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My Weight Loss Success  

BlessMeFather4i 56M
0 posts
2/3/2022 2:37 am
My Weight Loss Success


I've never been scary overweight, but I recently managed to lose fifteen pesky pounds and keep them off for two months, now -- so this clearly wasn't water weight. Interestingly, this involved no caloric restriction, and no exercise! How could this be?

I managed this unusual weight loss over the course of three weeks, during a trial run, combining a ketogenic diet with intermittent fasting. A ketogenic diet is one that favors ketosis, which means fat-burning. This involves leveraging an important aspect of human metabolism: in the absence of carbohydrates, our body will fall back on the burning of fat, for energy.

For those three weeks, I avoided all sugar, and lowered carbs to less than 20 grams per day. In other words -- no soda pop, no beer, no bread, pasta, potatoes, cake, cookies, candy, etc. YIKES! Sounds like a miserable diet, I know. But surprisingly, it wasn't that bad. What did I eat instead? (And... NO BEER?!??)

What I did eat were things like bacon & eggs, steak, salmon and shellfish, plain whole fat yogurt, nuts, berries and leafy greens. Fruits generally will not fly, on this diet. As for berries, strawberries, blueberries & raspberries are good. Nuts can be iffy, because of their high starch content, but are not problematic in reasonable amounts, and are desirable for their favorable fat profile.

Beverages were a struggle, at first. My new go-to became flavored, carbonated water. The flavor made things less boring, and the bubbles tickled the back of my throat, something that I've always liked about soda pop, leaving me feeling less deprived. Instead of beer, I drank vodka or gin, mixed with carbonated water. (Eating excessive carbs during ketosis will cause your body to return to carb-burning mode. Alcohol will pause ketosis, until the calories from that alcohol are burned, and then resume.)

The second part of my strategy was intermittent fasting, which essentially involves restricting the times when meals are consumed. I ate within a six-hour window, running from 2pm to 8pm. This was a bit difficult at first, but once ketosis kicked in, I was surprised to find that I wasn't hungry at all, during my daily fasting period!

How does this work? I'm still learning, but as I understand it, an important aspect is lowering insulin levels, is the hormone responsible for fat storage. The following paragraph was shamelessly lifted from PubMed, a clearing house for medical literature hosted by the National Institutes of Health:


Ketogenic Weight Loss: The Lowering of Insulin Levels Is the Sleeping Giant in Patient Care

Research conducted by<b> members </font></b>of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians (recently renamed the Obesity Medicine Association) and others shows remarkable health benefits associated with wellness protocols that limit the intake of carbohydrates and sugars, which results in lower insulin demand and levels. The research demonstrates that the lowering of insulin levels dramatically improves diabetes and the factors associated with metabolic syndrome including central obesity, high blood pressure, and elevated blood lipids, which, of course, are risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease. Other conditions that have shown improvement under the influence of reduced insulin levels include fatty liver disease, polycystic ovary syndrome, gastroesophageal reflux disease, irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea and other maladies. Significantly, dietary carbohydrate restriction induces ketosis, a state in which the body is forced to burn fat instead of sugar as its primary source of fuel. When in ketosis, patients are able to lose weight safely, effectively, and relatively quickly.


The above abstract covers a lot of territory, and it touches on so many of the chronic conditions faced by so many of us! While I do massive amounts of research on PubMed, all the medical terminology requires some effort to wade through. As a mere mortal, I fall back on a handful of YouTube resources:

* Dr. Berg
* Dr. Sten Ekberg
* Bobby Parrish
* Thomas DeLauer

I will note that neither of the doctors are MD's -- one is a chiropractor, and the other is a holistic health professional. This left me a bit leery, at first, but it is now clear to me that both individuals are medically knowledgeable, particularly around matters involving nutrition, metabolism & endocrine health. Parrish does informative shop-alongs -- pointing out which products to buy, which to avoid, and why -- from popular supermarkets including Walmart, Costco & ALDI. DeLauer is a bodybuilder who discovered healthy eating along the way, and offers an interesting perspective. Particularly encouraging is the fact that all four resources are in general agreement, and that all follow the emerging medical literature (unlike my general practitioner, and likely also yours!) I should also point out that while some of these individuals additionally offer products & services, I bought nothing from any of them.

To wrap up, discovering this has been nothing short of game-changing. I have come to regard the ketogenic diet not as a workable lifestyle diet, but as a powerful therapeutic intervention. I now eat a low-carb diet, still largely avoiding . I allow myself some beer, but I still try to drink liquor & water (NO SUGARY MIXERS!) In fact, generally speaking, I've come to realize that I can still have cake, cookies, candy, etc. -- I just can't have them every day. Peanut Buster Parfaits are now a monthly thing -- that's all.

I'm sharing this information in the hopes that others will take hope from my experience, and feel encouraged to take of their health! If you appreciate my efforts, please consider helping me with a few points -- whatever you can spare.

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