What is Nutritional Ketosis?

I’ve been watching the Nutritional Ketosis movement for several weeks now, and I came to a serious “AHA moment” yesterday.

I attempted a real Ketogenic diet several years ago – the type they put kids with seizures on – but I didn’t have much luck with it. In fact, I quickly gained about 10 to 15 pounds within the first week or two, so I haven’t been that interested in doing it myself, but I’ve been curious about it in case it worked well for others.

A high-fat, low-carb diet isn’t new. Barry Groves has been recommending that type of weight-loss program for years! But what the low-carb community zeroed in on when presented with that type of diet was only the high fat. That’s where most people placed their focus because that’s what they wanted to eat. It didn’t matter that Dr. Atkins boldly claimed his diet was not a high-fat diet. Fat is what’s restricted on a standard low-calorie diet and doesn’t raise blood glucose levels, so that’s what makes low carbing attractive to many folks.

For the most part, the low-carb community ignored everything required to make a high-fat, low-carb diet work. The result of that high-fat mind-set was a weight-loss stall that appears around the time where the amount of fat calories eaten equals the amount of fat calories the body needs to sustain your weight. In other words – maintenance. The body won’t access its remaining fat stores if it doesn’t need to. Dr. Eades tried to get low carbers to understand that many years ago, but most low carbers didn’t listen.

Some people have been able to overcome the problem by reducing overall calories and upping activity, but that hasn’t worked for everyone. If you’re short or have serious medical conditions, the amount of calories needed to drop pounds and maintain a healthy weight is often too low for sustainability. On a typical low-carb diet, I found I needed to drop my calories to 900 calories per day or less, in order to lose. At 1200 calories per day, I maintain or gain.

WHY? Because the most important component of a high-fat, low-carb diet is ignored.

And I’m as guilty as everyone else. Although I’d figured out from re-reading all of Dr. Atkins’ and Dr. Eades’ weight-loss books that neither of them recommend a HIGH fat diet – and calories count a whole lot more than most low-carb folks are willing to accept – I was still missing the most critical component of what makes that type of diet work.

Enter Jimmy Moore and Nutritional Ketosis

Within the current low-carb climate, it’s easy to see that Jimmy Moore’s n=1 Nutritional Ketosis experiment is what brought the idea of Nutritional Ketosis to the front of attention. He has an extremely large group of followers, so what he says, recommends (or doesn’t), and DOES, pretty much drives the thought process and actions within the low-carb community. We’re talking about the overall direction of low carbing itself.

Yes, there are groups who are resisting the movement. There are pockets of folks who want to continue eating their large portions of protein foods and low-carb products because they don’t see a reason to fix something that isn’t broken. And that’s fine. If high protein is working, there’s really no GOOD reason to switch to something else because the whole point behind the original Atkins Diet was to find your particular degree of carbohydrate intolerance and stay within those limits.

However, as time goes on, what I’m seeing is that for the most part, our metabolic problems are getting worse, not better.

A Low-Carb Diet Doesn’t Work the Same

In 1972, when Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution first surfaced, there were no low-carb products. Restricting carbohydrates was a relatively new idea, and worked nicely because the body had never had to rely upon that alternative metabolic pathway before. It worked well because our food was still pure and relatively uncontaminated with genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). You could switch from processed foods to a whole-foods diet and easily detox from what the “Powers that Be” were doing to our wheat and other processed foods.

That isn’t true today. For a great many people, what worked in 1972 no longer works because our food and beverages aren’t the same anymore. Animals are fed genetically-modified feed (including most grass-fed animals in the winter when pasture is scarce). Those pastured fed are washed and processed with genetically-modified corn-derived citric acid or lactic acid by law. Eggs are washed in a genetically-modified cornstarch solution.

Meat, poultry and fish are further contaminated with GMOs at the grocery store by their packaging. Fresh fruits and vegetables are picked green (including organic produce), and then waxed with petrochemicals and genetically-modified corn-derived ingredients or gassed with Ethylene. In fact, every product that lists alcohol in it's ingredients such as simple Vanilla extract, contains GMOs. And organically grown, or even the term “organic,” doesn’t mean what you’re about to eat is 100 percent organic and therefore safe.

It’s Not Just About the Carbs Anymore

Nutritional Ketosis is an attempt by Dr. Phinney and Jeff Volek to help those within the low-carb community that are finding it difficult to lose weight following a standard low-carb diet. It’s no longer a simple matter of moving to whole-foods such as Paleo or using a carb-restricted solution such as Atkins. For many individuals, something is interfering with the body’s ability to go into Ketosis when restricting carbohydrates. And it’s that something that Jimmy Moore and others are addressing with their Nutritional Ketosis experiments.

If your insulin response is still in good condition, you won’t have the same problems as those of us whose insulin response isn’t behaving normally anymore.

It used to be, when you ate protein and it was converted into glucose, insulin simply ushered that glucose into your cells to take care of the portions of the brain, kidneys and other cells that don’t have mitochondria. This is called Gluconeogenesis and low-carb authorities considered a good thing. But many low carbers are discovering that their insulin resistance and other metabolic issues are not correcting themselves by simply restricting carbohydrates any more.

In fact, many who have started using ketone meters that measure the amount of ketones in the blood, rather than the urine, are finding they are not in Ketosis at all.

What is Nutritional Ketosis?

In Phinney’s and Volek’s book, The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living, Nutritional Ketosis is defined as having a certain level of ketones in the bloodstream. The term was also used by them in the latest Atkins’ book that they authored. The latest Atkins book has not been well received within the low-carb community because of its stance on dietary fat and higher carbohydrate allowance for Induction. Low carbers are also skeptical because of its contradictory nature. It tries to reach out to as many individuals as possible by correcting a lot of myths and low-carb misconceptions, but for the most part, low-carbers want to continue to believe in Low-Carb Magic.

Most low-carb dieters focus on the amount of ketones being thrown off into the urine because that’s what Dr. Atkins recommended in 1972, but the amount of ketones in your urine does not mean you are in Ketosis! What people are finding is that there is absolutely no correlation to urine ketones and Ketosis.

I’m not going to go so far as to say that Dr. Atkins was wrong, but it certainly isn’t true today that Ketostix measure Ketosis. They absolutely do not!

So what is Nutritional Ketosis? Dr. Atkins used to refer to the condition as Dietary Ketosis or Benign Dietary Ketosis in order to separate it from the very dangerous situation of Ketoacidosis. Ketoacidosis is why many medical professionals are afraid of Ketosis. When that condition occurs, insulin level has dropped to zero, so there is no way for the body to correct an abnormally high level of ketones in the blood.

Too high of a blood ketone level can be fatal. I had a nephew die several years ago from Ketoacidosis, so I know first hand that it’s not something that you want to play around with if you have Type 1 Diabetes. It’s dangerous!

But Nutritional Ketosis isn’t the same thing because in a normal metabolism, the body will secrete insulin to take care of a ketone level that becomes too high. It’s no secret that Insulin shuts down access to body fat stores. In the presence of Insulin, the body is then able to burn its present level of ketones in the blood. After which, your insulin level goes down and your low-carb diet then continues. That’s why Nutritional Ketosis isn’t dangerous. Insulin is a healthy, backup response that keeps the diet totally safe.

But that backup response is also one reason why going too low in carbohydrates can be just as detrimental to your weight loss efforts are going too high. It all comes down to finding the right balance of protein, carbohydrates and dietary fats, which can be a bit tricky.

I now realize that's why my past Ketogenic Diet efforts didn’t work very well. I didn’t understand how important finding the right balance actually was. I ate high fat, and extremely low carbohydrate (sometimes, even zero carb), but I also ate a ton of protein. When I did zero carb, I ate as much as 8 ounces of protein at each meal since I wasn’t eating anything else.

That translated into about 144 grams protein minimum to as much as 200!

Regardless of the absence of carbs, that much protein simply kept my body burning glucose for fuel. And when you burn a majority of your fuel as glucose, insulin goes up, so the body simply stores all incoming dietary fat until it needs it later on.

For me, later on never came!

Update: Well, I tried a Nutritional Ketosis Diet that restricted my protein intake to 60 grams. I ate 1,200 calories and seriously upped my fat. I recorded my experience and results at my After Low Carb blog. If interested, you can check it out and leave me a comment.