What are ketocalories?
Normally when people are on a keto diet they dont count calories but those of us with damaged metabolisms from years of low calorie and low fat dieting really need some extra guidance on how this works.
We know the calorie theory is just a theory and its a wrong theory. Dr Robert Lustig has said so.
All the calorie theory tells us is how calories work in a calorie burner 'bomb'.
When those same calories hit our digestive system there is a completely different set of reactions.
Also not everyone has the same reaction to the same quantity of the same food!
A child would have a different reaction to a man, who will have a different reaction to a woman and an obese woman would have a different reaction again.
Those of us who have been dieting for years, like Bridget Jones, have the calories of known foods hard wired into our brains. We have lost so much weight, so many times over, we should by now weigh less than zero. But we dont.
What I believe is important is the effect of the food we eat on our pancreas. The pancreas has many functions but 2 important ones are producing insulin when a glucose food is consumed, or producing hormone sensitive lipase when fats or lipids are consumed. One pushes glucose and glycerides into the cells and holds the cells shut, that's the insulin and the other, the HSL allows the glucose glycerides out of the cells to be used by the body for energy. The 2 systems are mutually exclusive. You don't make HSL if Insulin is predominate. So you cant burn your fat and your cells and brain are starving for fuel.
How can we apply this to the calorie theory.
Lets ignore protein, that stays fixed at 4cals per gram and most of us need around 70 to 100gms of pure protein a day, so about 150 grms of protein foods ( which may or may not include fats).
We have been told that fats/lipids are the highest calorie macronutrient at 9cals per 1gm. But what if fats and lipids are necessary for the body to access its own fats? We need fats to get our gall bladder functioning and also to stimulate the pancreas to produce HSL.
So instead of 9cals let say 1 gm of fat counts for the same as protein 4ketocals. ( some people may be able to calculate even lower at 2ketocals for good fats). These are not your poly oils. But olive oils, coconut, butter, cream and meat fats from grass reared animals).
Now we get to the sugars, the glucose. The calorie theory says 4cals per gm. But my new theory says 9ketocals per grm.
Calculating like this we can see that the keto eating plan encourages good protein and good fat foods and limits the glucose.
We should get some carbohydrate from green vegetables and a keto diet of 25 grms of carbs per day would give ketocalories of 225 cals.
So the daily macro would go something like this.
Protein foods would remain around 150 grms about 600 ketocalories, no change there.
Fats would constitute around 75 grms which is now ketocalories 300.
Carbohydrates at the keto level of 25gms so 225 ketocalories
Total for the meals 1125 and then some extra for cream in coffee.
In the book The Calcuim paradox and vitamin K2, Dr Kate Rheaume Bleue says that healthy young men reduced their production of insulin by 50% after one week of taking a vitamin K2 MK7 supplement. The pancreas is the second most needy user of Vitamin K2 when it can get it.
What could it do for the obese and the diabetics, and the women?
I am taking 450mcg Vitamin K2 MK7, split into am and lunch time. Included in the second capsule is1000mcg of MK4 is which has a much shorter half life in the body.
What I am doing is trying to get my afternoon binging, munchies cravings ( whatever you call them) under control.
I have noticed my afternoon glucose readings running much lower. 5.7 5.8, highest has been 6.2.
My weight loss is continuing slowly and have reduced 5 jean sizes, nearly 25kg over the past 18 mths.
What I have to learn is how to eat post diet so I do not put the weight back on and I believe the ketocalorie theory will help me do that.
