consume, on average, fewer calories per day. I am also lighter, and we know TEE varies with body mass, so it’s not surprising that most days I am not eating over 4,000 kcal, as I used to. Of course, one might argue my body has become more metabolically efficient at utilizing substrate, and so my REE is lower than it was a year ago. Finally, I do exercise less than last year. Hence, there are many explanations for this difference.
- I consume less dairy. Don’t read too much into this. There is nothing deliberate about it, just an observation of my behavior.
- I consume less meat of all varieties. Again, don’t read too much into this. I have no explanation except that I seem to crave it in lower amounts and less frequently.
- I consume more overall carbohydrates, though still virtually zero sugar or refined carbohydrates. Most of this additional carbohydrate is in the form of nuts and SuperStarch.
- I consume virtually zero sugar substitutes, except for the little bit in my SuperStarch and protein powder (sucralose). I also drink, at most, about one diet soda per month.
- I spend less money on food.
- I spend less time eating.
- Currently I only eat three meals per day about once a week. I eat two meals per day probably 4 times per week, and one meal per day twice per week.
To calculate the nutritional content of my intake I use a piece of software called Nutritionist Pro, which is not for the faint of heart. It’s one step removed from a DOS prompt. In addition to costing about $600 a year, it’s not exactly user-friendly. I’d probably describe it as “user-hostile,” actually. But, it’s really accurate and has a database that is unrivaled. The reports, once you learn how to generate them, are very good, also.
Three consecutive days of representative eating
Keep in mind, I don’t count my calories or weigh my food normally. I do it periodically, such as at this time, when I’m curious as to what I’m actually eating. I believe I’m able to do so without eliciting the Hawthorne Effect, but obviously one can never be positive.
Tuesday
- 7 am — morning workout – flat intervals on bike (75 minutes).
- 1 pm – Nicoise salad:2 cup butterhead lettuce, 1 tomato, 10 black olives, 8 oz tuna steak, 1 hard boiled egg, 0.5 cup red onion, 2 oz lemon juice, 4 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp mustard.
- 7 pm – Chicken salad with nuts:2 cup romaine lettuce, 1 tomato, 0.5 cup cucumber, 2 oz cashews, 2 oz walnuts, 8 oz chicken breast, 6 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar.
Daily totals:
Carbohydrate – 89 gm
Protein – 131 gm
Fat – 218 gm (about 15% SFA, 70% MUFA, 15% PUFA)
Calories – 2,900
Wednesday
- 6 am — morning workout – high intensity dry land (90 minutes).
- 3 pm – The “Peter Kaufman shake” (named after my good friend, Peter Kaufman at Generation UCAN, who hooked me up with the recipe):
4 oz heavy cream, 8 oz zero-sugar almond milk, 1 pack chocolate protein SuperStarch, 2 tablespoons almond butter, 8 gm additional glutamine, 1 tray of ice cubes (blended to smoothie consistency). - 7 pm – Chicken-nut omelet:
4 eggs, 0.5 avocado, 3.5 oz cheddar, 3 oz red onion, 2 oz walnuts, 2 oz cashews, 4.5 oz chicken thigh, 2 tbsp butter
Daily totals:
Carbohydrate – 60 gm (30 gm of which is SuperStarch)
Protein – 151 gm
Fat – 226 gm (about 40% SFA, 35% MUFA, 25% PUFA)
Calories – 2,800
Thursday
- 7 am — morning workout – hill intervals on bike (75 minutes).
- 5 pm – Attia super salad:
1.5 cup romaine lettuce, 0.5 cup cucumber, 0.25 cup mushroom, 1 tomato, 3 oz sliced T-bone steak, 2 oz cashews, 2 oz peanuts, 2 oz macadamia nuts, 8 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar. - Between 6 and 8 pm – after-dinner snack consisting of:
3 oz cashews, 1 oz almonds, 2 oz peanuts, 1 oz macadamia nuts, 2 cups of coffee with a total of 6 tbsp heavy cream.
Daily totals:
Carbohydrate – 94 gm
Protein – 93 gm
Fat – 369 gm (about 20% SFA, 65% MUFA, 15% PUFA)
Calories – 3,800
My daily supplements
Note: I am only listing the products I use, and not trying to convince you that my brand of vitamin D is superior to another. If I feel strongly about a product, I note it. But this is not a product pitch. I don’t make one penny off you buying any of these products.
Fish oil
1 tablespoon of Carlson’s Very Finest Fish Oil, providing 2,400 mg EPA and 1,500 mg DHA. I do feel this is a superior product and I’ve had detailed toxicology analytics conducted on the product to confirm the absence of lead, arsenic, mercury, and other toxins.
Vitamin D
5,000 IU D3 in gel capsule, by NOW.
Magnesium
400 mg magnesium oxide by Nature Made.
Sodium
2,000 mg in the form of bouillon, typically by Knorr.
MCT oil
Either 2 or 3 tablespoons, depending on activity level, by NOW.
Probiotic
2 capsules of Mark Sisson’s Primal Flora, providing 60 billion CFU. The reason I use Mark’s product is because I know and trust him, and I know how much homework he did in formulating this product.
One of the topics I’m currently getting steeped in is gut biota, and I’m hanging out a lot with a San Diego expert on the topic, UCSD Professor Larry Smarr, who has repeatedly sequenced his entire gut biome, with the help of Craig Venter at Synthetic Genomics and others at MIT. As Larry points out, the challenge of “moving the needle” with probiotics is that they only provide the aerobic bacteria while, of course, most of our gut biome is anaerobic. Stay tuned for much more on this topic.
Closing thoughts
- My performance, especially in light of my reduced training volume (or maybe because of it!) has not deteriorated. In fact, this week I had 3 best times in 3 of the activities I do weekly (tire flipping/sledge hammer/plyometic routine (1:04); short sprint up 15-18% grade (0:39), and long sprint up 8% grade (3:29)). It’s possible the added carbohydrate, relative to my constantly ketotic state, has facilitated this, despite consuming about 15% of the carbohydrate I used to consume on my “standard American diet” circa 2008.
- I will discuss the impact on my biomarkers in a separate post.
- The only drawback I’ve noticed of IFIK so far is that I’ve inadvertently turned my daughter off nuts. About 4 months ago, after having three consecutive identical dinners (chicken-nut-salad), she called my wife into her room as she woke up and said, “Mommy…we need to talk. We need to have something different for dinner tonight. We can have steak…we can have sausage…we can even have regular salad without nuts…but I can’t have nuts in my salad anymore!” Poor girl… So now I have to make my salads separately.
Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash
Hi Peter,
I am a 57 year old recreational cyclist who likes to ride several century events throughout the season that we have here in the UK. Earlier in the year three of us went to the Alps for a week and climbed a lot of the famous Tour de France climbs like l‘Alpe d’Huez, Col du Galibier and Mont Ventoux. In addition my riding buddies and me also do a fair bit of mountain biking to mix things up a bit. I don’t have a weight problem and no significant health issues either and as far as I know am not insulin resistant.
A couple of recent TV programs on the BBC switched me on to the dangers of sugar and via Dr Robert Lustig’s “The Bitter Truth” and the wonders of web searching I eventually ended up at your brilliant website. Along the way I also discovered Gary Taubes, Steve Phinney and Jeff Volek and downloaded and devoured their books in record time (not many carbs in an ebook!).
As a committed cyclist riding many miles each week I had become concerned about the amount of sugary energy products that I needed to consume just to allow me to pursue my sport. As you know, on longer rides it becomes a logistical nightmare to carry and manage your carbohydrate replacement in order for you to make it to the finish in decent condition especially on very arduous terrain.
As such, when I found out about the wonders of ketosis it seemed like the answer to all my problems. The fact that it also turned conventional nutritional wisdom on its head and actually had very beneficial effects on heart disease and strokes seemed almost too much to believe. Having said that apart from the sugar consumption on the bike I always felt like I ate a healthy, low-fat diet but couldn’t understand why my cholesterol seemed high whenever I had a blood test. Now I know why!
I decided to go completely cold turkey and just see how things might pan out – my wife thought I was nuts by the way. All processed sugar of any kind went out the diet from Day 1 and pretty much every other kind of carbohydrate too. The first week was a struggle to accustom my palate to all the cream etc. I had switched to and my first couple of 30-40 mile training rides on the bike were also lacklustre affairs. My legs just didn’t seem to have any power from almost the first pedal stroke. Then I tried to do a 70 mile ride at the weekend with only water in my drinks bottles and no food on the ride. Boy did I hit the wall at 40 miles big time! I really don’t know how I made it home I was hallucinating so badly.
Subsequent rides I followed your advice and took some cheese and nuts out with me and although leg strength was still way down, at least I made it round the rides without drama. At this point after two weeks on the diet I was still assuming (due to my lack of strength) that I hadn’t reached ketosis yet. I was determined to stick with it though and by now I was actually enjoying the diet and lot more and things were at least getting easier on that front as I was organising my meals a lot better and learning what sort of things suited my tastes better.
Then in the middle of my third week I got on the bike for a training ride with a friend and as soon as I turned the pedals over I knew my “legs” were back. Not 100% yet but at least I was able to push a lot harder than I had been able to since starting the diet especially on hilly rides. I have been following the ketogenic lifestyle for about six weeks now and things have been getting steadily better over the last few weeks and I think I am pretty much back to where I started performance-wise before I started the diet.
Now I seem to be really reaping the benefits that I had hoped that a ketogenic diet would provide. I have done several 70 mile plus rides only eating a handful of cashew nuts and drinking electrolyte fortified water as well as taking salt tablets. Incidentally the salt intake is one of the things that I have really struggled with. I drink what you call bouillon (we call stock) occasionally but I don’t really like it that much. I have increased the salt in and on my food as far as possible and take salt tablets if I think I need to but still find it a bit wearing to keep supplementing with the salt. I don’t suffer with hypertension by the way so am not especially worried about salt intake levels, especially after reading Gary Taubes take on it as well.
One comment I would like to make about your website is that it’s a pity that you don’t have a forum. I think others have made this observation too. The problem with your comments after a blog posting format is that a variety of threads get started about things which may or may not be related to the blog topic. This makes it very hard to follow a train of thought effectively and especially relate back to some piece of advice that you may have given someone but is buried halfway down on of your blogs. The length of the blog also becomes very unwieldy especially for newcomers like me having to wade down each one!
Apologies for the length of my post but I hope some people might find parts of it helpful to know where others are coming from and going to. I can only say that your website has literally been life changing for me and obviously for many others as well. I look forward to many other interesting articles that you have in the pipeline.
Regards,
Bruce
Bruce, thanks for your story. I’m so jealous about the ease with which you can take a quick trip to France to climb Alpe d’Huez! It breaks my heart that I’ll be in France for a week and I don’t get to ride my bike at all…
Whirled peas? Are those OK to eat?
Peter:
Any health / science based reason for the reduction – or elimination – of artificial sweetners from your current intake? Or just a preference?
For some, not sure if I’m in this camp, but suspect I’m not, they are still “treated” as sugar by the body/brain. Any time someone is looking to up their eating game, I always suggest a trial without them.
Do you agree with the idea that we are genetically built for the diet that we ate as we first became homo sapiens a couple of hundred thousand years ago? The so called Paleo ideal. Do you think we know what those first humans ate? It seems we are clearly omnivorous, but do you think there is some other dietary ideal that would work best, independent of individual differences, if we could figure out what it was?
I think it points us in the right direction, but I don’t necessarily subscribe the notion, wholesale. It’s a complex question, but worth of discussion at some point. Our ancestors ate out of necessity and their eating patterns were largely determined by survival and availability.
Peter, as so many have mentioned, thank you for your time and commitment to this website and the posts. I have been following this website for about 2 months and I’ll say that my mind has been completely blown by the information and I love it! I have tried to get completely changed over to a VLC diet and it has been pretty good so far but I wonder what your recommendation would be like for a person like me (and I’m sure that there are at least some people out there that this may pertain to). I want to preface this question with the complete sincerity that I am not trying to brag or boast about my physical condition/status whatsoever. I love hearing people’s testimonials of how certain goals were achieved and I am just falling into the same boat as someone who is wanting to achieve physical goals, and at the same time, hoping I can do it while still being on a VLC/Ketotic diet. So I have been skinny/scrawny my whole life, and have been on a constant (since 10th grade) effort to gain muscle mass and get “bigger”. Now at age 28 I have made modest gains but still would like to gain more. My goals are not for any major athletic event, but is just for overall health, moderate physical hobbies (rock climbing, basketball, surfing), and the aesthetics are obviously a bonus. I love the way you have got me to think (re-think actually) about what is healthy and have made appropriate lifestyle changes (mainly in diet). This change in my diet, however have made my gains VERY difficult. I am still eating as many, if not more, calories on this diet/lifestyle. I have lost some weight, but that really wasn’t my goal. It is nice knowing that I am contributing to my health but I would also like to still move forward in my goals. I have read all your posts (maybe not all the comments/responses) but I can’t remember if you have talked about achieving the types of goals I am looking toward while being keto adabted. I feel like if I am not trying to actively gain weight, I am loosing weight (which for me is the opposite direction from MY goals). I appreciate the fact that I may have lost some fat% but that really hasn’t been a concern either. I know there is a lot of rambling here but do you have any thoughts about someone who has no goal of loosing weight but is trying to gain weight (and by that I mean muscle mass) while still trying to being in ketosis? Thanks, Isaac
As a fellow ‘skinny’ person, I have to chime in here with the concept that a lot of body-build is genetic. In college, I went on an intense weight lifting schedule; at the end of a year, I weighed only 5 pounds more. However, I looked like Michael Phelps; is that so bad? One’s build has a lot to do with your natural levels of circulating hormones and a lot of other built-in factors. A friend in college looked like a pumped-up Arnold, and never worked out a day in his life. Don’t worry about it, just work out for health and conditioning.
More than any other genetic factor passed on from generation to generation, body habitus is profoundly conserved. Clearly genetics plays a role in obesity. However, it’s the epigenetic factors we need to be worried out. Genetics aren’t driving the obesity epidemics. Epigenetics are driving it. Obviously, it’s my hypothesis that the most important epigenetic factor is the quality (rather than quantity) of food we now consume.
Thanks for the post Dr. Attia. I haven’t done anything particularly consistently this year, but I’m keeping things like IF & other tricks up my sleeve for if/when I hit a plateau.
I’ve lost 85 lbs this year (from 372, 6ft, 36yo), and I count your blog as one of my inspirations. Because of your signal to noise ratio, you’re at the top of my fitness blog list.
I know it’s a work trip, but I hope you have a {little} bit of fun in France.
Congrats, Joshua.
I think I remember you saying in your first “what I eat” post that you had maybe 1 diet soda every once in a while…but in this post you seem to make a point that you had like no artificial sweeteners the whole year except for what’s in the SS…was this deliberate? I’ve read your post on artificial sweeteners where I believe the gist of it is that “we don’t know yet if they’re bad for you, so just observe moderation and if you’re intolerant then cut it out” But is there something you found out since then that made you want to purposely avoid artificial sweeteners altogether? I mean, did you not have any of your famous ice cream this whole year? Or am I misreading what you’re saying altogether?
Correct, I’ve noticed that less AS in my diet makes it even easier for me to ignore anything sweet. I also do see that a non-trivial segment of folks I work with, removing them may accelerate fat loss, though the reasons aren’t entirely clear.
Peter,
First things first; my question is: Is there enough research out there to identify the key drivers of our health? If yes, what are these key drivers (I assume LDL particle number will be one key driver in your opinion)? If no, what do you personally believe our key health drivers are?
I’m a Norwegian management consultant and the author of http://www.rethinkingtruth.com. I highly respect your work and admire your approach to finding the “truth” and accepting that sometimes you have been/will be wrong. Keep it up. Also, I’ve read most of the books you recommend and I especially like Doug Newburg’s. I started my own “who am I, what do I feel, and what’s important to me” journey about five years ago and it’s been a very challenging but excellent process.
Some more details about my question:
Life & health is my main interest and I strongly believe in the importance of identifying key drivers and how to measure these. One of the life & health topics I have studied is how to measure health from the perspective of answering the question: How healthy am I currently and what are my disease risk levels. Unfortunately, I’ve been frustrated in my quest for identifying such key health markers. Having spoken to dozen of doctors, nutritionists, paleo/LCHF experts and blood work guys my conclusion is that no-one knows what the key health markers are (say the 10-15 most important ones).
Would you be able to provide a break down of how you view the key health markers for a human being, to provide some data on why you have picked these markers and how certain/uncertain you are about these being the most important ones?
Thanks a lot and regards from Norway!
Great question — sort of like the “unifying theory of life.” Short answer is I don’t think I know and even if I did, I suspect the “weighting” of the variables would be far more relevant to an individual. If you think of this as a Taylor polynomial, it’s like figuring out what the coefficients are — they will differ for different people. I do think about your question a lot, but I think it deserves a more thoughtful response than I can muster right now. Let me put some real thinking into this and take a crack at writing it up.
Thank you for your informative post again.
I don’t normally comment but anything related to gut flora is close to my heart. Hippocrates reportedly said “All disease begins in the gut.” Apparently our gut holds the same type of neurons found in brain so the gut is indeed our second brain.
Unless you already own a copy, get hold of Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions. It’s full of great recipes and soon you’ll be cooking your own stock. It may sound time consuming and initially it may be the case. However, when you have fresh stock in your fridge/freezer, cooking is faster. You make nourishing soups in no time. My personal favourite for Vitamin D is Green Pastures fermented cod-liver oil. It’s produced in the USA and bit difficult to get hold of here in Europe. I treat it like a gold dust 🙂
Sounds interesting. Thank you.
I’m curious as to why you double your sodium supplementation on fast days. Could you expand on that a bit?
Not getting as much sodium out of food.
As always, a very interesting and informative post. I am much looking forward to your Part X of your cholesterol series! I do have a question regarding your experience as your diet has “evolved” — have you noticed any changes in your LDL-P?
I didn’t do NMR until I was already keto-adapted, so no way to know for sure where I started.
Hi Peter, Great post as always. I tried various IF schemes awhile back. In addition to weight loss, I was interested in any health benefits it might bring. One obvious question when it comes to fasting is whether lots of short fast or less frequent, but longer fasts are more beneficial. One person who has a strong opinion on that is Dr. Thomas Seyfried – I wonder if you’re familiar with his work. Rob Wolff and Jimmy Moore have interviewed him and have material on their websites. Dr. Seyfried uses fasting and ketogenenic diets in his mouse models to control cancer and epilepsy. According to him, many cancer cells cannot burn fat and are inefficient users of sugar (the Warburg Effect). The most powerful anti-cancer therapy he knows is to undertake a 7-10 day fast once a year (distilled water only) to put any cancer or neo-cancer cell in your body under extreme metabolic stress, and hopefully kill it. So that’s what I do.
Eric K.
See the latest two posts by Richard David Feinman, he talks about this. https://rdfeinman.wordpress.com/
Will your gut biota entry include discussion of kefir and yoghurt? I have seen comments elsewhere, suggesting that kefir has fewer carbs than are listed on the label, due to fermentation consuming the sugars. Do you know if this is true? Or should one just consider the carbs to be consistent with what is listed on the label?
Also, for food items, I find that baking some thin slices of pepperoni makes a great substitute for chips and that adding a touch of vanilla or dark cocoa powder to whipped cream makes it very tasty without adding sugars. I wish someone would sell whipped cream that is full fat with no sugar though; it would be convenient to have around for times when I don’t have time or inclination to whip up a batch myself…
Re the popularity of the food article, I would add that it seems always to be the top item in the “Top Ten Posts” sidebar, which I suspect helps it to stay in that place.
Thanks for your hard work on this site. It has been very helpful to me.
Sorry, I should have been clearer in my question about LDL-P. I meant if you had seen any changes as you transitioned from your full keto diet to the IFIK diet that you described in this post.
the question was “what do you eat”? i think you have so much traffic on this because at times it is hard to find alternatives when you eat low, very low – carb.
when one eats a type of nutrition full of carbs, the choice is immense, but once one goes into a differrent lifestyle nutrition, it is difficult to figure out how to get your fat quota up especially if one does not eat dairy. very low carb without diary is hard to put together in the long run i think. and too many nuts may contain too many O6 oils.
great blog by the way.
Fair point.
“I wish someone would sell whipped cream that is full fat with no sugar though; it would be convenient to have around for times when I don’t have time or inclination to whip up a batch myself…”
I can help with this — i use an ISI whipper ( https://www.amazon.com/iSi-1-Pint-White-Cream-Whipper/dp/B0039B3YD2/ref=pd_sim_k_3 ) . It uses N2O cartridges — you just add your cream (+ flavoring if you like) and voila — instant whipped cream! Just keep it in the fridge like redi-whip. Works great!
hn
I’m looking at Primal Flora. A couple of questions — what benefits have you personally seen? And I see you’re taking 2 daily vs. the recommended one. Why did you go to 2?
Bowel regularity and better diggestion. Trial and error for the dosage.
Supplement Questions:
– Why Magnesium Oxide vs. Citrate or Glycinate?
– Have you tried Green Pastures fermented Cod liver oil? Not only for the fish oil, but especially for the natural Vitamin D & A.
– Why the Vitamin D Pills vs. liquid drops?
– When you do take BCAA’s during or post, how much do you take and what ratio of Leucine to valine/isoluecine?
– Should someone who is trying to stay ketotic be concerned about too much BCAA supplementation in the same sense of too much protein via gluconeogensis. I add 3-5x more leucine to my BCAA supplement b/c of this concern based on the fact that leucine is a ketogenic amino acid.
Off topic question: Have you seen any research or anecdotal evidence that nicotine patches may be an effective means for woman to lose hip/thigh fat?
Thank You!
1. Not clear there is a difference.
2. Have not.
3. I take gel/liquid, not tabs.
4. 5-6 gm.
5. No, amount is small (see above).
6. Some evidence this could be true, probably through downregulation of LPL on adipose tissue (ergo, more TG breakdown).
Magnesium oxide tends to pull more water into the intestines and causes looser stools, and it’s believed to be less absorbable than other forms. I used to do consulting work for the company that makes (or actually, originally made) MagOx, and they reformulated it to address both these above issues, claiming a 40% improvement in bioavailability over other Mag oxide formulas. I can’t speak to that claim, but it does seem to get decently absorbed as I did a pilot study for them with diabetic clients and all had significant reductions in BP.
Nicotine patches for thigh fat – what an awesome idea!!
Hello Peter,
just a quick question on Vitamin D supplementation: as you take 5000 I.U. per day (plus what’s in the cod liver oil) please let me know why you aren’t supplementing Vitamin K2 at the same time in order to prevent calcification of organs/arteries, etc which is one of the risks when taking high D3 doses. Thanks a lot and kind regards from Germany, Tina
I haven’t seen evidence that compels me to worry about my vit D contributing to atherosclerosis. Maybe I need to learn more, but my serum levels are normal, not high/normal. No vit D in my fish oil, just some vit E.
Hi Peter,
I recently stumbled upon your site. I am a 22 year old female and even when I was running for an hour daily and doing several hours at the gym working out (I was a kickboxer), I always had fat on my body that just wouldn’t go away, no matter how much I worked and how strict I was with my diet.
Now that I’m nearing the end of my degree, I’ve become sedentary as my study demands increased. I’ve maintained a low fat diet to no avail, I’m heavier now than I ever have been.
A fellow student directed me here, after a discussion about ketosis and the health risks and benefits that arise from it. I was interested that he thought ketosis was risk-free and may even be beneficial, and when I asked him for his resources his answer was your website.
I’m trying to exercise again by including my hourly run each day, but I would like to attempt to keep myself in ketosis to see if it will finally rid me of these fat patches that never go away (my upper thighs, knees and belly). But I’m very short, female and presumably may need to consume far less calories than what you’ve described as making up your own diet. How should I start so I can determine how much is too much or too little for me? Should I be making a slow transition into ketosis, or should I start immediately? Should I consult my physician and have tests run first, and if so, what tests?
Thanks!
Lucy, glad you’re willing to give a shot to new approach. I can’t really provide the kind of help you’re looking for in this response, but the good news is (if you have the time to read the blog and the comments), most of your questions have been addressed. Also, pick up a copy of “The art and science of low carb living” by Phinney and Volek.