Diet: Low Carb and Ultra Cycling

[ratz]

I'll drop the stevia when it will be eaten as bun bread on hamburgers

http://pin.it/EHMBMr9

On that page search for:
Cloud Bread ----> Excellent Hamburger bun.
Low Carb Bun for One -----> Also excellent hamburger bun

We are still working on perfecting the taco shell / wrap

 

[LarryOz]

I'm diving into this low carb thing. The pounds are still dropping and I'm moving beyond the pork rinds. Check out my meal tonight. If I have counted correctly there is 7 carbs total. I'm using Ratz's soul bread (.9g slice) and Reeses cup mixes (2g square). The bread was delicious but tastes more like yellow cake. I'll drop the stevia when it will be eaten as bun bread on hamburgers. The liquid is Silk cashew milk (0g). The Salmon (0g), broccoli (4g serving), and salad (<1g) rounded off the meal.

Your making me hungry and it not even 10am yet!

 

[ratz]

Your making me hungry and it not even 10am yet!

Yeah I have been thinking we need to delete that photo from this thread or post enough to move it back a page.
We had Seattle Salmon last night and the leftovers are calling from the fridge every-time I see that photo.

 

[DavidCH]

delete that photo

I'll second it, it's nearly 2am. I have a friggin tough time today on a very heavy bike. I am resilient as ever but hungry. On the via verde today it was as hot as hell. Thank God I had those salted almonds in my pocket and lots of water. What a diet. It's incredible isn't it! I would love to try the cashew milk but I have looked everywhere locally here in Spain, and it's not here.

 

[LarryOz]

I would love to try the cashew milk but I have looked everywhere locally here in Spain, and it's not here.

Just buy some cashews, soak them for a day, mash them up into a pulp and squeeze them through cheese cloth - there you have it!
I did this to make my own Almond milk. I think all the "nut" milks are pretty much made the same way.
It did it because I didn't want to pay the high price for the almond milk and thought "how hard could it be". We'll - I gladly pay for the almond milk now. Go figure!

 

[DavidCH]

mash them up into a pulp

I will give it a go

 

[trplay]

Hamburgers tonight with freshly baked low carb buns. They taste better than they look.

 

[SamP]

Would it be an interesting idea or a bad idea to bring a small squeeze bottle of MCT oil for energy on a ride, sort of in place of a maltodextrin-based energy gel? Can your body absorb/digest it while cycling?

 

[DavidCH]

Has anyone tried a bottle of this stuff on their morning ride?

http://nextshark.com/5-reasons-why-everyone-is-putting-butter-in-their-coffee/

Could this be Maria's secret?

 

[Rick Youngblood]

They taste better than they look.

Actually, the burger looks pretty darn tasty to me. Thanks for watering my mouth.

 

[Maria Parker]

This thread is really excellent and my blog post will not give you any more information than you have already shared with one another. Congratulations to those of you have improved your performance with a ketogenic approach. It has changed my life in even greater ways than I describe in this post. What you all might be interested in is the addendum to my post which is Jim's cure for cancer.

http://cruzbike.com/blog/2016/05/24/keto-cruzbike-and-a-cure-for-cancer/

 

[trplay]

Noooo Maria! You can't slide that easily. You set an all time record eating cheese and a cracker and think you can sneak by without giving us at least a little scoop? I'm still trying to figure out if this is another gimmick/fad and have a ton of questions. Lee Taylor gives an interesting link that causes concern over clogged arteries while Voleks art and science book says just eating a small amount of carbs during the exercise cycle will significantly impact the process. The primal endurance book of Sisson has case studies using M&M's as a jump start once energy drops and makes it sound like you can bounce in and out of Ketosis at will. Who's right? Are you in a full time keto adaptive state or only target certain time periods to get there? Does anyone know what happens when one takes a keto holiday for a day? How long does it take to get back into the adaptive state?

 

[ratz]

Noooo Maria! You can't slide that easily

Pssst that's a combine article it's maria's blog post with Jim abstract proposal attached at the end. Fooled me when I saw this earlier today

 

[trplay]

My apologies, the blog certainly sets her free! Jim's concept sounds wonderful but way beyond my ability to even make a comment. I can say the low carb thing is working for me. I now have a 3 pound vendetta and hope to get the weight to zero very soon.

 

[ratz]

My apologies, the blog certainly sets her free! Jim's concept sounds wonderful but way beyond my ability to even make a comment. I can say the low carb thing is working for me. I now have a 3 pound vendetta and hope to get the weight to zero very soon.

By that theory I need to tie my vendetta to the ground.

 

[Maria Parker]

Noooo Maria! You can't slide that easily. You set an all time record eating cheese and a cracker and think you can sneak by without giving us at least a little scoop? I'm still trying to figure out if this is another gimmick/fad and have a ton of questions. Lee Taylor gives an interesting link that causes concern over clogged arteries while Voleks art and science book says just eating a small amount of carbs during the exercise cycle will significantly impact the process. The primal endurance book of Sisson has case studies using M&M's as a jump start once energy drops and makes it sound like you can bounce in and out of Ketosis at will. Who's right? Are you in a full time keto adaptive state or only target certain time periods to get there? Does anyone know what happens when one takes a keto holiday for a day? How long does it take to get back into the adaptive state?

These are all good questions that I don't know the answer to. We try to stay in a ketogenic state all the time. I don't measure my ketones enough to know if I truly am, the test strips are very expensive. I have completely bought into Volek and Phinney's theory that our body will switch back to a preference for carbs very easily. While we train and race, I eat no or very few calories, Jim eats a few and doesn't worry about it. My main goal is not to get sick, so not eating is easy. I'll feel hungry, but it goes away and doesn't seem to impact my performance.

One thing we've learned is that Jim gets into and stays in nutritional ketosis a lot easier than I do. My numbers are always lower than his even if we eat the same things.

 

[LarryOz]

Thanks Maria (and Jim) for your article and feedback - we all benefit!

 

[Maria Parker]

I'm so grateful to all of you -wish I could spend more time on forum to learn from you.

 

[Lief]

Ok - finally jumping in (must...bury...TRPlay's...mouth watering pictures) - I'm on chapter 5 of the book at the top of this thread and will be diving in at an appropriate (TBD) level soon.

• I'll try to recount/quantify how easy it is to go from my moderately low carb intake for most of the last 5 years into fully keto-adapted state as a way to verify whether @ratz is right about it being "easier" if you are already low carb.
• I've only approached this level (of low carb intake) a handful of times - I will certainly be returning.
• late last year - after the HooDoo - my carb intake crept up reliably and as of Easter I was completely off-the-wagon and pounding my old favorite candies, uncontrollably - all my old symptoms (see below blog post) returned and it simply can't continue.

Re-copied in it's entirety here, with my permission, is my blog post from July of 2011 titled Sugar Sugar.

Re-reading it, I see some gaps in knowledge, which are now being filled, but there is also (for me) an absolutely unquestionable correlation with low-carb intake and a massive reduction in triglycerides and "fatty liver" enzymes (I don't remember what they are called and I suppose I could look it up but...it isn't the most relevant piece to the conversation).
Again - this is for me, may not work/be the same for you, but it has been confirmed by several very expensive blood tests - and changed my life for the better.

Thanks for the thread - it's awesome.

Sugar Sugar
Before I get around to my recent ride reports (HPC at PIR and 100MON) I just have to write this down.
Mostly for myself, because I am proud to have found a reliable cause-n-effect relationship and because, you know, I have a few relatives who might have some of the same things going on – this might put a bug in their ear.

Sugar.

My body doesn’t like it.
Rather, my brain LOVEs it – honey, candy, jellybeans, cherry sours, gum drops, hot tamales, kool-aid, I could keep going. But the rest of my body “freaks out” – and that is a direct quote from my attending naturopathic physician.

A short history.
Several years ago I was ‘diagnosed’, by the blood mobile, with hepatitis. I was too young to care and blew it off – I was healthy.
Skip forward 5 years and my life insurance exam also noted high liver enzymes indicative of someone with either hepatitis, heavy drinker/smoker, overweight, or…”
It must be the ‘or’ I said…cause none of the others apply”. The ‘or’ I found out was a small cadre of individuals blessed with fatty liver for ‘no reason whatsoever’.
I pay more [be]cause the life insurance company only needs one excuse.
Skip forward 5+ more years and a ‘regular’ checkup with my medical doctor showed high cholesterol. Prescription? – “more exercise, it isn’t that high”

Uhhh, I already bike to work nearly every day and I am currently training for the Seattle To Portland classic – putting in 100s of extra miles each month.
"Oh…well then take some of this medicine and we’ll check back in 6 months – oh and that medicine might cause some flushing, don’t be alarmed."

Fearing the loss of the better part of my lower intestine, they didn’t bother to explain what flushing was, I again prepared to completely blow it off but maybe having gotten wiser or maybe succumbing to the preponderance of independently verified data AND recognizing that my traditional doctor and nurse hadn’t recognized me for who I am individually I stumbled across a naturopathic physician.

I’ll skip the iterations of blood tests and trial and error in the interest of brevity but I met with her every couple of months for a year as she tried all the usual suspects in search of a root cause. She was also addressing the symptoms and narrowing down the cholesterol numbers to a rather singular portion of the “overall” test – my triglycerides.

With a host of supplements, vitamins, and more minor medications meant to address the symptoms, my numbers were slowly coming down but the triglycerides were still in the 250’s when 2 winters ago [late 2009] she recommended going off sugar – as much as possible.

The science, the explanation, and my habits (see aforementioned list of candies) all pointed to this being an issue so I stopped, pretty much cold turkey for about 4-5 months and took the blood test again.
We were dumbfounded – with no new medications my tryglycerides came down to 67.

67! What the heck did you do?
I stopped eating sugar.
Well I should say so…and I think we found your achilles heel.

Indeed we had…in fact, in the coming months, I noticed that I no longer used my skin cremes for eczema…for the most part I wasn’t even having eczema any more.
Right after that I took the leap and began tapering my asthma medication. Now, for most intents and purposes, I don’t need my asthma medication either. I commute hard by bike nearly every morning and only after a cold (or after pie) do I find that I might have a use for some asthma rescue medication – very mild usually.
Long term preventative meds? Totally not necessary.
That has been a lifelong thing with me, since that morning when I was a toddler stumbling into my parents bedroom barely breathing.
The docs said it might go away with age – it didn’t. But they didn’t know anything about the sugar factor.

Skip forward one more year to yesterday. My recent tests came back after 14 months of NO supplements and a steady increase** in sugar and simple carbohydrates estimated by me to be peaking at roughly 40-50% of BN (Before Naturopath) – and my numbers are right on the edge of tolerable.

** read that as me slowly giving in to the difficulties of reducing simple sugars and carbohydrates entirely.

So now, my goal is to tighten the sugar-belt a little bit, some sugar or simple carbs in moderation (if I can stick to it in moderation) will be fine, make sure and balance that with protein intake and fiber (to make it harder for my body to absorb it) and it seems I have found a good balance. We estimate that based on these new findings I can probably eat whatever I want sugar/carb-wise during an endurance event (like 150 miles around the mountain…ohh man those Oreos tasted good that time).

And I remain, for the most part, asthma free, eczema free, medicine free, and on a path to not expressing those genes I clearly have which turn sugar into triglycerides at an alarming rate in my body. Lot’s of triglycerides tend to turn into (or at least be related to) things like hypertension, high blood-pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and probably other bad things.

Oh, and I almost forgot – my liver enzymes are way below normal.
WHA WHA WHA??
This seems to be the last thing to move in the right direction. The blood mobile, the life insurance company, my medical physician, none of them could explain it – for that matter neither has my naturopathic physician. These particular enzymes used to be over 50, as low as 40 on the medicine, and now they are 25 – without any supplements or medicines of any kind, unless you count coffee.

Hell! I dunno!??
Wrapping this up – suffice it to say that sugar and I will have a long-distance relationship from here on out – with an occasional tryst, chaperoned by my bike…naturally.

Now…about that Vitamin D!??

Copyright © 2011 blief. All Rights Reserved.

 

[LMT]

Ok - finally jumping in (must...bury...TRPlay's...mouth watering pictures) - I'm on chapter 5 of the book at the top of this thread and will be diving in at an appropriate (TBD) level soon.

• I'll try to recount/quantify how easy it is to go from my moderately low carb intake for most of the last 5 years into fully keto-adapted state as a way to verify whether @ratz is right about it being "easier" if you are already low carb.
• I've only approached this level (of low carb intake) a handful of times - I will certainly be returning.
• late last year - after the HooDoo - my carb intake crept up reliably and as of Easter I was completely off-the-wagon and pounding my old favorite candies, uncontrollably - all my old symptoms (see below blog post) returned and it simply can't continue.

Re-copied in it's entirety here, with my permission, is my blog post from July of 2011 titled Sugar Sugar.

Re-reading it, I see some gaps in knowledge, which are now being filled, but there is also (for me) an absolutely unquestionable correlation with low-carb intake and a massive reduction in triglycerides and "fatty liver" enzymes (I don't remember what they are called and I suppose I could look it up but...it isn't the most relevant piece to the conversation).
Again - this is for me, may not work/be the same for you, but it has been confirmed by several very expensive blood tests - and changed my life for the better.

Thanks for the thread - it's awesome.

http://www.dietdoctor.com/health-markers-eight-years-lchf

The above is the first link that Google threw out after I googled 'Low carb high fat blood results'

You'll see that Triglycerides have gone up, and the persons Cholesterol is extremely high, whilst the 'good' cholesterol has gone up, the bad has gone up even more. Just because one loses weight with a lifestyle does not mean it is healthy.

And please, everyone, semantics. Sugar is a collective term for a group of mono/disaccharides. Sucrose is not the same as lactose which is not the same as fructose from a plant source. It's very important to make this distinction when looking at what one particular substance does to the body over another.

And glucose is, and always will be the number one primary source of energy for the brain and human body. 15-20 million years of human evolution ain't wrong imo.