Another copy of a comment that I have commented on at forum.lowcarber.org regarding eating habits
corsair915 posted:
Hey Folks I need some helps and advice. I am back on full time low carb after a maintenance period of semi- low carb. This return to serious low carb was a choice to clean up my diet and build muscle. I have gained lean mass very well on low carb. I do martial arts with heavy weapons and train heavily 12 hours/week. I have a prize fight in one month-3 grueling hours of full on contact with big weapons against guys who are a foot taller and twice my weight-all highly trained. I’m ready! And in just 2 weeks of true low carb I packed on 4 pounds of muscle-WOOT!
Now the bad news-I burn 400-800 calories/day and am deeply in ketosis. All is going well with diet, hydration, electrolytes, supplements, even energy levels. I allow up to 50 grams of carbs on days when I train more than 2 hours and I am doing well with sufficient energy. But I really have to FORCE myself to eat anything at all. I am not only without hunger, but food is a total turn-off. I just don’t want to eat anything. No nausea, fatigue not out of proportion to the level of training. But I just don’t feel like food has any appeal at all. Except for pork rinds, hahaha!
Before you all wanna kill me, seriously I need to ask if you can helps. I will not be able to repair my beat-up 49 year old body without food! Anyone been through this? Anything you found that stimulates appetite? Everything I eat tastes awful from the ketones. Just breathing heavily during a workout is like having my head in a bucket of nail polish remover. Water runs through me in an hour and I need to drink a lot so it makes me full and doesn’t helps the food intake situation. Will this pass?
I’ve had a lot of experience and success at low carb for 4 years but this is new territory for me. Any advice and suggestions are truly appreciated!
My insight:
Hi corsair915,
The two keys here are variety, leaning towards the things that you like to eat and quality, making sure that they’re protein and fat rich but there is something else I noticed as well. You say you’re without hunger which isn’t that unusual for someone in ketosis but I noticed also you are drinking protein shakes. My only observation there is that you are sacrificing the pleasure of eating natural protein for consuming, shall I say, an unnatural protein.
No one and I mean no one can convince me that the protein contained in those types of supplements are superior to the protein, vitamins, minerals, trace elements and more importantly enzymes that we get when we eat protein from a natural source.
I suspect that if you tackle those three things you’ll find that your appetite returns but also you will give your body the opportunity for it to tell you what it needs on a day by day basis.
Hope that helps,
Mark