Fat People Shouldn't Fast Their Way Into Ketosis

Man. What a crap weekend. I mean, really, crap going in and crap coming out. Thursday night started a bit of a snowball for me. After going almost a week with zero change on the scale or the tape measure, I was seriously questioning this ketosis thing. I wasn’t feeling as good as I have been, and I haven’t seen the quantifiable changes either and I was ready for a break. So I broke. We ate texas roadhouse and ice cream. To the tune of 3900 calories consumed between 5pm and 7pm. Then Thursday I had cookies and pizza. Then Saturday I had more ice cream and Chick-Fil-A. Then Sunday I thought I was getting back on track. It’s easy just fast.

Fasting is a really sucky way to get back into Ketosis. I’m sorry for all those experts that say “I went to a party and had some drinks so I kicked myself out, but I fasted the next day and got right back in. It’s easy.” Bullshit. It’s not easy. Maybe it’s easy if you’ve never had an unhealthy relationship with food, but for us normal fat people, it’s not that easy, and I want to tell you why.

I’ve worked really hard all my life to make myself insulin resistant… That’s bad. It means I’m basically diabetes. I have now done the ketogenic diet for 5 weeks, minus two exits from ketosis for a total of 4 days out of 35 of being out of ketosis. So what happens when this guy has carbs? My body reverts to using them for primary energy. Coming out of ketosis is not that big of a deal – the biggest difference between being in ketosis and being on a low-carb diet that limits your insulin response is purely the energy carrying ketones that ketosis provides, but you can still burn fat and lose weight while you’re out of ketosis – I hope that’s obvious. So when this guy eats a ton of carbs and his body starts using carbs again for energy, it seems to make sense to fast for a day to try and get back to ketosis.

Here’s the problem, once the carbs are all used up there still aren’t any ketones available yet for energy, so I got real tired. I felt sick to my stomach and light headed. When you’re hungry, tired, and light-headed you make bad decisions. So I had ice cream. Again.

People, don’t take short cuts. A day of fasting may have gotten me back into Ketosis 12 hours faster if I had stuck with it. But the pot-odds on this bet are just not worth it. When you’re jumping back into ketosis, do it slower. Eat your fats and take in your calories and let your body do what it does best. It might take a few hours longer to work, but you’re not going to make bad decisions with your empty stomach.