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Whether you’re trying out a restaurant while on vacation or trying to make a new-to-you place a regular go-to, there are a few things you can do to help win over the waitstaff. Because let’s face it — it’s nice if they like you as much as you like them.
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Even having finished and printed The Keto Reset, the quest for deeper understanding continues. I keep researching, thinking, revisiting, and discussing the science and practice of ketosis. My writing partner, Brad Kearns, and I maintain a running dialogue on all things keto. The latest conversation revolved around two very common questions or “problems” that keep coming up in the ketogenic community.
Why do some people on a keto diet blow high numbers of ketones while others eating the same way blow low numbers?
and this one…
Is ketosis glycogen-sparing or glycogen-inhibiting?
I won’t offer definitive answers fit to etch into stone. I will offer my exploration of the research, some educated speculation, and actionable advice you can ruminate on. And by all means get back to me with your take on the questions and my explorations, please. Dialogue is essential to understanding.
One theory is that some keto-adapted people are so adapted to producing and burning ketones that they don’t leave any extra to spill into the urine and breath. They make only as many as they can use and their cells gobble up almost every ketone they produce. Under this argument, low ketone numbers on a ketogenic diet are a reliable sign of full ketone adaptation.
This sounds plausible, but I haven’t seen any empirical evidence that it’s the case.
Another theory is that the keto-adapted have built so much fat-burning metabolic machinery in their muscles that they can burn free fatty acids directly and don’t require much additional fuel from ketones. They make enough ketones to fuel the brain, since our brain can’t run on fatty acids directly, but your muscles no longer require as many. Many people who have been in long term ketosis can get by quite nicely on 20-30 net grams of carbs a day and might only show .4 or .7 millimolar ketones on a blood test, but they have plenty of energy from burning free fatty acids and maintain muscle mass on relatively fewer calories than when they were dependent on carbs.
Keto pioneers Stephen Phinney and Jeff Volek found that keto dieters blew higher readings early on in the diet when they were still burning ketones in the muscle. As they grew adapted to free fatty acids as a source of fuel and produced ketones primarily for the brain, ketone levels dropped. It was totally normal. If anything, they were more fat/keto-adapted at lower ketone readings.
Consider the energy requirements of the brain. Whether it’s running on glucose (most of the population) or mostly on ketones, the absolute energy requirements are quite modest. You don’t need a ton of ketones or glucose in absolute terms to power your brain. That’s why people can “get away” with lower ketone production and still reap the benefits we expect from eating this way.
There’s almost certainly a genetic component to ketone production, too. Take the Inuit, who were rarely in ketosis despite traditionally eating a very low-carb diet. It takes several days of deep fasting for them to produce measurable ketones. Yet, they are adept at burning free fatty acids, almost as if they “skip” keto-adaptation and proceed directly to burning fat. Other variants that affect ketone production have yet to be discovered, but they’re out there.
What about people on long term ketogenic diets who still get astronomical readings? What’s going on?
A major factor not often mentioned in whether someone on a keto diet blows high or low ketones is overall calorie intake. How much food are you eating?
Ketones are generated when the amount of dietary fat available to be burned exceeds the supply of oxaloacetate (provided by protein or carbohydrates). It’s not that the body thinks, “This woman needs some ketones, stat.” It’s more like, “I’ve got too much acetyl-COA from all this fat, and I can’t find any oxaloacetate. Guess it’s ketones!” If you’re the type to use keto to justify chugging olive oil, you’ll generate lots of ketones simply because your fat intake is outpacing the supply of oxaloacetate. Keto athletes eating tons of calories will probably produce more ketones simply because they’re eating so much fat.
If you’ve attained the much-desired “caloric efficiency” I espouse and eating fewer calories overall, you’ll generate fewer ketones but still be “keto.”
Another factor is the use of exogenous ketones. Dean Ornish could take keto esters and blow big numbers.
Above all else, focus on the symptoms.
Can you go without a meal and maintain steady, even energy and concentration?
Are you losing body fat or happy with your body composition?
Are you thinking more clearly?
Has the keto flu come and gone?
Are aerobic activities easier than ever?
If any of those are happening to you, there’s no need to fret over some numbers on a device. The numbers can’t negate your real world experience.
A 1983 study by Steven Phinney gives us a few hints. He put people on a typical high-carb diet for 4 days, ran a 65% VO2 max endurance test, then switched them over to a ketogenic diet with 20 grams of carbs and about 80-85% of calories from fat for 3 weeks and ran the test again. There was no difference in time to exhaustion after either dietary arm, but glycogen storage and usage changed a ton. During the high-carb arm, the group began the workout with 150 grams of glycogen and ended it with 50 grams. While eating ketogenic, the group began the workout with 75 grams and also ended it with 50 grams.
In a modern setting, the high-carb guy could just squeeze some glucose goo in his mouth, replenish the lost glycogen, and be ready for the next race. But in a setting where glucose goo isn’t available, the keto guy has the advantage. He’s still got 50 grams of glycogen left in the tank—enough for two more races—while the high-carb guy’s 50 grams of carbs will only last him half a race. And the low-carb guy doesn’t have to eat. That’s pretty cool.
It is the modern world. You can grab some glucose goo and win the race. But there’s something special about utilizing the metabolic machinery developed over hundreds of thousands of grueling, blood-and-sweat soaked years.
Sparing glycogen is one thing. Does keto inhibit our ability to utilize the muscle glycogen we’ve spared?
Free fatty acids sure don’t, according to this study. Healthy young males spent a couple hours depleting their muscle glycogen through exercise, after which they were split into two groups. One group got a high-fat breakfast, giving them elevated free fatty acids. One group got a low-fat breakfast, giving them low free fatty acids. They measured glycogen before and after exercise in both groups, as well as markers of the pathway responsible for burning glycogen. Normally, free fatty acids impair glycogen burning. Not this time. Exercise was sufficient to overcome the inhibitory effects of FFA on glycogen-burning.
Semantics enters the fray here. One man’s spared glycogen is another’s inhibited glycogen. We spare glycogen by using less of it—by inhibiting its metabolism. That doesn’t mean the ketogenic athlete can’t burn glycogen when required. It means there’s less to go around, and that’s probably okay because, once again, the ketogenic athlete can do more with fat and ketones and doesn’t need as much glycogen.
Confusing, isn’t it? That’s biology for you.
Still, we know a fair bit. The sparing/inhibiting effect keto has on glycogen metabolism doesn’t impair endurance performance and probably even bolsters it. Long-term elite keto athletes can burn up to 2.3 times more fat at peak oxidation and 59% more fat overall than non-keto athletes, and they do it at higher intensities.
We know fat-adapted athletes beat sugar-burning athletes at high-intensity intervals due to their increased ability to burn fat and retain glycogen. These aren’t 100 m sprints—they’re 4-minute intervals on an incline treadmill—but they’re still glycogen-intensive.
We know low volume, high intensity strength training doesn’t suffer on keto.
What we don’t know is how the delicate balance between glycogen sparing and inhibiting affects high volume, high intensity glycolytic work. I suspect you’re going to lose some performance at the upper echelons of intensity. I also suspect you can regain most, if not all of it by incorporating well-placed carb refeeds.
Anyway, folks, that’s what’s been on my mind these past few days. I wanted to get it out there on the blog so you folks can mull it over and kick it around, and hopefully come back with some good feedback and insight of your own.
Thanks for reading, everybody!
The post Why Am I Getting Low Ketone Readings on a Ketogenic Diet? appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.
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Welcome to Kitchn’s new series A Week of Dinners where we show you how people put dinner on the table for their family, thanks to the five weeknight recipes they rely on.
Erin Alderson, one of our favorite bloggers, lives in Sacramento, California, with her husband, Mike, and their 2-year-old son, Mack. She’s the mastermind behind the gorgeous vegetarian food blog, Naturally Ella, and she also has her own business, Grove Haus Studio. She is the author of two cookbooks (The Easy Vegetarian Kitchen and The Homemade Flour Cookbook) and is currently working on a third. Oh, and she’s also developed a bunch of awesome recipes for Kitchn (which you obviously need to check out.) When she’s not puttering around in her kitchen or playing with her camera, she enjoys spending time with her family, hiking, and drinking lots of coffee.
Today Erin is going to let us in on her strategy for weeknight vegetarian cooking, how she works around the different diets in her household, and the five recipes that help her put dinner on the table.
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It’s not hard to make the most tender, juiciest pork chops you’ve ever had. Trust us — we help readers do it all the time. In fact, our post about how to make pork chops is consistently one of our most popular posts, week after week.
See the steps: How To Cook Tender & Juicy Pork Chops in the Oven
Luckily, aside from some great instructions and, well, some pork chops, you don’t really need all that much. Here are the four things you’ll need. Bonus: You’ll use them for more than just pork chops on a weekly (sometimes even daily) basis in the kitchen.
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Earlier this summer, the supermarket industry was shaken up: Online retailer Amazon acquired upscale grocery chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. One of Amazon’s first moves was to cut costs at the 460 brick-and-mortar stores in the United States, Britain, and Canada.
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Chicken and vegetable stir-fry should be a staple of every home cook’s weekly meal plan — it’s quick-cooking, flavorful, and can be better than takeout with just a few key ingredients and one brilliant step. If you’ve spent anytime at the stove trying to stir-fry without a wok and found that your chicken and vegetables sauté rather that stir-fry, then this recipe is for you.
With expert advice from Grace Young and a deep dive into the pure magic that is velveting chicken for stir-fry, this is literally everything you need to know to make a better weeknight stir-fry without a wok.
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I am a person who likes to stay hydrated. I typically keep a big water bottle at my desk, a little one in my purse, and another big one in the car. If I see a water fountain (I know, I know: germs), I take advantage and fill up whatever vessel I happen to have with me. Because heaven forbid I don’t have access to water for five minutes.
And now that you know I’m willing to drink out of a public water fountain, I’ll admit something else: I almost never clean those water bottles. I’ll let that desk water bottle sit there for weeks before I notice the formerly clear glass is looking sort of … opaque, and then I’ll get out my favorite bottle brush and be shocked and disgusted at how much cleaner it looks when I’m done.
In an effort to find out whether I’m poisoning myself, I reached out to Dr. Chuck Gerba, a professor of microbiology at University of Arizona. Turns out it’s not so bad!
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