Friday, February 25, 2022

Early stages of a fast or low-carb diet. Easing into it.

This exchange illuminates what is going on when you see that dramatic weight loss at the onset of fasting, or a low carb diet, the need for electrolytes..etc.  Here I think Megan was largely talking about very sick, potentially elderly people, people on blood sugar meds. It may be possible for healthy people to more fluidly switch between fasted and not fasted - even if they aren't on a low-carb diet.  Caveat-emptor, that's my lay interpretation of the context around what she was saying.  I recommend listening to the whole podcast.

From Diet Doctor Podcast #7 with Meagan Ramos

Megan: But if anything, they were sick, I mean these people had their arms amputated, such bad arthritis-

So you tried to use low-carb as the transition point? Try and get them on low carb first and then into some form of fasting? 

Megan: This is what I do. I realize that it's just tough and I do need to get them into a bit of a state of ketosis. When they're going from high carb to fasting, that's dangerous, because their insulin levels are going to drop rapidly and their kidneys are going to release all kinds of sodium, they are going to lose a bunch of water and a bunch of electrolytes at once, and they're going to fill horrendous, they're going to get nauseous, fasting is not going to be a good experience for them, nor a safe experience for some of these patients. 

So the idea of getting them to follow what a lot of them consider the fancy low-carb diets was not possible. So I got them to do something we joke around and we call a fat fast for four days leading up to an actual fast. And for those four days they're only permitted to eat bacon, eggs, olives, and avocados. 

And if they don't eat bacon for whatever reason then they have eggs, olives and avocados, I don't care, but just those four foods. And to be honest most of them enjoy it. Most people love at least two or three of those four foods, if not all of them. They're all simple to make. Olives require zero preparation, avocado zero preparation, eggs can be unbelievably simple and bacon, you can throw it in the oven or in the microwave, you don't have to sit there at the stove. So it's all very simple, all very easy and things that you can get for reasonable prices within the Toronto area. So they liked it, they like the challenge, it became a game to them. 

So they would do it, they would always do it. And so they would lose water weight safely while replenishing their electrolytes and then they would be able to transition into fasting quite effortlessly. And once they got into a fasting state, they felt like eating less on their eating days, they wanted to eat that bacon and those eggs a little bit more often and then because they were fasting intermittently or fasting for a couple chunks of time throughout the week, like maybe two 48 hour fast a week, they were able to actually save money.