Slothy

Ok, so to start off, I'm not going to go to much into the theory behind the diet I'm embarking on. Suffice it to say, I'll be eating a low carb, high fat diet. I could spend the entire post elaborating on concepts like insulin's role in fat storage, the role carbohydrate control plays in managing blood glucose, and any number of other topics but that's not what I'm interested in jumping into right now. I've talked a bit about a lot of this stuff lately, but frankly I think other people do it better.

Anyone who'd like a primer on the science behind how fat storage works, I'd recommend the documentary Fat Head by Tom Naughton. You can find his blog and website here. I often recommend his movie because it's both funny, and well researched. He also has a nice tendency to break things down so the concepts he talks about are clear and understandable so for people not familiar with low carb eating it's not a bad place to start. If there's enough interest in the comments though I'll probably do a post or two about the nitty gritty details with this stuff. I'll probably do that when necessary anyway, but if the interest is there I'll try and get their sooner.

More specific than just eating a low carb, high fat diet though, I'm going to try and force my body into ketosis. You can read more about the basic concept on Wikipedia. Suffice it to say, the plan is to get my body to switch from burning mostly glucose for fuel, to burning fat instead. For most people, this is relatively easy to accomplish by simply switching to a low carb, high fat diet since there are too few carbs to readily convert to glucose, and a much more abundant supply of dietary fat.

But after reading this post by Mr. Naughton, I was surprised by the idea that too high a protein intake could sufficiently raise insulin levels to prevent someone from hitting ketosis.

Prior to this, I had been messing with my diet a bit based on the recommendations of the trainers at my gym. I don't have the spreadsheets here with me, but my first run at it from memory saw me eating roughly 185-195g of protein, around 50g of carbs, mostly from milk and some vegetables, and around 100g of fat from various sources.

This initial experiment, something of an attempt to set a baseline if you will taught me a few things:

1) I had trouble eating that much protein without supplementing some protein powder. My original goal was to eat closer to the 210-225g range for protein, but getting their was painfully difficult, quite literally in some ways because I just can't eat that much meat despite being a badass Starfleet captain. Even getting an extra 40-60 g from protein powder was difficult.

2) Protein Powder was making my depression worse. I'd have some every morning with breakfast, feel full until lunch easily and have good energy, but I could feel the depression creeping in within an hour or two tops and my mood would be shot for most of the day. I only realized it after skipping the protein powder for a few days and feeling fine, then starting it again and feeling worse almost immediately.

3) My performance in the gym improved quite a bit. I think this was mostly because I was being more consistent about getting sufficient amounts of protein and avoiding foods high in carbs, particularly sugar and starches which I knew from past experience made me feel slow and sluggish.

4) Despite only eating about 2,000-2,200 calories a day and working out a lot I lost no weight. At first I thought it might be me putting on muscle again, and I think there was some of that going on, but there was still no appreciable downward change in the scale or the way my clothes were fitting. In fact I actually put on a couple of pounds in the few weeks I was trying this.

There are a number of possible explanations for this last one. It did involve a lot of protein so it's possible muscle gain was outstripping any fat loss, but regardless, I wasn't trying to gain significant amounts of muscle mass so this isn't entirely desirable since I'm quite heavy right now and I'd rather maintain muscle mass while dropping body fat at the moment. My diet also included dairy and whey protein which may have been an issue. Some people have trouble losing weight with too much dairy, though I was at my leanest early in my days doing CrossFit despite drinking 2-3 glasses of whole milk a day, so I'm not totally convinced. Still, it's something to consider.

So with those things in mind I've made some tweaks to the diet. Some of this is born of the idea that excess protein may be keeping me from reaching ketosis and slowing fat loss, and some is the result of spending much of last summer eating quite a bit more fat than that and having a better handle on my depression than I'd had in years.

What I'm shooting for right now is around 120-125g of protein, 145g of fat, and 40g of carbs at the moment. I'm going to see how things go and try tweaking a bit from there. Unless I've made a mistake in the numbers there (again, my spreadsheet is at home right now) that comes out to about 2,000 calories. I'm still drinking a glass of milk (with some 35% cream added no less) with breakfast but whey protein is out for the time being. I may try adding some post workout in a few weeks, but for now I think it's best to avoid it. I'm also supplementing with fish oil capsules to get Omega-3's in there. The goal being a combined 5g a day of DHA and EPA for now and I may up it in the future. I've used fish oil at various points in the last few years, and aside from being great at fighting inflammation, I find it helps manage my depression. Hopefully I get my hands on some more concentrated stuff at a decent price soon though because I'd rather not take 16 capsules a day past the end of this bottle.

Some preliminary results from day 1: I felt full from breakfast until about 11am when I could feel hunger creeping in. I did wake up feeling a bit depressed this morning but noticed it going away about 1-2 hours after I ate my breakfast. It kind of felt like the symptoms were coming back at around 11:30-11:45, but since eating lunch an hour ago that's abated again. I'm thinking I may need to tweak breakfast a bit so it keeps me full longer and hopefully I don't find myself getting hungry and depressed so early. I'll keep running with it for the next few days, but if the same thing keeps happening I may replace the milk and cream with a small salad, maybe cook my steak with some butter to get a bit more fat early in the day, and leave the milk for supper time/post workout.

One other thing to note: eating 1/3rd of a cup of almonds in one sitting can suck some days, particularly if you don't have a drink close at hand. Doing it twice in one day? About as much fun as it sounds. I may need to work on an alternative and cut back a little bit.

One final note to explain the title of today's post: my fat intake at the moment is at a minimum twice what Health Canada, the USDA, or any Dietician would recommend. Probably more than that to be honest, and I'm considering upping it a bit more if need be. Actually, if I told most doctor's what I'm eating, they'd probably want to skip the blood test and head straight for prescribing me a statin. Note that I'm not all that worried I'm going to die of heart disease... well, pretty much ever.