Hi guys. I am a previous Atkins dieter. Initially I did it to control my carb cravings. I have a lot of metabolic problems (thyroid, insulin etc.), but I just want to let you all know that long term ketogenic dieting made them all worse. Yes, it made my insulin resistance much much worse. I think that for obese individuals, short-term ketogenic dieting can really aid insulin resistance. But for me (I was not overweight), it made my insulin resistance terrible. I now need to take glucophage. A low gi diet is far preferable for people who are not overweight and have metabolic issues like myself - think broccoli!

Check out this article if you don't believe that Atkins is bad for your insulin resistance: http://www.atkinsexposed.org/atkins...mplications.htm

Just in case anyone is confused by your post, and your apparent desire to give up a healthy low carb way of life for the decidedly unhealthy alternative that vegan crackpots like Greger espouse, I'll just take you back to your post a couple of months back;



In summary you have never followed Atkins, you have been starving yourself rather than follow the advice offered to you here as to how to put on the weight you desperately need in as healthy a manner as possible. And strangely that advice would be to eat broccoli (are there any low carbers who don't? ) as well as a great deal more healthy protein and healthy fats and also to raise your carb intake to at least keep you out of ketosis.

So now you think your "personal testimony" will scare others from following a diet which is clearly not the source of your problems?

One thing we can agree on - you obviously are a "sick puppy". You need help. Do not waste a minute more of your time here blaming others, before you get some professional assistance to help you overcome all your health issues.

I wish you well.

Cheers,

Malcolm

Yakumo I've done both of those diets for years, broccoli is fine with both. The difference for me is that I eat more vegetables on atkins because he says you have to start out with 3 cups/day and then add more as you progress.

Chronic ingestion of a low-carbohydrate diet, coupled with elevated amounts of protein as a major macro-nutrientresults in increased hepatic glucose production and decreased peripheral glucose utilisation, both indicative of an insulin resistant state.41,42

Your eating few carbs and the body makes what it needs- I think this is a great design feature. If your in a place where you didn't have enough food for a few days you'd die if this didn't happen.

Decreased peripheral glucose utilization- right it switches to a fat burning metabolism.

Both indicate insulin resistance- since when do gluconeogenesis and burning fat indicate insulin resistance???

Although more study in this area is needed, early findings suggest thatincreased basal insulin release, higher fasting-glucoseproduction and enhanced gluconeogenesis all increase thedemand on insulin release from the pancreas and mayhasten the onset of diabetes in susceptible individuals dueto pancreatic beta cell failure.37,38

WRONG WRONG WRONG
You don't get increased insulin release.
Lower carb does not increase fasting glucose.
Diabetes in not hastened.
Beta cell failure may still occur but the damage was probably done before lowcarb or caused by the other factors then dietary.

In the early 90s a large Italian family with 21 diabetics in it was studied. Researchers found a bad gene that caused them to develop insulin resistance. Only family members with that gene became diabetic. It was hypothesized that the ingestion of carbohydrates turns the gene on. They have gone on to find defective genes in other groups, one for the East Indies has been found. Also the Pima Indians that have the highest rates of diabetes at 70% of any group. They were perfectly healthy and only began getting diabetes when they started eating the Standard American Diet.

I personally went from diabetes to glucose intolerant to hypoglycemic suggesting that my beta cells have bounced back pretty well from eating fewer carbs.

Hmm, interesting post nawchem. The fact is though that my insulin resistance is a lot worse. But I think that fasting might have done more damage than Atkins. I do, however, believe that long term ketogenic dieting does make insulin resistance worse. Otherwise, why does fat come back so quickly when you add carbs back in? Anyway, I still plan on eating low GI, but I really need more carbs anyway as mscblues said. mscblues: I am getting a lot of help for all my issues and they all recommend I stay out of ketosis. However, I do indeed do very badly on a high carb diet. I think something along the lines of a 30/40/30 or so protein/carb/fat ratio would benefit me more.

By the way, how many grams carbs do you eat, nawchem? I'm scared to overdo it. My primary source of carbohydrate is broccoli of which I go through maybe two punnets a day (700g?) so I don't think I'm getting too many carbs and they're really low GI anyway. Lately, protein makes me sick and tired anyway. No idea why. I think it's allergies or something

You can't cure insulin resistance, you can only control it. You'd never have gotten it in the first place if you hadn't been consuming a diet high in refined carbs.

We don't have a insulin resistance/diabetes epidemic on our hands because of low-carb diets...

And you CAN gain weight on low carb. Trust me, I've done it. But you're a guy, probably young to boot, so you might never run into it.

I've never heard of allergies to protein.

Are you referring to a specific protein? Eggs? Beef? Fish?

Because food sensitivities can make you feel really bad, and even though a lot of people are primarily sensitive to grain products, you could possible be allergic to something customarily eaten in a low carb category.

How do you know your insulin resistance got worse?

yakumo I have many health conditions as well and it has taken me some time to work through it all. A low gi diet did not make me feel bad but lowering my carbs into a range that had some physiological effect did. Initially lowcarb made me feel incredibly ill, because my body wasn't functioning right. I thought it was the atkins diet making me feel so awful. I eventually found out I had a heart murmur, hypothyroid and hypoglycemia so my body is very sensitive.

When I restarted LC to lose weight this summer I ate approx. 20 carbs/day with a day off in which I ate 300 carbs. I was following the flexible diet by Lyle McDonald. Kind of like a CKD. After 2 months my cravings got the best of me and I didn't lose any weight. Now I am doing atkins exactly by the book. Even after eating a basic Lowcarb diet for about 10 years dropping my carbs made me feel very tired and out of it. But I think this happens to everyone with high insulin levels, it seems to be a little harder for me to use fat for energy. I wake up every morning with lowblood sugar, its just tolerable on lowcarb. If eat more carbs on a regular basis it becomes so bad I can't stand it and overeat to get rid of the hypoglycemic symptoms.

I think you have a habit of undereating and need to slowly increase, it will probably feel bad and strange to you. I'm guessing you need to eat more fat, your body will begin to make more fat utilizing enzymes. You could slowly add one new food a week, just eating it every other day and seeing how you feel.

You can get books on hypoglycemia from the library. I liked Hypoglycemia For Dummies. They all advocate the same diet for people with high insulin levels that need to heal there bodies. It is not a weightloss diet and it is how I plan to eat when I lose a little more weight. It also explains the things that can mess up and help those with high insulin levels taking weightloss out of the equation. It made me realize some things I can do to help myself. The book starts from a total no sugar/no carbs when symptoms go down you slowly add in foods checking for symptoms and at no time do you ever add in sugar.

I'm wondering if you have had any tests to check things cortisol, DHEA, stomach antibodies. My dr told me its a blood panel test that costs about $99, maybe that would show something. I had food allergy testing done, they tested for tons of foods that cover the basic food groups and looked at IgE (allergy) and IgG antibodies. The average person is allergic to at least a dozen foods.

Not a wise choice to depend on "animal rights activists" as your source for medical advice.:

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=193732
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=215186

Wa'il

From a previous post of yours: and and and

Yours is not a typical situation in any way and your diet has not been Atkins...you even openly admitted in another post that the way you eat resembles anorexia. You have also stated that you've tried to change your way of eating numerous times and have found nothing that works. My point is that you have a ton of issues...and one of them may well be an eating disorder. You repeatedly focus on staying in Ketosis instead of trying to get yourself to a healthy weight. And before you get into "why" you like to be in ketosis...I already know...read it elsewhere...preserving lean body mass and able to eat next to nothing...etc...but that's not healthy or normal either...especially at your weight.

Again...I understand that medical issues may compromise your ability to be healthy...and I wish you well with all of them....but it's frankly just wrong to make a statement (supposedly based on personal experiences) regarding the dangers of a plan that you truly never followed. In addition...with the roller coaster ride you've been on with regard to how and what you choose to eat...how can you possibly blame any of your issues on any one eating plan....even if you had followed them.

If you plan to stay out of ketosis, be sure not to go to sleep for any length of time. We all wake up in the morning with ketones in our blood, from what I read.

Hey. Well, a couple of people told me that long-term keto dieting made your insuling resistance worse, and since mine got so bad I assumed that's what did it. But it could have been the fasting.

NancyLC: You can, by all accounts, cure insulin resistance. At least, my endocrinologist seems to think so. Glucophage and a low GI diet seems to do it. A Schwarzbeing principle diet or 30/40/30 diet seems successful. Also, I think that if you change your body-fat composition it can go away (if you are obese, losing fat, or underweight, gaining lean mass).

Anyway, it's true that I am badly messed up. I've been adding more carbs back into my diet and exercising, but as usual, I get unbalanced, get severe hypoglycemia, then eventually my body says "enough of this" and I just eat way too many carbs and feel like rubbish. The thing is, I know that about 6 months ago I could eat many more carbs without adverse effects to my insulin and blood sugar like I get now so something made my insulin resistance much worse in the intervening time and it wasn't a high carb diet.

Also, I want to be normal. I don't want to do Atkins or LC forever and I need to gain lean weight which by all accounts means I need to eat carbs. At least like 100g or 150g a day. But Even if I keep these super-low GI (green-beans and broccoli) I just get hypoglycemia and get unbalanced. I think that my candida makes me much more susceptible to a lot of carb-related problems though.

The trouble is that not eating makes me weak and ill, and eating invariably makes me ill somehow although I feel much better for a while - especially if I eat carbs. My insulin resistance was once just a mild annoyance, but now it is really bad (fasting insulin of 19 once!!). Perhaps repeated fasting/overeating cycles did it? I only do well on Atkins for a short while and then start getting fatigued and my gallbladder acts up because of all the choleserol and saturated fat. So I start eating less and less to keep feeling well and eventually end up fasting again. Eating lots of green things (broccoli/green beans) helps for a while, but eventually my body demands more carbs. I think I need to take some ampho-B or something and just nail this candida and get it overwith. A protracted battle will kill me.

Anyway, if anybody has any advice on a good WOE, I'm open to idea. I'm considering Schwarzbein or 30/40/30 at this point, but don't know if I can sustain it.

Oh yeah, I also have what seems to be multiple food intolerances/allergies - probably caused by the candida. This can also trigger overeating since if I eat a food that disagrees with me too much, I feel sick, tired and very, very hungry. It will often wipe me out, make me sleep and then I wake up starving. Really irritating problem especially since it seems like a good dozen foods can do this

The body is in constant production of ketones. Ketosis means that you are producing so many ketones that they can be measured.

I've been low carbing for 3 years. I do not ketogenic diet but my diet is very carb restricted - 20% of cals about (definitely under 100 grms per day).
All symptoms of insulin resistance only continue to improve, despite the fact I have been normal weight for about 2 years now.
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=266614
My cholesterol levels continue to improve.
My fasting blood sugar is more normal (I was always hypoglycemic before; now much less so)
My A1C is getting lower and lower, despite the fact I am eating the same or more carbs than before. It's almost below 5 now.

Perhaps your insulin resistance worsened because of conditions unrelated to low carb?

Number one, a low carbohydrate diet is by far the best treatment for insulin resistance. My own doctor instructed me to eat lots of "lean meat and veggies" after I demonstrated a serious abnormality processing sugar (drinking the equivalent of one of those 16 oz pepsi bottles caused my sugar to go up to 150, and then crash brutally at 40 in 2.5 hr time). My doctor is hardly a radical - he is merely informed of current info for treating IR. Those who still suggest diabetics, hypoglycemics, and others in the metabolic disease spectrum should eat "lots of complex carbohydrates but avoid sugar and fat" are dinosaurs. Wake up!

Number two, broccoli is consumed by the bucket on a low carbohydrate diet. Furthermore, if your diet is based on broccoli you will surely waste away as broccoli is not a true food that contains energy adequate to support human life. If you are eating mostly non-foods like plain broccoli it is no wonder you are deteriorating as you are.

Starvation, when you persist in it, eventually causes autoimmune problems like hypothyroid and type 1 diabetes. The body WILL fall apart without nourishment, this is not a joke. I would be willing to bet your problems come from your unwillingness to nourish yourself - not from the macronutrient composition of the meager energy you permit yourself to consume.

Eating low-carb is normal. Eating lots of carbs is abnormal and is a very recent addition to the juamn diet. Carbs do not create muscles, exercise/recovery and adequate protein do.