Bored Druid Thread: The Next GenerationFollow

Just came home from an eight hour lecture on neocortex philosophy.

I think I was clinically dead for a good 20 minutes at some point.

Whiny bastards.

























I took a nap this afternoon, it was delightful.

Just take fish oil, lol. Less disgusting, and probably more comprehensive.

I take fish oil too. Well, fish oil pills anyways.

I'm doing a keto diet, and I've lost 11 lbs in about two months. Not great weight loss, but I've also lost a couple inches from my belly and an inch off my waist. Progress is progress, and this is a diet I can stick to with only occasional cheats. So yeah, the goal is to do about 80% fat, 15% protein and 5% carbs.

That's essentially what I'm doing.

I suppose I'm technically doing a low-carb, high-protein diet.

But it's more than I've cut or reduced my intake of carbs that aren't offering me much else. I don't really eat pasta, but I get plenty of fruit and vegetables. So I get carbs, but I try and limit them mostly to natural sugars and fiber. I probably should be trying to get more starches (beans and such), though.

I take fish oil to check my fats. I eat mostly lean proteins (which works out well, since chicken breasts have more-or-less always been my go-to for meat). Lots of vegetables.

And I don't stress over occasional treats, like chocolate.

I'm mostly just trying to make everything I eat count. Either nutritionally or emotionally.

I have a stocky body type, so it's naturally inclined to carry some weight.

I'm down to somewhere around 180 lbs, now, which is about 81.6 kg. My weight hasn't really dropped much in the past month or two, I think, but that's probably because I'm adding muscle at around the same rate I lose fat. Then again, I haven't really been tracking it obsessively. I think I've been around 180 for at least 3 months, but I've gone down an inch or two in my waist, I've been eating under my daily caloric expenditure, and I've been more aggressive in my workouts. So I assume it's working.

My biggest irritant right now is excess skin.

I haven't had too much of a problem sticking to it. There's been quite a few studies in the last few years that have shown that low carb diets are best for weight loss and healthier in general. Even Sweden has recently come out in support of a low carb diet, to the point where the government is recommending it for the general populace. I still eat a fair amount of veggies. Not every day, but more often than I did before.

Oh and digg, be careful about eating too much protein. If your protein intake is too high your body will take the leftovers and turn it into sugar. It's called gluconeogenesis.

Nope, but you can put veggies on pizza and that totally counts.

It's more complex than that. Your body needs glucose - it's not the enemy.

This is going to be an annoyingly long post. TL;DR: low-carb diets are fine in the short term, but you NEED to up your protein with them or you body will break down your muscles to get fast-burning energy to replace the carbs. And there's little reason to use a low-carb diet when you don't need to lose weight (because it'll severely limit the development of lean muscle mass, in the best case scenario, or be actively destroying it, in the worst).

I obviously believe that low-carb diets have their place. But the thing is, they need to be relative to the situation. A low-carb diet should NOT be your standard diet for your general health maintenance. It should be a short-term solution to another problem, and it's own shortcomings need to be addressed.

I'm on a low-carb, high-protein diet because I'm trying to minimize my muscle loss while I cut fat. As soon as I get my body fat percentage down to a point I'm happy with, or I decide to focus more on bulking my muscles, I will increase my carb intake.

You are absolutely right, that protein gets converted to glucose. But glucose isn't a problem in and of itself. Glucose is a problem when its being created in excess of your caloric needs.

Let me put it this way - your body's energy needs aren't constant. Sometimes you are using more, and sometimes less. Your body's ability to access fat reserves, however, has a pretty low cap on it. It just can't get at them that quickly, because they were designed to sustain, not for burst activity.

So whenever your body has to spike your energy levels (because you're stressed, your heart rate is up from exercise, etc.), it's going to be looking to burn any fast-burning molecules it can get its hands on. In the best case scenario, these are ingested carbs. In a great deal of the time, these are proteins saturating your muscles.

The high-protein portion of my diet exists for two reasons.
1. I've reduced my carb intake to force my body to use more of my fat reserves for its daily maintenance, which means that it's going to be burning my proteins whenever it needs burst energy (for example, when I'm lifting weights, which is why you up your protein intake before and/or after your workout).
2. Because I'm trying to, at best, build muscle or, at worst, maintain my muscle levels (and I'm very actively damaging my muscles), I need high protein saturation to rapidly replace burned proteins in the muscle and to use them to repair/rebuild new muscle connections).

If you are on a low-carb diet and you haven't upped your protein intake, your body is very actively degrading your muscles and some organs. This is a VERY bad idea, and you should NOT be doing it. Your protein requirements will be less than if you aren't working out, but they are still higher than if you were eating a normal level of carbs.

Fats can't be burned anywhere close to the speed that carbs or proteins can. And without protein to replace the burned ones, your muscles will shrink and weaken.

Once I'm no longer cutting, I won't need to reduce my carb intake to force my body to use fats. So you up your carb intake, to prevent your body from using proteins as much as possible.

And as long as you stay under your caloric needs, you won't gain weight. Though, of course, if your goal is bulking you have to eat over (you can't gain mass if you burn off everything you eat).


Realistically, any healthy diet is going to include foods that provide energy at different rates. Because you want each meal to be providing relatively constant energy until your next one. And if you know you're going to be doing a burst activity, you know you need to spike your energy (or your body will break down the things you don't want it to instead).

The goal is to cut all of those things proportionally to maximize fat burning. If I eat a ton of fast-burning stuff, it's going to log excess energy and shut down the fat conversion process. But then my body starts burning proteins, because I didn't eat slow-burning foods, and it doesn't have a stream of energy of fats to help out.

But if I only eat slow-burning stuff (like fats), then my body's always going to be breaking down other fast-burning molecules in my body, because the slow burn is a constant and can't really account for all those stupid little energy spikes that happen when you needed to jog a block to make your bus, or because your heart is pounding because your crush asked you out or your boss screamed at you, or because you went to the gym, etc.

Spoiler tag that ****.

Spoilerit makes you strong

Chop the cauliflower up finely, boil it in milk (won't take long as the cauliflower is all in little bits), strain it but keep some of the milk then put the auliflower through the blender with some of the milk from boiling and some butter. Tasty, quick and smooth cauliflower puree.

Also, start watching Masterchef Australia. Especially the masterclasses. It got me a lot more interested in cooking and learning new techniques.