Current status

Toned down the fats a bit, earlier I was trying to eat more, to see if it made me feel better or not. I think it made me gain some fat, or I at least stopped leaning out a bit, so I reduced my fat. To fuel my lifting I've been adding in more carbs. Right now I'm cooking a soup for my lunches which is made from a 3-4lb butternut squash, with onions, green onions, mushrooms, hot peppers (habanero, jalapeño, chili) and spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, caraway, black pepper). Also drinking 1-2oz of cranberry juice diluted in 0.5-1L of water, which supposedly helps liver function, but it's also a good way to increase my water intake.

My guess is that I'm eating somewhere around 200g carbs now, especially on WO days. Trying to stay at 200g or a little less on protein. Probably my target is 180g, but I kind of find it hard to eat less protein. Meat tastes good, and it comes in 400g packs, so two of those, and that's all the meat I can eat in a day. I want to eat meat for lunch, otherwise people might think I'm vegetarian - happened once, when I was eating 300g+ protein a day, I had a good chuckle.

Current Diet: 1-29-2012

Reflecting back on my past 3 or so months I've been living in Germany, I've realized that I've departed quite a bit from what I was eating back in the states. Primarily the frequency and amount of vegetable consumption has gone way down, and the quality of the meat that I eat isn't as good as I'd like it to be.

The main vegetable matter I eat is sauerkraut, spinach, and canned tomatoes, in order of frequency, with all of them being organic. I'm eating organic ground meat (pork and beef mix), organic eggs, Kerrygold butter, and organic/Kerrygold cheese, along with the occasional conventional meat, although lower fat. I eat fruit probably once every two weeks, and I am experimenting with eating more carbs prior to my workouts in order to have more glycogen. I've started doing this as I realized I fill out a lot when I eat more carbs, which shows me that I am fairly glycogen depleted (in muscles) normally. Makes sense due to my pretty low carb diet.

Typical Day:

• Breakfast - 300g ground meat or 6 eggs cooked in 50g butter, with Sauerkraut, coffee [60g P, 50-70g F]
• Lunch - 300g ground meat in broth with spinach, coffee [60g P, 30g F]
• Dinner - 300g ground meat or 6 eggs in 50g butter, sauerkraut [60g P, 50-70g F]

Totals: 180g P, 130-170g F, negligible carbs

Calories: 1900-2250

Recently I've been buying some cheese, and eating 200g a day, adding roughly 30g P and 30g F, and 390 calories to my daily totals.

For lifting, I eat two potatoes the meal prior to lifting, and then two post. On Saturdays I lift around 10:30am, so I've been experimenting with eating two more potatoes on Friday night.

Looking at my totals, I'm a little surprised to see the calorie totals around 2000, I was under the impression I was eating around 2500 or so. 

Of Low carbs and High carbs

To summarize this post: I ate some ice cream two weeks prior, it caused some fat gain, I'm doing keto for 2-3 weeks and then adding carbs back in once I start lifting again (80-140g carbs a day).


I've recently been reading some articles from Danny Roddy and Anthony Colpo who are both firmly in the camp of higher carb diets. Anthony frequently makes fun of the LCing people, especially LCing athletes.

Reading their differing views also makes me question my views on carbohydrates, which changed a couple of months ago. Previously when I was in keto, I thought that eventually my body would become "keto-adapted", and that I would regain my athletic ability that I initially lost when switching to keto. I never regained my performance, and after getting a little freaked out about hypothroidism by reading some stuff by Matt Stone, I decided to add some carbs back in.

From that point on I've decided that for those engaging in athletic activities, be it strength or endurance, that carbs are a good thing. But I also think that for many people, who don't engage in athletics, that carbs aren't necessarily warranted in their diet. Like many LC people recommend, 60-100g would be fine for them to consume. I also think that there is some truth to the whole "metabolically damaged" thought out there, that some people's insulin receptors are not quite working optimally, or would handle a high carb diet well. I feel that going LC, then VLC/keto possibly reduced the number of insulin receptors throughout my body, and therefore made my body more insulin sensitive. This is all speculation of course. Warm fuzzy thoughts to help me sleep at night.

Anyway, before leaving for Germany I decided to add a greater amount of carbs to my diet, that instead of just eating fruit, I'd add in probably a little under a half-pound of potatoes a day, which I later switched to ice cream. The ice cream idea was still in my head from earlier, when I experimented with ice cream PWO, and also from hearing Danny Roddy talk about how Ray Peat eats ice cream (it seems to me that Ray is the only person Danny reads due to how often he cites him, but I guess it's no different than other paleo bloggers who can't actually do their own first hand research - but I digress).
       I did this for around two weeks I'd say, with some intermittent lifting (throwing rocks, one back day complete with romanian deadlifts, sumo deadlifts, and 600lb tractor tire flipping), although my activity level was definitely lower than normal. At first I noticed that my muscles seemed to be denser, that they took up more volume, but that could of been myself seeing what I wanted. After the first week, I noticed that my abdominal fat was getting a little more soft, and by the end of the second week there was definitely more of it there.
        I didn't really change the fats in my diet, if anything I reduced them trying to keep my calories the same, but since I didn't record anything, this was just qualitative, instead of quantitative.

After that, I decided that I was going to go keto until I find a gym in Germany, which will probably be two or three weeks, as I want to find a gym close to where I'll be living (although finding a serious gym is proving difficult - I definitely got lucky last time when I was living in Freiburg). Probably my main goal is to lean out a bit, kind of undo what the ice cream did, but a second is just to be in keto. If nothing else I like the idea of running off fats, maybe for the shock factor I get when I tell people what I eat, or when they see what I cook. Then there is also the high energy in keto that I've grown to like. For me, it's fun to be in keto.
    One thing is that I kind of see the dangers in being in keto all the time, being that it can lead to hypothyroidism and other such disturbances in hormone levels. That's also the one reason I've decided to do it for a short time, that I think that the problems of keto can't really manifest themselves over the course of two or three weeks.
    Once I find a gym and start lifting, I'll be adding carbs back in, around 50g every morning for breakfast, and another 50g post workout, with maybe around 30-40g coming from other vegetable sources. I will very rarely be eating fruit, and won't include it in my diet until it comes back into season.

Current Diet

Right now I'm eating “lacto-paleo”, that is paleo, except with added dairy. I've noticed that I tend to have a little more mucus production (I've got to blow my nose once a day) than before, but I'm willing to deal with it in order to eat dairy. I've been trying to keep myself in keto since the beginning of may or so, so I've been taking in 50g or lower of carbs a day. I got turned onto some dangers of keto by one of my friends who knew someone who follows the Perfect Health Diet, and I decided to include a small sweet potato post workout now. I then happened upon keto myths over at ketotic.org, showing that I really don't have to worry, although I'm still keeping that post workout sweet potato.

I'm toying with the idea of bringing myself out of ketosis for a day or so over a weekend, just to break up my keto period, although with my occasional drinking of cider and such, I probably don't have to worry about my keto period being long and unbroken. The 'bringing myself out of keto' might resemble the Anabolic diet from Stronglifts, where I eat fat/protein during the week (keto), and eat carbs/fat on the weekends, while limiting my protein (not keto). Having 'fat days', where all I eat are fats, sounded appealing to me, and I'm thinking about trying that. The only thing I'm wary about is restricting my protein, and having it affect my recovery time from lifting. I'll have to get around to reading more about leangains and such, although I'm thinking about implementing a two-meal-a-day plan, where I have a breakfast and a dinner that makes up all my food. I've also been having days where I just don't feel like eating, so I might just do some fasting instead. We'll see.

Anyway, for some samples of what I've been eating:

One Day - a typical work day:

• Breakfast - 3/4 of lean conventional meat, 6oz of grass-fed cheese, 2 TBS pastured butter on brussel sprouts
• ~100g protein, ~84g fat
• Lunch - 1 cup shredded, dried unsweetened coconut, 6 TBS organic heavy whipping cream
• ~20g protein, ~76g fat, 12g carbs (from coconut)
• Dinner - 3/4 of lean conventional meat, 6 oz grass-fed cheese, 2TBS pastured butter on brussel sprouts
• ~100g protein, 84g fat
• Totals - 220g protein, 244g fat, 12g carbs, roughly 3100 cals

Today - kind of went heavy on the cheese:

• PWO (10:00am) - protein shake with half&half (rather tasty), one sweet potato, 2 TBS pastured butter, 5oz conventional cheese, frenched green beans and conventional catfish
• ~120g protein, ~90g fat, ~60g carbs
• Meal 2 (4:30pm) - 4oz conventional Brie with brussel sprouts, 6oz grass-fed cheese
• ~60g protein, 100g fat
• Meal 3 (8:45pm) - 2 TBS pastured butter and brussel sprouts, 4 oz grass-fed cheese
• ~24g protein, ~64g fat
• Totals - ~204g protein, ~254g fat, ~60g carbs, ~3350 cals

Turns out I've got a thing for melted cheese. Today I cubed up the cheese and heated in the microwave, pretty good stuff. I've also melted cheese on pork rinds before, which turned out to be a really great idea, but I really plow through those, so I don't keep pork rinds stocked at my place anymore.

I'm thinking about going back to a more meat and butter/coconut oil based keto, and go away from the dairy, since I'm pretty much using cheese at a main fat source. I tend to think that I feel more 'clean' on just meat, butter, and coconut oil (and also some veg).