Another terrific resource from Dr Andreas Eenfeldt and the Diet Doctor website (dietdoctor.com).
The Low Carb for Beginners guide (PDF) is available on their website at this link. It is an excellent overview of how to do a low carb diet, including a list of foods to include and those to avoid.
From the DietDoctor.com website — Dr Andreas Eenfeldt interviews Dr Jason Fung, a Canadian nephrologist who treats obese and diabetic patients. In addition to LCHF, Dr Fung often recommends fasting as an effective part of the intervention.
I found a good resource booklet (PDF) from the 2 Keto Dudes website — The Ketogenic Diet in a Nutshell — at booklet.2keto.com.
2 Keto Dudes are Carl Franklin and Richard Morris, and their website is at www.2ketodudes.com. They do a weekly podcast that I have been listening to for a while and it is really good. Whether you are just curious about the ketogenic diet or already on board with it, the podcast is very informative.
Carl and Richard also recently launched a discussion forum at www.ketogenicforums.com and it is another good resource to check out. Lots of good information and conversations happening there.
Some people who start a low carb diet experience what’s called the “keto flu” or the “induction flu” in the first few days while the body is adapting to burning ketones instead of glucose. You can think of it as kind of a carbohydrate withdrawal.
The common symptoms are:
Many people have reported good results in minimizing these symptoms by doing the following.
I did not experience this in 2013 when I went on the ketogenic diet, but my 15 year old son had a couple of days in June where he felt crummy. This was about 3-4 days into the switch to removing carbs from his diet. It passed quickly and then he felt really good with a lot more energy.
In any case, do some research on this and decide for yourself how to prepare for the transition. You might even do a gradual reduction of carbs rather than diving in all at once.
My 15 year old son is a big boy, about 6-1. As of June 20, 2016 he weighed 233 lbs, and he was carrying some excess weight that he wanted to lose. He loved eating all the usual carb-rich foods like pizza, chips, and sugary soft drinks.
He decided he wanted to do the keto diet along with me and his mom, so on June 20 he got on board with us, ditched the carbs, and started eating what we were eating. We check his weight every Monday morning to see how things are going.
Here is his progress so far. The first week usually shows the greatest weight loss as some of this is water.
Updated: November 1
| Date | Weight | Weekly Loss (lbs) |
Total Loss |
| June 20 | 233 | ||
| June 27 | 225 | 8 | 8 |
| July 4 | 220 | 5 | 13 |
| July 11 | 216 | 4 | 17 |
| July 18 | 215 | 1 | 18 |
| July 25 | 213 | 2 | 20 |
| Aug 1 | 212 | 1 | 21 |
| Aug 8 | 211 | 1 | 22 |
| Aug 15 | 207 | 4 | 26 |
| Aug 22 | 202 | 5 | 31 |
| Aug 29 | 200 | 2 | 33 |
| Sep 5 | 200 | 0 | 33 |
| Sep 12 | 196 | 4 | 37 |
| Sep 19 | 192 | 4 | 41 |
| Sep 26 | 194 | -2 | 39 |
| Oct 3 | 188 | 6 | 45 |
| Oct 10 | 188 | 0 | 45 |
| Oct 17 | 187 | 1 | 46 |
| Oct 24 | 184 | 3 | 49 |
| Oct 31 | 182 | 2 | 51 |
Aside from the weight loss he is feeling much more energetic. We can tell from his behavior too—he is just happier and more animated than he was before. He also told us that he feels awake more quickly when he gets up in the morning. It used to take him a while before he would talk to anyone in the morning.
This is the spreadsheet where we enter the data every Monday morning.
If you are considering a LCHF / keto approach, a good resource to start with is “A Ketogenic Diet for Beginners” on the DietDoctor.com website.
Introduction to keto, benefits, what to eat, ketosis, side effects, and much more are there for you to become acquainted with a lifestyle that is transforming the health of many people.
Scroll down the linked page and read up on the benefits of Ketosis: weight loss, improved mental focus, T2 diabetes reversal, increased physical endurance, and improved metabolic syndrome.
Great article at the New York Times by Dr Sarah Hallberg and Osama Hamdy.
Rather than cutting on perfectly healthy organs to deal with weight loss, why not use a dietary approach on a dietary problem: cut out the foods that contribute to obesity.
Excerpt from the article:
It is nonsensical that we’re expected to prescribe these techniques to our patients while the medical guidelines don’t include another better, safer and far cheaper method: a diet low in carbohydrates.
Once a fad diet, the safety and efficacy of the low-carb diet have now been verified in more than 40 clinical trials on thousands of subjects. Given that the government projects that one in three Americans (and one in two of those of Hispanic origin) will be given a diagnosis of diabetes by 2050, it’s time to give this diet a closer look.
When someone has diabetes, he can no longer produce sufficient insulin to process glucose (sugar) in the blood. To lower glucose levels, diabetics need to increase insulin, either by taking medication that increases their own endogenous production or by injecting insulin directly. A patient with diabetes can be on four or five different medications to control blood glucose, with an annual price tag of thousands of dollars.
Yet there’s another, more effective way to lower glucose levels: Eat less of it.
This is one of many LCHF success stories on the DietDoctor.com website.
Linda Vikström was 40 years old when she started LCHF in 2012, and by August 2014 she cut her weight in half, going from 309 pounds to 154 pounds. Her husband dropped 88 pounds. See the rest of her story here.
A couple of excerpts from the article:
I started eating LCHF in March/April 2012, and have lost 154 lbs. (70 kg) and my husband 88 lbs. (40 kg). The weight loss took 18 months, and we have kept the weight off since then without any effort, and we feel great and we don’t need to go hungry. I got my life back, and have so much energy and am able to be active with my children in a completely different way than I could be before.
I remember when in my job as an assistant nurse, I had to take a lady in her 80’s out for a walk; an alert and healthy lady for her age, but she had poor vision, so my job was to join her so she wouldn’t risk falling. When I walked with her, she was the one who had to adapt her pace to mine as I couldn’t keep up with her. I was in my 30’s and she in her 80’s. Not even then did my warning bells sound.
Neil lives in England. The NHS (National Health Service, UK’s health care system) failed him with the old dietary guidelines, just like many U.S. docs are doing with their patients.
You can read Neil’s story below, here’s a summary.
This two-minute clip from Dr Ted Naiman’s presentation is a brief explanation of the obesity epidemic. It is about the activity of insulin in the body. For most people, this is resolved through diet — not pharmaceuticals or exercise (although exercise is important).
Click the image below to view the video clip on DietDoctor.com. For the full video presentation, and a lot more great information, you can become a member of the Diet Doctor website for $9 per month. I am not affiliated with the site in any way, but I am a paying member and it is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to understand more about how a low carb approach can transform health. Highly recommended.
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