Welcome


My name is Gina and I would like to welcome you to my blog!

On this blog, I not only share the dietary and lifestyle approach which reversed my metabolic disease and achieved my weight loss, but I also debunk many misconceptions surrounding obesity and its treatment.

I am 5'5" and was weighing 300 lbs., at my heaviest. I lost a total of 180 lbs. I went through several phases of low carbohydrate dieting, until I found what worked best and that is what I share on this blog. Once on a carbohydrate restricted diet, along with intermittent fasting, I dropped all of the weight in a little over two years time.

My weight loss was achieved without any kind of surgery, bariatric or cosmetic. I also did not take any weight loss medications or supplements. I did not use any weight loss program. This weight loss was solely the result of a very low carbohydrate, whole foods based diet, along with daily intermittent fasting and exercise.

I allow discussions in the comments section of each post, but be advised that any inappropriate or off-topic comment will not be approved.

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Sep 5, 2022

Six common beliefs addressed, Part 191

1. Avocado oil, used in "keto" diets, increases LDL and triglycerides (trigs).

If you have a lipid profile that is sensitive to the fat content of your diet, then dietary fat can increase your lipids. For some people, LDL is particularly sensitive to saturated fats. This means that LDL will not rise due to avocado oil consumption because it is a monounsaturated fat.

Monounsaturated fats have also not been found to raise triglycerides but triglycerides are a measure of excess fat energy in the body. If the body is already loaded with unused energy, then dietary fat, of any kind, can cause a problem. Usually this is not an issue if the diet is very low in carbs but some individuals can experience issues regardless, due to their liver's ability to process lipids. This could be genetic or from impaired liver function. There is also "cross talk" between leptin and trigs. People who have leptin resistance, usually experience high trigs. This is precisely why you have to monitor your dietary fat intake as leptin resistance will not burn it so you will get fatter by default.

Either way, you need to work closely with your doctor to try and figure out what's causing it. In the meantime, reduce your fat intake. You should be following your macros.

2. "Keto" is suppose to decrease inflammation but it increases it in some people. 

"Keto" doesn't do anything. What increases or decreases inflammation is the presence of inflammatory conditions and the body's ability to mitigate them.

When the body is under metabolic stress, of any kind, then the chronic release of stress hormones interfere in the body's ability to mitigate its stress response. One of the most common stressors that the body is under, in modern life, is blood glucose dysregulation. The body likes to keep its blood glucose within a tight range and when it is unable to do so, because of dietary interference or other factors, it triggers an adrenal stress response.

Going low carb or "keto" might reduce this stress response due to better blood glucose regulation making it appear "anti inflammatory". But if you follow these diets incorrectly, then you might experience a "pro-inflammatory" response as starvation is a very powerful stressor in the body.

For this reason, there is no anti or pro-inflammatory anything. There is only the ability to mitigate your body's inflammatory response or not and the things that interfere with this.

3. My HbA1C and inflammation have gone back up since I stopped low carb. 

The answer is in your own statement.

4. I want to know if my diabetes is "cured". My HbA1C went from 10 to 5.5 when I went "keto". I lost about 100 pounds.

Diabetes is not "cured" by a lower HbA1C. Nor is it "cured" by lower blood glucose. This is because diabetes is not a "disease" of high HbA1C or high blood glucose. Those are just markers which are abnormal in diabetics as they have lost proper blood glucose regulation. They are symptoms of the condition, not the condition itself.

Diabetes is a metabolic adaptation towards hyperglycemia. In other words, the body is actively trying to keep its blood glucose high in order to prevent lows. This adaptation is triggered by erratic fluctuations in blood glucose causing large disparities between its highs (postprandial) and lows (fasting). In order to keep blood glucose very high, the body uses its glucoregulatory systems like insulin function, gluconeogenesis, hypothalamic/pituitary/adrenal axis, etc. to create excess blood glucose. In diabetes, these systems are all working together to keep blood glucose high, not normal.

This means that you can be diabetic with an HbA1C of 5.5. Yes, you have read correctly. You can be diabetic with a lower HbA1C, though your doctor will not agree. After all, your doctor will only make a diagnosis of diabetes at its end stage, when you have an HbA1C of 12. But if you have an HbA1C of 5.5 and your body is unable to regulate its blood glucose correctly, then you are technically diabetic. How is this possible?

HbA1C is your average blood glucose within a three month time period. It does not measure blood glucose disparities. It only measures the average between the highest and lowest readings. If within a three month time period you have a postprandial blood glucose of 200 mg/dL and a nighttime fasting blood glucose of 60 mg/dL, you might have an average HbA1C of 5.5. But those large disparities between blood glucose highs and lows are diabetes and soon you will have a deadly night time hypoglycemic event or go into a coma due to hyperglycemia.

This is precisely why it takes so long to diagnose someone with diabetes. A diabetic can maintain a seemingly completely normal HbA1C for years before they are diagnosed. They are usually diagnosed because they pass out or begin going blind. In fact, most diabetes is detected from a simple eye exam, rather than from a yearly physical. This is particularly true if your fasting blood glucose does not reach a level where an HbA1C test is even ordered.

This is why we do not give any one marker so much importance that it can determine if you are "cured" of diabetes. You are only "cured" of diabetes when your body can regulate its blood glucose correctly and keep it at around 84 mg/dL, whether fasted or not. Anything other than that means you have metabolic syndrome, if not full blown diabetes.

Now, your loss of 100 lbs. is a much more impressive accomplishment and will be more important to your metabolic health, in the long run, than your drop in HbA1C. It is this fat loss that gives context to your HbA1C drop. Your body is able to regulate its blood glucose far better after such a drop in excess body fat and that's being reflected in your lower HbA1C. It is excess body fat that puts a high insulin demand on the body, which deteriorates blood glucose regulation further over time. This is why fat loss should be at the top of the list, rather than just lowering blood glucose and HbA1C.

You would be able to know better how well your body is managing its blood glucose through individual blood glucose testing, while fasted and after meals, in order to correlate your HbA1C results.

Are you "cured"? I don't believe so, even though your doctor will remove the diabetes diagnoses from your records. Your HbA1C is still high. It should be below 5.0 and again, you need to check your blood glucose to see what your highs and lows are. Continue losing body fat, if you have more to lose, as that is really the only guarantee of long term diabetes remission.

5. I dropped 150 lbs. so far but my doctor keeps freaking out over my cholesterol.

Your doctor will always make a big deal about your cholesterol. Always. There's no getting around that. The only thing you can do is allow them to have their freak out and go on your merry way.

Get involved in what your goals are for your own health and have the appropriate testing done in order to truly determine if you are having an adverse health effect from your diet. Dropping 150 lbs. is the best thing you could have ever done for your long term metabolic health. Much more so that lowering total cholesterol.

6. You can eat as much fat as you want when you switch from "keto" to carnivore.

The rule of thumb is a protein to fat ratio of around 1:1.5.

But, this is very individualized, so your macros are very important and of course, results should always be the top determiner of what you follow.

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