The Ketogenic Diet

In IT we have a saying..."Garbage in = garbage out."  I think the same holds true for our diet.  If we take garbage in we should expect less of a return from our bodies on the investment that if we eat with a focus on nutrition.

My experience in diet comes from an answered prayer.  I was praying that God would motivate me to get off of the couch, put the snacks and wine/beer down in front of the tv at night, get up and exercise, and knock those 10-15 lbs off that have plagued me for the past year or so.  Answered prayers come sometimes in the form of a blessed plight.

When I initially got the first report that I had a tumor back in late January, I began to read about diet and what effects diet can have on cancer.  In my reading I discovered the Ketogenic diet.  Allow me to interrupt myself here and clearly state that I am in no way professionally trained as a dietitian, I am a total neophyte at this, so read and take dietary actions at your own risk, independent from anything you will read here.  Please do consult your doctor before making any dietary changes.  For example, there are warnings against people with diabetes or high blood pressure doing this diet.  I am just a process oriented person that loves data and facts, a good hypothesis and conclusion based on them, and was willing to experiment with my own diet and body with little to no regard for longer term consequences given the current state of my health.   I was in reasonably decent shape other than being 10-15 lbs over my ideal weight and wanted to learn more about what my diet could do to fight cancer.

At any rate, I set out to learn about the Ketogenic diet which hearkens to the Paleo diet that has been so popular.  It is essentially to eat like a wild animal...Focus the diet on meat and vegetables with no sugar or carbs and put your body into a state of ketosis.   This is important to people with cancer because infection and cancer thrive on sugar, but theoretically speaking, cancer cannot make the conversion to ketones as regular cells can.  So, the idea is that you starve the infection or cancer.  There is a ton of debate about that, but I decided that there are a sufficient amount of cases on both sides of the argument to make an experiment out of it.  With that, I learned a lot about sugar, and especially processed sugar.  I also wound up discovering that I could control my weight very easily by managing carbohydrate and especially sugar intake.

So here is my experience:

Beginning pertinent data:

• Starting weight 215 lbs 2/20/17
• Diet consists of eat whatever and however much I desire.
• Optimal weight for someone 6'4" is 182lbs - 222lbs.
• Target weight 200 lbs - 205lbs to hit the middle of the span.

I went on a strict Ketogenic diet for 2 weeks and noted a few changes in my body.  Again, strict Ketogenic diet means the elimination of all carbs and sugar, at all costs.  What this means is that I had to discover where sugar was present by reading labels and doing research.  The shocker (not so much) was that sugar is in everything.  For example a single can of Coke has 35g of sugar.   A Hershey's candy bar has 43g of sugar.  The list goes on and on, and to eliminate sugar is to remove everything from your diet that is processed, artificial, and generally speaking tasty and addictive.  The obvious, sweets, jams, wine, beer, sweet sauces, etc all come to mind immediately, and they are good to eliminate, but one must read food labels as the most unsuspecting things have sugar in them.   For example an 8oz cup of skim milk has 12g of sugar!  A tbsp of ketchup as 4g of sugar.  A tbsp of balsamic vinegar has 3g of sugar.  All delicious in their own right, along with a plethora of marinades, sauces, and other culinary goodness loaded with sugar.

Just for curiousity's sake I Googled RDA for sugar.  This is mind blowing as it pertains to perspective of just how much sugar we take in.  The average male should consume 37g (9 tbsp) of sugar, and the average female should consume 25g (6 tbsp) of sugar.   So basically 1 - 12 oz can of soda and your are done for the day.   Here is a chart to further depress you about your sugar intake.

After sorting all of that out and eliminating the sugar and carbs to the best of my ability, I started to notice that I was dropping weight, and fast.  I had reached ketosis.  Noted differences in my body:

• Much more consistent level of energy.   It is notable that I had also eliminated coffee due to the caffeine and acidity of it, and switched to green tea which is about a 1/3 of the caffeine with a much lower acidity level.  
• Clearer thinking
• Deeper, more effective sleep
• Burning fat at an alarming rate and massive weight loss. 
• Inflammation of the tumor appears to have reduced as I was not wheezing at all day or night.
• Minor back pain subsided

After the two week period I had dropped 15 lbs. and I was at an even 200lbs.  One of the symptoms to having cancer can be weight loss.   So I thanked God for the new found weight loss, but asked to gain weight back, by going back to my regular diet to disprove that it was in fact cancer causing the weight loss.  After going back on my regular diet of I do not care what or how much I eat, I gained 8lbs back in a week.   My body essentially went into a mode of "store up all of the carbs and sugar, this guy may go on another sugar strike!"  Here are the effects of that:

• Weight gain
• Thinking less clear
• Sleeping less deep but still pretty good
• Fatigue late in the day
• Mild back pain returned
• Wheezing due to tumor in lung returned

Upon reaching that small victory that I had proven that cancer was not causing the weight loss, I concluded that I could be in complete control of my weight.  I then wanted to figure out how to stablize my weight at the desired weight and stop the yoyo routine.   So as of this week, I have added complex carbs in moderation and some sugary simple carbs back into my diet which seems to be working.   Complex carbs include whole grains, oats, quinoa, etc, and sugar carbs includes eating a cup cake at a BDay party and some banana bread.  So far this week, I have stabilized in a 3 lb window at my target weight for 4 days now.  Current effects of the modified Ketogenic diet:

• Weight stable in desired 5 lb range
• Clear thinking
• Sleeping good
• Fatigue late in the day is gone
• Back pain gone
• Wheezing is still present and very annoying.

The Ketogenic diet to starve the cancer experiment is inconclusive to date because 1. the tumor did not shrink and did maintain its size, but also 2. there has not been a definitive diagnosis of cancer as of yet.