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How to get into keto fast?
I have been in keto for 3 years. I know it is not long. However, for me it was difficult. So, I read a lot to help me crack this nut. An answer might be: My journey into ketosis started when I arrived back from hospital after getting my first bladder infection after completing a four and a half day fast. This was not a good start. I have since found out that some of the foods I was eating before my fast and then after I completed my fast really did not help in all this. So I decided that I needed to sort my diet out. I did not understand at that time in my life what addictive substances placed in some of the foods I was eating by some manufacturers was doing to me. However, I persisted with the idea of getting into ketosis because I had heard so much about it. The difficulties I had with cutting carbohydrates out was tremendous. There seemed to be a tug of war between what I wanted and what my body craved. And what it craved was carbs, but not the healthy ones but the ones manufactured. If I eat a plate of roasted vegetables, seasoned and topped with olive oil and balsamic vinegar until I was full, I still felt like something was missing. I was bursting with food, but felt I had not eaten, because something inside me was not satiated or satisfied. I muddled through my carb problem for a while until I discovered daily intermittent fasting as proposed by Jason Fung. He says that at least 6 days of daily fasts are required to reverse metabolic syndrome, (These are the pre and ongoing conditions required or found in persons with or are getting diabetes; hypertension and heart disease), so since previously my doctor had told me that I was beginning to show signs or heart disease. I thought this is my chance to kill two birds with one stone. I would use daily intermittent fasting to help me get into ketosis. The road had already been long and difficult even before attempting to put it all together so that ketones would be produced by my liver. But the difficulties in keeping carbs low enough and eating enough fat were compounded by the fact that even if you are successful at producing ketones that your body is not yet ready to use them! Yes, you heard that right. Although we all as babies were born in ketosis and if kept on mother’s milk remained in ketosis until other foods were introduced this does not mean that our bodies are able to drop right back into using ketones right away. The reason for our bodies dispite having been born in ketosis and then having difficulty later in life to continue to be able to burn ketones at will is that the mitochondria that used ketones back when you were a baby only live about six weeks, as mitochondria still do, and so when you began to eat other foods that contained carbohydrates they will have had many generations of mitochondria only using carbohydrates as food, and this all began when we were first weened onto solids as a child right up to now with practically not exposure to ketones. You may ask, why does the body drop using ketones at the first sign of carbohydrates? That is a great question. An answer might be that through evolution and survival of the species, when food may have been unpredictable and eating opportunistic, that our bodies used foods that provided the quickest energy burst in case we needed it to survive an immediate threat to our life and second developed an ability to store food for later use. This is partly why when eating sugars, that insulin rises. It does this to help store surplus energy as fat. It is only during the presence of insulin that the body can quickly store surplus energy as fat. for a more indepth explination of what they are. As I understand it, fasting helps to kill off old senescent mitochondrial cells to make room for new ones. And since you are now beginning to produce ketones, some of these new mitochondria will be exposed to ketones and will begin to adapt to using them. It is your mitochondria’s' being able to utilise sugars or ketones that is called metabolic flexibility. This therefore can be seen as part of the solution to metabolic syndrome. What exactly did I do to get ketones into my blood stream? Well, the first thing was to try and skip breakfast. This was a little difficult and for anyone addicted to a carbohydrate diet will testify to this. This is because, what happens when you cut carbs or sugars from your breakfast is that you are affectively starving your body and brain of energy in the form of sugars. This may sound obvious but remember that our muscles can store up to some of glycogen in a ready state for action or energy. So, at first your body just must work a little harder to use this ready stored energy and no big deal here. However, after doing this for a few days you might begin to run short of this glycogen. This readymade store of glycogen can be replaced fast, but only if you are eating enough sugars or carbs, which being that you are cutting carbs and increasing fats are most definitely not consuming and therefore this glycogen store continues to dwindle until you begin to feel faint. At this point I suggest you sit down and eat some cooked and or uncooked veg and cover it with olive or almond oil or coconut fat etc with seasonings to your liking and wait 20 minutes. This will provide some energy that may get you to your next meal. One cup of rice or bread or potato (starch) is the equivalent to 14 cups of vegetables such as cauliflower, broccoli, onion, mushroom, leeks, spinach, salad, cucumber, greens, etc. This means you are now not eating enough sugars for your energy requirements. So, feeling tired is normal at this stage. If you cannot afford to be tired, then put a spoon of exogenous ketones into your coffee and blend it with some fat. Most people choose coconut fat, but other use MCT oil. This all-combined will give you a boost of energy, and we think we know this because, discovered that the Tibetans were doing this with their tea or coffee, although they used oranic yakk butter, (which contains omega 3!), to give themselves a boost between meals. However, I am not too sure if these lucky Tibetans were not already in some form of ketosis at least some of the time. So, if you find this blended drink does not help you too much then eat more vegetables and perhaps add some non-insulin producing )like substances like glycine (amino acid) or ........... However, it should not be forgotten that this tired period, although can be helped along a bit, is just the transition phase. So, keep at this until your energy begins to return a bit and then consider pushing your lunch break back an hour or two to perhaps 2pm to 2:30pm. This will stretch you again and further force more of your mitochondria to be switched over to being able to burn ketones for fuel. This ongoing pushing around the clock your first meal of the day is how I began to break the back of my carb addiction. And with the aid of ketones was slowly enabling myself to become energised again, but this time without carbs. Producing ketones in my blood was the next trick. I would have days where I fasted for most of the day and then I would eat a very low carb meal with protein and lots of fat and then found myself craving more and more food through the rest of the evening. Now although I tried to stick to as low carbs as possible and even if I drank, I only drank spirit, because it contains the least calories, nevertheless I found no real evidence in myself that anything was happening or indeed that any ketones were being produced. I think retrospectively it is possible that a long drawn out period of nearly zero glycogen storage levels and a pseudo level of sugars from the healthiest sources that you can bear is the holy grail on getting into ketosis. The next three things I did, made the difference for me and helped me achieve ketones. First, I bought a ketone reader and then a glucose reader and started taking my morning blood fasting glucose readings and took my ketone readings just before my first meal of the day. Second, I started writing down my estimations of carbs; protein; and fat intakes and just how long I had managed to fast for. And third I started playing with the variables of how long I fasted or how much I eat and of what. It was immediately after these purchases of the meters that I discovered I was not producing ketones. I was dumb founded. Either I was very ill, from a metabolic stance, or getting into ketosis was really difficult. Assuming that both might be true, since the doctor had already given me the heads up about the beginning of heart disease. I decided to fast for even longer. According to Dr Jason Fung, this will quickly fix metabolic syndrome. So this seemed an obivious thing to do. However, this is almost 3 years ago, at the time of this writing, and although these days just a day of fasting does produce ketones every day easily, back then nothing. No ketones. So I fasted all night and went for as long as possible the next day and then took my readings. Yes finally ketones. With ketones the keto reader is thought to be dependent only on my current daily sugar intake until you have used up your glycogen stores. It was thought that it did not care about any problems I may have had in the past, and that this is simply a battle for dominance over my ketones. I was determined to win this. In her book Dr Boz explained that using a tool, like the reader, to better your health, that because it has readable measurements to help you gauge your progress was one of the fundamental benefits of using ketones to get your health back on track. I would absolutely agree with this, that is the miracle of testing to see if you have ketones yet. However, I do think that if you are metabolically unfit, then this process will be much harder. How it is harder is difficult to know for sure. For me I fasted for longer periods until I produced ketones, but it didn't help for a long time. Tiredness and cravings plagued me for 3 months. Because I was not trying to lose weight, I did not care how much I ate in the evenings after fasting, and because I was not yet focussing on a good nights sleep, I did not care if I ate too late. This was a step in the right direction for me. All the other stuff can come later. This is how it should normally work. First you fast for a period. The length of your daily fast partly depends on how far you have progressed and if you want to see ketones quick it also depends on how metabolically fit you are. If you push this too fast you will feel faint; dizzy or have chronic tiredness. Just ease up until more of your mitochondria are replaced with new ones, that can use the ketones you are producing. This takes time and takes more time the further you must go to get metabolically fit. So, keep on with the roasted or boiled or raw vegetables in as high a quantity as you can bear, with ample amounts of olive oil. Dr Gundry says the reason we eat, is to have the opportunity to eat olive oil. So, pour it on. Next if one meal a day has become your norm. Now start to exercise, with walking to begin with short walks, then long walks all without fainting. Then progress to more vigorous exercise all done before you are about to eat. Then eat your keto friendly meal. Which as you probably already know is lots of vegetables in a form you enjoy with little protein and lots of fat. Some people will eat organ meat. I agree with this. It is highly nutritious has lots of fat and not too much protein and plenty of B vitamins and the heart has lots of Co enzyme Q10, which will go on to help protect your own heart. Next you will find that every time you are about to eat, that is after exercise, that if you take your ketone reader and take a test you will find you are producing ketones every day. Job done. Keep this up for two years and according to Dr Boz you will have arrested heart disease and according to Dr Jason Fung only daily fasts six days a week are enough to arrest diabetes, period. Your morning blood glucose readings will fall in line in time. If you have had years of abusing your body, just expect it to take some time to heal from the inside out. What is the reason for taking my fasting blood glucose readings in the first hour of waking? This was due to a long history already established in society of people having already posted their results, and this is what doctors use to assess ones' condition regarding how well their pancreas is handling their carb intake. If your body is struggling with your sugar intake or you have elevated cortisol levels in the mornings, then your results may show reading above 6 mmols. Every person that visited the house were subjected to a glucose test. Especially if I had bumped into them in the first hour of their day. This is what I discovered. Every single healthy person that visited nearly always had readings of less than 6 mmols. And it did not matter about age. My ex's mum would visit, and her readings were nearly always below 6 mmols. However, on mornings after a night of drinking alcohol, her readings would nearly always jump up to over 7 mmols. For me, my readings were always high from the start. Always more than 7 mmols which is borderline diabetic. And well inside the range of prediabetes. Now one does not have to wait until their readings start to rise to find out if there is a problem. Because, if your pancreaous is working then your blood sugar fasting levels will be under 6mmols no problem. However if your readings start to rise, this just means that your pancreas is doing its' job. It is the job of your pancreas to keep your blood sugar levels stable and not too low or high. The test to see if your pancreas is struggling, although still achieving stable glucose levels is a little beyond the scope of this article, besides, I was now giving it my full attention and all these problems would be about to go away, I hope. Some things I noticed with my morning blood glucose fasting sugar readings was that after spending the night before drinking tequila my readings from the glucose reader would jump to 9 mmols or on one occasion it even jumped to 11 mmols. This frightened the life out of me, and I quit drinking tequila straight away. Also, I noticed that a poor night’s sleep, which was most likely due to raised cortisol, which might have been because of too much food too late the night before or anxiety also may have contributed to raised levels of sugar in my blood stream. So, the glucose reader was just checking my metabolic health, well more accurately it was checking if my pancreous could cope for now. The results were showing that my metabolic health was not too good at this moment. Which agreed with what the doctor had said. So, all was good on the side of knowing what the problem was.
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