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!
