Diet, Macronutrients, and Metabolism

[ttt]

I'd like to talk about diet -- high carb/low fat vs. low carb/high fat. I spent about 10+ years eating low-carb (sometimes keto, sometimes not), as I thought that was healthy. The highest glycemic food I would eat is cabbage. Last year, I did the unthinkable -- I went on a high-carb fruitarian diet, where my macronutrient ratios were about 75/12/12 carbs/protein/fat, and most of what I was eating was fruit (and also a lot of raw vegetables). I felt amazing! My sleep was a zillion times better, and I had tons of energy and was finally able to build muscle! But this is not a nutritionally balanced diet, so I don't think it's good long term, and it worsened my already-existing candida, so I stopped after 8 months.

I've experimented with different macronutrient ratios since then, and right now, I'm about 60/15/25 carbs/protein/fat. My carbs are still mostly from fruit -- no starches or refined sugars. I've noticed that every time I reduce my carbs, I feel crappy -- poor sleep, low energy, etc. Why this confuses me is because so many people rave about feeling better on keto.

I'm wondering if there's some metabolic issue with ME/CFS that makes us unable to become fat-adapted, where we need carbs in order to be able to produce energy? I guess I'm trying to figure out why I don't do well with low-carb when so many people love it.

 

[drob31]

I've been thinking a lot about this too. I don't think it's strictly a ME/CFS think, but a co-morbid of having thyroid/adrenal/metabolic issues.

With that being said, nearly every alt-medical source recommends low carb, paleo, high fat.

I've also used this formula for years, but the issue with low carb and high fat is that it drives cortisol way up, and forces your body to use it's own resources to try to raise blood sugar when you blood sugar is low.

This may cause hypoglycemia if you can't produce enough cortisol for whatever reason. So eating more carbs but with smaller meals and having complex carbs seems to be a better strategy in my opinion.

 

[Runner5]

I eat almost 80/10/10, Vegetarian.

I'm at a 90% recovery. I went and ran 6 miles with my husband this morning along the ocean.

I guess that's all I got to say about this thread before it gets locked ;-P

 

[ttt]

Runner5, how long have you been eating that way? And why do you think the thread will get locked?

 

[brenda]

Low carb high fat gave me, increased insulin resistance, gall bladder attacks, sick pancreas, weight gain and sugar cravings. High carb and very low fat, vegan is giving me my life back.

 

[mattie]

 

[sb4]

I have done some reading on this and have come to the conclusion that both ketosis and carbosis (v high carb, v low fat) can help insulin signaling and undoubtably a bunch of other proccess and thus cause our cells to burn energy healthly again. It's complicated but basically, both ketosis and carbosis mean you release minimal insulin and your cells only have to worry about one macro nutrient at a time. Mixed diets do not do this.

You can of course be perfectly healthy on a mixed diet but if you mess up your metabolism/insulin signaling/leptin/whatever somewhere along the line, then it appears going for one extreme or the other provides an enviroment for your body to correct the issue easier.

I also think this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective as I would assume that for most of evolution, we have been eating, fruit/starch, and meat separately. Meaning our bodies are used to dealing with one at a time.

The problem is we are all individual and are dealing with different forms of this disease. Every attempt of mine so far to go super high carb has caused a drastic worsening of POTS symptoms.

I would warn you, that if I'm right about this, you don't really want to be consuming much more than 10-15% fat with your meals as this is when your mito start generating a lot of ROS through reverse electron transport and your body starts treating it as a mixed meal.

 

[ttt]

Thanx, sb4. So do you think that as long as macros are kept separate from each other (e.g., mostly carbs at breakfast, mostly fat/protein at lunch, mostly carbs at dinner, and a fat/protein bedtime snack), this would work optimally? Or do you think it's more useful to look at it in a bigger picture/overall diet way, where if you eat carbs, you shouldn't eat more than 10-15% fat in your diet overall? I do follow food combining rules pretty well, and that seems to help.

 

[sb4]

@ttt I think it's best to play it safe with doing the big picture (in your case high carb all day very low fat) as it gets complicated. For example if you eat a mixed meal, some/all(???) of that fat is stored in your intestines until your next meal (or bed time) when it is released into your blood for your body to deal with. The carbs on the other hand go into the blood straight away (or at least 1-2hrs after consumption.

This means if you had a high fat meal for breakfast then a high carb meal for dinner, the dinner meal would act like a mixed meal, potentially causing problems.

it is important to say that I haven't been able to properly test this theory due to my intolerance of carbs. But when you look at other peoples results, and the seemingly contradicting testimonies of high carbers vs high fatter, and the contradictory study results (high fat better vs high carb better, sat fat bad vs sat fat good) the contradictions start to disappear.