htone

Peaches and Gada have formed a very strong bond and are inseparable during the day... except when there are people around, then they pretend not to know each other Having a Sunday afternoon snooze on a very cold day here...

Too much of a good thing

Gotta love the way in which he explains things so that even I can understand ! Good post, thanks !

Well done on your progress - that's inspirational stuff right there ! On the tipsy part - I don't drink (just out of choice) and haven't had a drink in yonks, so this is probably more the reason for what follows than LCHF... We got invited to a surprise birthday gig of a friend recently - it was all hush-hush as it was to be a surprise for everyone. Turns out that it was a beer tasting experience. Not being one to be the stick in the mud, I went along with this and tasted 6 different beers - I think the tasting glasses held about 150ml of beer each. By number 4 I was thinking that I should take up drinking as a sport and by number 6 I was about ready to dance on the counter.... Anyways... how I felt later on and the next day, made that one of those "note to self" occasions. I can well imagine that my LCHF status had a part to play. Or that's my story and I am sticking to it !

Which is why it is not included in most versions of Paleo ! Fascinating though !

A very interesting 14 minute film on why only one third of humans are able to digest lactose ! http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/making-fittest-got-lactase-co-evolution-genes-and-culture "Human babies drink milk; it's the food especially provided for them by their mothers. Various cultures have also added the milk of other mammals to their diet and adults think nothing of downing a glass of cows' milk. But worldwide, only a third of adults can actually digest lactose, the sugar in milk. In this short film we follow human geneticist Spencer Wells, Director of the Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society, as he tracks down the genetic changes associated with the ability to digest lactose as adults, tracing the origin of the trait to less than 10,000 years ago, a time when some human populations started domesticating animals, including goats, sheep, and cows. Combining genetics, chemistry, and anthropology, this story provides a compelling example of the co-evolution of human genes and human culture."

@helpmytrap - here are some numbers from this morning's ride that you may find interesting. We did a "low & slow" fairly flat 76km road in 3 hours, so averaged 25km/h. My ave HR was 138, max HR 164. BG on waking was 4.6 I decided to NOT have breakfast this morning (i.e. no fatshake) and it made no difference to my power or endurance. This tells ME that I am fat-adapted enough to ride below VO2Max on my body's own fuel (read fat) stores. After the ride I did a ketostix check and ketones were at ++. Blood ketones tested a massive 3.2 mmol, which bears out that what we measure in urine is the wasted ketones (not used for energy). BG after the ride was 4.8. We had a rather large coffee with milk mid-ride, so the higher BG could be as a result of that, but I am thinking it is just because of the energy demands placed on my body, especially during the last 15 km, when we picked up the pace to about 32 km/h. I was thinking about your comments about the lack of energy during sprints and have the following thoughts on that: 1. You have not allowed enough time to fully adapt to fat burning, so your body is very much in an in-between phase now and what you are feeling is typical of that. I would keep at it for another month at least and then make a call. 2. You ride more than anyone I know and probably feature in the top 5% of people on TheHub in terms of training volume - that in itself says you may have to approach things a little "differently", probably more along the lines of what JCZA does when it comes to supplementing with carbs during your riding. 3. You have said that you do not supplement enough with magnesium or salt, that would be the first and easiest thing to fix that relates directly to what you are feeling. 4. You need to look at what your typical riding consists of in terms of what % of your riding falls in your VO2Max zone - not sure if you ride with a HRM, but if not, you would do well to get one. This will determine your feeding strategy. If you are a rider that spends most of the riding time below or just above VO2Max, then LCHF works like the bomb, and you can run like that for hours. If however you spend a high % of time in or above VO2Max, then you will have to supplement your diet with carbs on the bike. 5. The benefit of feeding with carbs during riding is that you burn that off quite quickly and could still experience the health benefits of an LCHF or Paleo style eating plan. 6. Do not underestimate what a lack of recovery or sleep can do to you, so make sure you are not confusing overtraining symptoms (sore muscles) with the effect of what you are eating. Hope this helps.

This week's definitely on its back. Have a great weekend everyone !

He is a good man, indeed. How are things going with her ?

Dunno. I missed it too

Fatigue is a blixem and could manifest in many ways - from the volume of riding you have been doing it is certainly possible. I was reading from Joe Friel's "Cyclist's Training Bible" just last night, we were discussing overtraining of a friends daughter who is a competitive swimmer, and the highlighted passage below was what I sent them. We often forget the importance of sleep - as that is the only time where the body gets a chance to recover and rebuild. Perhaps this will have the same "a-ha" effect for you:

P.A.K. you need help Bro... WAHAHAHAAAA !

May not be this at all, but I had a mild urinary tract infection at one stage, my guess at the time was that it was from all the riding and not enough fluids, and that initially manifested as a mid-back pain, then went to my kidneys, in fact it got so bad that I thought I had kidney stones... turned out to be a UTI that could be cleared in not time with a short course of AB's. Just saying ...

Came across this LCHF site : http://www.lowcarbshighfat.com/ Although there's a commercial element to it, they have some really nice LCHF recipes for all sorts of meals on there. Just in case you wondered what to eat over the long weekend !

One way to find out would be to eliminate it from your diet (or cook it) for a few days and see if that makes a difference ? How much of the stuff do you eat, as we go through a bunch or two ourselves per week and neither my wife or I have had anything resembling what you describe ? Another question would be - do you supplement enough salt & magnesium and do you drink enough water. When you review the detox process that your body goes through on LCHF you will discover that the kidneys are actually working harder than normal (initially) to get red of all the carb-related gunk in our bodies !

Not sure if any of you have read Gary Taubes' book "Why we get fat : And what to do about it" ? It is the follow-up to "Good Calories, Bad Calories" and well worth the read as it contains a lot more current research than his previous book. From "Why we get fat", here's an excerpt on ketosis - I hope it is big enough so you can read it:

No ways.... look, I know the fatshake is a lot to get used to, but somehow eggs in coffee just don't grate my carrot

@flymango - that is a very good question and people often get confused between ketosis and ketoacidosis. Dietary ketosis, like what we are trying to achieve with LCHF, is perfectly safe. We are "forcing" our bodies to produce ketones by massively restricting carb intake. The excess ketones (that are not used for energy) are excreted via the breath and urine and THAT is what we measure with the stix. In a Type 1 Diabetic, ketosis is extremely dangerous as the body's mechanism to regulate ketones is imparied, leading to massive build-up of ketones, which are acidic and results in ketoacidosis (but this is a distinctly different condition than being in dietary ketosis). SO what I said in my post, is that the stix were invented as a quick and easy method for Type 1 Diabetics to measure ketones in their urine, because a Type 1 Diabetic does not want to be in ketosis at all - they cannot regulate that process. Hope this makes it a bit more clear - we measure the same thing (ketones in urine) but for completely different reasons. Here's a little snippet from Wikipedia: Ketoacidosis is a metabolic state associated with high concentrations of ketone bodies, formed by the breakdown of fatty acids and the deamination of amino acids. The two common ketones produced in humans are acetoacetic acid and b-hydroxybutyrate. Ketoacidosis is a pathological metabolic state marked by extreme and uncontrolled ketosis. In ketoacidosis, the body fails to adequately regulate ketone production causing such a severe accumulation of keto acids that the pH of the blood is substantially decreased. In extreme cases ketoacidosis can be fatal.[1] Ketoacidosis is most common in untreated type 1 diabetes mellitus, when the liver breaks down fat and proteins in response to a perceived need for respiratory substrate. Prolonged alcoholism may lead to alcoholic ketoacidosis.

Actually just + is good enough, these things were invented to measure keto-acidosis so if a diabetic measures anything above trace it is a danger sign. ++ is sehr gut.

Patience, young Skywalker.... My carbs are now well below 50g a day, my BG tests at between 5.0 and 5.2 throughout the day and ketones are above 0.5 mmol (+++ on the stix), averaging about 8 hours of training per week - if in your case your stix show less than +++ it is indeed because you are burning ketones as fuel - remember that you are measuring excess or wasted ketones in your urine.

One of my favourite dishes - I buy the pork belly with ribs as this is usually cheaper than the de-ribbed version. We eat pork about once a week, so I am not getting my knickers in a knot about to PUFA's and O6 as my diet is pretty much devoid of any other PUFA sources... I stick the pork rib in the oven at about 140deg C for 3 hours, then crank up the heat for the last 10 min or so do harden up that crackling a bit. What I normally do while this is going is to make a parcel of "oven vegetables" (ja, I know, "oondgroente"... not very imaginative) which would be e.g. broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, baby marrows, etc - lace that with some Nomu One for All spices and healthy wad of butter and garlic and close it up in a tinfoil "parcel", put that in the oven for the last hour or so and you are good to go !

Sleeping dogs, 3 in a row !

I wonder if that piece of paper on the bed holds a clue to the mystery unfolding.... ?

My two peas in a pot.... with that "what are you doing" look !

MONS and Little Fish will have a field day with that pic jaxtun