Fast-5 Diet and Lifestyle: Re: [fast5] Ketone question

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Re: [fast5] Ketone question

The issue in cases like this, in my experience, isn't so much that there "is no glucose" as that "the body doesn't want to release glycogen". Your body HAS stored energy, unless you are really, really skinny. But, it might not be very good at getting the energy OUT.

Usually, the way the body releases stored energy is to release a bunch of cortisol. Which works: it raises the blood sugar. But, if too much cortisol is released, it also makes you grouchy and headachy and gives the symptoms of "low blood sugar".

I learned this because I got a glucometer, to test how "low" my blood sugar really went. Turns out, when I had "low blood sugar" episodes, my blood sugar was actually HIGH. What I was having was "high cortisol" episodes.

It's fairly easy though, to fight high cortisol. It responds to rather odd triggers ... like, eating a bite of lettuce. Or lemon juice. Or exercise. Sauerkraut is one of those things that works: it has acid in it. Dunno why acid works, but it seems to.

Anyway, if you stick with it, your body gets better at regulating cortisol, so you can deal with the random times you just can't get away to eat. In my experience, Fast-5 is one of THE BEST ways to train your body to do that. In the meantime: lemon juice tea works rather well, and it's totally ok calorie-wise.

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 11:08 PM, Chantelle <chantelles@cox.net> wrote:

This was interesting to me because I get the sense that my body does do this on its own, with my own version of "fasting". I seem to kn ow when I NEED To eat (and its not based on timing, etc.). I have had trouble figuring out how my body decides actually and its curious to me. So your post heather made me think that perhaps my body senses the ketone thing and attempts to get me to eat before it "goes there". I'd have to say that I probably don't make my body very happy. In the last seven days I've made it wait several hours after it told me that "food was a dire need". I wasn't doing that for fast 5 purposes, its just that I was at work and trying to leave to go get food. It's been an unusual week as I don't have a vehicle and my attempts to plan ahead and take food with me have not operated like they usually do. I do commend myself for having a jar of saurkraut with me at work one day so at least I had that to tide me over.... :)
chantelle
<HeatherTwist@gmail.com> wrote:
My understanding is that ketones get produced when there is not enough glucose to keep the brain happy. Your brain can run off ketones when it doesn't have enough glucose.

Now, you don't have enough glucose if you don't eat carbs, is the usual case. Which was the rationale behind the Atkins diet. However, long-time low-carb eaters ... like bobcats and tigers, or old-time Inuit ... eventually adapt and their bodies learn to produce glucose from protein. Long-time American low-carbers may adapt too.
On fast-5 ... it may be that if in your window you eat mainly low-carb, and use up all your glycogen stores during the next 20 hours, your body could go into ketogenic mode. Depends how much glycogen you have stored, how much you exercise, and how much you have eaten.
Mostly though, esp. once your body adapts to this way of eating ... probably not. Your body resists running on ketones ... it's not the preferred mode. You'll eat "just enough" to make it to the next eating period, most likely. From what people have said here, it seems many of them WERE on Atkins at one point, and would know ketosis if they were in it, but I haven't heard them mention that as a side-effect (nor the bad breath that often comes from low-calorie diets)

I am exploring IF and have a question while I was reading through the ebook yesterday. I read a lot about the "ketones" in the body and I recall hearing about that a lot while the Atkins diet was big...and how that was not healthy and I wondered if the IF does the same thing as the Atkins did with the ketones thing? Does anyone know?

Thanks for any information!
Kim