Lowcarb/Keto Plus Other Restrictions

The Lowcarb/Keto eating plan already restricts you from eating a lot of things which most people think of as ‘normal.’ As I have found now that I’m having to eat low-protein due to a bad kidney test, adding even more restrictions can be hard. In my case, it seems to be necessary for my health right now. It can be hard to cope.

The problem is to understand the reasons behind your restrictions so you can make good choices. The reason you can’t have two bananas for breakfast is not because bananas are evil or Satanic, but because they are high in carbohydrates. (If you utterly adore bananas perhaps you can split a banana with a family member once a week or so.) The reason I, personally, can’t eat three chicken thighs for lunch is because even ONE chicken thigh can take me over my protein allowance for the whole day. Knowing the ‘why’ can really help.

Getting firmly into ketosis (MEASURE YOUR KETOSIS DAILY!!!) and adding more intermittent fasting to your life makes coping with multiple restrictions a lot easier. (I would not recommend doing more fasting without being in ketosis. It’s hard!)

Sometimes you can cope with restrictions by finding substitutes for problem foods. If you are lactose-intolerant, perhaps you can use coconut milk or cream, or nut milks of different kinds. If you can’t handle butter, you might try ghee, which does not have the milk solids from butter, or if you can’t handle that, try extra-virgin olive oil or coconut oil. 

If you have to be on sodium restriction (I am experimenting with that right now,) you can learn to add more spices to your food. If the food is spicy enough, you can hardly tell whether it has salt or not! You have to find the spices and herbs you personally enjoy to flavor your food that can help make unsalted food taste great. 

Multiple restrictions are a challenge, but if you have already learned how to cope with one needed set of restrictions, adding another isn’t as much as a problem as it may seem at first. I’ve used OMAD (one meal a day) or OMAD plus a ’snack’ to cope with the protein restriction without exceeding the carb limitation. I also alternate days. On one day I don’t worry if I exceed the protein max by a bit. The next day I eat very light on the protein. (I tend to NOT exceed the net carb limit most days, or even get very close to the limit.)

Here’s hoping you joy in spite of restrictions,

Nissa Annakindt

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On Twitter? Follow my dedicated lowcarb/keto Twitter account: https://twitter.com/nissaamaskatoj

The Lowcarb/Keto Learning Curve

Starting the lowcarb/keto eating plan without enough information can lead to bad results. Someone learns that eating lowcarb will lead to ‘quick weight loss,’ lower blood pressure and lower blood sugar, and so they get started. They’ve heard you can’t eat bread on lowcarb. So they eat pasta, or English muffins, or Froot Loops— all also high-carb foods. 

Some people are so afraid of dietary fat they are afraid to eat any meat except an ounce or two of dry, lowfat turkey. They eat egg white omelets— and wonder why they get so hungry. Other folks pig out on bacon and won’t eat any salads because they think veggies are not allowed.

Don’t be like that. The best way to NOT fail at lowcarb/keto is to learn what lowcarb/keto really is. Don’t rely on short magazine articles on ‘keto,’ or a random web site. You need to begin a reading plan to get up to speed on what foods are really allowed and not allowed, and you need a little of the science behind it— especially if you can’t get a doctor who knows about lowcarb.

I suggest a plan of reading, for a short time each day, some material that will help you get started. Recovering alcoholics often make a practice of reading AA’s Blue Book every day; we may need to do the same thing, both to learn and to keep inspired. I have done this for some years, reading my most recent lowcarb book for inspiration daily. (Do each Stage for about a month.)

• Stage One. To get started, you need to learn the basics. I recommend getting ‘Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Cookbook’ and read chapter two, which tells how the Atkins diet, a lowcarb/keto way-of-eating, works and what foods are allowed. Read this every single day. Yes, it’s boring and repetitive, but after about a month you will know very well what you can eat and not eat. Another good book to have is the original Atkins diet book, ‘Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution.’ The chapter on how to do the diet is the twelfth chapter— not numbered in my copy of the book— titled: ‘The Revolutionary Never-Hungry, No-Limit, Steak-and-Salad Plus Diet.’ Read that chapter also for a few days.
• Stage Two. You now know what foods are allowed better than most, so it’s time to expand your reading. Get out your ‘Dr Atkins Diet Revolution’ and read a chapter a day during your reading time. When you are finished, try Jimmy Moore’s ‘Keto Clarity’ and Gary Taubes’ ‘Good Calories, Bad Calories.’  Be willing to re-read these books once in a while. And read your Stage One chapters once a week or at least once a month to refresh your memory.
• Stage Three. Podcasts are a good way to learn without having to read books. Jimmy Moore has had a number of good lowcarb podcasts which often have featured well-known doctors and researchers and other well-known people in the lowcarb community. Moore’s old podcasts were still available online some time ago, so you can find interviews with a lot of folks you may have heard of by now, like Gary Taubes.
• Stage Four. By now you will have a lot of knowledge. You will have heard of other books to add to your reading list, and you will be able to tell when you are reading a book that is less science based than the others you have read. 

Can you ever stop learning? I have let my daily lowcarb/keto reading sessions lapse— but when I do that I am more prone to be tempted into renewing my carb addiction. I would suggest that after you have gone through the stages for some time, you might cut back to reading or podcast listening only 3 days a week and see if that keeps you inspired enough to keep on lowcarbing.

Wishing you happy lowcarb learning,

Nissa Annakindt

Kidney Test and the Food-Free Diet

Last Wednesday I got the results back on a kidney test and my results were worse. At least according to my PA. She wants me to eat less protein & less sodium. Since I need to be on low-carb to control my diabetes and I’m sure my very conventional PA presumes that everyone needs to be low-fat, that adds up to a food-free diet. Luckily I already have a couple books about that diet.

I have ‘The Complete Guide to Fasting’ by Dr. Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore, and ‘The Obesity Code’ by Dr. Jason Fung. Dr. Fung is a nephrologist (kidney doctor) and if fasting (or low-carb) were deadly for people with kidney disease, I assume he would know it. Perhaps be in jail for killing patients by now.

I ordered another of Dr. Fung’s books, ‘The Diabetes Code,’ which I intend to read cover-to-cover repeatedly even though Dr. Fung doesn’t write as well when he doesn’t have Jimmy Moore as a co-author. I also ordered 2 books on kidney disease and low-protein diets, both written by doctors. I need information!

Low-protein shouldn’t be THAT hard for people on the LCHF eating plan. Even though commercial sources brag about the grams of protein in meal bars and meal ‘shakes,’ our way-of-eating is supposed to be MODERATE protein. Because our clever bodies can turn protein into glucose. Also, protein intake can raise your insulin levels even if you eat it without carby foods— and that can make insulin resistance worse.

I have had fun calculating how many grams of protein I can be allowed on this new diet madness. First, I had to convert my weight from pounds into kilograms. Since I’m still hoping to lose weight and I don’t want to get in an eating pattern that I will have to make more restrictive soon, I used 160 for my current weight even though I’m at 182 at last check.

That’s about 73 kilograms. So at a .3 grams of protein per kilogram I can have about 22 grams of protein, and at .6 grams of protein per day that comes to 43 grams of protein. So my target is between 22 and 43 grams of protein per day. (Though my protein-needed amount is 50 grams per day I calculated.) I ordered a book of food counts that includes the protein & sodium counts to help with that. I also wanted to look for an app for my phone that did food counts, but I cannot find the darn thing at the moment— even though I put St. Anthony of Padua on the job! (Update: found it when the phone rang. Downloaded Carb Manager app and started using it.)

So— my current intermittent fasting plan calls for reducing my eating opportunities to one meal a day, with plenty of fluids in between time, and perhaps a bulletproof beverage to help me overcome hunger (which counts as a ‘meal.’ I’m going to replace my morning bulletproof coffee with a cup of hot bone broth (recommended by Dr. Jason Fung) and later a black coffee (with cinnamon & turmeric added.) 

It’s doable, and I haven’t been badly hungry so far. Just slight hunger pangs which can be ignored or defeated with a glass of water, tea or black coffee. My blood sugars are better— 101 this morning— and today I had a 123/72 blood pressure which is a big improvement. Plus according to my Ketonix I’m in moderate ketosis. 

So— good health and good low-carbing to you,

from 

Nissa Annakindt and her ‘unhappy’ kidneys

How I learned to Control my T2 Diabetic Blood Sugars

I learned that I was diabetic because my mother is thrifty. She was and is ‘addicted’ to constant doctor visits, and she does what she is told. When she had a bad cholesterol reading, she obediently went on a statin drug— and promptly got full-blown diabetes. 

She controlled her diabetes with pills, got bad low-fat-based nutritional advice, and learned to test her blood sugar every morning with a blood sugar meter. When her ‘health-care provider’s’ corporation moved the patients on to a different brand of blood sugar meter, she gave me her old one because, as someone who grew up during the Great Depression, she wasn’t going to take a thing that was worth money and throw it away.

I tested my blood sugar one day just for kicks— it was over 300. Scary! So I went to mom’s ‘health-care provider,’ a nurse-practitioner, and she put me on Metformin— one of the few diabetes pills that doesn’t make you gain weight.

I had already learned about low-carb living, since I’d bought copies of various Atkins diet book from St. Vincent de Paul thrift shops. I KNEW that my weight problem already showed that my body had a problem handling carbohydrates. 

As a child I had read a REALLY old home medical book my mother had, that had two or three whole chapters about diabetes, which was very keen on the discovery of insulin injections which was new when the writer was younger. I learned that diabetes was a disease where you had to ‘give up sugar forever.’ As I grew older and learned about Atkins and low-carb, I knew that carbs in general were the problem, not just sugar and not just ‘added sugar.’

The Metformin did bring my blood sugars down. I tested my blood sugars about 3 times a day when I was ‘being good.’ I was mostly eating less carbs, but my father had recently died and so I felt I had to go out to eat with my mom a lot. We do not have fancy restaurants where we live; going out to eat meant eating hamburgers, fried chicken or a fish fry. Carb city!

I got a second blood sugar pill added. In time I realized that the only way to get good blood sugar readings was to be on strict keto as well as taking the pills. Which I mostly did.

I had a bad kidney test, and was sent to a series of nephrologists (kidney specialists.) After a lot of angst, my most recent and least competent kidney doctor took me off all meds— she said that the Metformin probably damaged my kidneys. She also said that no diet change would help my kidneys, and that I needed to prepare to go on dialysis. 

I was scared to go off my meds, but I found that going off, while staying on strict low-carb/keto, made no difference. My blood sugar was controlled by my diet, not the presence or absence of pills. And my kidney tests improved when I was strict with my diet. My kidney doctor didn’t believe that result, though my ‘health-care provider’ (physician assistant) did notice that. So I let that particular kidney doctor go though I kept the ‘health-care provider’ (because I’m on Medicaid, I can only change ‘health-care providers’ once a year, and they won’t tell me when.)

I read “Dr. Atkins Diabetes Revolution” when it came out, and the two books by Dr. Richard Bernstein, “Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution” and “The Diabetes Diet.” Both were very helpful in getting me to get my diabetes under control through diet. I noticed, though, as I grew older the low-carb diet I had been doing for years took longer to take effect when I restarted after going off the diet. Carb binges did more damage, and had longer lasting effects. Just a part of getting older.

The final piece of the puzzle was when I read Dr. Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore’s “The Complete Guide to Fasting.” Fasting brought down bad blood sugar numbers quicker than keto alone. And when I started fasting, already being in ketosis, the fasting was easy. In fact, on a keto diet I often skipped mealtime without thinking about it, if I was already busy with something. 

If you have been diagnosed with T2 diabetes, I hope you will learn to control your blood sugar with your (low-carb, ketogenic) diet instead of with pills that only work for a few years for most people. (My mom, in spite of her carb-filled diet, still gets fairly good blood sugars because of her two diabetes drugs— and since she is 91, I’m hoping the drugs will continue to work for the rest of her life.)

If you are lucky enough, you can find a doctor or a nutritionist who regularly encourages patients to eat low-carb. Ask your current ‘health-care provider’ if they know of someone like this. If no luck, ask your friends if they know of anyone. There are even online lists of keto-oriented doctors and medical people. Look it up, there may be someone good you can get to.

I didn’t have such luck. All the doctors and medical people in my area are part of the same big medical corporation and they don’t seem to have or allow keto-oriented dissenters. So I had to work on learning all about keto for myself through books and podcasts. I did notice that once I lost weight and got better blood sugar numbers on a diet that doctors discouraged me from following, they encouraged me to stick with it.

Why Low-Carb/Keto/LCHF is a Lifestyle, not a Diet

I believe it was Dr. Atkins who started off the idea of not talking about this way-of-eating as a diet. In popular usage, a ‘diet’ was something temporary. You went on a diet, lost weight, and then went off the diet. 

The problem is that we know that this cannot be just a temporary thing for us, even if we do lose weight. Weight gain was not our problems, just a symptom of a bigger thing called Insulin Resistance. Insulin Resistance is a disease that can cause many health problems— diabetes, kidney failure, Alzheimers Disease, as well as overweight/obesity.

The medicine for our disease does not come in a pill bottle. It’s eating in a way that doesn’t trigger our Insulin Resistance. And we can’t just do that for a little while. We have to keep it up for the rest of our lives.

And that’s hard when we live in a culture that doesn’t support our lifestyle. In our culture, eating processed food is the norm, and that means food that is stuffed with carbs. McDonald’s doesn’t make a living by selling meat— it sells buns, french fries, and soda pop, with a little bit of meat to flavor the buns. They are ‘drug pushers’ of an addictive drug: carbohydrates. And so they don’t want to start giving their customers an alternative menu item that meets Low-Carb or Keto standards.

The hard part of the Keto lifestyle for me is the cooking. Our culture actively discourages home cooking. How can the food processors make any money if we buy fresh meat and some fresh veggies and cook it up? And I live alone, which means that if I make most low-carb/keto recipes, I have to eat the same thing for days.

But I must adapt. I make the most simple/basic low carb meal— a serving of meat plus non-starchy veggies— in a simple way. I make a ‘bullet-proof’ beverage in the morning. I make my low-carb ‘breads’ and freeze some for later use.

And I’m thinking about the long term. What happens as I age and can’t do for myself any more? I need to simplify my eating life. Since one of my biggest problems with home-cooking is the cleaning up after, I am making plans to get a dishwasher, since my old one went defunct years ago and I’ve been hand-washing ever since.

One of the co-hosts on a Jimmy Moore podcast likes to call those of us on a keto lifestyle ‘ketonians.’ Like we were a separate foreign culture with different ways. That may be a helpful way to look at it. When we first learned that keto was the way to help our health problems, we joined the tribe. And we are going to stay in it until we die— because going out of the tribe and becoming a carbivore again will make us die quicker.

Low-Carb Diet: How to Do it Right

Updated 9/26/18

I knew the low-carb diet had finally gone mainstream when General Hospital mob boss Julian Jerome stopped eating carbs. It was about time. Low-carb first became part of American diet culture in 1972 when Dr. Robert Atkins' book, 'Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution' made the best-seller lists. Atkins created the diet for himself, based on things he'd read in medical journal articles, but the medical establishment called him a heretic for not promoting a calorie counting or low-fat approach--- which is also known in medical journal articles as a 'semi-starvation diet.'

Low-carb, also called ketogenic, diets are different from temporary weight loss diets. You have to change your eating patterns for life to reap the benefits.

The problem with low-carb is that everyone has heard of it but precious few people know how to do it. Look at this scene, which takes place at a buffet:

Husband: Look at those bread rolls! Don't they look great?
Wife: We can't have them, dear. We are eating low-carb now, remember?
Husband: Then let's have these buttermilk biscuits, then. Or that corn bread.
Wife: We can't have those, either. They are bread, too. Sort of.
Husband: Well, what can we eat, then?
Wife: Well, how about this mashed potatoes? It's a vegetable. Surely no diet can restrict our vegetables? And this fruit salad--- I'm sure we can have as much fruit as we like.
Husband: What about this macaroni and cheese?
Wife: Well, it's got pasta, but pasta isn't bread. And cheese is a low-carb diet food--- go for it!

This, as you may have guessed, is NOT the way to do low-carb. In order to do it right, you have to get a sound low-carb diet book with good instructions on how foods fit in to the low-carb eating plan. In this plan, there are three classes of foods:

1. Foods to eat freely: meats (beef, pork, lamb, venison, chicken, turkey), fish and seafood (salmon, tuna, cod, smelt, perch, shrimp--- all kinds except clams, scallops and oysters), eggs, mayonnaise, butter, coconut oil, olive oil.
2.  Foods to ration: salads, non-starchy vegetables, heavy whipping cream, cheese, nut products such as almond flour, coconut flour. (A good low-carb diet plan will tell you how much of each you are allowed.)
3. Foods you may not eat: bananas, figs, candy, cake, bread, muffins, pasta, milk, pancakes, corn, cornstarch, sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, jam, honey, potatoes, raisins, sweet potatoes, yams, sweetened yogurt.

The low-carb diet is a trade-off. There are some foods you just cannot eat at all--- unlike the calorie-counting approach where you can have tiny portions of such food. In exchange, there are foods you can eat without restrictions.

When you are consuming no more than 10 or 20 grams of carbohydrate per day, your metabolism changes. It stops running on glucose--- sugar--- and starts running on ketones. Ketones result when your body is running on fat instead of sugar. It's very healthful, not just for weight loss but for many other conditions. A ketogenic (ketone producing) diet has been used to treat epilepsy for decades, and helps in diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, autism, kidney disease, and other conditions. Read 'Keto Clarity' for more information, much of it contributed by doctors.

When choosing your Basic Diet Book for your eating plan, beware of these things: first, some 'low-carb' diets are not low carb. They just reduce your carbs a little. So you don't get the benefits of a low-carb/ketogenic diet.

Also, the Atkins approach has steps. You start at a healthy 10 or so grams of carbs, and then after two weeks you start adding more carbs back. This triggers your food cravings for carb foods and can lead to food binges on carb foods. This is why people go off Atkins and swear it didn't work for them. Advice: ignore the instructions for the steps, except that if you are healthy you might try the first one or two addition of 5 more carb grams, which you can use on nuts or more veggies or certain fruits (berries, mostly). Don't go full on for adding back carbs if you want to keep losing weight and gaining in health.

The 'Carbohydrate Addicts Diet' is a plan to avoid. On it, you eat two meals a day of low-carb food, and one reward meal in which you can eat any foods you like, so long as you finish the meal within one hour. This plan doesn't work on some people at all, and with others it works initially but then quits working. It can lead to food binges on carb-foods. Remember, for most people who go on diets, carb foods are like alcohol is to an alcoholic. They must be avoided.

The Paleo diet is NOT a low-carb ketogenic diet. It does not restrict fruit consumption, for example. The book Neanderthin is a more low-carb approach to the Paleo diet, but even there you will have to get another eating plan to provide your carb restriction plan. It adds more restrictions to the diet--- you will have to give up cream, butter and cheese--- but some people like a low-carb Paleo approach. As long as you are keeping your carbs low enough, the Paleo approach may be right for you.

Some recommended diet plan books:
Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution
The Diabetes Diet
Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It


How to use the diet plan books: Buy one or more of the books above. Everyone should probably have a copy of the original Atkins book, even if your eating plan is based on The Diabetes Diet. Read them cover to cover. Find the section of the book that is the 'diet sheet' --- that sums up what foods you can and can't eat. Make two copies of it. Keep one in your billfold or purse. Put the other up on the refrigerator or somewhere else handy in the kitchen. You can put it on the inside of a cupboard door if you like.

There are also videos at KetoWhiteBoard.info which are by health podcaster Jimmy Moore, author of Keto Clarity. They are highly recommended. And on the sidebar of this blog there are links to the Jimmy Moore podcasts, including Livin' La Vida Low-Carb, which will also help you get informed.

Make a point of reading in your diet plan book for ten minutes every day. This will keep your enthusiasm up, and it will help you remember all the things you need to know about your new diet.

You will also need other books for your low-carb/ketogenic lifestyle. Books like Keto Clarity which show you the benefits of the diet. Recipe books, like those by Dana Carpender.  But you don't need all that to start with. I started out with just the original Atkins book which I bought at a St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop, which contains a recipe section in the back. Later, I added an early Atkins recipe book.

Have you ever tried Atkins or another low-carb diet plan? Did you commit to it as a lifelong eating plan? Did you try it for weight loss or for one of the other health benefits? Are you still on it? Do you think it helps you?