Month: July 2018

I think alot about conventional wisdom and where it may have come from.

Things like “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” and “Don’t eat too close to bedtime.”

Many people dismiss these things in favor of trying to trick the body by skipping breakfast but this usually just means they eat later in the day. I tend to think, like many traditional things, these statements are based in a deep truth and an intuitive insight into human physiology.

Both of these statements make me think about how our hormones work at various times of the day. Things like insulin sensitivity and cortisol patterns come to mind.

This study discusses diurnal variations in insulin resistance. While they are able to measure that we are less insulin sensitive in the evening, it isolates two possible reasons and cannot determine which it is.

Diurnal Variation in Insulin Sensitivity

It is the opinion of the researchers that it could be either the expression of clock genes in muscles that increase fatty acid metabolism and reduce the need for glucose in muscles (peripheral insulin resistance) or the increased level of FFA (Free Fatty Acids) in blood later in the evening.

I can totally buy into the clock genes theory as you can see that we have many internal clocks that guide the way we react to and secrete various hormones. What I don’t buy is the idea that the higher level of FFA in the blood is causal. Yes there are more FFA available because the subjects were eating fat throughout the day. Of course. Just because there are FFAs at the scene it does not make them the perpetrators of the crime. Just like fire fighters being at a fire does not mean that they are starting the fires. It is more likely that the muscles become insulin resistant at night for good reason and not as a result of eating all that naughty fat. All 30% of it. It would only make good sense that if the muscles are happy using fatty acids for fuel and glucose is better used elsewhere, like in the brain and red blood cells, that the body would be smart enough to regulate it’s fuel partitioning to be most efficient.

Also the difference in FFA available right before breakfast was barely different from right before dinner.

0.68 μmol/mL before Dinner
0.52 μmol/mL before Breakfast

This is literally nothing. It is like saying a pool is more full after putting a drop of water in it. Of course it is technically more full but does this make any meaningful or measurable difference? Nope. This is reaching for something that is not there.

The graphs of FFAs in this study do show an interesting thing. Almost immediately after eating a meal of 55% of total energy as carbohydrates, 15% as protein, and 30% as fat, the availability of fatty acids as a fuel drop like a stone. This demonstrates the power of insulin to clear fatty acids from the blood as an available fuel source. They also appear to stay low for at least 4 hours after a meal when you eat this way. Essentially if you are eating every 4 hours and you are eating that level of carbohydrate, you will never be able to utilize fat as fuel. No wonder people are getting fatter and fatter.

I believe that there is an alternate reason for why we move towards insulin resistance at night. If we think back to hunter gatherer ancestors, they would not have a whole lot of excess adipose tissue available. If they needed to survive only on fat from dusk until dawn they may have a problem. Since they likely did not have a large amount of carbohydrate available at all times they would likely be pushing all consumed carbohydrate into muscles when they are insulin sensitive and quickly reverting to fatty acid metabolism. This would be fine during the day as they could forage and hunt for food to keep energy up. During the evening however, if all they used is fat reserves they could quickly deplete their fat stores before morning and have trouble maintaining a healthy level of fat and die off. This would place adequate stress for adaptation. That adaptation could be the ability to reduce insulins effect of clearing glucose from the blood in the evening in order to have a supply in the blood to use throughout the evening to reduce the necessity of utilizing only fat as fuel and preserving the valuable reserve fuel source.

Being insulin resistant at night makes sense on several other levels as well. The brain is hungry. It uses approximately 600 calories per day. If we were completely insulin sensitive at night and just pushed all glucose into muscles and liver, the brains use of glucose would quickly deplete blood glucose resulting in hypoglycaemia. This would result in a rise in cortisol in order to stimulate the pancreas to increase glucagon in order to bring blood glucose back to a safe level. A rise in cortisol and glucagon would not result in a very peaceful sleep. The glucagon would start flooding the system with energy from stored glycogen and fatty acids alike. This would quickly wake us up and quickly deplete stored glucose and increase fatty acid metabolism which would further reduce fat stores. In todays situation that may not be a bad thing since most of us have plenty to spare but back then this would surely mean a quick death.

So back to what this means in relation to the conventional wisdom I stated at the beginning of this article.

As the study I linked to clearly shows, we are more insulin sensitive in the morning and less insulin sensitive at night. Since this is true and when we are insulin sensitive we are better able to take in and distribute nutrients, it only makes absolute sense that the best time of day to eat a large nutrient dense meal is first thing in the morning. This also means that when we are less insulin sensitive we are less able to distribute incoming nutrients. With that being true, the least beneficial time to eat is in the evening.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and eating too close to bed can result in weight issues. There are clear reasons why people used to have no problems with weight. Long before we had all these studies and we relied on conventional wisdom we seemed to have a more intuitive sense of how to eat. Now we seem to rely too much on results of this study or that study and it is only resulting in more confusion and poor health. On the flip side, if we start looking into why conventional wisdom may be right, we can see that the intuitive nature of our ancestors seems to be guided by ur physiology and perhaps our intuition is a much better guide than the latest nutritional study.

More studies showing breakfast is king.

Larger breakfast leads to expression of weight loss genes

Eating larger breakfast results in dramatically reduced BMI compared to skipping breakfast

Keto On!

Coach Jack

If you want to get your Ketogenic Diet back to a place of Common Sense and learn how to heal your metabolism you can get personalized coaching from Coach Jack.

Check the details here:

Personalized Coaching with Coach Jack

Disclaimer: Any information given is for information purposes only and is not meant to replace that of a Medical Professional.

First Let me introduce myself. My name is Jack. I am the creator of CSK. After being keto for over a decade and trying the many various versions and methods I have found what I believe to be the best solution for long term weight loss that is sustainable. Let me be the first to tell you that anything I say is based on the latest research. As research is ever evolving my thoughts and practices will change. I am sure there are many things I am wrong about and if I am wrong I will be the first to tell you and change. Those who don’t change will never succeed. You become stagnant and expire. 

You can read more about my journey here:

Coach Jack’s Journey

If you want to get to know me a little better you can listen to the interview I did with The Optimal Performance Podcast:

Coach Jack’s Interview with The Optimal Performance Podcast

Check out my Blog with all kinds of articles on Keto and nutrition. I detail all of the experiments I do here:

Common Sense Keto Blog

You can check out my coaching services here:

Private Coaching with Coach Jack

If you have never done keto before start here:

Beginner’s Guide to Keto

If you are not new and are trying to break a stall or just find the optimal way to do keto while maintaining a healthy metabolism continue reading. 🙂

As the name suggests, we are about one of the most elusive things in the diet world. Common Sense.

Does that mean that we do keto like most people would think is common sense? Absolutely not. All of the recommendations I make here come from what I believe is an ability to take all of the research and literature and parse out what actually makes sense from a physiological standpoint as well as an evolutionary standpoint and form it into something that is very effective. I take every strategy I come up with and test it on myself and if it works I start using it to work with actual clients. I see real world results with it and if for some reason it doesn’t work I figure out why and modify the approach. I do not stick with things that don’t work. I am constantly testing, researching and changing as I find more effective ways to approach health and weight loss.

Here at CSK we believe in the idea that calorie restriction has not worked in the last 50 years and never will. We have been restricting more and moving more than we ever have yet we are more sick and more fat. Fitness and diet are a $3.7 TRILLION Dollar a year industry yet nearly 1/3 of the worlds population is obese or overweight compared to 13% in 1970. Guess how much the fitness industry was making in 1970? Not enough to even be able to find any info on. We believe that health comes from giving the body what it needs to thrive. What the body needs is adequate energy and real food along with the appropriate vitamins and minerals to manage that energy. What we call eating adequate energy is eating to your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure).

Below is an article on why Calorie In Versus Calorie Out (CICO) has never worked and never will. It gets into the hormones that control fat storage and fat use actually work:

Why CICO doesn’t work

We believe that the majority of that energy should come from Healthy Fats. That means fats that come from nature without processing. If you can squeeze something and oil comes out then it is healthy fat. Veggie oils do not meet that criteria.

We believe that hormones dictate weight loss but that calories still matter. We don’t “burn” food. We break it down chemically and metabolize it into energy of various forms. We can actually waste energy if we take in more than we need We are not a closed loop machine. We are a complex organism. That being said, calories are a decent proxy for energy. The issue is that we can change how we process calories so losing weight does not mean we have to starve. We can reverse diet or cycle from low to high. 

Read more about how we can waste energy through ketones here:

Ben Bikman on wasting energy through hormones

We also believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion. If you have an opinion contrary to the methodologies of the group and have some solid evidence to back it up, post it up for discussion. If the discussion is productive and civil, it will stay. If it degenerates it will go. If you choose to believe or follow something contrary to our methods please feel free to do what you feel is best. Just don’t recommend it to our members. Keep it to your self. I am sure there is another group out there that will be happy to host your beliefs. If the evidence is solid and shows something different to our thoughts then our thoughts will change. 

One thing that will not be tolerated is the comment “Show me one peer reviewed study”. Unless you are prepared to cite studies that show your idea to be true. If I hear this, without any evidence IN THE FORM OF STUDIES AND NOT ARTICLES BY SOMEONE ELSE, you will be removed from the group. I have yet to have one productive converstation with anyone who has ever said these words. There are hundreds of studies showing the efficacy of everything. Even how carbs are vital. Anything I speak of I have researched and found numerous studies for. If you want to see the studies go google them for yourself like everyone else does. Then there is the problem of how peer review can be biased. More often than not, the writer of the paper gets to recommend the reviewers. Do you think the writer will recommend reviewers who agree or disagree with their hypothesis. Even if they didn’t get to choose them what are the odds that the people that review it would not have the same biased opinion about nutrition. Here is an article about peer review and how biased it actually is from the perspective of an actual PHD researcher who has published many papers using peer review.

Peer Review is not really a gold standard

If you have no interest in broadening your perspective and losing your dogma, kindly move along. There are many other groups out there for you. No need to be here. We will gladly let you speak so long as it is in good will and not demeaning to anyone. We expect the same from you in return.

DO NOT ASK OTHER MEMBERS TO PM YOU or PM OTHER MEMBERS!! It is not ok to solicit in this group. If you are not soliciting anything then whatever you have to say can be said in the open. That is what a discussion group is for. What you have to say may help others so don’t hide it.

If you are looking to “Coach” others privately than start your own group to do so. Any members posting anything to the effect of “PM me” will be removed.

Exogenous ketones are not something that will be discussed here. Exogenous ketones are not beneficial to Keto. Unless you have a neurological disorder requiring a constant high level of ketones and you cannot, for some reason, maintain a ketogenic diet then they are a waste and not part of a proper ketogenic diet. If you want to waste your money on them fine but any mention of them and you will be banned from this group.

Sweeteners of any type are not part of our strategy here. If you want to use them fine but they will slow your success. We don’t use them and I’ve posted many articles about why. There is one in this post down below. Do not discuss them or ask why we don’t discuss them. Any post relating to sweeteners will be deleted. Despite the “fact” that you lost weight using them does not make them good. People have lost weight eating the potato diet and the twinkie diet. Still not good and not something that should ever be done. If you had cut sweeteners your journey may have been easier. Maybe not. You’ll never know. If you want to use them fine. We don’t need to hear how great they are. 

Sweeteners are not for weight loss

So how do you start CSK?

Start with getting your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). This is the amount of energy you need for the day:

What is TDEE?

Next you start eating the most important meal of the day:

Breakfast is and always was the most important meal of the day!

Bad stuff happens when you skip breakfast

Don’t fast. Eat 3 meals a day!

Fasting was a necessary evil not a weight loss technique

Fasting is misunderstood and misused

Fasting and Metabolic Damage

Fung says fasting doesn’t slow metabolism, except it does.

Doc shows fasting tanks thyroid and testosterone

Exercise induces autophagy in humans fasting has never shown this

Here are some additional links and articles that can help yo on your journey. Do some reading and ask plenty of questions. That is how we learn.

15% off Keto test kits

What is Keto

Good and Bad of the veggie world:

Why am I stalled, my hair falling out and my finger nails cracking?

Why not being hungry is not a magic benefit of Keto to help you Cut calories!

More on why your lack of hunger is not a good thing

Why Fat as a lever is wrong and why BPC doesn’t cause stalls:

Why and how are ketones so high:

Why don’t you need MOAR BROTEIN!!!

Medically supervised 382 day fast shows us why our need for BROTEIN is bullshit. (I elaborate on this in the “Why don’t I need MOAR BROTEIN!!!!” post above.)

Great blog on why LDL is not increased by saturated fat and why we can’t trust science to tell us the truth about nutrition.

There you have it!!

Keto On,

Coach Jack

Alcohol and weight loss are not synonymous.

It is a fact that alcohol is a toxin and has to be metabolized before any other macro. This results in any other energy in the body to remain in storage while you use the alcohol.

Despite this fact there are always these people:

“Well I drank all the booze last night and I woke up 2lbs lighter so drinking is fine.”

There is a very simple explanation to this but first I have to ask a question.

Who here has ever gotten drunk and not woke up the next day thirsty enough to drink a river?

I would venture to guess everybody has experienced this. That is the answer to the reason why you can drink and wake up lighter.

You have not lost weight. You have dehydrated the hell out of yourself. It is well known that alcohol is a diuretic. It reduces the bodies ability to retain water by cutting off the production of ADH (Anti-Diuretic Hormone).

It has been shown that drinking 8oz of alcohol results in losing as much as 32 ounces of fluid. Odly enough, 32 oz of fluid weighs 2lbs!!! Imagine that.

So yeah, you can drink and “lose weight” the next day but this is not fat. It is water and as soon as you hydrate yourself you will quickly and efficiently gain this “weight” back. The goal of keto is health and fat loss. Not artificial “weight” loss.

The Diuretic effects of alcohol

Keto On!

Coach Jack

If you want to get your Ketogenic Diet back to a place of Common Sense and learn how to heal your metabolism you can get personalized coaching from Coach Jack.

Check the details here:

Personalized Coaching with Coach Jack

First let me tell you what the heck lipodystrophy is:

Lipodystrophy syndromes are a group of genetic or acquired disorders in which the body is unable to produce and maintain healthy fat tissue.

Why is this bad and why is getting fat protecting us?

Fat is a way for us to store energy for use later or when there is no other fuel source around. It was how we were able to survive harsh winters and long dark nights and how we evolved to deal with food shortage. For those with this disorder, they are simply unable to store fat. Sure they can sometimes look very lean and fit but in reality they can be very, very sick.

With no way to store energy these poor folks end up with excess energy floating in the blood in both the form of fat and glucose. This is toxic to the body. Those with Diabetes know the dangers of chronic high blood sugar. People with lipodystrophy quickly become diabetic and need insulin and they do not require small amounts, the require massive doses. Sometime more than 10 times what the average type 1 diabetic needs. Lets look at why that is what it means.

First lets look at a normal person and how energy is dealt with. In previous posts I’ve talked about what happens when we eat a meal of mixed macros. I’m only going to get into fat and carbs for simplicity sake.

1. Carbs get broken into glucose and other sugars which goes to blood and raises blood sugar levels which stimulates insulin.
2. Fat gets stored in fat cells.
3. Glucose gets pushed into liver and muscle for storage with any extra getting turned to fat for storage

This cycle goes on and on in the normal person keeping energy levels stable in the blood and the person none the wiser. Now if we start exceeding the energy usage for the day and we are keeping insulin high the fat we eat can’t be used and the liver and muscles have no more room for glucose storage so we end up accumulating fat.

Now if we look at people with Lipodystrophy, they eat a meal and this happens:

1. Carbs get broken down into glucose and other simple sugars which go to blood and raises blood sugar which stimulates insulin.
2. Fat……Wait, fat can’t go to fat cells since they don’t have the ability to create new fat cells. Triglycerides start accumulating in blood. That can’t be good. High blood triglyceride is bad.
3. Glucose gets pushed into liver and muscle for storage with any extra getting turned to fat for storage….Wait, they can’t create more fat and there is already elevated levels of trigs in the blood so what happens to this glucose? It sits in the blood keeping levels high.

This now looks exactly the same as insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes doesn’t it. That is because it is exactly the same thing.

Have you ever noticed that some people can get extremely obese and not get diabetes while others seem to be very lean and still get diabetes? Why is that? Well it comes down to the persons genetic ability to create new fat cells. Everyone is different in this aspect. Some people can create them very easily while others cannot. This is why you see some people who are able to eat candy all day long and stay lean while others can’t even smell candy without gaining weight. I can’t say with 100% certainty that my theory is right but it seems to make sense. If your ancestors grew up in a place of extreme energy availability like a tropical climate with lots of fruit, veg and land for animals then they would have never developed the need to store fat or create new fat cells to any degree so the stress would have never been in place to push those epigenetic buttons and evolve that way. Now if you look at people that came from an extreme environment where there was no vegetation and food was scarce, it would make sense to evolve the ability to store whatever energy you could get your hands on for an emergency. It seems logical that stressors would push evolution. The stress of starvation would push the buttons for evolving the ability to easily store energy while not necessarily evolving the ability to quickly burn off energy. On the flip, the stress of constant intake of food would push the buttons for a fast metabolism and the ability to quickly dispose of energy while not necessarily evolving the need to store energy.

Type 2 diabetes is essentially the inability to create new fat cells. Once you reach your genetic capacity for fat cell creation the cells don’t want any more fat and the body doesn’t want to create any new cells. This is insulin resistance. The body will start to compensate by making more insulin. The greater insulin load forces the body to create new fat cells. Eventually the pancreas cannot make enough insulin to overcome the new genetic capacity to create fat and there is still a need to get the energy out of the blood so the person is now required to inject exogenous insulin. Again, the increased insulin load forces the creation of new fat cells and the person can now get the energy out of the blood and they can no get fatter again. It is a vicious cycle.

People who suffer from Lipidystrohy are just very unlucky in that they have none of the genes needed for easy fat creation so they are pushed into the above described state very quickly in life.

So why doesn’t everyone that can eat candy all day without getting fat immediately get, or ever get, diabetes and some get it easily? Well that comes down to gene variations and what genes you got from your parents and their parents. If for whatever reason you were in a line of people that had mostly the genes for not being able to create fat cells while also not having the fast metabolism genes and your family was unlucky enough to keep reproducing with other people with similar gene patterns, you end up with multiple copies of two forms of genetics that make you unlucky enough to have both poor ability to dispose of energy while also a poor ability to make fat to deal with the excess energy. That is the unlucky genetics lottery that results in this condition. On the other side you have people who have been successfully cross pollinated if you will, with different genetic adaptations so they will have some ability to create new fat cells as well as the ability to quickly deal with the extra energy via a fast metabolism. Genetically gifted people we call them. These are the ones we really do hate. 🙂

So to summarize:

– Creating fat easily is a genetic adaptation to help us to have energy reserves for hard times.

– Since there are no more hard times and too much high carb/high fat energy sources this protective adaptation is now a huge problem.

– People that don’t have the ability to create new fat can actually be at a higher risk of getting diabetes, among other chronic diseases, despite not being obese which makes it even more important for lean people to be aware of their energy intake and specifically what kind of energy they intake.

As always I hope this makes sense to everyone. It makes sense in my head but that doesn’t mean anything really.  It gets messy up there sometimes   🙂

Some links to some info on what I discussed here:

Personal Fat Cell creation threshold

What is Lipidystrophy

Keto On!

Coach Jack

If you want to get your Ketogenic Diet back to a place of Common Sense and learn how to heal your metabolism you can get personalized coaching from Coach Jack.

Check the details here:

Personalized Coaching with Coach Jack

What happens when you don’t eat or only eat fat in the morning.

This is straight from my Human Anatomy and Physiology course. Not opinion. Not conjecture. Just science.

We have two states.

1. Fasted/starvation
2. Fed

The signal for the fasted/starved state is:

1. When the body is fueling only on fatty acids or ketones.

The signal for the fed state is:

1. When amino acids are detected by the gut
2. When insulin is increased as a result of carbohydrate ingestion

The body does not differentiate between using dietary fatty acids or fatty acids from adipose (stored fat). When you wake up in the morning you will have used all glycogen stores during the overnight fast. Insulin will be at its lowest. You are using strictly ketones and fatty acids for fuel.

This is the fasted/starved state

The body does a couple things in the state in the morning, or any time of day potentially to those that are not yet very fat adapted:

1. Hunger is reduced so it is not causing hunger pangs as this would be distracting to the hunger gatherer who desperately needs to focus and hunt so not to waste away. The lack of hunger and the focus and energy are mostly due to adrenal hormones being released with the dawn effect.

This is why most people are not hungry when they wake up.

2. Cortisol spikes to increase energy through gluconeogenesis, the breakdown of lean tissue and fatty acids for the creation of new glucose. This energy is so you can hunt and get food. It is not meant to live off of so you don’t have to eat. It is meant for you to have energy to get food so you can eat.

What happens when you just skip breakfast?

Sure you continue to use fatty acids which is good and your GNG is down regulated so you are preserving lean mass. That is great but you are also dropping metabolic rate to preserve your storage for a potential famine. This happens when you are not eating. The longer you don’t eat the lower your metabolic rate drops. If this didn’t happen the lean hunter gatherer, which we spent the majority of our evolution as, would quickly burn through their minimal stored fat and have only lean tissue left to feed off of. This would mean a quick death from starvation.

So upside you get to burn more fat but downside is you do use some lean mass and you slow your metabolism. This is just an evolutionary necessity. We are an efficient machine and our one mission is to stay alive whatever the cost and slowing of the metabolism is a great way to do that in the fasted/starved state.

What happens when you have just a fatty coffee?

As previously stated, the body does not differentiate between using body fat or ingested fat. You are in the fasted/starved state in the morning and everything that comes with it. If all you do is have fat when you get up the body simply continues the state by spiking cortisol and starting GNG and lowering metabolism even further. If you don’t eat something other than fat in the morning you will be missing the best opportunity to spike insulin. When it is beneficial. This further reduces insulin sensitivity rather than the goal, which increasing insulin sensitivity. It has been proven in numerous studies that people that eat breakfast have better glucose control and this is related to our circadian rhythm.

We are very insulin sensitive in this state as the body is always prepped to take in nutrients in the fasted/starved state. Doing so will signal the end of the fasted/starved state and signal gene expression for increasing metabolism. There is potential that this is a good window to eat carbs with no effect since we are the most insulin sensitive at this time. I will be testing this in the near future. It is possible that this may not work for those that are very insulin resistant because the glucogenic load of the carbs and the protein may increase insulin to levels that will keep fat utilization shut down for long periods so these people may be better off to eat a more ketogenic meal at breakfast and keep the insulinagenic properties of the meal lower. That is something that each person will have to test.

So to summarize:

We are in the fasted/starved state in the morning and in this state hunger is suppressed, adrenal hormones are released and GNG starts to give us energy to hunt and metabolism starts to slow to preserve lean mass losses.

If we don’t eat we just let the above process continue.

If we eat protein, and potentially carbs, at this time we reset the system and not only prevent a lowered metabolism but increase gene expression for a high metabolism and better insulin sensitivity.

The below links will take you to research showing that eating breakfast results in better BMI and the expression of genes for weight loss and insulin sensitivity.

Larger breakfast leads to expression of weight loss genes

Eating larger breakfast results in dramatically reduced BMI compared to skipping breakfast

Keto On!

Coach Jack

If you want to get your Ketogenic Diet back to a place of Common Sense and learn how to heal your metabolism you can get personalized coaching from Coach Jack.

Check the details here:

Personalized Coaching with Coach Jack