Outed by Macadamia Nuts …

by Karl Goldkamp ND, Dipl. Oriental Medicine, environmental Med, April 8, 2018

It was innocent enough at first. We were just settling in to start watching the next season of Homeland on Netflix. Finished dinner, home-smoked

Alaskan salmon from the day before that Judi made into fish cakes. There was no misunderstanding in the beginning. It was just an after dinner treat, a few nuts only. I knew what “a few” meant so wasn’t going to make myself parse them out one at time. That would have been a bit too anal even for me and my love of data, but then it continued …somewhat unconstrained, unconsciously.

As expected all came crashing down soon enough and became obvious what had happened. I had been kicked out ….. or nearly so… depends on how nice you want to be….of Ketosis.

Yup ….totally, booted out, completely….. apologies not forthcoming. How could I have been so NAIVE? It was just a couple of Macadamia Nuts, well then followed by a small handful ….yes small, absolutely, then just a few more. Since I knew what “a few” were as I mentioned earlier, I again felt it wasn’t necessary to allot myself a precisely measured number of nuts that would be breaking a cozy moment of enjoyment.

Before I knew it, I had become Winnie-The-Pooh with my head deep in the honey jar…. of macadamia nuts… and my life of ketosis had slipped away and I was diving into in the land of glucosis quickly….had I taken another reading I’m confident that would have been the case.

My blood ketones had dropped from 5.8 to 1.1 and glucose increased from 74 to 102. These readings were reliably honest at a time when I really wasn’t looking for that kind of honesty.

My readings an hour before eating the macadamia nuts…..

This is more or less my average:

Ketones running between 4-7 mmol/l, Glucose 75-85 mg/dl.

OOPS…..

An hour after ……poof!

Ketosis nearly gone: 4.7 ketones, increased 26 with glucose.

You might say I had been slapped in the face with an obvious reality about eating any kind of nuts, and was under the illusion that somehow macadamia nuts were different.

The reason I start this blog on the ketogenic way of eating with this topic….. is because Nuts and Diary consumption is the most common and easiest way to take yourself out of ketosis.

I knew that was true but wanted to document it on myself. Given my numbers were good and pretty consistent. I thought I had built in a type of new ‘set-point’ for myself, a new normal level that my metabolism had created, perhaps even a degree of imperviousness. As it turns out I was completely wrong….. that was sheer speculation verging on a kind of metabolic hubris.

This lesson wasn’t futile at all, it verified how very important it is to track your blood glucose and and blood ketone levels ON YOUR OWN. You absolutely have to dig in and track them for a while. Don’t let what is popular in the social media lead you astray in terms of nuts and dairy being the ‘perfect’ keto food. Maybe they are for some people … though I’m suspecting with all the feedback I’ve been getting that if such people do exist, they are not easy to identified.

These foods have become the biggest obstacles to achieving a healthy, easy state of Nutritional Ketosis for many outside of that speculated minority whose state of ketosis is undeterred nuts and dairy products. If there was a list of the MOST NOTORIOUSLY TEMPTING FOODS that will derail your hard earned biomarkers and obliterate your sense of ketogenic bliss, these would be them. The reason is that it is just too difficult to ‘eat just one’. Everyone loves them, and almost begs for them to be considered as bonafide ‘keto’ worthy foods… and technically they are. But the reality is they have become the Potato Chips for people attempting to pull away from the high carb world of the standard American diet and keto up. It is a food that people over-eat by a very long shot. (Diary will be covered at length in a separate blog and podcast. It is a surprisingly detailed topic and deserves more than a simple thumbs up or thumbs down).

Deeper look at What’s in Macadamia nuts

At first glance lets look at the basic break down of the macros and why macadamia nuts are consider special… and almost unique.
On the Macros
Protein      8 grams      8 %
Fat            76 grams    78%
Carbs       14 grams     14 %

So that would give us a fat : (protein & carbs) ratio
of 76 : 22 (carbs & protein) = 3.45

The classic Ketogenic diet is considered a 4: 1 ratio so by merely looking at this level you would feel very secure that this was a super-duper keto food.

On paper this nut is a gift in terms of nailing the ratios….. darn close to perfect.

So why the big shift in the ketone and glucose readings.
Ah now we’re getting somewhere. Remember that the daily limit in carbs should be low, ideally 20 grams/day. The reality is that I probably did what most people did and that was to eat at least a cup of nuts which would have been my carb limit for the day and about 1,000 calories which would have been nearly 65% of my total calories for the day. Unbelievable….. and boy was the easy to do.

It was the sum total carbs consumed that made my numbers plummet. Not that I want to do this again, but had I eaten ‘just a few’ the results would not have been so dramatic.

At your own peril

You must learn to track your ketones and blood glucose levels!

There’s no ifs, ands, or buts on this one. This is not something you can do intuitively. If you don’t know what your numbers are then you’ll never be able to know where you are, in ketosis or not.

This will absolutely teach you what foods work for you and what specific foods to avoid… that you love …. Remember this is your story, these are numbers, this is your metabolism, so tracking your biomarkers periodically can teach you volumes about yourself. And it is exactly what blogs, books, Facebook groups cannot offer you.

By knowing your own data over time you will get an insight about your diet that will go way beyond just getting a handle on your blood sugar and ketones. You will have learned how to use a major factor for improving your health outcomes in many areas, gut, brain, heart, liver, muscle… YOUR data is 10 times more valuable than all the general advice out there….my advice included. This is all about you and how your react to the foods you eat and environmental stresses over time. Tracking these biomarkers will make you THE expert on you and your metabolism.

Given the smothering amount of hype that has come into the ketogenic blogoshere, Facebook groups, and podcasts, it has become understandably difficult to discern true valuable advice, expertise and observations from wishful thinking. This is where cultivating your own knowledge based your experience will give you something to measure such comments against.

To embark on a ketogenic way of eating is to begin a journey that needs a map and compass like any other. You can read about it all you want but eventually you going to have to start gathering your data.

For me, this inadvertent experiment of screeching out of ketosis showed me just how easily it can happen. That’s a good lesson. But since I value the benefits of being in ketosis so much now that I have both learned how to so fairly easily and that my metabolism has had plenty of time to adapt,  I want to maintain it. I don’t want to let it slip away due to not paying attention to what I’m eating. My new found  sustained mental focus, the deferred hunger, endurance during my workouts, never needing to break my activity just to find something to eat…..not to mention it’s positive effects for nerve, muscle and brain, immune system, etc., encourage me to pay attention ….just a little.