Hello Health Champions today I'm going to talk about what happened to my weight my body and my blood work when I ate bacon butter and eggs for 30 days and why would I do something like that because I needed to undo the damage from a 10-day experiment some of you may have seen the video where I ate junk food namely the standard American diet for 10 days and in doing that I went from 193 pounds or if you're more familiar with kilos it's 87. 6 at the beginning of the 10 days now that was already a bit higher than my usual ideal weight because this was soon after the holidays and I had made some exceptions and I hadn't quite gotten back on track but after a mere 10 days I was up to 203 pounds and that's 92. 2 kilograms so I needed to lose some weight so I decided for 30 days I was going to do a ketogenic diet ketones are byproducts of fat they are Reserve fuel for the brain that the body develops when you go very low carbohydrates so a ketogenic diet is about cutting down the carbohydrates in my case 30 grams works pretty well some people might be able to do more or less but it's net carbs that I'm referring to which means you take the total carbs you subtract the fiber because fiber does not contribute to blood glucose or does not trigger insulin then you also eat a moderate amount of protein you don't want to overload on protein because that creates a lot of nitrogen waste and then the rest of it will come from fat so relative to most diets and the mainstream view of things this is going to be a very high fat diet but it doesn't mean more fat is better and we'll talk about that it also means that if you eat bacon butter and eggs which it's not the only thing you can eat but it's probably going to mean you eat a lot of saturated fat which a lot of people are concerned about and we'll talk about that too and because my blood work showed a lot of inflammation after the 10 days I didn't just want to lose the weight I also wanted to reduce inflammation and make sure I didn't eat anything that I had food sensitivities to and the two most common food sensitivities are going to be Dairy and grain especially wheat or modern wheat now I did eat butter obviously because I ate bacon butter and eggs mostly but the dairy the big problem with dairy is the Protein that's what people are sensitive to and butter only has Trace Amounts of protein so the vast majority of people do fine on butter even if they are sensitive to Dairy and when you do a low carb diet you're going to get even better results if you combine it with intermittent fasting so I ate omad and two mad for the 30 days which is one meal a day or two meals a day and probably 80 percent of the days I ate one meal a day so over this 30 days I got anywhere from 16 to 24 hours of fasting which means for that time period I didn't eat any food and when you don't eat food that allows your insulin to drop and allows your body to burn fat because you're not putting anything new in but even more important than just losing weight we want to understand what's happening in the body metabolically inflammation wise disease-wise are we moving toward degenerative disease because weight is not really that clear a marker but with blood work we can figure this out so I measure insulin a lot and the optimal range is between two and five and before I was at 4.
8 after I was 5. 7 and this I might add was the first time I've ever been outside of that optimal range and then in a little bit we're going to take a look at what happened how does that compare to after 30 days of eating mostly bacon butter and eggs another important marker for metabolic resistance is triglycerides that's how much fat is floating around in your body because if your cells are resisting then the blood fats stay in the blood if your cells are open and metabolically flexible the triglycerides can make it into the cell so a good range is between 50 and 90. and I started out at 45 even after the holidays but after 10 days of junk I was up to a hundred and one another marker is vldl which is very similar in in function to triglycerides because vldl they are lipoproteins very low density lipoproteins and they carry triglycerides so this curve is going to look very very similar I started out at eight and I finished at 17 after 10 days and again the first time I've ever been outside of the optimal range when you want to measure insulin resistance Homa IR is an excellent marker so what it measures it's a ratio and it measures not just your glucose your blood sugar levels but how hard is the body working at controlling it so if your glucose Rises and your insulin Rises to control it then your glucose may be normal but if your insulin is really high then that's reflected in this ratio so a good number is between 0.
5 and 1. 5 they constructed it so a good number is around one and I went from 1. 0 to 1.
3 now this doesn't change all that quickly so to see a change in just 10 days is still pretty dramatic the next marker is about the liver the liver is super super important it's the metabolic Hub in your body if you will and this AST it's an enzyme enzymes do their work inside cells the only time they end up in the bloodstream is when cells break a little bit of breakage is normal because we have cell turnover they age they wear out they get replaced so a little bit is normal that's the green zone from 12 to 25 but any time that we see numbers higher than that it means that there's more cell breakage that the liver is experiencing stress that causes more cells to break and in 10 days I went from 23 to 31. again I managed to get into that Danger Zone in just 10 days and the second enzyme alt is even more specific to the liver because the AST occurs in many different organs but alt is mostly liver and here I went from 20 to 25 in 10 days and the third enzyme I want to share is called LDH lactic acid dehydrogenase now this is not specific to the liver it's in every tissue in the body because this is how the body makes its emergency fuel when you don't have enough oxygen when you have poor oxygen supply or you're in a crisis your body is going to start breaking down glucose called glycolysis and in the process it makes lactic acid and then this enzyme lactic acid dehydrogenase breaks down that lactic acid so two things can cause a high level of LDH either excess cell breakage or that you have an excess of glucose and or a lack of oxygen so a lot of times this is due to tissue damage like lung tissue if you can't take up oxygen and a normal level is from 140 to 180 and here was the Shocker because not only did I get into the danger zone but I got way way way out of the normal range even the lab range so you the lab range is up to 225 and I got all the way up to 335 and I've done a few videos before you may have seen where I ate 100 eggs and I ate a hundred tablespoons of butter neither of those videos I was very concerned because I understand what the body can do and I understand the proper fuels and foods for the body but with a 10-day junk diet I was a little alarmed because that was the first time that I felt I put myself out there and took a little bit of a risk and as you can see that fear that concern was Justified so now the question is how much can you do to reverse that in 30 days and is a ketogenic diet the right way to do that so very often people associate a ketogenic diet with bacon butter and eggs and those are good foods and I did eat a lot of that but that's not all I ate and it shouldn't be for you either now if you go from a junk food diet with lots of sugar and processed starches and Seed oils and garbage Foods then switching to bacon butter and eggs and eating nothing else would be a vast Improvement but the question is we don't want to just do better we want to do optimal so when I talk about keto I'm talking about healthy clean keto versus dirty keto and clean keto involves eating a lot of variety and a good amount of vegetables so some people say that well vegetables or carbs two you can't eat them and there's a small percentage of people who do better on Carnivore because they're sensitive to virtually every plant food there is but that's a very small percentage so if that's not you you're going to be better off eating some vegetables and the fibrous vegetables do not contribute to insulin they do not stimulate insulin so in addition to bacon butter and eggs you can eat similar foods with protein and fat like steak fish ground beef chicken Etc but you also want to eat a lot of leafy greens you can eat as much leafy greens as you like you cannot eat enough leafy greens to get an insulin problem you can almost eat as much non-starchy vegetables as you want and I say almost because if you eat three pounds of broccoli or cauliflower or something like that it's still going to provide a substantial amount of sugar and here are some examples of what I would eat so I ate a lot of salads I would put a meat on the salad which would be steak or ground beef or fish or chicken and the only dressing I had would be extra virgin olive oil and vinegar I also put salt and pepper to taste and I also sprinkle some more bacon bits I put some seeds on I like pumpkin seeds it adds a little crunch to the salad and oftentimes I do eat goat cheese but not during these 30 days because I cut out all forms of dairy but that adds a really nice touch with some goat cheese I had a good bit of omelettes and on those I would put sausage and bacon I would serve it on the side with avocado I put onions and tomato Into The Omelette and any other non-starchy vegetable that you like I would also have a lot of steak and with that I would do steamed or baked broccoli or cauliflower I do brussels sprouts asparagus and with that I would serve a really nice sauce so Biore sauce is a really tasty sauce with steak you make it from egg yolks and butter with a few spices look it up and try it it's absolutely fabulous and tabouleh is also a great side dish traditionally it is parsley onion lemon and wheat but if you take out the wheat and you chop up some pecan nuts instead then it makes it a Keto version I also ate a lot of chicken wings and guacamole so the chicken wings I would bake in the oven with lots of spices or I would do them in an air fryer and toss them in a sauce of wing sauce and butter afterwards guacamole is avocado mixed with some onion and lemon and cilantro and spices and I would eat a lot of guacamole I would serve sometimes I make guacamole sometimes I just cut an avocado and put it on the plate and with the wings you can also do celery or bell pepper and dip in the guacamole so let me clear up a few things because a lot of times people are confused on this that keto it is not about eating more fat it is about eating less carbs about eating very very low carbs so that your body is basically forced into developing another source of fuel which is fat and then like I said you eat moderate protein and then then you eat fat to satiety more is not better you just eat as much fat as you need to feel satisfied so you don't have cravings so you can maintain this for a period of time so when you're getting ketosis and your body makes ketones it does mean that your body is burning fat primarily for fuel and the body doesn't care where that fat comes from it could be fat from your plate that you eat it off your plate or if you're fasting then it could be that you're eating the fat from your body and obviously that would be the goal so if you put too much fat on your plate there's no incentive for your body to burn it off the body and here's how I got into ketosis and how it oftentimes works that between 0 and 0. 5 everyone has a tiny smidgen of ketones normally people are probably going to have 0.
1 when they make up in the morning and a lot of the rest of the day if you eat like most people eat you're not going to have any detectable level and they typically say that nutritional ketosis is considered to start where you have a significant level where it matters at all starting at 0. 5 so on day one I had 0. 1 I was just getting started and this was coming off a junk food diet high carbs High seed oils high sugar everything bad so it would take the body a little while to get into that to adapt to fat burning again on day two I was at 0.
4 so not technically really in ketosis but on day three I was up to 0. 7 and if you're coming from a low carb diet then that's probably going to happen a lot lot faster so for the vast majority of people they're going to be between 0. 5 and 3.
0 when they do a ketogenic diet or intermittent fasting but it doesn't mean that it's dangerous to go higher because if you do low carb and you do an extended fast if you go two three four five days now you'll probably a lot of people not everyone but a lot of people will get into this orange Zone and that's not a bad thing but you want to start understanding your markers of ketones glucose and Insulin so that you know not to get into the Red Zone and it's not like 7. 9 is good and 8. 1 is bad but what you have to understand is there's something called ketoacidosis that happens primarily to type 1 diabetics undiagnosed type 1 diabetics so if your ketones go really high and you have virtually no insulin but your glucose is high then that's a really bad thing that's where you can get extremely acidic and it could be life-threatening but if you're like most people then you're not going to have this situation with high glucose you're going to have it with very low glucose so then on day four my body got into the groove and I hit a stronger level of Ketone so I was at 2.
2 Then I Drpped a little bit and then I was up to 2. 4 and so on and for the rest of the 30 days I pretty much stayed between two and three I peaked at 3. 3 I went down to 1.
5 again but for the most part I I was in that range now let's talk about saturated fat because this may be the biggest hurdle that keeps people from trying a low carb or ketogenic diet and even if they do get on such a diet then there's this nagging voice in the back of their head that you're doing something bad to yourself and a lot of this comes from studies and either the study is just a questionnaire where they're asking people how much red meat do you eat and then a lot of these people are going to have insulin resistance or diabetes because those are a lot of people that they do studies on and then what you're going to find is that's not a great combination but it's not the red meat it's the fact that you're going to have a problem processing and metabolizing anything that you eat when your insulin is high and then if they do a study where they control the food then they cut the carbs maybe from 60 to 40 percent and they call that a low carb diet well the ketogenic diet is less than five percent so you can't cut carbs a little bit and expect a change you have to cut them dramatically and when you do that and Insulin starts dropping then the red meat's not a problem anymore or the saturated fat so same thing bacon and Insulin could be bad if you are insulin resistant eggs with insulin resistance could be a bad thing processed plant oils or seed oils combined with other food that drive up insulin or already have insulin resistance that's double bad same thing with sugar in addition to a diet or people who are already insulin resistant it's double bad but if you eat that saturated fat and that red meat with a diet that reduces insulin a low carb ketogenic diet with intermittent fasting that is dramatically going to lower your insulin levels now your body can metabolize whatever it is that you're putting in same thing with bacon if you are on that low carb diet then your body can process it and same thing with the eggs it's not the saturated fat that's the problem it is how is the body processing it and if you have High insulin levels your body cannot process through it but if you are lowering your insulin dramatically not a little bit but dramatically now that food is perfectly fine and it helps you on that diet because it's very satiating so the thing to understand though is that this is going to apply to the majority the vast majority probably 95 percent of people are going to have fairly straightforward Journey that these physiological mechanisms these principles are going to work just fine but then there is always the exception the other five percent and here is where you need to understand the markers or some basic markers well enough that you can tell what's going on if you are the exception and then start playing a little detective so for the people who want to dive a little deeper I created a blood work course and I'll put some information down below if you want to check check that out now let's look at the results of 30 days on mostly bacon butter and eggs so on the junk diet I went from 193 to 203 and after 30 days of high fat I was back down to 189 I still have a few pounds to go and I would like to get a little more fit because I haven't had time to exercise a whole bunch but you can see that there's a dramatic difference and the reason I put these colors is this is where I feel the best this is not weights that you need to to fit it's not about BMI this is just where I've been for the most part in my life and between 185 and 90 is where I feel the best when I'm over 200 I feel absolutely terrible I want to mention cholesterol we're quick but I'm not going to get into a lot of detail because I've done so many videos on the details but normal range in the medical field they feel lower is bad better and anything over 200 is too much I believe based on everything I've learned that the optimal range for most people not kids kids can often be a little bit lower there's a difference between men and women but for the most part 180 to 280 is the optimal range and then on either side of that we have ranges that can still be okay that if it gets too low you want to start being concerned but it could be okay for your situation for your genetic makeup and age and so forth and you could be a lot higher than 280 and still be okay if you understand the other markers and you control for insulin and triglycerides Etc but then there is the red range where again you could be over 350 and still be okay but you really got to do some additional tests and understand what's going on but what most people don't realize is that on the lower end it is much more dangerous the all-cause mortality is several times higher down at the bottom of this range than it is at the top and yet there are people on medications that used to be 205 and now they've got them down to 120 and the doctors are just super happy and saying lower is better you have to stay on this and these people may have no actual risk for heart disease so in my case according to the medical criteria I would be a little bit too high according to my criteria I'm right in the middle and as you can see I went from 225 to 222 to 220. so during these experim moments nothing really changed in that regard and that has a lot to do with my genetic makeup the fact that I'm metabolically flexible and my body is fairly stable but now let's come back to the ones I mentioned before so my insulin had gone from 4. 8 to 5.
7 first time out of the optimal range 30 days of high fat and I was back where I need to be in the three to four range my blood fats the triglycerides had gone from 45 to 101 after 30 days back down to 60. my vldl went from 8 to 17 30 days of fat puts it back down to 10 and this is very counter-intuitive for most people they're wondering how can your blood fats your triglycerides and your vldl which carry the triglycerides how can they go down when you eat more fat because we're told that it's the saturated fat that clogs up your arteries and contribute to blood fat and all that it's just that people don't realize that most of the fat is created by insulin in response to glucose the carbohydrates turn to fat when they become too much and my home IR went from 1 to 1. 3 after 30 days they were back to 0.
