30 day Ketogenic Prophylaxis

Starting on May 6, I started a 30 day ketogenic diet experiment. I'll let you google if you're interested in what exactly that means, but the gist is less than 20g of carbs a day, HIGH protein and HIGH fat.

My reason for wanting to give this 30 days is that I heard Robb Wolf talk about sort of active cancer prevention on a podcast a while back and I logged it away in my head. He mentioned the glucose dependent nature of cancer, and how limiting sources of glucose/glycogen from the body for an extended period, it might help to augment and assist cancer treatment. Essentially take away the cancer's main fuel source. The rest of the body is really good at maintaining homeostasis, but the cancer needs that readily available glucose fuel source to continue to thrive. He also mentioned how it might help mitigate any fledgling growing cancer in a prophylactic way. He mentioned it might be useful to do a 5-10 day fast, or a 30-60 day ketogenic diet once a year for those concerned with cancer. Well, as you know, I'm a survivor or Hodgkin's lymphoma, so I'm interested in prevention interventions where I can get them.

I made my plan public on May 6th. The BookFaces is a great way to hold yourself publicly accountable. That is, just as long as you're not friends with a bunch of lazy, boring, uninspiring people. I happen to be friends with my role models.

The ketogenic diet is easy. Lots of meats, veggies that grow above the ground, nuts, cheese, avocados, fish oils, coconut oil, and so on. Keeping the carbohydrates to an absolute minimum. Eventually the body switches from using glycogen/glucose for a fuel, and switches modes to ketone bodies. There is a transition period about 3 days in that is probably the worst part of it. I personally got some headache, fuzzy head, fatigue, and grumpiness during this time. No big deal, I just try to limit my conversation time with people so I don't get too grumpy.

I was perfect keto through Friday 17. Sean of CMTT invited the wife and I out for sushi. There should be a rule in dieting that says, "stick to your diet, unless it makes you an unsociable asshole" or the "never turn down free sushi" rule. I'll keep working on that one. Anyway, this dinner threw me out of ketosis (it only takes a little bit). So the next day I had some beers, and tried to get all my carbs into a 24 hour period. I guess the first week was a cyclic-keto week. No big. Back on the wagon.

The way I'm monitoring my progress is with KetoStrips (Amazon Link). You get to pee on a little strip, wait 15 seconds, and see how you're doing. My boy Mike D. turned me onto this last year when he was talking about the luck he had with keto.

Today is the 14th, and I'm back in ketosis after my cheat day ending Saturday. Same symptoms as before.

Observations while in ketosis: I feel a bit buzzy. Almost like I'm wired up on some stimulant. I also feel like I think a bit sharper. It's easy to fantasize about a pizza (beer for me), but if you stay busy it's a non-issue. Sort of an icky taste in my mouth as well. All normal as far as I can tell. I've been doing a food log on MyFitnessPal to try to get an idea of my macro-nutrient intake and total caloric intake. I'm probably running about 2000 Cal a day. So a slight deficit.

Going to Keto from paleo is a pretty easy transition. I had been doing paleo for 5 or 6 months leading into this, so no big deal. It was actually nice to throw some cheese back in the mix.

Weight training is possible on Ketosis, but I wouldn't recommend glycogen depleting jogs/runs/biking/crossfit/BJJ type stuff. When I was doing Jits and MT last year, I was doing the 4hourbody diet, which is a cyclic low carb diet (lots of beans and low glycemic foods), and having a helluva time performing. Turns out I was being a dummy and trying to do highly metabolic work while not having the fuel to sustain that. If you're doing that, you're going to need some sweet potatoes and a banana after training. If you do attempt this stuff on keto, expect your performance to suffer.

I don't expect to get stronger in the next month, but I'm ok with that. I'll go through my movements and maintain what I've got before I hop back onto the paleo carbohydrate train.

EDITS:
Starting weight: 197.6
5/14/13 192.6 (carb depleting will shed 3-5 lbs of water, for me)

5/22/13 190.0
5/28/13 189.6

EDIT:
I've had to stop this experiment in light of some reading I was doing on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Warburg_effect

I don't want to inadvertently cause cancer to grow by giving it fuel (a few kinds of cancer cells use ketones to fuel growth, but they're not the most prevalent kinds).

So going forward, I'm keeping to a paleo gig. No wheat/ Dairy/ Legumes. I will be very vigilant about no wheat. I probably will let legumes sneak in from time to time, since chili is easy to make, cheap, and filling.

The good thing about keto is that you tend to melt fat. I lost almost 10 lbs effortlessly. Granted, probably 4 lbs of it was water (you retain something like 4oz of water per gram of glycogen in your system, but don't quote that number), but you can see how someone who was major overweight could get quick losses using this method. If someone had like 50+ lbs to lose, I think I'd recommend a ketogenic diet with a carb refeed every 2 weeks or so to kickstart the hormonal signalling (cyclic keto I guess). Anyway, case closed on this deal.