Fat for Fuel and ketogenic fat loss ideas.....

Today's post:  Thursday, 7-27-2017

Last week I had ordered the book listed below from Amazon about ketogenic fat loss and related health benefits:

* Fat for Fuel: A Revolutionary Diet to Combat Cancer, Boost Brain Power, and Increase Your Energy is a new book by Dr. Joseph Mercola which came out on May 16, 2017.

* I was quite disappointed with it.  It was extremely technical and not at all well set up to use as a guide to fat loss.

*It was even less usable for people who know to add or maintain their strength and muscle mass.

*That said, it did have some valuable information that was new to me:

After fasting, the follow up week or two to add to or maintain any fatloss, will only work well if you stay in ketosis. AND a bit too much protein will turn off ketosis as effectively as too much carbohydrate intake.

Also, if you stay in ketosis with some protein in the week or two following a fast, you can get better fat loss results if you eat most of your food in a way that you have a 12 hour or more fasting period each day.

And, if you eat enough more protein and carbs while still eating in a low carb way to stop ketosis but maintaining that practice of eating most of your food in a way that you have a 12 hour or more fasting period each day the week or so after that it can help prevent rebound fat gain.

*On a totally different topic, he presents evidence that taking an iron supplement and/or having too high a level of iron in your blood in men and in post menopausal women not only can cause heart disease, it tends to cause fat gain or prevent you from losing it. 

Since I’ve had less success with my efforts at fatloss and I HAVE been taking a multi with iron, I found this personally interesting!

I’d heard of the possible link to heart disease and that giving blood could reduce the risk.

But he also says it has a negative effect on efforts to lose fat you keep off.  The even more valuable thing he has in this book is how often to give blood to prevent this effect.

I did give blood a couple of times for heart disease prevention.  But I had no clue how well this worked or how often to give blood to get this effect.

He has the answers to those questions in this book!  You can get a blood test for iron as ferritin.  And his book has how often you need to give blood each year based on your test results.

*I’ve also been reading both Mike Matthews and Ben Pakulski’s work on how to add muscle AND lose fat.

Both have gotten excellent results.

Mike’s advice is less complex to follow but Ben’s advice is based on a good bit more of the technical knowledge in Dr Mercola’s book and is more compatible with it.

*It looks like adding this new information to what I’ve been trying may already may make my efforts more successful.

When I fasted and seemed not to lose as much fat as I wanted and then gained it back that may well have been because I didn’t create ketosis or didn’t do it enough when I fasted and then didn’t have a week of eating while maintaining ketosis or the daily fasts for several hours a day or have a week eating low carb without ketosis but with the daily fasts for several hours a day.

Dave Asprey of Bulletproof has had good results with just his coffee and butter and his MCT oil with no food during the first part of the day and his main meal at lunch time.

For me, and according to the studies I’ve seen, many other people, eating the main meal at breakfast and very lightly if at all in the evening to get this several hours of fasting a day works better.

For a four week period for fat loss, something like the following may work:

1.  A week of fasting with ketosis.

2.  A week of only moderate protein intake at breakfast while maintaining ketosis and the daily fast in the evening.

For those two weeks, do the same intensity but far less repetitions or weight in my strength training due to the protein restriction.  This maintains the training of my nerve control and I think will prevent muscle loss.

3.  A week of my normal high protein intake but maintaining the daily fast in the evening and a low carb eating style.

4.  Then a week of high protein all day eating with some carbs for muscle gain.

*It will be interesting to see how well that works when I try it.

*Meanwhile, I’ll get my ferritin tested to see how much iron I might need to remove by giving blood.