Good morning, everyone! To say that I've been overwhelmed by the response of members to this thread is an understatement. I spent all day yesterday doing deep research on Dr. K and his plan, so that I could (hopefully) respond to questions intelligently today.

I will begin doing that shortly, but in the meantime have just posted a new thread (which I hope will be made 'sticky') that contains a lot of that research and basic information about why we started this thread to begin with:

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...924#post7785924

As with any research, answers to questions usually beget even more questions, so please post those questions here. Since we don't have our own forum (yet? please?) it would be too crazy-making for everyone unless for the moment we stick to this one thread for all posts.

Be back soon . . .

Lisa

Wow! That's a whole lot of links! Very cool. Thanks for doing this, Lisa!

I am really intrigued by this approach, as it mirrors what I naturally fall back into eating and feel best (when not in the midst of a carb induced haze! Did relatively well on Atkins until stalled, switched to high fat/high protein (not so good) and through a series of health issues have now gained back most of my weight and really trying to find a healthy approach.
Couple questions though:

Carbs are these net (minus fiber) or total?

Seems like dairy is acceptable in larger quantites (cream, cheese etc)


Nuts seems ok too??

Soy?? (soy milk or soy cereal (dixie diner) one of my favs.

Mayo??? No one seems to be mentioning but (fingers crossed) mayo, coconut oil, and olive oil are my favs!!

Carbs 10-15%
Fat 70%
protein 15% ??????????

Thanks and really liked the sticky!!
Kristen

. . . to everyone on this forum who believes they're too old to make their dreams come true:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

And only sightly off topic. After all, many of us are hoping this plan will answer at least one of them. Enjoy!

Lisa

Wow Lisa ! That's a power video.

Thank you so much !!

Patrick

The problem with going by %'s is that you could end up consuming too much protein if your calories are very high.

Oh wonderful! I'm going to have to remember to search on Susan Boyle from time to time on YouTube. It was so funny watching their reactions to her at first and how their faces changed when she started singing.

I’m very intrigued with the back and forth between Valtor and DorianJ. I would really like to believe that if you subtract the carbs, your body will find and maintain its natural weight. Charles and his Zero Carb forum are big proponents of this theory.

However, many people on that board eat strictly Zero Carb and are still overweight so I’m thinking it can’t be just about the carbs. Many people are eating ONLY unseasoned beef and drinking ONLY water and they are not rocketing to their ideal weight.

There has to be more to it than this or everyone could just stop eating carbs and easily get thin. Perhaps it’s not an either/or situation. I enjoy the discussion though so thanks for the input. I suspect that we just don’t have the definitive answer yet which is why I enjoy experimenting with my diet so much. It will be interesting to see what the Optimal Diet will do for those who are giving it a try.

I gained 10 pounds in the first two months of doing Slow Burn weight training. Yes, some of it was muscle, some was muscle water-retention, some was additional blood volume (seriously worked muscle grows extra blood vessels to carry more fuel to the new mitochondria fat-burning furnaces they also build), and some was the result of eating way too much protein and not enough fat when my body cried out for more food.

I cut down on calories. No change. I cut down on fat. No change. I started the K Plan - and am now losing those pounds while retaining (and still growing) the lean muscle mass.


I know my response is going to be shocking to a lot of LC'ers - but especially if you're doing weight training you need to up those carbs a bit on this plan - but not for the reasons usually given by 'bodybuilders.' And, here's the shocking part - some of those carbs should be glucose in the form of starch, like potatoes. Wait - don't get out those pitchforks just yet!

First, Dr. K says that you need to eat just enough carbs (and under his formula, the net carb is still very low) to stay out of ketosis. But why is that? Isn't ketosis exactly what most LC'ers want to acheive?

Here's my working hypothesis: when we're in ketosis, our little glycogen tank (always given major priority by our bodies and refilled promptly, since it helps us fight or flight when we must) gets emptied by activity, like weight training - and in the absence of carbs, gets filled by the process of neoglucogenesis. That is, it makes 'new' glucose from another source, like protein. But Dr. K doesn't want us to fill our tanks from protein sources.

First, in order to convert protein to glucose, it needs to be affected by an insulin response. Those of us who were eating a lot of protein can testify that yes, we were getting increased insulin response - and scale weight gain or stall as a result! With just enough carbs to fill the tank, the insulin response becomes to come only in the presence of those carbs, and not the protein.

Second, we eat so little protein we don't have a lot to spare, and thus the body begins to get the idea that whatever protein we do eat is strictly for tissue and muscle repair. That, btw, is one of the reasons protein is kept low; it's just enough for those purposes and no more. Which means the fuel the body needs to make bigger and harder muscle must come from fat!

Here's where it really gets interesting. Weight training vastly increases fuel requirements, yet much of the extra fat we consume on this plan gets quickly burned and out of our system. It's why, as Nancy noticed, although you begin to consume many more calories under this plan, you start feeling more 'hungry' than you did while eating fewer calories but more protein. So your growing muscles need more fuel than you're giving it, but you've decreased protein intake, which they were using for fuel before. What's a hungry muscle to do?

Easy - after a few months of serious weight training, those muscles have already built new highways to deliver the fuel to the new extra furnaces - and those furnaces are happy to convert fat to energy. And guess what - if you're still overweight, you've got a built-in pantry just filled with the stuff, waiting to be emptied and used.

This is why Dr. K's plan has vastly accelarated my stored body fat burn -- because by lowering my protein and upping my fat, two processes have occurred simultaneously: my body is now getting enough fat (and a lowered insulin response) to open the fat cell spigots to let some out instead of hoarding it, and my muscles must get their required fuel from fat, not protein.

Ergo - carb intake under the K Plan must be upped a little (if they are exceedingly low). But wait - there's more - with the caveat that many things on this plan are different for diabetics.

Starch carbs which converts to glucose, but not fructose, may help increase insulin sensitivity on this plan. [I said this would be shocking]:

Before doing my deep research on Dr. K's plan yesterday I wondered why many of his recipes used white potatoes. And why many of the plan followers were eating potatoes and still losing. Once again, it goes back to the glycogen stores, which a small amount of potatoes will fill very easily and quickly. And certainly keep me out of ketosis.

Imagine my surprise when my research showed that despite his having devised this plan nearly 40 years ago (based on his own research and experience with thousands of patients), he came to the conclusion that it was fructose, and not glucose that (along with excess protein) led to insulin resistance. In fact, he claimed then (which 'new' studies are now validating) that glucose from 'starch' -- in the presence of high fat and low protein/carbs -- helps increase insulin sensitivity. This may also help explain why other studies which show that 'resistant' starch (like Hi Maize) can be beneficial to insulin just may be right, under certain circumstances. Who'da thought?

Although under the K Plan I must continue to keep carbs low, and thus don't have a lot to play around with, I intend to add potatoes back to my diet in small amounts, and will keep track of how that affects me. I figure half a baked potato loaded with butter and sour cream (and homemade bacon bits!) will be low enough carb and protein, and high enough in fat to easily fit into the program. I'll alternate the potato days with fruit (1/4 cup berries with yogurt) and see how it goes. FWIW, YMMV


Depends on how much protein is in the jowls, and how that plays into your overall protein allowance. I try and eat a very HF/very LP breakfast. It gives me a head start on my daily fat requirement, lots of energy quickly, and it leaves me enough protein to make decent lunches and dinners.

Lisa

You mean I'm not really 29? Amanda, if you'll give me your height in centimeters (not meters) I can give you the stats you need to get started.

Lisa

Patrick - sounds like a plan. But please remember that there's protein in egg yolks and cream - though Dr. K says that egg yolks are the most nutritional food we can eat, and that we should try to eat 4 (large) a day. For me, that would mean 2 jumbo yolks, which are 4g protein.

Lisa

The simplest way I can put it is like this.

Here are a couple scientific facts (observations) that everybody is trying to explain.

1) Some people stay thin whatever amount of calories they eat.
2) Some poor people eat less than a 1000 calories per day and still become very obese.

The conventional hypothesis says that # 1 is because they move a lot (Eout is high) so they compensate their intake. This is not always true and they are still trying to explain why. About # 2 they mostly want to forget about this fact, because they are having a really hard time explaining it.

Our hypothesis says that # 1 is because these people either eat moderate carbs/protein or that they are better than some at metabolizing the excess carbs. About # 2, they became insulin resistant and because their insulin levels cannot go down enough in between meals, their fat cells can't release their fatty acids and they are always stimulated to increase instead.

Also, since # 1 bodies do not steal their energy by storing it as fat, they have more energy available from their intake and are more likely to be active and do more sports. Explaining why thin people are often more active than obese. They are not thin because they move more, they move more because they are thin. See how looking at statistics you could imply that they are thin, "Look here they are more active, that's why they're thin !". Statistical studies can never imply cause like that. They should look at it and say maybe they are thin because they are more active. Then they must test this to confirm their hypothesis. The few times where they tried to confirm this, they were unable to and are still trying to explain why. We on the other hand know why because our hypothesis explains it perfectly.

Now if you research the subject, you will find that the people who holds onto the "caloric deficit" hypothesis are acknowledging that our fat stores is controlled by our hormones. But they are not willing to acknowledge the implications of this fact. If it's our hormones then it's not our lack of willpower that makes us fat. On the human side of things, they continue to say do sports and eat less (so it's willpower). And on the other hand, when they talk about the science, they accept that it's only our hormones that can make us fatter.

They have been trying to bridge this gap for at least 40 years! And if you take a close look at all the studies they cite to support their idea. You will find that they are epidemiological studies where they imply cause from their data. This is a big no no in science. But nowadays the medias do not care about true science and they publish these "findings" without further ado.

Taubes hypothesis is simpler and explains more facts without tweaking the data. People get overweight by becoming insulin resistant and since their deregulated bodies steals energy to make fat, they eat more and/or move less to compensate. Otherwise they would become fatigued and/or sick. Even for the ones eating a lot of carbs and staying thins, they could have other symptoms like diabetes, alzheimer or cancer. All these symptoms including obesity are all part of the same arrow of causality in our hypothesis.

So in conclusion, it's not because we eat too much that we develop these problems it's because we eat too much of the wrong stuff !

Here is a truly enlightening video presentation that explains all this a lot better than me

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_d...webcastid=21216

Patrick

Thank you Lisa and nancy for your replies!

I hope I can go back to eating my meat when I reach goal! One of the things I love so much about Paleo is that I get to eat loads of meat.

I suppose I can try counting the hog jowls as 3 or 4 slices of bacon each to try to suss out the protein/fat ...

Thanks Lisa, but I can't forget that. I use CalorieKing to track everything I eat

Patrick

Also, don't forget that your body's natural weight might not be what you have in mind as a target. Especially if you already deregulated your body with too much carbs and/or protein. It's just too late for some of us. I know that for myself I will have to go through a tummy tuck to get back to normal when my body reaches it's target.


There is more to it than just the carbs for sure, but it's still just an hormonal question, never a willpower one.


That's for sure ! That's why Gary Taubes, others and myself are begging scientists to look at things with an open mind. And also to test our theory. Some of it is already happening and eventually the whole picture will emerge.

We are at the end of the nutritional dark ages.

Patrick