Help! I'm going under
Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2018 12:35 pm
My theme song these days seems to be Paul Simon's "Slip Slidin' Away." I am really struggling to maintain my weight on the Ketoflex diet. I need to maintain my reserves for the grandbaby who's scheduled to make her appearance in September, and I'm not feeling my healthiest right now even though my energy level is okay and I'm moderately active. People who know me keep expressing concern at my progressive skinniness. My BMI keeps dipping into "underweight" territory despite concerted efforts to maintain my weight at a healthy level for my 5’3” (160cm) frame. No lower than 20 BMI is my goal - that's where I felt healthiest - but it's proving difficult to achieve. I need help from APOE4 veterans who have gone through this experience and found workable solutions.
I’ve been on Ketoflex 12/3 since late January. I adhere to at least the minimum 12-hour fasting period each day, even when I have family celebrations and evening receptions to attend, and I usually go beyond the 12 to as high as 16 hours a day of fasting. I don't mind fasting for this period of time because it gives my system time to process and try to get on top of what feels like immense amounts of food I'm eating. I can't imagine taking a whole day off to fast, my weight would drop like a stone and I'll have to push it back uphill like Sisyphus (picturing Sisyphus as skeletal-looking) for more than a week to get back to where I was. A week of fasting, as others here practice, seems downright suicidal to me.
I try to stick to an 8-10 hour window for meals and I try to limit myself to 3 meals a day. I log everything on Cron-ometer. I am uncomfortably full at every meal. I can't imagine restricting myself to two meals, and when 3 meals don’t get me to my calorie goal (often over 2,000 a day) I often cheat with an afternoon avocado/flax/hemp powder smoothie and then try to force more food down at dinner.
I'm limiting protein to 15-20% of calories, relying mainly on fish and tempeh (alternate days) and 1 or 2 eggs every other day.
I aim for 50-60% of calories from healthy lipids, and ’m trying to follow Stavia's limit of 7% of total fat as saturated fat. but even healthy vegetable fats have saturated fat content and I routinely exceed my saturated fat quota each day on avocados, tempeh, eggs, and EVOO. I’m also overshooting my omega-3 with relatively modest consumption of fish trying to meet protein requirements. And I'm often exceeding omega-6 with nuts, led by walnuts which I have to limit to 4 halves a day.
That leaves carbs at about 25-30%. As a vegan/vegetarian for many years I am used to consuming lots of veggies and fruits but I have cut down drastically on fruits (2 servings of low-GI fruit a day - if I ate more, or added coconut or bananas, I could up the calorie count more easily), eliminated former calorie stars 100% organic whole grain and seed bread and organic beans (the latter a sacrifice to Dr. Gundry, I miss those beans; and I have sandwich envy when I prepare those whole-grain nut butter sandwiches for my husband.)
I eat no added sugars or sweeteners, but I’m always surpassing my 20 g sugar limit through eating carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and modest amounts of fruit. I consume no salt or soy sauce but I always exceed sodium guidelines (1000 mg) from eating plain eggs, almond milk, fish, and the occasional plain nonfat yogurt which I take for calcium. Essentially, to get enough calories to try to maintain my weight, I am going over on these areas and that is an issue since I was hospitalized 8 years ago for heart anomalies and elevated troponin level; routine exams this year at different times turned up a suspected heart murmur and a somewhat long QT interval, so I have to look out for both my heart and my brain.
I am finding that the quantity of cruciferous veggies I eat is causing digestive problems so I'm lightly steaming those. Although my diet is pretty darned healthy by SAD standards, I still can't get all my vitamins and minerals every day from my mix of food so I take organic food-based supplements as needed.
I'm just tired out trying to plan for and balance and cram so much more food than my system is comfortable with every day just to maintain my weight. I’m hoping you can pick out something in this long droning narrative that I should or could change. I've been looking around for other sources about maintaining or adding weight on a low carb or keto diet and came up with Diet Doctor's advice here: https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/gain-weight. He says if you need to gain weight, eat whenever you're hungry or maybe every 3 hours, rather than practicing intermittent fasting. This would possibly be an easy fix but it would drop me out of my faithful, hard-fought adherence to Ketoflex. I’m considering it but loath to break the intermittent fasting if it would be harmful.
I realize we’re all n=1 people here but if something has worked for you, I figure it’s worth trying, and I would like to find a sustainable solution within the Bredesen protocol. If you have figured out how to maintain your weight on the protocol please share your thoughts or critiques.
I’ve been on Ketoflex 12/3 since late January. I adhere to at least the minimum 12-hour fasting period each day, even when I have family celebrations and evening receptions to attend, and I usually go beyond the 12 to as high as 16 hours a day of fasting. I don't mind fasting for this period of time because it gives my system time to process and try to get on top of what feels like immense amounts of food I'm eating. I can't imagine taking a whole day off to fast, my weight would drop like a stone and I'll have to push it back uphill like Sisyphus (picturing Sisyphus as skeletal-looking) for more than a week to get back to where I was. A week of fasting, as others here practice, seems downright suicidal to me.
I try to stick to an 8-10 hour window for meals and I try to limit myself to 3 meals a day. I log everything on Cron-ometer. I am uncomfortably full at every meal. I can't imagine restricting myself to two meals, and when 3 meals don’t get me to my calorie goal (often over 2,000 a day) I often cheat with an afternoon avocado/flax/hemp powder smoothie and then try to force more food down at dinner.
I'm limiting protein to 15-20% of calories, relying mainly on fish and tempeh (alternate days) and 1 or 2 eggs every other day.
I aim for 50-60% of calories from healthy lipids, and ’m trying to follow Stavia's limit of 7% of total fat as saturated fat. but even healthy vegetable fats have saturated fat content and I routinely exceed my saturated fat quota each day on avocados, tempeh, eggs, and EVOO. I’m also overshooting my omega-3 with relatively modest consumption of fish trying to meet protein requirements. And I'm often exceeding omega-6 with nuts, led by walnuts which I have to limit to 4 halves a day.
That leaves carbs at about 25-30%. As a vegan/vegetarian for many years I am used to consuming lots of veggies and fruits but I have cut down drastically on fruits (2 servings of low-GI fruit a day - if I ate more, or added coconut or bananas, I could up the calorie count more easily), eliminated former calorie stars 100% organic whole grain and seed bread and organic beans (the latter a sacrifice to Dr. Gundry, I miss those beans; and I have sandwich envy when I prepare those whole-grain nut butter sandwiches for my husband.)
I eat no added sugars or sweeteners, but I’m always surpassing my 20 g sugar limit through eating carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and modest amounts of fruit. I consume no salt or soy sauce but I always exceed sodium guidelines (1000 mg) from eating plain eggs, almond milk, fish, and the occasional plain nonfat yogurt which I take for calcium. Essentially, to get enough calories to try to maintain my weight, I am going over on these areas and that is an issue since I was hospitalized 8 years ago for heart anomalies and elevated troponin level; routine exams this year at different times turned up a suspected heart murmur and a somewhat long QT interval, so I have to look out for both my heart and my brain.
I am finding that the quantity of cruciferous veggies I eat is causing digestive problems so I'm lightly steaming those. Although my diet is pretty darned healthy by SAD standards, I still can't get all my vitamins and minerals every day from my mix of food so I take organic food-based supplements as needed.
I'm just tired out trying to plan for and balance and cram so much more food than my system is comfortable with every day just to maintain my weight. I’m hoping you can pick out something in this long droning narrative that I should or could change. I've been looking around for other sources about maintaining or adding weight on a low carb or keto diet and came up with Diet Doctor's advice here: https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/gain-weight. He says if you need to gain weight, eat whenever you're hungry or maybe every 3 hours, rather than practicing intermittent fasting. This would possibly be an easy fix but it would drop me out of my faithful, hard-fought adherence to Ketoflex. I’m considering it but loath to break the intermittent fasting if it would be harmful.
I realize we’re all n=1 people here but if something has worked for you, I figure it’s worth trying, and I would like to find a sustainable solution within the Bredesen protocol. If you have figured out how to maintain your weight on the protocol please share your thoughts or critiques.