Ketosis and Burning Body Fat

Alternate Title:  Picture Worth More Than 1000 Words.  In speeches and interviews lately, Jimmy Moore has become fond of mentioning a few things (well, in addition to name dropping Robb Wolf)

• Nutritional Ketosis as being somehow unique from run-of-the-mill, what, biochemical ketosis.  NK requires blood ketone testing as this is more accurate.  And,
• Ketosis is evidence of burning body fat which he wasn't doing prior to this experiment.
• Ketones and blood glucose being reciprocal

Tis true that measuring blood ketone levels is more accurate than urine ketones.  For one thing, urine levels vary widely with fluid intake, frequency of urination, etc.  Urine ketones are also "spill-over".  This is why nobody is ever busted for DUI on the basis of a urine test.  But just because urine levels are not necessarily representative of one's ketogenic production doesn't mean a person is, or is not, in NuttyK.  But let's presume that to be truly NuttyK one must also be a prick-er.  

On the right sidebar are Jimmy's NuttyK experiment results from Days 180-209.  Top to bottom we have AM glucose, AM ketones, PM ketones,  and body weight.  Do YOU notice any correlation?   Here's what I see:

1. Looking at the top two graphs, there's no reciprocal correlation between glucose and ketones.  This should be no surprise as fasting glucose won't be below a certain level (unless your dead), and below a certain level of carb consumption is not related to nutritional state.  His blood glucose varied from 71 to 94 -- max reading is only 32% higher than the minimum (or 132% of min).  Ketones OTOH, varied from 0.4 to 5.3 -- that's a max reading of 1325% of minimum.  But there are stretches when ketones are relatively stable and lower where BG was up and down and vice versa.  No discernible correlation.
2. Ketones in general are erratic, vary from morning to night (and presumably throughout the day). If anyone out there is considering measuring their blood ketones but isn't quite the prick-er Jimmy is, they might want to consider that this reading is going to be pretty useless to them.  For example, on the day Jimmy fell out of NuttyK (less than 0.5) with a 0.4 morning reading, he posted a respectable 2.0 in the evening.  Now imagine you are going to test every third morning, or imagine you don't have a bunch of money you want to literally throw away on testing so you only test once a week.  What Jimmy's n=1 is showing is that if you're going to be a prick-er, you need to do it frequently to get any sort of idea of whether or not you are NuttyK, and even in doing so, you pretty much are gathering useless information because ...
3. There is NO correlation with weight loss.  Indeed in the first half of the month with pretty steady losses Jimmy's ketones, AM & PM, are on the low side, and when the trend started rising, Jimmy gained weight.  

Look folks, if you want to try this, don't bother with the blood meter unless you have money to waste. Even if that is the case, consider donating that money to a food bank this holiday season instead.  If you must,  pee on sticks.  It's what Jimmy did during his 2010 NuttyK eggsperiment.

March 16, 2010 Low Carb Menu:  Fat intake has been close to 85% by design with protein around 15% and minimal carbohydrate. Other than the calories being around 2,000 daily, this diet closely mimics the diet used to control seizures and prevent cancer. I suppose if I had issues losing weight eating this way, then I'd keep the same 84/15/1 ratio of fat to protein to carbohydrate and simply lower calories slightly. But this is working pretty well right now and I physically feel smaller than I did when I started this last Friday. That's a good sign and it's those kind of intangibles that I'll be using to measure my progress on this plan.

March 17, 2010 Low Carb Menu, One thing is for certain, my body is definitely back into ketosis and it's so awesome to see that happening on the Ketostix.  That's what eating a high-fat, adequate protein, low-carbohydrate diet will do for you!

{Note:  Yes, I know those links won't work, but this is what Jimmy wrote in his now scrubbed-from-the-internet menus blog about his eggfest in 2010.} 

I will revisit the eggfest after the holidays, there are some gems in that fiasco from which we learn a few things worth highlighting.  But for now I will remind folks that this was Jimmy's response to (then) hitting the 289 lb mark after LC Cruise 2010.  He lost over 20 lbs in the first two weeks, and almost 30 lbs in a month eating nothing but eggs, cheese and butter.  So, we've been here before folks, and if comments on Regina Wilshire's latest post on good old fashioned ketosis vs. NuttyK are any indication, the tide is a turning in regards to the spectrum of reactions (as opposed to his heavily censored comment section) to these whacky weight loss schemes.

And now, it's Christmas Eve day!  That means cooking for moi.  Only for 4, but it's a traditional feast so it takes a while ... well, pretty much all day!   I'll probably pop in here in between toiling and boiling and whatnot.   Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!