Carb Blockers on Keto - Day 3

I'm pretty stoked this morning to find after yesterday's non-mover, I've lost 2.3kg - or if you are into lbs that's just over 5lbs! During the  early stages of ketosis there is a lot of water weight that comes off,  but that's a sign of quite possibly being in ketosis - still,  after eating pasta? It's still too early to say whether this is working of not but so far so good.

I haven't doesn't anything worth mentioning during the day in regards to food - just keeping track of my macros.
However I did learn that using carb blockers is somewhat frowned upon by the elitist keto snobs that hide in the well protected bunker that is the Internet.
If you decide to use carb blockers then maybe it's for the best if you don't mention it in certain corners of the Internet. #DontFeedTheTrolls I guess.

Dinner
Chili was on the menu tonight,  with 60g of brown rice that hopefully will be blocked by the tablets,  leaving around 1g of simple carbs to be absorbed.

Feeling pretty demotivated due to the flame from 'the community' but happy that this is working!

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Carb Blockers on Keto - Day 2

I woke up this morning with the same metallic taste in my mouth. I was pleased as this was a sign of being in ketosis. However, weighing myself gave a rather disappointing result. Exactly the same weight as yesterday!  KCKO, right?

I was focused on my carb intake yesterday and didn't pay any real attention to my other macros. It's easy to assume that you are doing fine but the reality is that unless you count each and every gram you consume you have no idea where you are at. I think I probably blew my protein goal yesterday, and maybe even exceeded my fat allowance. This could have all contributed to sustaining my weight.

Calculating my macros so far gave me a bit of a shock.  I had 3 eggs and 2 rasher of bacon for my breakfast,  and a BPC when I got to work. I'm looking at 3.5g carbs so far (vs 20g) which is fine,  protein at 35.15g (vs 114g),  but a fat count of 101.51g (vs 191g)! This was quite an eye opener for me!

Lunch
After reviewing my macros I decided that a lower-than-usual fat lunch was in order,  so I opted for 6 Babybel cheeses, and some Pepsi max.

I have a strange feeling of contentment and euphoria mixed with sleepiness and a headache. Having this headache for over 24 hours now I'm thinking it's the dreaded keto flu.

By mid afternoon my head had cleared and I got a burst of energy - dancing to bloodhound gang's bad touch in an office job kind of energy.  This was great. Another sign of being in ketosis.

Dinner
After last night's shambles I thought I would try and play it a bit safer and go for spaghetti bolognese. I'm a massive fan of pasta and it's such a massive part of me to give up for keto. I decided to go for a double tablet sized portion. 80g of brown spaghetti came in a few carbs under what the tablets allegedly block. Minced beef,  100g of chopped plumb tomatoes, and about 30g of grated mozzarella brought me pretty much on the dot with each of my macros. I couldn't have planned it any better!

I've always turned my nose up at brown pasta because,  well,  it's brown. It didn't look tasty. Oh how wrong I was! Tasted amazing,  and probably more food than I needed to be full.  Maybe next time I'll reduce the spaghetti. I'm really eager to get to sleep tonight so I can see the results on the scale tomorrow morning.

Gross stuff after this.
Im slightly reluctant to write this as I know that friends and family will be reading,  but #ForScience, right? The side effects are listed as flatulence and diarrhea. I have not yet experienced this. Quite the opposite in fact. Thought I'd mention so it was mentioned for the sake of mentioning.

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Carb Blockers on Keto - Day 1

I'm currently not in ketosis and moving into ketosis has a short period of hunger, which is why I like to (re) start the keto diet with my evening meal. This is so I eat, sleep, then eat again shortly after waking - I'm not going for long periods awake being hungry while my body changes over to burning fat for fuel. However, today I just wanted to get started at breakfast

Breakfast. I cooked some Gordon Ramsey style scrambled eggs - 3 eggs, butter, Crème Fraîche - and 2 rashers of bacon. All washed down with a bulletproof coffee.

I used 35g of Crème Fraîche in my eggs, 100ml of double cream, and about 10g of coconut oil in my coffee.

The total carbs for the meal comes to roughly 3.5g, all of which are simple carbs. I didn't take a carb blocker as the complex carbs in this meal were near enough non existent.

Lunch
Lunch consisted of a Snackeroni chorizo flavoured stick of pork salami. These have a great fat:protein ratio and 0.25g of carbs per stick. A bulletproof coffee with only 50ml double cream - 1.3g carbs, and some pork luncheon meat - 1.6g of carbs.

Carbs so far: 6.4g most of which were simple carbs.

I have a headache. Mild, but a headache non the less.

By this point I'm realising how quickly my carbs are adding up. I've never paid a significant amount of attention to my total carbs - I've estimated it. Unfortunately my daily estimates have been 5-6g per day total, and I can see that even by this point I've exceeded that. And I normally have milk in my coffee too!

Dinner
Dinner was the perfect opportunity to try the carb blockers. I decided on fried chicken. I calculated that I could manage 40g of wholegrain flour to make a batter and not exceed what one carb blocker tablet could manage.
So assuming that the carb blockers do what they say they do, then that should bring my carbs today to a grand total of about 7.5g

I've never actually made SFC before, so making this was a first for me. it didnt turn out amazing. I was expecting KFC, but I actually got more like Dung fried chicken. I Jest - its wasn't that bad, but i'm going to try something new tomorrow. And maybe not try deep SFC again any time soon :P

I have a taste in my mouth, its hard to describe, but its one that I associate with being in ketosis. I think some people describe it as "metallic", but it's too early to even think about drawing any conclusions.

So far so good - i'll have to see how my body reacts in the next two hours.

Next:Carb Blockers on Keto - Day 2 http://ketocafe.blogspot.com/2016/03/carb-blockers-on-keto-day-2.html

Thanks for reading! I appreciate comments and feedback, and If you are a Facebook user and wish to keep updated, then hit the like button below!

Carb Blockers on Keto

I'll start by saying that I am not a doctor or a nutritionist. Hell,  I didn't even go to university. With this all in mind please do not take anything you read here as any kind of advice or recommendation. The following posts are purely my thoughts and observations.

Living in a fast paced fast food world,  any diet takes willpower and with keto being a total change to the way you eat it makes it even harder.

I have been finding that following a ketogenic diet is both fun and rewarding - at least for the first few months anyway. On keto your options are somewhat limited. There are only so many ways you can prepare minced beef,  eggs,  or -dare I say it- bacon.

The point that I fail is when the thought of eating a keto meal makes me feel nauseous. I've tried to add as much variety to my meals as possible,  making meatballs to steak to holy grail pizza. Eventually the meals become less than unappealing.

Talking to my Fiancée, she mentioned that her sister was taking some diet pills - Fat & Carb Control tablets. I've taken fat blockers before with little success (and lots of orange greasy diarrhea), but a carb blocker? This interested me.  I did some research and found that the same company did a carb only blocker.

I was skeptical to say the least.  If a tablet could help you lose weight then why was it not mainstream prescribed by the NHS? I concluded that - if nothing else it was probably because the NHS believe that 30% of your daily intake should be from starchy carbohydrates. 

Being inquisitive and always on the look out for an easier life,  I started researching carb blockers. I could find a small amount of info here and there and I began to piece it together. The general attitude was carbs = bad so any reduction was a good thing.  Being on keto we measure how many carbs we eat. It's the single most important factor for being in ketosis or not. Eventually I read (on Yahoo Q&A of all places) that they block 35-40g of carbs. Score. This was the info I was looking for.

There was one other thing that I needed (and quite possibly need to learn more about, at this stage) is the type of carbohydrates these tablets are supposed to block. They say that they only block complex carbohydrates. So what is a complex carbohydrate? Back to researching. So it turns out that you have simple carbs which are single molecules, whereas complex carbs are 3 or more joined together. Simple carbs are things like table sugar. Complex carbs are found in things like grains. Our body needs to break down the complex carbs into simple carbs to enable them to be absorbed.

This raised another question - how do I know which carbs are simple and which carbs are complex?
The nutritional information on packages says "Carbohydrates: x grams.  (of which sugars: y grams)". I made a guess that the former was complex and the latter was simple. The NHS website verifies this was the case.

I started looking at the nutritional information on all of my keto food to see how it was split into complex and simple carbs. I was finding that a lot of keto food was low in carbs,  but all of the carbs were from -presumably natural- sugars. I was slightly surprised by this.  I was hoping that maybe I could block all the carbs from certain foods that I already eat - milk,  for example - but alas,  no.

During a shopping trip I started looking at the nutritional information for products picked almost at random. I found that a lot of foods - flour,  pasta,  bread,  etc - had a high complex carb count,  and a low simple one.  This raised not one,  but two of my eyebrows.

The decision was made.  I had a slight grasp of what the tablets would block,  a rough idea of what foods I could eat, and a vague idea of what I wanted to do. I bought some carb blockers from Boots (UK) for £19.99 for 60 tablets.

Looking over the info on the packaging I saw the line I was looking for that explained that 2 tablets would block around 200 kcal of complex carbohydrates. Bingo. A quick calculation later told me that each tablet would block 25g of complex carbs.

The plan

On keto it's recommended that you keep below 20g of carbs (in general) in order to stay in ketosis. My idea was to instead of tracking the total number of carbs,  I would track the "of which sugars" value,  on the condition that the NET complex carbs was no greater than what the blockers could block (carbs minus sugars).

I did some more reading and found some conflicting information. I read that processed food - such as white bread - loses its complexity due to the refinement process, and becomes a simple carbohydrate. So actually I don't really know my simple carbs from my complex carbs. I'm going to play it safe and buy my high carb foods from a list of foods with complex carbs. As a result of this I decided to buy some sweet potatoes, wholegrain/brown rice,  pasta,  flour.

I have no way of actually measuring my blood glucose levels without buying a testing kit. I'm broke so I'm not going to get one just yet. Luckily I've been in and out of ketosis more times than I care to admit,  so I know the signs. And the obvious one is weight loss. I'll keep you posted..!

Please feel free to contribute to my knowledge on the subject by leaving a comment, and I'll document my progress.

TL;DR
Going to use carb blockers, try stay in ketosis,  and record the results here.

Next: Carb Blockers on Keto - Day 1 http://ketocafe.blogspot.com/2016/03/carb-blockers-on-keto-day-1.html

Thanks for reading! I appreciate comments and feedback, and If you are a Facebook user and wish to keep updated, then hit the like button below!