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Comment by jlturner | Hacker News Reader

I'm on my third ketogenic diet stint, and I can attest to how fantastic it is. I'm narcoleptic and I experience nearly no symptoms on the diet, my fiancée is epileptic and is transitioning off her meds to the ketogenic diet (with the supervision of her nutritionist and neurologist), and a former employee uses it to keep her benign tumor from spreading (actually! And she's totally normal, again with doctors). All of us report much better hair, skin, daily energy levels, ability to think more clearly and focus better, and massive weight loss. The first month my first time doing keto I lost 30 lbs without trying to, ended up being a total weight loss of about 70lbs and I became very lean and muscular.

Why stop? Bread is delicious and it make social eating event difficult / less engaging. You can take a meal off from the diet and be fine, but it's a slippery slope of will power.

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I could have written this post. While I am not technically narcoleptic, this whole year I haven't been able to do with out an afternoon nap (where nap == 3 hours, sometimes more).

I've just started a ketogenic low calorie diet, and mentally I feel great. I did go to bed early yesterday but I haven't needed a nap in a few days.

The mental part is a big deal for me. I haven't felt actually "awake" for a long time. Always this haze of sleepiness hanging over me.

I am working with my doctor on the diet. I'm basically using a vegetable protein powder for most of my meals, supplementing with some eggs, greens, and lean meat (mostly turkey at this point). And a multivitamin.

I've been successful before, but the hardest part is the first couple days of transitioning to ketosis. Many times I simply couldn't power through the initial cravings of the first few days. This time I did, and I'm going to ride this train as far as it will take me.

The second hardest thing is after. I'm actually planning to stay on a keto diet after, with the appropriate amount of calories for maintaining rather than losing weight. And eating whole foods instead of the powder (although I imagine it will still be my breakfast because it's so convenient).

That's awesome that your doctor is working with you, most will just push drugs to treat the symptoms (usually modafinil or xyrem). I wish more doctors would suggest or support dietary change.

Obviously listen to your dr over me, but it's a common 'mistake' with keto to not up your fat enough. More fatty meat might actually work out better for you than turkey. Take a look at The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living for more info on the importance of keeping your fat to protein ratio high.

Very good point. I didn't mention it, but I am eating garlic stuffed olives for electrolytes and fat.

edit: forgot to mention too that I make the protein shakes with almond milk which has a few grams of fat per serving as well.

May I ask exactly how the garlic is treated and exactly what olives you are eating?

I like Mezzetta. Ingredients: Olives, water, garlic (cloves), sea salt, lactic acid, sodium bisulfite, and "natural garlic flavor"

They are large green olives from Napa Valley. I'm not that knowledgable about olives so I can't say more than that.

I appear to be one of those weirdos who reacts to something in bread but not celiac.

I was watching that Michael Pollan series and he was talking about his theory that industrial bread was the problem and everyone would be fine if we went back to sourdough. Well this feels like one of those things that sounds good but has no substance, but clearly at this point I'm willing to try anything. There's a little bakery on my way home and they're open late. I've had half a loaf of sourdough bread in two and a half days and other than burping more, I feel no worse than I did last week.

What I wonder every time someone posts about ketosis is just how bad are sugars and starches for us, and how did we get this far without figuring it out?

To answer your second question, this is something we knew and collectively forgot in the middle of the 20th century. Gary Taubes' theory is that if WW2 had not been so devastating, the European scientific community mighy have been healthy enough to prevent the "fat is bad" myth from taking over.

Was posted a few months ago on HN: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-co...

I am the same. I did a 23andme and found I had the highest risk gene for Celiac (HLA-DQ2.5). If you have that gene, you get an inflammatory response to gliadin (one of the proteins in gluten and mimicked by proteins in other things) regardless of whether you develop the enteropathy of your intestines that is required for a Celiac diagnoses. Certain parts of Europe never ate bread until globalized food and did not evolve to digest triticea family plants. Eliminating these foods from my diet made me calmer than I have been in my entire life within a week. I find that flour is much worse than baked bread, and baked bread is much worse than sourdough. And this is reflected in the amount of unmetabolized gliadin in each of them. I tried reintroducing enough times to just give up and accept it. And I continue to feel better as time passes - so far no diminishing returns.

Stephen Jones is a wheat grower who is also an advocate for long rise times. You can read more about him and his ideas here: http://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/cooking-tips/article/...

There's also more and more rhetoric now about the microbial gut biome and the various stuff that we eat nowadays (antibiotics in meat, artificial sweeteners) changes whatever balance we might have had, once upon a time... you get the idea. The more I read, the more it seems like my "sometimes this makes me sick and sometimes it doesn't" experience with food, wheat in particular, is due to something more complicated. Possibly the sprue stage is a symptom rather than its own disease?

Most bakeries use commercial yeast in addition to starter in what they call sourdough. If you haven't already been doing this, you need to ask if there's commercial yeast in their sourdough. You might need to shop around to find a bakery that does it pure.

My partner has a similar condition (not celiac, not gluten sensitive, but 'something in bread' sensitive) and she found that sourdough from locally made starter was way easier on her system than anything from bakeries or the store.

(Source: We've been experimenting with breadmaking at home, so I've learned more than I ever expected to about bread over the past year.)

It's hard to not start a starter with yeast and can be dangerous to not use a commercial yeast to keep a starter going. If the conditions are not right or it's not a safe yeast colonizing your starter it can be deadly.

I don't have a strong opinion about the origin of the starter. It will definitely influence the flavor of the bread but other than that I don't think the origin is important. More important is the rise times. A longer rise is more likely to convert more sugars and also more likely to give indicators of a bad batch.

I heard a crazy thing last year that there's a wasp in France that harbors one of the yeasts that flavors the wines of the region. The wasps, while a pest, also end up inoculating the vines and grape skins with the 'right' kind of yeast.

I wondered about that. 'Tastes like sourdough' might not mean actually sourdough. Good to have a confirmation of my suspicions.

I said bakery, but there are commercial bakeries around and I meant a baker bakery (a boulangerie, if you will). The place I went to is the sort where you walk in, the bread is on wooden racks and they give it to you in a paper bag. I figured there are maybe three places I can think of that are more likely to be doing 'real' sourdough and they're all in the other direction.

Have you ever tried Cloud Bread? While certainly not the same, it's a convenient replacement for bread if you want to make sandwiches or so.

For reference, a general recipe (without any sweetener, but use stevia or something if you want):

  - 3 eggs
  - 3 Tablespoons cream cheese
  - ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

Takes around 20 min to bake. Makes six slices. As you can tell, it's low carb.

But I get the social thing. I have been moderate carb (50-150g/day) and gluten free for around 7 years now. Things have certainly gotten easier with the social aspect, but so many things are breaded.

Also try cream cheese pancakes! Very similar recipe and my kids love them. Also good for Gyros.

One great feature of keto in my experience is that if you're truly rocking ketosis, cheating oftentimes feels absolutely awful. It's just the first few weeks that's somewhat hard really.

Yes, the automatic negative reinforcement of feeling gross is helpful

When I use to live in Toronto there was this German Bread Factory in Etobicoke. I was able to eat various breads they made and stay in Ketosis. I didn't eat a lot but a slice here and there.

http://www.dimpflmeierbakery.com/product/10-pack-carb-smart-...

A great bakery with so many different varieties of breads. Most of it still warm when you buy it.

Dimpflmeier black rye is the greatest toasting bread in the universe. So dense.

I started 3 weeks ago, and have been losing weight steadily (10 pounds in 3 weeks), have no real appetite (can go for half a day without eating something, but force myself not too), and am more alert during the day at work, without the "sleepy" low period in the afternoon anymore.

I eat mostly what's allowed on "Atkins 2.0, stage 1", plus some small stuff that's not like watermelon). Scientifically the calorie intake is more important than the what (for losing weight), but this diet helped me reduce that too.

>Why stop? Bread is delicious and it make social eating event difficult / less engaging. You can take a meal off from the diet and be fine, but it's a slippery slope of will power.

Can try with some extra rules, like "only on weekends", "only when having dinner at friends house" and also limit it to specific "light" items, not full-on refined-sugary/starchy stuff.

> Scientifically the calorie intake is more important than the what (for losing weight)

This has been the assumption but there's reason to believe it might be more complicated than that. Gary Taubes addresses the subject here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKuDamgGkZQ

I've been on this diet for a little more than a year. I lost 35 lbs but have an appetite. I would love to lose 35 more.

My doctor says all evidence of pre-diabetes is gone. I used to get ear infections or bronchitis a few times a year. None since starting. She (my Dr.) says that is likely from the fact that keto dieters have less internal inflammation, though we have not measured that.

>Bread is delicious

Bread taste sooo good when you haven't eaten in a long time, it really is addictive.

Maybe bread with real butter?

Really is, sucks too cause I love baking bread and making pizzas :P

Try making pizza crust with almond flour.

or cauliflower.

Nugget grocery stores has in their steamtables mini pizzas that use a cauliflower crust.

I can concur. Thats the one thing thats hard about switching, here in the Netherlands bread is THE lunch thing. I found low carb bread at the supermarket, so i can eat that, it has a lot less carbs. Lifesaver!

I wonder how much of this is cultural/emotional.

I'm ethnically Indian, and grew up with white rice as by far the dominant carb in my diet. To this day, I'm not particularly fond of bread (though I like crusty, soft-crumbed bread like french baguettes from time to time). However, if I go more than a week without a rice based dish, I crave it on a visceral level.

Which carb you crave is probably cultural, but craving of carbs seems to be pretty universal.

have you tried making the keto flax focaccia bread? it changed my life.

http://www.healthfulpursuit.com/2014/08/flaxseed-focaccia-br...

as far as pizza crust goes, there are myriad alternatives for that as well.

no alcohol either ... that is a deal breaker for a lot of people (including myself)

you can have alcohol. beer obviously is off limits except for some low carb beers but liquor and wine is OK.

You can have alcohol. I follow a ketogenic diet and regularly drink liquor and wine. Wine has carbs, but not a lot. ~4 grams per 5 ounces.

how much wine do you drink (if you dont mind me asking)

your basically saying you follow a low carb diet but drink alcohol and that is you main source of crabs right?

I drink alcohol once per week, give or take. I drank a bottle of wine on Saturday and it didn't bump me out of Ketosis. You have 50 carbs to spare typically without completely exiting. A bottle of wine is about 20-25.

Liquor has 0 carbs unless it's infused with something.

  alcohol and that is you main source of crabs right?

Alcohol is a vector for crabs in general. ;)

You can have some wine.

actually, many hard liquors don't have any carbs. i do keto and drink bourbon regularly.

https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/hv0wu/bacon_booze_the...

whisky and red wine, my friend

Alcohol is actually fine on a low carb diet. Beer has carbs but Vodka, Rum, etc are totally fine.

In fact alcohol tends to have a greater effect on you when in ketosis so you even save some money when out drinking.

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