More questions about diet

[mike]

Does bread do something that causes the metabolism to slow down? I am not that attached and can give it up and probably should since I have two sides of a gluten intolerant gene, (I take enzymes for gluten when I eat bread, in case enzymes help) but I have already determined that I cannot gain weight (in fact can barely maintain weight) on olive oil, avocados, and nuts alone.

Thank you for any insight.

Bread goes straight to sugar and will play more havoc with your glucose levels. I would try slower carbs like yams. Do you measure your glucose levels at all? Each person's tolerance for carbs is different. You want to be able to bring your BG down to fasting levels before eating more. If you can't get it back down, then you need to consume fewer and/or slower carbs until you do. Otherwise you develop metabolic syndrome.

[JD2020]

Bread goes straight to sugar and will play more havoc with your glucose levels. I would try slower carbs like yams. Do you measure your glucose levels at all? Each person's tolerance for carbs is different. You want to be able to bring your BG down to fasting levels before eating more. If you can't get it back down, then you need to consume fewer and/or slower carbs until you do. Otherwise you develop metabolic syndrome.

Hi, Thanks for your reply. I've seen several of your posts, and I appreciate the way you explain things. I used to measure glucose and ketones regularly in 2020 when I was trying to comply. I gave up in total frustration, not because of bad measurements but because I couldn't maintain weight, and I was making myself crazy with all of the restrictions.

Anyway, I am very relieved to have finally regained weight. I feel less fragile. My appt with my ReCODE doc is coming up, and it will be interesting to see the blood work results. In the meantime, I will try what you suggest and measure blood glucose before each meal. I have no idea if BG comes down to the right level before I eat again. What level am I aiming for?

Thanks again.

[mike]

In the meantime, I will try what you suggest and measure blood glucose before each meal. I have no idea if BG comes down to the right level before I eat again. What level am I aiming for?

Thanks again.

Sure, glad to help. Ideally, you should get below 100. If you're up at night, you can check it around 3-4 am; that is around the level that your body will fight to bring your BG down to. If you have T2D that number will likely be higher than the 100 level by a good amount. Otherwise take it before your first meal, and as long as you don't have any quirks, that should also be a good spot. It is good to measure 1 and 2 hours after your meal. At one hour, you are looking at close to your BG peak. Ideally at 2 hours, you should be close to where you where pre-meal. If not, take again at 3 hours after. I would stick with yams as your carb source and experiment with the amount to see what you can tolerate. Once you get a sense of where your carb load is, you can begin to try other low-glycemic carbs. Berries are another good for you source of limited carbs. After a while you likely won't need to test anymore.

[SusanJ]

I have doubled down, eating bread 2 x per day. I have gained more weight in 2 months than I did in all of 2021, when I was attempting to gain weight without bread. This makes no sense to me. If a pound is about 3500 calories, then how can adding a couple of slices of rye bread make the difference?

Does bread do something that causes the metabolism to slow down?

I have the same problem. I cannot keep weight on unless I eat carbs, and yes, I sometimes throw a piece of rice bread toast on my breakfast plate with eggs and veggies for weight maintenance.

My guess is something called the "thermic effect of food", along with the time of day you are eating those carbs.

First off, your body is on a circadian rhythm, and more insulin sensitive in the morning. If some of those carbs are eaten at night, they are turned into glucose during a less insulin sensitive phase of eating.

The circadian system may explain these dichotomous time-of-day effects. The circadian system orchestrates approximately 24-hour rhythms in metabolism, physiology, and behavior. It produces these rhythms through coordinated transcriptional–translational feedback loops involving clock genes such as BMAL1, CLOCK, PER1/2, and CRY1/2, which in turn cause oscillations in a myriad of downstream targets. For instance, insulin sensitivity and the thermic effect of food exhibit 24-hour rhythms, peaking in the morning [49]. A large number of plasma lipids [50] and age-related hormones such as cortisol, insulin, and growth hormone [51,52] also vary across the 24-hour day. Many of these metabolic and hormonal rhythms peak in the morning and are downregulated in the evening, implicating the morning as optimal for food intake [49]. Therefore, eating in sync with these rhythms may improve cardiometabolic health, as suggested by a growing number of human studies [53,54,55,56,57,58]. In contrast, eating in circadian misalignment with these rhythms by eating late in the day worsens several cardiometabolic endpoints, particularly glucose tolerance [59,60,61,62]. Therefore, TRF interventions where food intake is limited to early in the day may be particularly effective at improving cardiometabolic health.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6627766/

This is just such an interesting article to read overall. I've been looking at research on the benefits of eating earlier, and I have started eating earlier in the day (over about a 10 hour eating window right now, slowly moving back to 8) to see what effects it might have on my very stubborn HbA1c and lipid markers.

So, thermic effect of food. According to this Examine.com article:

Some of the calories in the food you eat are used to digest, absorb, metabolize, and store the remaining food, and some are burned off as heat. This process is known under various names, notably diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT), specific dynamic action (SDA), and the thermic effect of food (TEF).[1][2]

There is a growing body of research indicating that the TEF may be lower for meals consumed in the evening or at night compared with a morning or afternoon meal.[10][11]

In one study (analyzed here in NERD), 20 healthy volunteers consumed a standardized meal at 8 a.m. or 8 p.m., and their metabolic response was measured. Eight hours before having the meal, participants consumed a slightly smaller standardized meal and were asked to spend the following six hours in bed. Values for the TEF were higher after the morning meal (328 kcal) compared with the evening meal (237 kcal).

This is consistent with previous research that reported a 31% relative decrease in the TEF after an evening meal, compared with one in the morning.[12]

So, maybe if you're eating some of your bread later in the day, your TEF is lower, your insulin sensitivity is also lower and your body has a few extra calories to pack away.

Would be good to look at your glucose levels as Mike suggests, at all meals, to see if there is a time of day when you might be able to eat a few more healthy carbs for weight gain, and still keep glucose levels reasonable.

Good luck and let us know what you figure out.

[JD2020]

I have the same problem. I cannot keep weight on unless I eat carbs, and yes, I sometimes throw a piece of rice bread toast on my breakfast plate with eggs and veggies for weight maintenance.

So, maybe if you're eating some of your bread later in the day, your TEF is lower, your insulin sensitivity is also lower and your body has a few extra calories to pack away.

Would be good to look at your glucose levels as Mike suggests, at all meals, to see if there is a time of day when you might be able to eat a few more healthy carbs for weight gain, and still keep glucose levels reasonable.

Good luck and let us know what you figure out.

First, thanks for the acknowledgment of the problem. For a while, I thought I was doing something wrong, but over time, I've seen a lot of people post here that weight maintenance is a real issue with Keto 12/3.

You are saying that later in the day, the body is less efficient at burning up the calories from bread, allowing easier weight gain? This is consistent with my experience the last couple of months. I mostly added the bread at dinner.

Also, if insulin sensitivity is lower at the end of the day, making the body more likely to gain weight from bread, is that why the same calories in the form of olive oil are not effective at weight gain? Because reduced insulin sensitivity does not impact the metabolizing of olive oil?

I have started experimenting with the glucose meter. At lunch I ate 1 1/2 cup of packed raw veggies loaded with olive oil, cashews, and rye bread with cheese. 2 1/2 hours later the glucose meter said 97. I will keep track, and it will be an interesting experiment.

[SusanJ]

You are saying that later in the day, the body is less efficient at burning up the calories from bread, allowing easier weight gain?

That's my guess, the body is using more calories in the morning for thermic effect, than at night.

Also, if insulin sensitivity is lower at the end of the day, making the body more likely to gain weight from bread, is that why the same calories in the form of olive oil are not effective at weight gain? Because reduced insulin sensitivity does not impact the metabolizing of olive oil?

I'd have to think about that answer. Insulin is also required for storing excess fatty acids in adipose tissue, but fat is also metabolized much more slowly than carbs. Let me look a bit more at the articles I've saved so far and see if I can tease out an answer WRT fats.

[circular]

In the meantime, I will try what you suggest and measure blood glucose before each meal.

I will too. Since I've been increasing my carbs for other reasons, I've started testing glucose after meals to see how I respond to various foods and food combinations. Two hours after a breakfast of coffee, two eggs, and a bowl of steel cut oats, my glucose is always below 100 at two hours, and usually back to the 70s or 80s. I like that I achieve this with a filling serving of a whole grain that also adds appreciable fiber.

I often add 10 to the glucose meter result to realize about the worst it might be, since even accurate meters like the Keto-Mojo I use I think have a pretty wide range that's considered a normal result. If I recall correctly, for K-M the actual result could be within 10 in either direction, or is it 5 in either direction? That may be be wrong, so if anyone can clarify this I'd appreciate it, or I'll try to look it up again. At one point I stopped using the meter altogether because even if it's considered accurate technically speaking, in my mind it really handicaps how appropriate the readings are when we want to know whether we're below 100 or at our fasting level. How many fasting readings would it take to know reliably one's average fasting level in order to best interpret post-prandial results?

[SusanJ]

I have started experimenting with the glucose meter. At lunch I ate 1 1/2 cup of packed raw veggies loaded with olive oil, cashews, and rye bread with cheese. 2 1/2 hours later the glucose meter said 97. I will keep track, and it will be an interesting experiment.

If I remember right, a couple studies suggest that lunch (mid-day) meals are pretty neutral WRT insulin and other markers. So with your numbers, lunch might be the best meal to add the carbs for weight gain and also keep glucose response in check.

Let us know how the experiment goes!

[JD2020]

I will, and I really appreciate all the responses. I have never been good at science, but my accountant brain can totally wrap itself around the concept of eating, glucose testing, and seeing what triggers a good/bad response. Very straight-forward and numbers oriented. So far (one day in) my readings have all been in the 90s, so never too high, but never as low as we would like. I just reordered a bunch of strips and will see what happens as I play with the variables. Thank you all, again.

[SusanJ]

Also, if insulin sensitivity is lower at the end of the day, making the body more likely to gain weight from bread, is that why the same calories in the form of olive oil are not effective at weight gain? Because reduced insulin sensitivity does not impact the metabolizing of olive oil?

Back to this question. I found a study of timed eating, whose results suggest that our bodies are on a circadian rhythm as to what gets preferentially oxidized/metabolized - during the day it's carbs, and at night, lipids.

So, if someone ate later, the shift to lipid oxidation was postponed and the end result was enhanced lipid storage, which over time led to weight gain.

(This also underscores Ketoflex 12/3, or not eating before going to bed - it is also very important in terms of maintaining healthy lipid metabolism.)

So, perhaps your eating more carbs at dinner was subtly delaying your nightly lipid metabolism, allowing your body to pack on more unused lipid calories, adding to your weight gain (perhaps beyond what you expected from the calories in the bread itself).

Thanks for the questions! I found the whole topic interesting and spent some very useful time down the Pubmed rabbit hole. This makes me all the more committed to try early time-restricted feeding to see if I can improve my labs.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7046182/