Dr. Kwasniewski's Optimal Diet-good/not so good
 

Does anyone have any good/not so good experiences to share on this WOE yet? I've been following this since April 1 - in two weeks, this is what I've noticed....

On the positive, I seem to have more energy than I did before and my skin feels softer.

On the not-so-positive, I have more heartburn than I did before. In the past I've gotten heartburn from cream, which I tried to include the last couple days so I'm hopeful that by discontinuing the cream, I'll get rid of the heartburn.

Anyone else?

The good?
I've only been on it a week tomorrow so hard to say for sure. But I have lost three pounds in that one week after four weeks of no loss on regular LC. That part is good for sure. :D Also good, there is a pair of jeans I tried on about 10 days ago. I could just squeeze into them, but they were not at all comfortable and I could never have worn them in public. Today they actually fit comfortably and have plenty of room, even in the belly area which was far too uncomfortably tight for me to be able to sit down in them 10 days ago.

The bad:
Well the amount of protein allowed is so small that it makes it pretty near impossible to go out to eat with friends and be able to order something that fits the diet. I mean one thing I love about LC is how easy it is to find something you can eat when dining out. For breakfast you can always get eggs, omelets, etc. Lunches and dinners it's usually easy to get a hunk of meat of some sort along with a salad or veggie side, with some butter or bleu cheese dressing, etc. But this diet is far harder to do that with - not that I go out to eat all that often, just plain can't afford to! But if I'm at work and get hungry, and I don't have anything there I've brought in to eat, there are few choices I can buy in the deli downstairs.

Also, maybe the worst thing I've noticed - in the last three days I've developed this dreadful taste in my mouth, not quite a metallic taste, but a very bitter, sour taste. Not only does it taste awful all the time but it makes much of my food have a bitter, sour taste also. Not fun!

I've also been hungry most of the time I've been on this diet, even at 2200 calories a day! Not excessively so, but enough that I'm constntly aware of an empty stomach.

The bad: Gained 5 pounds in about 10 days. My appetite is enormous on this diet.

The good: The food! OMG!

Health: No noticeable changes. Except I sometimes feel on the verge of heart burn and I get this strange "full/empty" feeling. I'll be hungry but full.

Tweaks incoming though, perhaps things can be improved.

Ohh, I've noticed something like this too. A lot of foods are tasing differently. I'm trying to decide if that's coming out of ketosis (before this I always kept to induction level carbs on Atkins).

I've only been doing this 4 days but the good: lost 7 pounds so far the bad: tracking everything is more of a Pita than with Atkins & it's much harder to get information online when you're doing research.

See the post I just made on the main zillion-page Dr. K thread. I quoted from the pages of Jenny Ruhl, a well-respected diabetes advocate. She makes the comment about 'ketobreath', often experienced by low carbers, which apparently is not actually caused by ketones but usually by excess protein, but she adds:

Paradoxically, dieters whose diets have too little protein can also get "ketobreath." That's because when dieters don't take in enough protein for their bodies' needs, their bodies cannibalize their own muscle protein and break it down.

I'm beginning to wonder if that is my case since cutting protein way back is really the main change I've made in my diet since the nasty breath thing started.

Well, I can say I tried, but maybe not hard enough. I did this diet for a couple of days, and the scale went up, so I freaked out and went back to Atkins. It was nice to have the french fries and bread for a couple days though.
Another thing that was mentioned was going out to eat. I went to a restaurant the other day and I did have some trouble deciding what to eat, because I had already used up most of my protein for the day. I have too many things going on in my life right now to be worrying about ratios, but I can easily count my carbs so I'm going back to what I know.
I'm very sad that this diet didn't work for me, because the food is amazing!

Eating out shouldn't be that hard really. I'd have a salad with lots of dressing. It might not be perfectly in line with the diet but it shouldn't throw the macro-nutrients too far out of whack, especially if there isn't too much meat on the salad.

That's true, but usually restaurant salads are not very appealing. Even today when they are a bit better than they were years ago (when a 'salad' was just a hunk of iceberg lettuce with two tomato slices and some shredded carrot on top) they are still mostly just a big hunk of lettuce with a few extra things on top. It may be the best choice but it still screams "DIET! DEPRIVATION!" to me, and I don't like to get salad dressings in public places as they are *always* made from unhealthy oils which I avoid.

But it's still probably the "best" choice, sigh, which means - once again, that I can't enjoy eating a meal out in public. That is if I want to keep my numbers in line!

If I know I'm going out, will ration protein all day until evening. Then, armed with knowing how many ounces I can have I can make a ballpark guess.

Even if it's only 3-4 ounces, that's a leg or a small thigh for chicken, or half a 6oz steak. Many places usually have a veggie of the day (or I supposed *gasp* some baked potato. OMG, I'm gona faint lol) and then lots of butte on the veggies. I think it's doable, so not going to sweat it too much. I don't go out often enough to have it sabotage I don't think if I get a measurement slightly off for one night.

That's true. Exactly what I would do if I knew I was going out. Usually I don't though. :D My "eating out" experiences tend to be "spur of the moment" - my son will call up, for example, and say he and his wife are going out for a bite and do I want to join them (i.e. pay for the meal, :lol: )

But I guess I will not obsess until I'm faced with the situation, and now that they two of them are moving in with the in-laws (since my son lost his job in December - can't afford to pay rent anymore) I suppose the going-out times will be pretty few and far between now anyway. But going overboard on protein for a single meal/day is not going to kill things entirely. Hey, I went way overboard on Easter - supposedly my second day on the ON plan, and yet have still lost three pounds this week.

I belong to a couple social groups that eat out a lot. I don't wish to stop participating. I already practice IF on days I'll be eating out. I was thinking a strategy to comply with the lower protein targets would be to just eat half the meat served and bring home a doggy bag. Making the meat go for 2 meals would be nice on the pocketbook, too.
Now, to find the will and strength to do this...

Well, I insisted that I would not count and measured, but my interest was peaked. No I haven't measures but i have done some rough counting. I'm on day 3 and am down 1.8 lbs. on the scale. According to calculus victus, I should weigh 121 (at 5'6" tall). That seems a little lower than what I normally see, but it works for me. I only have 7 lbs. to lose, so I'm surprised I dropped as much as I have so quickly. We'll see how this goes. If I continue to see a downward trend, I will eat my words about not counting thing. Btw: This is my daily allowances: P=56, F=145=190, C=24-48.

Good: The food is great! I so love my butter.

Bad: Easy to overdo the protein if not paying attention, but I feel this is something I would easily adapt to since I always paid attention not to overeat protein anyway.

What about sleep?
 

I've been seeing dozens of links to a mouse study that suggested that a high fat diet interrupted sleep cycles. Sleep is my Achilles heel, so I was wondering if any of the high fatters on Dr K's regime were having any sleep issues?

I'm too new at this (4 days) to give a good answer :(

I just started this, so I can't report on it yet (plus I'm not doing it properly - I'm following the ratios but not eating the ideal ON foods). I definitely have sleeping problems, though, so if the super-high fat intake seems to exacerbate them or have any effects, I will let you know!