Keto diet micronutrient supplementation

You should take mineral supplements to ward off symptoms of keto flu.

My keto flu entails sluggishness, muscle weakness, headaches, heart palpitations or heart beating rapidly.

To get rid of the headaches and the rapid heart beat, I drink soy sauce straight from the bottle. I also eat salty foods that are zero carbohydrate high fat of course. I hope that's obvious.  Bacon and certain deli meats are good for sodium supplementation. But you want to avoid the meats that have sugar added to them because those will take you out of ketosis.

To get rid of muscle fatigue and sluggishness, I supplement daily with 500 mg pills of magnesium that I picked up from Walgreen.  The effects of this pill are immediate and you should feel energized right away.

I have a problem with digesting dairy products. I know I have lactose (dairy sugar) intolerance and I'm pretty sure that I have a casein (dairy protein) allergy as well.  I know that because whenever I eat dairy products I get an upset stomach and I wind up on the toilet an hour later. So I have to avoid cheeses even the processed kind, milk, and butter only if I don't take a lactose enzyme that helps me to digest the butter.
So I also have a 1200 mg calcium pill daily for bone maintenance.

To supplement potassium intake I eat avocados, guacamole that's made out of avocados, and I sprinkle my food with Lite Salt , a namebrand low sodium salt substitute that has potassium chloride.  A quarter teaspoon has 350 mg of potassium which is ten percent of USA RDA government guidelines.  The potassium intake is not something I obsess over because meat and chicken have a lot of potassium.

I also take a multivitamin. The kind I take have a lot of iron and water soluble vitamins and fat soluble vitamins.

I don't know how long I'll be able to sustain myself on this diet but I need to shed fat and I feel very low carb intake is the best way to do it.

Preaching to the converted: yet another ketogenic diet

I would have to guess I'm on less than 20 grams of carbs per day.  The only supplements I take are a  multivitamin and soy sauce.

Keto flu

I get the Keto flu quite regularly.  Being in ketosis especially in the first few weeks, you tend to urinate a lot.  That leads to dehydration and loss of salt in the body.  I know I'll get keto flu when I urinate three or four times in a row and then I get this weird tingling sensation in my fingers and limbs.  My heart starts beating rapidly and I get muscle twitches.

The simple fix although it tastes quite disgusting is to drink soy sauce.  Although after I drink it, I have to drink a glass of water to get rid of the dryness and salty taste in my mouth. After about twenty minutes, my heartbeat returns to normal and the tingling sensation goes away.

Progress Report: My take on the Ketogenic Diet

All of this has been inspired by The Ketogenic Diet.



 Like anything in life, eating without carbohydrates takes patience, diligence, and perseverance. I started living without carbohydrates on November 8th, 2014. My first couple weeks have been hard because I didn't know how to survive without dietary glucose intake--stuff like bread, pasta, juices and the like.

The one thing you have to realize about your body is that it's a closed loop system. That means you receive inputs from your hormones that signal to your brain to coordinate an action. Think of your home heating system. There's a sensor in the thermostat that when it detects the temperature falling below a preset level, it'll kick on the furnace system to heat the house. That's what's called closed loop because the inputs are closed within the system and the resultant action is closed within the system as well.

My main problem with adapting to the Ketogenic Diet is not knowing the feedback signals of my body.  I didn't realize that when your heart starts beating convulsively, that that's the signal to eat potassium.  I get my potassium from those little tubs of guacamole that you get from the supermarket. I eat one of those at least once every two days. I didn't realize the first thing you should do in the morning is try to get most of your protein in at breakfast.  Also try to eat a lot of fat with the protein as well.  That combination of the high fat and high protein helps me to carry out my day's activities feeling relatively energetic. I was unknowing of the fact that if you feel headaches that it could be a) not enough salt intake or b) not enough protein intake which supplies glucose via the process of gluconeogenesis.  Most of the time the headaches are going to be from low protein intake because your brain still needs that steady supply of glucose to survive because it hasn't learned how to turn on the action of lipolysis or the act of breaking down fat into ketones which the brain can then use as energy source -- otherwise known as ketosis.  The salt intake for me is not an issue because the foods I eat have plenty of salt in them already. 5-6 grams of sodium is the acceptable intake range to ward off the headaches.

In fact the adaptation to a high fat moderate protein diet (probably about 150-160 grams of protein and the rest just fat) has caused me to rethink my approach to dieting.  I don't count calories anymore. I eat when I'm hungry.  I eat protein along with fat every meal because that's what my body feels best on.  I can go longer between meals because my energy levels aren't fluctuating all over the place.  This in turn has caused me to eat less food which results in less calorie intake which resulted into a weight loss of seven pounds in almost two weeks.

Now mind you most of that was water weight ( I was constantly urinating the first couple days).  But as the weight loss continued I could feel my clothes getting bigger.  Honestly that might be muscle mass loss as well, but hopefully some of that is stored fat although I'm not totally sure.

Sugar is evil redux

Same guy, same presentation but more biochemistry presented in layman's terms.

Sugar is the devil

A ketogenic diet video that influenced my eating habits

Nutrition: Progress Report, the Ketogenic Diet

All of what I write has been inspired by The Ketogenic Diet by Lyle McDonald.

So my first few days on the ketogenic diet have been difficult.  The first day my body especially my brain was in a state of shock because I wasn't pumping it with carbohydrates at least not in the form of breads or juices.  On the contrary, I was eating a lot of chicken to supply glucose to the brain via the process of gluconeogenisis or the breakdown of protein into glucose. At least the first three or four days I was consuming 250-270 grams of protein per day to keep my brain happy.

Suddenly after that, I woke up on the fifth day feeling not so fatigued.  I felt energetic maybe even happy.  I haven't felt like that since I was a boy.  I knew I had flipped the metaphorical ketone switch.  That's the adaptation where the body and the brain especially accept that there are no serotonin releases to get their fix off of and have to live off ketones for energy.

Much as you like to probably consider yourself drug free, you have to remember serotonin is a drug that the brain and body fiend for.  Your craving for carbs in the form of pasta, desserts, fries and the like are all related to the body's need for serotonin.  Like it or not, every time you eat a Snicker's bar you might as well be a junkie sticking his arm with a needle full of dope.

 This was probably my worst day of eating because my brain wasn't ready to give up its serotonin addiction.  As you can see from below, I had to eat a whole chicken to give my brain its fix.  The wraps I ate at Dunkin Donuts were without the tortillas so I still adhered to the zero carb principle.  I also ate a container full of guacamole to nourish my body with potassium and sodium to keep myself from getting heart palpitations and headaches. Also notice the vitamin I took.  I don't eat a lot of vegetables so the vitamin I hope will make for any nutrient shortcomings I have.

	Calories	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Sodium	Sugar
Dunkin Donuts - Angus Steak and Egg Breakfast Wrap, 2 wraps	460	26	28	28	1,140	2
7-11 - 1/4 lb Big Bite - No Bun, 2 hot dog	720	4	68	22	0	4
7-Eleven - Buffalo Chicken Wings, 3.5 wings	90	3	6	7	600	0
Walmart - Jlr - Rotisserie Chicken (the Whole Chicken), 18 oz	960	6	60	102	3,960	0
Sabra - Spicy Guacamole, 12 tbsp	270	18	24	6	900	0
Health Peak - Sentry - Complete With All Rdi Nutrients - Multivitamin & Mineral Supplement, 1 Tablet	0	0	0	0	0	0
Add Food Quick Tools	2,500	57	186	165	6,600	6

Another consequence of my changing to zero carb eating is I got rid of my addiction to track my macros. That's right no more myfitnesspal.com for me.  The reason for that is I eat when I'm hungry but I don't crave that much food because I kicked myself off my serotonin habit.
The only con of the zero carb lifestyle is lack of food choices.  Your only options are meats, cheeses, certain high fat vegetables like avocados, eggs, chicken, pork,and of course leafy greens and the other vegetables.  But I admit that I don't do many vegetables or salads because they pretty much shoot right through me and I wind up on the toilet soon after that. The lack of food choices could get old pretty quick, so I don't know how long I'm going to last on this diet.  But perhaps the need to feel healthy and energized will overcome my need for variety.

Nutrition: The Ketogenic Diet

First off I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who has not lifted heavy weight in almost three months. But the overall encompassing notion of this site is to achieve strength through experimentation with nutrition and heavy weight training without the use of anabolic drugs so I feel this post is relevant to that objective.

I'm on a ketogenic diet. My two references for implementing an endeavor as such are this video and this pdf download.

 Here's the video:









And here's the free download link to the pdf download of a book titled The Ketogenic Diet by Lyle McDonald.
I don't know how long this link will last so don't blame me if it doesn't work.


The main gist of these info sources is that the human body is a machine that when inputted with different energy sources, it will yield contrary results.

First off we have the insulin effect. That is where your body in response to an influx of carbs and to a lesser extent animal protein will convert those carbs into fat.

Secondly we have the glucagon effect. It is insulin's opposite. It triggers the burning of body fat.

Those two processes are started by what you eat. The ingestion of high amounts of carbohydrates will cause the insulin effect. The complete absence of carbs in your diet will stimulate the glucagon effect and hence shedding fat.

I've done the ketogenic diet before but failed due to my ignorance of the bodily functions involved in fat loss and fat gain but the two sources I listed above have educated me in nutrition and how the body responds to food.

Besides, they're free so what have you got to lose?