Dean
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Don't try this at home!I am really wondering about some things lately.
For the last 10 days of June, I took on sort of an "experiment" in "carb loading". I started out just upping carbs via fruit... but, then I decided to go crazy on the sugar, and basically that is all I was consuming for several days in a row. I kept my calories in check... by none other than IFing. But, my carb ratio was through the stratosphere!
My muscles looked very firm and full... of glycogen that is! And, because I kept my calories low, I actually lost a bit in the waist. I gained water weight, but only three pounds, which surprised the hell out of me. I've since lost all of that and a little more... doing ZC IF CR... along with cardio in the park, and some resistance. Sounds familiar, huh?  Yah... I'm following jeff's lead to see if I too can lose 3/4 of an inch off my waistline. Shit, I don't care if it was 100% muscle he lost, it's still 3/4 of an inch!... and I'd love to lose that at this point. 
Anyway... the thing I cannot understand is the unbelievable energy I've had since day one (July 1st)... the day I went on ZC IF CR. I tend to think it was the IF I've been doing for so long now, more than anything. Could have also been the 90 days of near ZC leading up to this "carb up". But, it seems that doing IF is so effective at helping to control blood sugar and such, that it is probably the primary factor in a lot of this. Of course, the fact my glycogen stores were so empty, and ready to be filled up, and the fact my muscles were so primed to take in the glucose... perhaps that is why I could continue doing IF, even while doing HC. I was still not hungry for anything until evening time. That was very strange, indeed... while eating all that sugar.
I just think ZC and IF (especially when you combine them) are extremely good at healing our metabolism, blood sugar issues, cellular glucose sensitivity, etc. The wildest part of all of this is the total recovery from this "carb up". Normally I should be feeling all down and have low energy, but instead I feel fantastic, and I have ZERO carb cravings... which is REALLY weird, believe me. Cuz, I have always been such a sugar addict, that it was HARD to get off the stuff. But, on July 1, I just went straight to ZC IF CR with NO problems! And, I am working out with vigor, even after like 20 hours of not eating! It is just too bizarre!
I have no doubt that jeff could probably eat pure sugar for two weeks and then bounce right off of it, without a hitch. I think the longer one does ZC and/or IF, the more they heal themselves, and the harder it is for their metabolism to go to hell. I am sure if I would have continued the high carb for another 10 days or something, I could have been in big trouble... but, the fact that it was so easy to jump off of this and not even have bad issues was so encouraging to me... because I realize that I am HEALING myself by eating the way I've been eating.
I'm not giving up IF nor ZC. And, even if I am not really super strict with ZC, I will practice IF every chance I get. I'm not forcing it on myself, either. I just don't feel the need to eat until way late in the day. It is so natural for me to not want to eat until then. And, unless someone can convince me that my thinking is flawed here, I am convinced that this IF thing has really helped my body get stronger and more resilient to carb consumption and other "toxic shocks". When you think about it, as we grow up, while we are young, we can handle a boat load of crap in our diet (lots and lots of sugar) cuz we are "fresh" and our bodies have not been damaged yet. That is what I am saying. My body IS getting HEALED. That is what I strongly believe is going on.
I'm not advocating doing this, but I can now see why CKD diets can work. I don't know if they are healthy. In fact, I would venture to guess that they are not, precisely for the reasons that when we ABSTAIN from carbs, our bodies heal... so carbs must not be the best thing to be putting into our bodies in the first place!
Anyway... just thought I'd share this experience / experiment. And, would love to hear other's reactions to this.
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Adapaz
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Yes, IF seems to be a best thing to do if one is eating 'normal diet'. There is a great benefit I would imagine in raising insulin levels only once a day as opposed to 3, 4 or even 5 times, as often as 'experts' recommend to eat to 'keep our metabolism going' and avoid starvation mode. 
I think I have enough bodyfat to go for two months without eating and I'm supposed to belive my body will shut down because I went without food for 5 hours.
As far as your IF HC CR(?) experimant Dean I'm suprised at the absence of cravings and this may actually be the best part of IF. If one is able to stick to zero/low carb, undoubtedly the healthiest diet, and IF HC on special occasions like dinner with friends but then get right back on Zero without cravings it would be great.
Oh, one more question. When you don't do IF but simply cheat on ZC for a day (I remember reading somewhere about you special bond with donuts  ) do you experience strong craving for that food the next day?
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Dean
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| Adapaz wrote: | | IF seems to be a best thing to do if one is eating 'normal diet'. There is a great benefit I would imagine in raising insulin levels only once a day as opposed to 3, 4 or even 5 times, as often as 'experts' recommend to eat to 'keep our metabolism going' and avoid starvation mode. |
That is precisely what I think is so healing about IF. You are spot on. I know Dr Eades talked about this as well, saying the best benefits would be to combine it with LC, but that there would still be benefits when doing it with higher carb diets. I think what a lot of people don't understand is insulin is not just related to carb intake, but related to all food intake. Therefore, even on a ZC diet, one should still be concerned with eating too often, and too much. Not to mention the fact that with the type of food we modern humans eat (cooked foods come to mind mostly) there is going to be a taxing response by the body. It is a fact that white blood cells (the immunity cells) come rushing in great numbers when we eat cooked food. This is taxing on our system, cuz it takes away from all the maintenance that are body is trying to engage in. For many reasons, digestion is pretty hard on the body. So, doing IF with any WOE is going to be good... doing it with ZC eating is going to be superior. Of course, doing it with RZC (Raw Zero Carb... nobody is quite there yet, here on the Bus ) would be the best.
| Adapaz wrote: | | As far as your IF HC CR(?) experimant Dean I'm suprised at the absence of cravings and this may actually be the best part of IF. If one is able to stick to zero/low carb, undoubtedly the healthiest diet, and IF HC on special occasions like dinner with friends but then get right back on Zero without cravings it would be great. |
That would be great. But, I don't know if it would be very possible for a lot of people, myself included. Although, it's worth a try by anyone who wants to give it a go. I just know I can't do that. If I mess up and eat carby crap even once, I typically am gonna want more the next day. I think it might be easy to go a few days eating junk, and then get back on the ZC path again, but a lot of people, me included, need to "get it out of their system" so to speak... and that can require a few days. That's not to say there aren't people who can do just one day of cheating, and perhaps IF can help with that. It sure helped me when the time came to make an easier transition back to ZC. But, again, I still "needed" a few more cheat days than just one.
Of course, this is the whole CKD diet that a lot of body builders do. They "carb up" EVERY weekend, and only for like 24 hours, and then go right back to low carb high fat. Not sure how healthy (let alone doable) that is. 
| Adapaz wrote: | | When you don't do IF but simply cheat on ZC for a day (I remember reading somewhere about you special bond with donuts ) do you experience strong craving for that food the next day? |
I think I was so used to doing IF for so long that even when I did the "carb up", I was still not hungry during the first part of the day. I was thinking before that a person needed to "train" themselves to do IF, and that eventually it would get easier and easier. If I could continue doing it during a 10 day carb eating fest, then that proves what I had thought... that it IS very possible to train oneself to do IF, and that once you are used to it (adapted to it) you won't have any cravings for food (HC, LC, or ZC foods) during your fasting hours. It sorta becomes like your bodies resting time, just as when you are sleeping at night... you don't wake up every hour and think about food... you are used to not eating during that time.
When I wasn't doing IF, like last Fall, and had cheats, yes, I did have much stronger cravings and hence the reason it was so hard to give up. Whereas this time, once July 1st came, I just stopped eating that type of junk, and started eating lots of fatty meat, which satisfied me completely. I think if one does not eat during the day, then they won't have cravings for any type of food... so, that helps when you wanna stop a certain type of food.
But, I think there was more to the story. Cuz, my energy levels were right back at high... I didn't go through any adjustment period going from my 10 days of high carbs right back to zero carb. Whereas before, I'd be all tired and had no energy... this time, I was out running in the park from day one, and that was during my IF hours! So, that was the most surprising thing of all. My speculation is that I got much more fat adapted doing ZC and IF for so long, and that even 10 days of loads of sugar eating did not knock me out of that FFA adaptation. So, when I went back to ZC, I was just picking up where I left off, without having to go through a change in metabolism. I don't know if this is true, but perhaps ZC combined with IF makes a person MORE fat adapted, than someone who just eats a LC diet per se.
Remember... this adaptation is all about switching out enzymes. If my cells got so used to coding for these FFA enzymes, and had little use for the sugar enzymes, then they would have kept pumping them out. Of course, as Dr Eades has said... this leaves a lot more sugar in the blood... but, I did have glycogen stores to fill. But, still, I'm sure I did some damage I would not be proud of.  But, basically, the longer one goes doing ZC (especially combined with IF) and the CLOSER they stay to ZC, the more FFA adapted they will become, and the harder it will be to throw them out of this adaptation.
I wonder what jeff's thoughts are on this. He's gone the longest at ZC, I think. Perhaps he would be willing to do a 10 day carb up, and see what his response would be.
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Adapaz
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| Quote: | | I think what a lot of people don't understand is insulin is not just related to carb intake, but related to all food intake. Therefore, even on a ZC diet, one should still be concerned with eating too often, and too much. |
While it is true that insulin is related to all food intake, not just carbs, anyone on ZC doesn't need to be concerned about insulin, not even if they eat many times a day. With absence of carbs only protein raises insulin and from what I have read, only slightly. If you add to that a fact that adding fat to either carbs or protein lessens the insulin response, eating only/mostly meat with high content of fat doesn't really affect insulin. For most people a meal that is under 10 g of carbs should not raise insulin enough to screw up fat metabolism.
You are right about digestion being hard on the body and I agree that IFing allows the body to heal itself and focus on regeneration of tissue instead constantly using part of those resources to digest food.
I've read that the first thing the body does when put into dangerous situation and faced with a fight or flight response is to shut down digestion and send the blood used there to the brain and muscles to increase chance of survival.
Our ancestors probably consumed one or two big meals a day of nutritionaly dense food rather that eating all day long like some claim.
As you have mentioned in your journal one definately feels better eating this way. There's a kind of energy and mental clarity and I find myself not hitting the snooze in the morning.I kind of miss it, I love those extra five min.  All this with weight loss and no hunger. What more can one ask for?
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Dean
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You know... if one is fat adapted, and does not easily lose that adaptation, then when they get back on the fat after a cheat (even a few days cheat... notice I said "few" )... then, they will not have that sluggish feeling, and instead will have loads of energy (which is what I certainly experienced). THIS is going to help a LOT in controlling cravings. If one feels like crap, due to "carb withdrawal" (meaning "I need energy NOW"), then they are going to find it MUCH harder to abstain from caving to carb cravings. BUT, if they have lots of energy, and feel chipper, they won't feel the need to eat carbs to get that feeling, cuz they already have it.
The moral of this story is... eat as close to ZC and High Fat (Dave, are you listening?) for AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. Then, if you do cheat for a few days (again, the operative word is "few"), you can jump right back on the ZC wagon VERY easily... cuz you will still be fat adapted. Eating plenty of fat during your cheat may help even more. And, as I've said, IF will help as well. So, perhaps one could look at this thing as a method of "training". One may train hard for awhile to build muscle, and then stop... but, they still built some muscle. So, if you look at doing LC (or ZC) the same way... look at it as "conditioning" your body, so that you will be able to get off the cheating easier once you cheat. And, EVERYBODY cheats. Well, jeff may not... but, he's from WI and thinks coffee and wine are paleo foods, so he really doesn't count! J/K, jeff!
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Dean
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| Adapaz wrote: | | With absence of carbs only protein raises insulin and from what I have read, only slightly. |
I've heard some protein (like red meat) raises insulin more than carbs. But, that may not be true. I think Red was the one who said this. But, I've also heard that insulin levels, as long as they don't remain high, are not that big a deal anyway. Confusing issue... but you have a good point about not worrying about it on ZC.
I'm really not that clear on the insulin issue, but the white blood cell deal is real. So, IF helps with giving the body rest. Plus, the cooked foods have the natural digestive enzymes destroyed, and therefore our bodies have to grab from the amino acid pool to create digestive enzymes to deal with this cooked food. That takes amino acids away from immune proteins, and perhaps even proteins to help build up muscle. Plus, as you said, the body wants to CLEAN and REPAIR itself, and if it keeps getting interrupted by this digestion business, it just cannot be good. You are correct about paleo people probably eating just once or twice a day. They did not have convenience stores to drop in on back then. Plus, with no carbs in their diet, their blood sugar was rock solid, and they did not experience this "hunger" that we in the modern world "live and die" over.
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Adapaz
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| Quote: | | You know... if one is fat adapted, and does not easily lose that adaptation, then when they get back on the fat after a cheat (even a few days cheat... notice I said "few" )... then, they will not have that sluggish feeling, and instead will have loads of energy (which is what I certainly experienced). THIS is going to help a LOT in controlling cravings. |
I never thought of that before but I think you're right. Being fat adapted when the cheat happens will not only lessen the damage by allowing muscles to take in a good amount of carbs that would otherwise go to fat cells but also make it possible to switch right back to fat burning the next day. Which bring me to cravings.If a person is fat adapted and DNA gives instruction to produce a great deal of enzymes that enable body to run on fat and reduces the amount of enzymes needed to burn carbs, and then cheat takes place but 2 days later person goes back to ZC. I wonder if it's possible that the reason you didn't feel cravings is because it's easier for the body to continue using fat for energy then it would be to produce a large number of enzymes neccesary to switch back to using carbs.
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Dean
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That's exactly what I was getting at. And that is why I emphasized the word "few"... cuz, if one is not fat adapted enough, then this cheat could really throw them back to more glucose metabolism, the longer they continued it. As I said, jeff could probably handle a two week cheat on lots of sugar. It might help him if he continued eating some fat, just so his body would not get too confused.
It is very obvious that the sluggish feeling that people experience is the lack of keto adaptation especially. When our brains are used to using glucose, and all of a sudden they have to get used to using ketones, there is a really bad feeling that comes from this. Most people call this feeling a "headache"!
So... it may be more about being keto adapted, than FFA adapted. Although, both probably play a part in keeping one craving free.
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Dean
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| Adapaz wrote: | | Being fat adapted when the cheat happens will not only lessen the damage by allowing muscles to take in a good amount of carbs that would otherwise go to fat cells but also make it possible to switch right back to fat burning the next day. |
Yah... my muscles took in a LOT of glucose. And, that is the reason muscle glycogen exists... for protection of having too much glucose in the blood. It is like a safety net... a place that sugar can go to get out of the blood very quickly. Cuz, too much sugar in the blood is BAD. You can go into a coma quickly. You know, I was reading something that said insulin is produced to provide a means to stop the liver from releasing glucose into the blood, once dietary sugar comes in... and that it does not have as much a role in glucose uptake. It IS for blood glucose regulation... but it works more on regulating the release of glucose, not the uptake. The cells can uptake glucose without it. I'll have to hunt that one down.
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jeff
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| Quote: | | I wonder what jeff's thoughts are on this. He's gone the longest at ZC, I think. Perhaps he would be willing to do a 10 day carb up, and see what his response would be. |
Nope. I'd be reluctant to try something like that. Although it may be interesitng to see what would happen, I just dont want to put that crap into my body.
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jeff
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| Quote: | | And, EVERYBODY cheats. Well, jeff may not... but, he's from WI and thinks coffee and wine are paleo foods, so he really doesn't count! J/K, jeff! |
I never claimed to be eating paleo! I don't think we need to be "perfect" with our eating. But, i do think our imperfections should cause minimal damage.
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Dean
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I guess the real bitch of it is... it's so hard to "see" the damage being done. If one could actually see it, then they could adjust their practices accordingly. But, when the damage done is not immediately apparent, it's hard to know how far to go. Perhaps 10 days was a little extreme, though.
You know, there are lots of nutritionists who feel that eating junk food is fine, as long as you limit it to like one piece of pie a day or something like that. They see nothing wrong with this. I don't know how they determine that. They must have special powers of perception or something.
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jeff
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| Dean wrote: | I guess the real bitch of it is... it's so hard to "see" the damage being done. If one could actually see it, then they could adjust their practices accordingly. But, when the damage done is not immediately apparent, it's hard to know how far to go. Perhaps 10 days was a little extreme, though.
You know, there are lots of nutritionists who feel that eating junk food is fine, as long as you limit it to like one piece of pie a day or something like that. They see nothing wrong with this. I don't know how they determine that. They must have special powers of perception or something. |
Very true....the consequences of bad eating my not show up for decades.
| Quote: | | I don't know how they determine that. They must have special powers of perception or something. |
because most of them believe in the saying "everything in moderation." even the really bad stuff.
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Dean
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| Adapaz wrote: | | I wonder if it's possible that the reason you didn't feel cravings is because it's easier for the body to continue using fat for energy then it would be to produce a large number of enzymes neccesary to switch back to using carbs. |
What I'm wondering most about is the keto adaptation. Since the brain prefers to run on ketones versus glucose, I'm wondering if that metabolic pathway is just really hard to break once you have been using it for awhile (like 90+ days in my case). I think that is the key to me not having cravings. I think the reason people find it so hard to get away from the sugar eating is because the brain is gonna go through major changes, switching from glucose to ketone bodies. Once the switch kicks in, things are fine, and the longer it stays kicked in, the better and better one feels. Trust me... BTDT. In fact, that is what has completely sold me on zero carb. I have Alzheimer's in my extended family, and don't even wanna go there. If this WOE can help prevent that... I'm IN, baby! 
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Heather
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I recently tripped and fell face first into a bowl of ice cream. I did not eat much at all the next day, no cravings, the second day after I was much hungrier but still no cravings. The third and fourth days were a little harder but relatively easy.... My weight jumped up.  I was so pissed off every day after, I was completely on plan but the scale kept jumping off the chart. I felt like such a cow.
I think it was much easier to get back on track. It was just the emotional reaction to the weight gain that was difficult to deal with....
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Dean
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Heather,
Do you know if this might have been muscle you were putting on for some reason? Or you retained the water from the glycogen you surely stored? I went through a whole gallon of chocolate ice cream during that 10 day carb up. I have zero cravings for stuff like that now. My sweet tooth is not there anymore. It's very odd. I think it's all the fat I've been eating... and my ketones are kickin' it in the carnivore crib. I'm in animal fat land and wanna stay right here. 
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Heather
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I'm pretty sure it was water (hopefully, mostly) it just irks me that it kept going up for 4 days following. It's like a delayed reaction or something. I try and force myself to believe that also when the scale does not move downward when I feel it should. It could have been something I ate a few days previous. That is what happens to me anyways....
I have been heavy on the fat consumption as well, it seems to help recovery.
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Steve
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What about the old carb load promoted by Vince Gironda in the 50's?
Every third day, have a carb only meal(no fat or protein) to help replace glycogen..
A yam,dry potatoe,nasty ass plain oatmeal..
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Dan
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I've been meaning to get some of Gironda's materials, but you can't actually order them off his web site. You have to call some dude on the phone.
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kateryna
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| Dean wrote: | | I guess the real bitch of it is... it's so hard to "see" the damage being done. If one could actually see it, then they could adjust their practices accordingly. But, when the damage done is not immediately apparent, it's hard to know how far to go. Perhaps 10 days was a little extreme, though. |
You can't yet Dean. I know that when I start upping my carbs, within 1 day I'm burping and .... up a storm, within 2 days my arthritis kicks in and my knees, hips and feet are sore as hell and I have trouble walking. And, I'm bitchy as hell, I mean bitcher than usual :P And I get depressed right away. It's a very fast reaction for me. What it's doing to my arteries, heart and brain I can't see but if it's as bad as the rest then it's pretty scarey.
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