Weight Maintenance on a Ketogenic Diet - Part 1

So in the two months after my finish at Old Dominion, I took a little time off running. The original intent was simply to recover thoroughly, then start back into training. In addition, I went back to a "normal" diet, as a reward for finishing my first 100.

And then, a miracle happened! My wife got pregnant with our first child!

And I really do mean a miracle. We experienced some issues getting pregnant, and had been trying for a couple years without success. But, things took a turn for the better, and off we went on our new path to parenthood.

And, of course, we both started eating. A lot. Sarah had a good excuse. She was eating for two.

I was eating for two as well. Me and my mid-section.

I gained about 20 pounds over the course of 3-4 weeks. Seriously, 20 pounds. I went from around 160 to around 180 (about a 12.5% gain in body weight). And at this point, I decided to go back on a ketogenic diet.

This 2-part post is really about the use of a ketogenic diet to obtain and maintain a healthy weight. I'll talk in detail about my personal experience with the diet, and tips and tricks the make sure that you stay healthy and feel great while transitioning to this diet.

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, there's some great information out there, including the books by Phinney and Volek, along with good websites like eatingacademy.com. I highly recommend doing your own research into the nitty gritty stuff to get a better idea of how this diet works, as I'll be talking primarily about my personal experiences.

So, I have actually tried to "diet" before. And by "diet", I really mean that I've tried to control my weight through controlling what I eat. This usually meant some sort of calorie restriction. And that makes sense, of course, from a logical standpoint. Calories in must equal calories out, right? But one thing always got to me. One thing I hated.

Hunger.

And no matter what "diet" I followed, I'd be hungry. Which made little sense to me. If we assume that ultimate objective of our brain is to have a healthy body (which I think you have to, although this is something that's up for debate, and perhaps will be discussed in a future post), then why would our brain continue to tell us we're hungry even after we've had a satisfactory amount of calories to fuel the body?

Or for that matter, if we're overweight, why doesn't our brain simply tell us we're full after a restricted amount of calories to facilitate weight loss, and help to achieve a healthy weight?

The answer? Insulin. In short, insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas which causes the liver, skeletal muscles, and fat tissue to absorb glucose from the blood. Glucose is the broken down form of carbohydrate, and can be toxic if its levels in the blood are not controlled. So in that sense, insulin is a good thing. It keeps us from dying.

However, insulin significantly interferes with our hunger reflex. Specifically, if we eat a high glycemic food (such a something high in simple sugars), our body releases a significant amount of insulin to deal with the spike in blood glucose levels. After all the excess glucose is cleared, we quickly feel hungry again, even though we may have just ingested quite a few calories.

So what does this tell us? Well, it tells me that insulin is a great thing that keeps us from dying, and that the body has the ability to produce insulin in order to fulfill the task of occasionally clearing the blood of excess glucose. Notice I said "occasionally". If our bodies had evolved to ingest significant amounts of carbohydrate, causing regular releases of insulin, then why does insulin interfere with our hunger response? Perhaps because we did not evolve to ingest significant amounts of carbohydrates. I'll talk about evolution and my personal theories in a subsequent post. For now, back to dieting...

I hate being hungry, so I found the best solution to losing weight was to adopt an eating lifestyle that allowed me to eat when I was hungry, and stop when I was full. The answer? Cut carbohydrates altogether. Eliminate the insulin response, and allow my brain to use the hunger response to get my weight to what the brain considered to be healthy.

Of course, this meant some wholesale changes in what I ate, and brought up some serious questions about how such a change in macronutrients would affect the metabolism of my body. Phinney and Volek's book gave me quite a bit of insight as to what to expect, and how to go about obtaining all the micronutrients I need.

I'll go into detail in Part 2.

So long!

-Dave