Low Carb 4000+ Calorie Diet?.....Please Help

Nutrition
41

[quote]ActivitiesGuy wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]ActivitiesGuy wrote:
From the end of that Diabetes Spectrum article, after they had reviewed what’s available in the literature (admittedly, this was back in 2000:

[b]Let’s review recommendations given to people with diabetes in regard to protein and try to determine if the research supports any or all of them.

“Between 50-60% of protein becomes glucose and enters the bloodstream about 3-4 hours after eaten.”

Perhaps 50-60% of protein goes through the process of gluconeogenesis in the liver, but virtually none of this glucose enters into the general circulation.[/b][/quote]

If you have full liver glycogen your body will be less insulin sensitive because it doesn’t need to refill liver glycogen so glucose in the liver preserves blood glucose from other sources. Where else is it going to go? [/quote]

Do you actually read the articles you post, or just skim them looking for a single quote that supports your point?

The Diabetes Spectrum article has an entire section discussing about this.

“This raises the question of why, if gluconeogenesis from protein occurs, does the glucose produced not appear in the general circulation?”

[/quote]

I’ve read them all. The ADA recommends that patients prone to nighttime hypoglycemia make sure to add protein to a carb snack at night to extend the effects of blood sugar maintenance.

Here’s the logic though. If you don’t burn protein, why the heck do we even count the calories?

42

[quote]mertdawg wrote:
I’ve read them all.[/quote]

See, I find this assertion very hard to believe when you literally quote something marked up front as “THIS IS NOT BACKED BY THE EVIDENCE, AND WE’RE GOING TO SHOW YOU WHY IN THIS ARTICLE” and use the direct quote that the article said was not true.

It’s either:

a) very poor critical reading skills, which I doubt
b) rushing to find something that (seemingly) supports your point
c) deliberately misleading in the hopes nobody will actually check

43

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Is this the newest research out there on the topic? 2005 was minute ago… The 70s were quite a few minutes ago…[/quote]

Find something newer that says otherwise. The only study that ever showed muscle gains above .85 grams per pound used .85 and 1.7 and found a small increase. If they had used .85 and .95 they could easily have found the full effect.

And if 100% of protein above 230 grams per day becomes ammonia, what does it matter whether they found that out in 2005?[/quote]

Easier killer, I was just asking.

44

I have read the spectrum article, and it does not argue for a significant effect of protein, so take that for what it is worth. I have a cache of sources and linked it here because it came up first in the search this time because I searched for “common advice”.

So this article actually goes against the mainstream diabetic medical advise that protein yields slow release of carbs.

I’ll get back later, sorry

45

[quote]mertdawg wrote:
I will post references if people promise to read them, but I didn’t say 150 gram protein limit. I said that about half of the protein most people eat converts to glucose over a period of 3-6 hours, and that the proportion rises to 100% by about .85 grams per pound of bodyweight.

[/quote]
Not disagreeing with your general point as to protein having some action as a slow release source of glucose, but on that numeric value, fully 100% wouldn’t be possible due to leucine and lysine being non-glucogenic and being roughly 20% of proteins (varies of course) as well as some conversion to ketone bodies and I suppose some going to turnover, with the replaced amino acids not necessarily converted to glucose. I haven’t seen 100% in the literature but don’t recall any specific figure that I have seen.

As a practical bb’ing observation, protein intake can be used to balance some amounts of Humulin R injection (so far as I know discovered by Oliver Starr, tried by myself with some success) but not at 1:1 relative to carbs. So that would speak against conversion being anything close to 100%.

Also as practical observation, not my own but of others, for diabetics daily protein intake doesn’t cause nearly as much need for insulin injection, at least not according to any calculation method I know of or the few personal accounts I’ve learned, as does daily carbohydrate intake.

46

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:
I will post references if people promise to read them, but I didn’t say 150 gram protein limit. I said that about half of the protein most people eat converts to glucose over a period of 3-6 hours, and that the proportion rises to 100% by about .85 grams per pound of bodyweight.

[/quote]
Not disagreeing with your general point as to protein having some action as a slow release source of glucose, but on that numeric value, fully 100% wouldn’t be possible due to leucine and lysine being non-glucogenic and being roughly 20% of proteins (varies of course) as well as some conversion to ketone bodies and I suppose some going to turnover, with the replaced amino acids not necessarily converted to glucose. I haven’t seen 100% in the literature but don’t recall any specific figure that I have seen.

As a practical bb’ing observation, protein intake can be used to balance some amounts of Humulin R injection (so far as I know discovered by Oliver Starr, tried by myself with some success) but not at 1:1 relative to carbs. So that would speak against conversion being anything close to 100%.

Also as practical observation, not my own but of others, for diabetics daily protein intake doesn’t cause nearly as much need for insulin injection, at least not according to any calculation method I know of or the few personal accounts I’ve learned, as does daily carbohydrate intake.[/quote]

Thanks, I wrote 50-60% because that is common advice for diabetecs. Keep in mind as well that even if it is at 50% it doesn’t mean that 20 grams of protein requires as much insulin as 10 grams of carbs, because its released slower and the brain will use 100 grams a day without insulin and the muscles will use some, and I also think some is used in digestion without the need for insulin.

So 20 units of carbs in 2 hours may require insulin while 20 units of net carbs in 4 hours might not require any insulin.

What does leucine and lysine end up turning into? (Acetyl CoA?)

The BCAAs are anticatabolic and I have read the leucine can cause insulin secretion which means that it will tax the pancreas and the more insulin you release in the day the less sensitive you become, so leucine may have a mechanism if increasing insulin resistance in high doses even if it isn’t turned to glucose.

In fact most AA’s are insulinogenic and so the more you take the more you release and the less sensitive you may become both short term and potentially long term.

The most recent research I read, and I am looking for suggests that high protein intake raises fasting blood sugar primarily because it slightly lowers insulin sensitivity which IS BASICALLY the issue presented in this thread.

Another issue is that having full liver glycogen reduces insulin sensitivity or at least hepatic insulin sensitivity.

I am open to debate on this and I don’t want to recommend anything to anyone-people need to think for themselves-but if someone is insulin resistant and they were eating 320 grams of protein a day that might be a factor.

What CAN protein possibly turn into to be burned as fuel? Which of those products do not pass through glucose of g6p on the way?

47

[quote]EyeDentist wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:
In fact at above about 200 grams of protein a day all extra protein converts to glucose and keeps your fasting blood sugar a little higher all the time. Even at 150 grams a day over half of the protein you eat becomes glucose. [/quote]

Do you have a reference for this?[/quote]

I am happy to discuss and learn more.

Biochem gives no real option but that protein is turned, in large part into glucose. If its not then give me another end product.

I have a T1D son who does get higher blood sugar when protein is added to a given amount of carbs, versus carbs alone, though it is complicated because it may delay the blood sugar spike or delay gastric emptying and then dump more carbs in a more concentrated fashion, but also the protein may reduce insulin sensitivity in response to that given meal. Short term insulin resitance leads to long term insulin resistance because thy body will overproduce, and insulin causes insulin resistance.

On the other hand, I have used 150 protein gram diets and 240 protein gram diets with moderate carbs, and did not end up with any difference in gaining or losing fat, or blood sugar levels. I also didn’t gain any more muscle and wasn’t any stronger with more protein.

I am happy to discuss and learn more.

Biochem gives no real option but that protein is turned, in large part into glucose. If its not then give me another end product.

48

See here there is some debate as to whether high protein causes “physiological insulin resistance” or whether it is the result of very low carbs (less about 100 grams per day)

paleohacks.com/ketogenic/the-high-blood-glucose-dilemma-on-low-carb-lc-diets-14400

"If you are on a ketogenic or very low carb (VLC) diet (e.g. with 50-100gr carb/day and/or eating ketone producing MCT oils such as coconut oil), you may have a dilemma of having high Blood Glucose (BG) despite eating LC: If you are keto adapted, that is, your body is using ketones and even though you have sufficient insulin (say >5 microU/ml) your body tries to keep your BG higher than necessary, e.g. above 100-110 mg/dl. That is your BG set-point is always high. If you try to lower the set-point to say 80s, by water Intermittent Fasting (IF), then your body starts to convert your muscles into glucose to keep its high BG set-point. So, you may have a slightly lower BG, but you lose some muscle mass. Having a high set-point has many other problems, e.g. if you eat something with a little bit more carb, say a small fruit, your BG shoots up to 130s and stays there for hours.

This may be due to something called "Physiological Insulin Resistance (PhIR) by Petro Dobromylskyj. He wrote many good articles about it -???thanks Petro–in his blog Hyperlipid. Apparently, PhIR is a normal reaction of the body and quite different from Pathological Insulin Resistance (PaIR). It seems that the main difference between PhIR and PaIR is that insulin is at a normal level in the former and abnormally high in the latter. (PaIR is obviously type2 diabetes.) If I understand correctly, PhIR is kind of IR only in the muscle tissue, that is only the muscles do not react to insulin and NOT use glucose even though it is available. However, if you are eating too much protein, the liver may also be considered IR, because it tries to keep the BG high by converting proteins to glucose, even though BG is already too high, that is, it also may not be responding to insulin. (I think working muscles can use glucose with or without insulin. Would that mean that PhIR does not affect working muscles? If not, then one can reduce his high BG [due to PhIR] by exercising.)

49

This one is interesting. Seems to show 20% carbs are best for blood sugar control. Replacing carbs with protein helps, but not any more than removing the carbs altogether.

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/53/9/2375.full

This site advises that high protein may cause high blood sugars basically by slowing gastric emptying, not by significant conversion.

http://www.ghc.org/healthAndWellness/?item=/common/healthAndWellness/conditions/diabetes/monitorFAQ.html
"Most people won’t notice a rise in their blood sugar levels after eating a moderate amount of fat or protein. Fat and protein are usually digested slowly and change into sugar over several hours.

However, if a person eats a large amount of protein, it can cause a stronger but delayed rise in blood sugar. Examples of large fat or protein servings include several ounces of nuts, a large steak (8 to 12 ounces), or meals that include a lot of cheese, such as pizza.

50

CT also said that he became hypoglycemic on leucine supps if he didn’t combine them with some carbs.

51

[quote]mertdawg wrote:
This one is interesting. Seems to show 20% carbs are best for blood sugar control. Replacing carbs with protein helps, but not any more than removing the carbs altogether.

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/53/9/2375.full

This site advises that high protein may cause high blood sugars basically by slowing gastric emptying, not by significant conversion.

"Most people won’t notice a rise in their blood sugar levels after eating a moderate amount of fat or protein. Fat and protein are usually digested slowly and change into sugar over several hours.

However, if a person eats a large amount of protein, it can cause a stronger but delayed rise in blood sugar. Examples of large fat or protein servings include several ounces of nuts, a large steak (8 to 12 ounces), or meals that include a lot of cheese, such as pizza.

[/quote]

So would this be an ok split? If not what is wrong? What should I add or take away?
4,254 Calories 164 grams of Carbs, 264 grams of Protein 300 grams of Fat, 54 grams of fiber.
Carbs - Brown Rice, Quinoa, vegetables (broccoli), whole milk, also carbs from nuts
Protein - Boneless Skinless Chicken breast, 93/7 ground beef, Salmon, Whey Isolate, Casein, protein from nuts and milk.
Fats - peanuts, almonds, walnuts, fat from salmon

52

Also forgot to add olive oil for a source of fat.

53

I would ditch peanuts and walnuts as intended calorie sources (small amounts fine, but these should not be dietary staples.)

Reason is the fatty acid profile.

Substitute with coconut and/or, as you listed, olive.

54

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
I would ditch peanuts and walnuts as intended calorie sources (small amounts fine, but these should not be dietary staples.)

Reason is the fatty acid profile.

Substitute with coconut and/or, as you listed, olive.
[/quote]

So maybe do like on ounce of each a day and substitute with more oils? and maybe add more almonds?

55

[quote]Mxdamien wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:
This one is interesting. Seems to show 20% carbs are best for blood sugar control. Replacing carbs with protein helps, but not any more than removing the carbs altogether.

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/53/9/2375.full

This site advises that high protein may cause high blood sugars basically by slowing gastric emptying, not by significant conversion.

http://www.ghc.org/healthAndWellness/?item=/common/healthAndWellness/conditions/diabetes/monitorFAQ.html
"Most people won’t notice a rise in their blood sugar levels after eating a moderate amount of fat or protein. Fat and protein are usually digested slowly and change into sugar over several hours.

However, if a person eats a large amount of protein, it can cause a stronger but delayed rise in blood sugar. Examples of large fat or protein servings include several ounces of nuts, a large steak (8 to 12 ounces), or meals that include a lot of cheese, such as pizza.

[/quote]

So would this be an ok split? If not what is wrong? What should I add or take away?
4,254 Calories 164 grams of Carbs, 264 grams of Protein 300 grams of Fat, 54 grams of fiber.
Carbs - Brown Rice, Quinoa, vegetables (broccoli), whole milk, also carbs from nuts
Protein - Boneless Skinless Chicken breast, 93/7 ground beef, Salmon, Whey Isolate, Casein, protein from nuts and milk.
Fats - peanuts, almonds, walnuts, fat from salmon
[/quote]

What are your guys opinions with this macro layout given my current health situation?

56

[quote]Mxdamien wrote:

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
I would ditch peanuts and walnuts as intended calorie sources (small amounts fine, but these should not be dietary staples.)

Reason is the fatty acid profile.

Substitute with coconut and/or, as you listed, olive.
[/quote]

So maybe do like on ounce of each a day and substitute with more oils? and maybe add more almonds?[/quote]

Sure, an ounce of peanuts is fine when the rest of the diet is fine. Having an ounce of walnuts too would push a moderate fat diet already up to a reasonable max for linoleic acid, but on your planned high fat consumption could still give a reasonable balance overall.

Treat almonds as being about like peanuts. Fine in moderation, high in inflammatory fat if a substantial part of the total fat intake over time. A fine occasional snack but shouldn’t be a dietary staple.

Macadamias have an excellent fat profile, and the more of them the better: it’s a shame they’re so expensive. Hazelnuts (filberts) aren’t a bad choice.

57

your sources of fat are a NO. Good sources of fat have been listed a few times here.

You don’t need that many proteins (&calories from them). Cut the whey & casein crap asap, you have far enough proteins from whole foods

carbs are ok

I’m not a fan of milk but if you remove whey+casein it’s ok.

58

I would get at least some egg yolk. Eggs | The Nutrition Source | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

I have also read a study recently that shows that egg yolk only raises LDL by raising the density of the bad VLDLs, and not by increasing the number of particles (which showed up as high on the first test you listed). SO it takes all of those VLDL particles and makes them less harmful, possibly even not a factor.

I’d eat liver and salmon about twice a week each. I would not eat fish a lot more than that because Omega-3s can be oxidized just like omega 6s. I like Flameout because of its purity and ratios. It also has CLA.

And I’d add some butter at least occasionally to the fat sources.

My wife is a cardiologist, and the move (slowly) is to promote whole eggs again and eliminate sugar from the diet. Old cardiologists who she has worked with say that removing whole eggs was the worst dietary recommendation made by AMA. Newer cardiologists also are focusing more on sugar as a problem. Its the ones in the middle who are still sticking to the low cholesterol mantra from the 1970s through the 1990s. Some of them still push margarine.

59

Btw, in an article referenced by your link ( Egg Consumption and Risk of Heart Failure in the Physicians' Health Study - PMC ), I just have to give kudos to the authors, Luc Djouss�©, MD and J. Michael Gaziano, MD. How often do authors so frankly delineate the limits of their findings (in this case, a finding of egg consumption averaging greater than 1 per day being correlated with increased risk)? Nowhere near often enough!
[i]
The fact that we observed elevated risk of HF without antecedent myocardial infarction suggests that alternative physiologic mechanisms could be responsible for the observed association. Alternatively, additional lifestyle/dietary factors associated with frequent egg consumption could be responsible for the observed relationship. Given the observational nature of our design, we cannot exclude chance or residual confounding by measured and unmeasured factors as a possible explanation of our findings. In particular, the lack of details on the dietary questionnaire prevented us from controlling for energy intake and other major nutrients. Changes in dietary patterns may lead to a spurious association between baseline exposure and incident outcome.

…The lack of a relationship between egg consumption and serum cholesterol is consistent with other reported findings showing no effect of egg consumption on the LDL subfraction.

Our study has additional limitations. Our participants are male physicians who may have different behaviors than the general population, thereby limiting the generalizability of our findings. Furthermore, we did not have data on protein intake, serum albumin, and creatinine to explore the influence of protein load on the observed association, especially in the presence of kidney dysfunction and/or type 2 diabetes.[/i]

All of which doesn’t prove that the found correlation is not causative, but it’s to be applauded that they were careful enough to explain why the result could have been seen without causation. (Most authors require the reader to have to figure that out for himself.)

60

^especially since for most doctors I know, the number of eggs they eat a day correlates to how many times they grab breakfast at McDonalds. My wife though is a cardiologist and she eats 10-14 home cooked whole eggs a week.

Actually I mentioned in an earlier thread. She is fairly lean, but got a cholesterol of 229 with an HDL of about 47. She started eating 1-2 eggs a day instead of taking a statin which her doc wanted and in 6 months she was at 198 with a 65 HDL.

I am looking for another study that I can’t find. It shows that adding vegetable oils lowers total LDL by lowering the density of the LDL particles that you’ve got (but possibly even increasing the number), and saturated fat can raise LDL solely by raising the density of the LDL particles that you have.