Hi, folks,

Every now and then someone asks if regular BFL nutrition means no ketosis, and at least for me, I think I have the answer. For the last two weeks, I have been doing Bill's recommended 40% protein, 40% carbs, 20 % fat. My carbs have been low glycemic: barley, grapefruit, blueberries, yogurt, sweet potatoes, beans, old fashioned oats. No bread except LC bread, no sugar, no white flour, etc. My ECC has been around 150g/day, give or take 20 and I have been in very mild ketosis pretty much the entire time.

I am *not* trying to entice anyone away from a true LC approach. My only intent here is to answer the question about ketosis and by-the-book BFL.

As far as my own challenge is concerned, I have to have surgery on my right hand tomorrow, so I'll do what I can until I can do more. Cardio and lower body shouldn't be much of a problem, and one-armed upper body will be wierd, but we'll see how it goes, LOL. Since this is my first challenge, and I'm still learning, I'll probably call these first 3-4 weeks a 'prelude' to BFL and go official with my first challenge when I can get my hand around a dumbbell again.

Nat - if you're lurking, I'm finding this quite a bit like C3 from Body RX, btw.

Cheers,

Friday

Interesting stuff Friday, I'll keep a watch to see how you make out. Good luck! How do you make the barley and what does it taste like? When are you eating it?

Hi Friday,

That's very interesting. I'm curious; when you are doing a more low carb approach do you find it easy to get into ketosis? I know we are all different, but I've always equated ketosis with consuming less than 30 grams of carbs.

But now that I think about it, I guess that doesn't really make sense. Since ketosis is just a by-product of your body burning fat, I guess you could be in ketosis at any level of carb intake so long as you are burning fat. I'll have to get out the old keto-sticks and see what they say.

Good luck with the surgery. I'm sure it will go well. That's great that you're still planning on hitting the gym. Be careful though, especially if you have stitches.

Arnie

Barley is simple to make. I get pearled barley at the grocery store, but I'm looking for a source of hulled barley which has even more fiber. You cook it much like you would cook rice, i.e boil it. It has a lightly nutty taste, a little more toward plain oats in flavor rather than like brown rice. The flavor moves easily toward sweet or savory, so add vanilla, splenda and cinnamon and you have breakfast. Add a dab of wasabi and some shoyu and you have dinner. The shrimp dish in my journal was all of 8 minutes prep. Run warm water over frozen shrimp, get pre-cooked barley from the fridge. Stir in a tsp of honey mustard (10 cals, 2 carbs), arrange shrimp, drizzle with 1T sesame ginger. Nuke for a minute-thirty. It also goes well in soups.

As I think about it, it does make sense that anyone who is losing fat is also in ketosis, so perhaps that's all it means. However, while on Atkins the last 6 months or so with no losses, I had to wonder if the fat that was being burned was just dietary and not mine. With BFL being lower on the dietary fat, I'm pretty darn certain that the ketosis is burning *my* fat. LOL

I get into ketosis fairly easy when I'm working out and eating right (40 carbs or less). I can go from Fruity Pebbles (carb-up) to ketosis in 24-36 hrs. When not working out, though, it's hard for me to stay in ketosis. I have to be really tight on the 20 g AND make sure my fat is upwards of 65%

I'll be interested to see if any one else tries the ketostix and what they find. As for me, for right now, I'm happy and this is working, so I'm sticking to it.

Cheers,

Friday

My carbs are are between 40-75 on cardio days, and between 70-100 on weights days. As I've said before, I couldn't work out hard on <30 so I just upped it and decided I wasn't going to worry about ketosis. Lo and behold, since I started pounding the BFL workouts, I've been in varying depths of ketosis almost the entire time. I purposely interrupt it for the weight workouts, then do 1/2 hour cardio to get back in (and burn off some more fat) afterwards.

I don't use Ketostix, but I can tell from the incredibly nasty, smelly sweat that I'm in a good state of ketosis most of the time.

Ah well, frequent washings and extra deodorant are a small, and temporary, price to pay for PERMANENT weight loss.

Emily

That's interesting Friday. I am following the diet too, but I am having to throw in extra snacks since I am so hungry. I don't have any symptoms of ketosis, but I'll check it if I do. I was wondering if the diet would cycle you in and out of ketosis because of the intense workouts.

Hi fridayeyes,

That was interesting. I'm not following atkins right now either, I'm doing my own low carb low fat thing (I eat certain fruits and berries and tons of green vegetables). Have some ketosticks and decided to check it out.
I'm in slight keytosis too!!
Julia

A girl at work, who sais she is LC'ing, told me that ketosis is DANGEROUS. Whatever, anyway I told her that it wasn't yadda,yadda,yadda. So I found an article that pretty much stated if your body is burning fat for fuel and that is what it has no matter what kind of WOE you are doing you are in ketosis. And it went on to say that all of us are in some state of ketosis at times. For example when you go to bed and don't eat for 8 or so hours, anyone, even somebody that isn't dieting can produce ketones. So it would make sense to me that you are in ketosis because you are burning fat. I just think that on a LC WOE it is easy for your body to get into it because there are no carbs to burn first.

Wee

Have been keeping track of this, and ketosis increases throughout the week, peaking just before free day. Even eating 150-200g/carbs, and with decent hydration, I have gotten as high as 'moderate' ketosis. The scale isn't showing it, but the inches are.

Cheers,

Friday

Interesting thread Friday. I went through the same experiments myself awhile back. Another BFL buddy of mine found the exact same thing as you, but me, the sticks never show me in ketosis unless I'm on Induction level carbs. I've checked the ketostixs at every level of carb intake I've done as well as post-exercise and first thing in the morning. Nada. I don't have keto breath either. After all, I had a bottle left from my old Atkins days I needed to use up. LOL

Funny how people differ so much.

Have a good day!
Wanda

Hi Fridayeyes



I'm like you and find as long as my carbs are low glycemic, and I exercise I go into ketosis at what some consider very high carb levels - I first noticed this last spring when I was on the Montignac Plan and walking 3 miles a day for cardio, going to curves, and on alternate days doing some weight training. When I lower my carbs to very low levels - I am in ketosis within 24 hours with or without exercise. Since for me ketosis has never equaled weight loss and I don't feel or function particularly well while in it, I usually try to get out of ketosis right away when I accidently go into it. I guess this is just another example of how we are all different - I know a lot of people really have to struggle to get into and stay into ketosis. The other thing is that although I've not had dramatic pound loss in a year - I have had rather amazing inch loss - I think I'm up to 30 inches gone now, and although still far from what WAS my weight goal, my measurements are now just about where I expected them to be if I had reached goal weight.

Hi KoKo,

Have you calculated your bodyfat percentage recently? I remember a post from you awhile back basically saying "Where are the losses?" If you've lost fat but gained a nearly equal amount of muscle, you may be at your goal even though your weight is higher than you thought it would be. I joke about weight training being the easiest 'diet' in the world - you just keep moving your goal weight UP.

I am a fan of low-carb, but I stalled for 6 months, and now I'm moving again with this recent change, so it's definitely a YMMV thing.

Congrats on your progress.

Cheers,

Friday

Thankyou Fridayeyes,

You know I feel exactly the same way, it was just a couple of days ago in my journal that I said I was going to stop trying to lose weight. I'm still quite far from what was my goal BUT to be realistic my measurments can't really get much smaller for someone my age (if any one reads them and thinks they are small please remember I'm quite short 5'2.5 - you can tell when someone feels short - they ALWAYS mention that half inch) it dosen't seem to matter what I eat - I won't gain much and I won't lose much - BUT if I don't exercise I'll expand. The biggest change for me was coming to love exercise instead of looking at it as something I had to do and get over with - now I usually look forward to working out and put all I have into into it - and look on it as a gift to myself instead of a torture session.

Good for you for breaking your stall, and even better for your dedication to exercise. A few years ago I read something - "Exercise is your license to eat" while it's not a license to eat EVERYTHING it's certainly true.