Remember, science is about distrusting yourself and never trying to confirm your bias.
I've been challenging my beliefs about staying in a constant state of ketosis.
I've been really laying into the research and opinions of those who advocate keto cycling and diet variation. It seems that maybe I've had it wrong. Maybe our bodies aren't meant for always being in ketosis. Perhaps our bodies are at work trying to get out of ketosis rather than ketosis being its natural state. Well that was my belief but I'm not so sure now.
Here's something I have learned:
2 of the 3 hormones that give us satiety are from fat and protein. The other satiety hormone is by filling our stomach to capacity. That's why vegans are always hungry and they claim it's normal to have a carb addiction. Maybe we weren't designed for constantly eating carbs and eating every few hours or else they would bring long lasting satiety and not make us struggle and feel weak after a few hours without food. But when in ketosis we know we can go a long time even days without eating and without any real hunger or feeling slow and out of energy.
I haven't been able to check my keytones lately but it seems the longer I'm in ketosis the higher my blood sugar levels are when in a fasted state. According to Dr. Mercola "long-term uninterrupted nutritional ketosis can trigger a rise in blood sugar by driving your insulin level too low." I do know that I feel better in the morning when I wake up and it's not high like it's been for quite some time now and perhaps my insulin levels are just too low. I think the best way to learn more about keto cycling and diet variation is to try it and see if it's right for you.
You can learn more about it from Dan Pompa, Darren Schmidt, Robb Wolf, Chris Masterjohn, and Ben Greenfield.
To my diet I'll be adding lots of sweet potatoes, zucchini, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, cottage cheese and things of this nature (healthy carbs). I'll start cycling out of ketosis with the higher carbs on the weekends and eating a highly carnivorous raw meat based ketogenic diet during the week days. I won't really know if I'm truly coming out of ketosis or when I'm going back in except by the way I feel. The first weekend was just some sweet potatoes and some cottage cheese and I felt great the day of but run down the following day with a headache something like the keto flu. I'd love to have the metabolic flexibility to jump in and out of fat burning and incorporating carbs after a workout to benefit my health and for muscle gain.
From my researched this past week I have concluded that both diet variation and keto carb cycling are an excellent tool for increasing metabolic flexibility, mitochondrial health, and hormone optimization.
I would also like to enjoy ancestral seasonal eating and I couldn't ask for a better time to jump into this stuff experimentally with my garden taking off and soon to start producing some of these foods, my hours at work having been cut way down, and the best news of all I'm about to take a week off of work because my wife is going to give birth any day now.
I have a question for you...
Are not vitamin content, mineral content and inflammatory factors the most important things when considering the healthiest foods?
(Something vegans really need to consider)