The guy who is selling the crowd on IF uses supplements with Branched-Chain Amino Acids and Essential Amino Acids during his daily fast hours — He uses Purple Wraath. This gets the aminos in your bloodstream so that when your body needs them, it doesn’t strip them from your muscles.

This helps avoid some of the problems you discuss.

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/ketones-and-ketosis/ketosis-cleans-our-cells/

Anyone else know anything about this?

Cheers
Scott

Thanks!

http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020127shelton.III/020127.ch31.htm

The whole page is about the great benefits of fasting, which I believe in, but the weight gain part scares me!!!!

Im trying to lose the last 20pounds (Im following paleo kind of diet – eating the real foods, no crap…)

So in order to speed up my fat loss, Im considering to include some fasting days = I wanted to do 3 days water fast, but I dont want to gain it all back (or even more).

Or would it be better to start fasting when I reach my goal weight ???

thanks

Yes, your brain can use ketones. But after getting used to glucose for fuel, it needs some time to fire up the ketone machinery. That is why high carb kids actually feel lousy in the morning if they don’t have breakfast. But after a week in ketosis, you will feel much better because the brain burns ketones. And ketones actually provide 28% more energy than glugose (like higher octane fuel in your car). Your hart actually PREFERS ketones to glucose.

When your body is set to use glucose, your body needs 200 grams of glucose to keep your brain and kidneys working when going into ketosis. Your liver is perfectly capable to provide this through gluconeogenesis.

But when your body changes over to using ketones, the need for glucose decreases to 70 grams. So staying in ketosis requires that you keep your carb intake below this level.

Even your muscles will use the ketones in the first few days of ketosis. But, due to muscle protecting considerations, after a week your muscles switch over to burning triglycerides (fat). Training in this ’state’ will increase the number of mitochondria in your muscle cells, thus increasing your energy producing capacity.

Why is ketosis so goor for weightloss? Firstly, gluconeogenesis can make 0,7 grams of glucose out of 1 gram of proteine. The process of gluconeogenesis needs energy to run, and this comes from fat. In using this fat, the ketones are produced. But part of the ketones are wasted in urine and breath. So this whole process is fairly inefficient. How is that for weightloss?

But it gets better. In ketosis your bloodsugar level is very stable. So insuline is not needed in large quantities (some insulin is available all the time). This prevents the hunger pangs. This is supported by the fact that fat and protein in your diet bring quick satiety. And protein helps to further stabalise blood sugar.

But now it get even better. Part of the aging process is the build up of ‘junk-protein’ in your mitochondria. When your body thinks you are starving – because the ketones have been all over the place for some time- it starts looking for ‘disfunctional protein’. So what happens? A process called CMA starts to clear the junk protein from the mitochondria to be burned for glucose. I have even read that ‘fresh cancers’ (when the cancertissue is still soft) are turned into fuel for gluconeogenesis, because yor body recognises the cancer a disfunctional protein. This sounds logically, but for now it is speculative.

And I am not done yet! Another part of aging comes from oxaditive stress on your DNA and cellmembranes. As you may know, digesting of glucose requires oxigen (it actually oxidises when turned into ATP). But burning fat and ketones does NOT require oxigen. So adopting a low carb ketogenic lifestyle reduces the oxidative stress and delayes aging. (heard of calorie restricting diets for mice? I reality the part of diet that was restricted whas the carbs!).

Have you ever heard that human growth hormone decreases with age? It does. And we also know that 80% or more of the growth hormone is produced during sleep. To be precise, during DEEP sleep, one of the sleepfases. And we also know that deep sleep deminishes with age. Is this a coincidence?
But guess what? The ketogenic life style will increase your deep sleep (as part of total sleep) with 25%. This should be enough to keep growth hormone production on ‘youth-level’.

Besides, testosteron is produced out of cholesterol. Gorging on the lovely saturated fats is very good for testosteron production, especially when combined with resistence training.

Did I already mention that cancer cells lack mitochondria and thus need (lots of) glucose for rapid growth? So low carb is low cancer?

Parkinson is the result of a defect glucose metabolism in the brain (diabetis III). Braincells that don’t get energy die. Ketones provide an alternative fuel for the brain- not dependent on the glucose metabolism. Parkinson patients react very well to ketogenic diets. But I say that the ketogenic diet prevents parkinsons disease.

People with a stroke often have brain damage due to hinderd bloodflow. But that is because a glucoseburning brain needs a constant supply of oxigen through the blood. A ketone burning brain doesn’t mind as much when the bloodflow is interrupted for a brief moment- it doesn’t need oxigen! So the ketogenic diet is protective in many ways.

Of course you know that the ketogenic diet decreases triglycerides in the blood and increases HDL cholestrol, thus reducing the risk of cardio vascular disease.

I think I will stop here. Fasting and low carbing is about health and longevity. Oh yes, and do seem to lose weight on it.