Don’t let the title fool you, I’m not the one who will be doing any running! Check out this new blog, tedvanslyck.com. He has recently started a ketogenic diet (testing ketones and all!) and has begun training for his first ultra-marathon. The goal? A bonk-free 31 mile run.

Good luck and I’ll be cheering you on!

Here is the promised list of ketogenic recipes from Low-Carbing Among Friends vol 2.

The postman surprised me today with my copy of Low-Carbing Among Friends vol 2.  I opted to pay the extra $2 to have mine coil bound and it was definitely worth it. It lies flat and I don’t have to worry now about the binding breaking. I wonder if I can get my vol 1 copy rebound… :)

My plan is to go through the recipes and highlight any that are ketogenic. They have the best low-carb, gluten-free recipes, and the desserts are as good as the “real” versions. Unfortunately low-carb does not always equal high fat, low-protein, especially when almond flour is involved.

So to help everyone else out, and make my initial perusing of the book more productive, I’ve gone through the entire book calculating the ketogenic ratio for each recipe. Here is a compilation of all the recipes with a ratio greater than 1.5.

One important note about this series is that they do not have pictures in the books. It helps save space and lots of money. However pictures of all the recipes are on their website (pictures for vol 1 and pictures for vol 2).

UPDATE: I love the coil binding so much I just reordered vol 1 coil bound. I plan on giving my non-coil bound version to my sister since she does low-carb too. Everyone wins! :)

I have been on my ketogenic diet for 6 weeks now and I’ve noticed something quite surprising. My grocery bill has gone down! I don’t know why I thought it would be more expensive, it’s quite silly actually since fat is pretty cheap.

Here’s a breakdown of a typical day’s meals. I am using non-sales prices from chain grocery stores, I don’t coupon clip, hunt down sales or frequent inexpensive places like WalMart… so you can obviously do much better than me. Check out my previous posting about my meals to get a feel for how large my portion sizes are.

Assuming I eat like this every day, this comes out to $216 per month.

* My other goto breakfast is 2 whole deviled eggs, which are quite a bit cheaper than bacon. But … I love bacon and I think eating eggs everyday is making my GERD reappear so I didn’t include them in my calculations. If you are a “egg based breakfast” person, life is even cheaper!

Read all about my ketogenic efforts: My Ketogenic Diet: Take Two, The Ketone Challenge, Ketogenic Diet Success and Ketogenic Ratio and Weight Loss.

This part 4 in a series on ketogenic diets. Check out part 1, part 2 and part 3.

One of the tools I have been using to decide if my meals are ketogenic is to calculate my Ketogenic Ratio. That is the ratio of foods that raise ketones vs the foods that lower ketones, i.e. produce glucose.

Ketogenic Ratio (KR) = (Fat * .9 + Protein * .46) / (Carb * 1 + Protein * .58 + Fat * .1)

But one question that immediately came to mind was “How does weight loss affect my ketogenic ratio?”

The formula only takes into account macronutrients consumed, not macronutrients used. When losing weight, you will be burning body fat in addition to dietary fat. Lucas Tafur discusses an alternate formula for Total Ketogenic Ratio (TKR) which attempts to include body fat as well. I’m not convinced of its accuracy however especially when it’s not possible to accurately measure total caloric expenditure outside of a lab. I know what my body theoretically burns each day and also know that it rarely performs as expected!

While The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living doesn’t address the ketogenic ratio, they do provide some guidance. When looking at percent calories, they point out that when losing weight your % protein will appear too high (> 30%) but when you take into account weight loss, it is actually much lower (< 25%).

My interpretation is that you calculate the calories you are eating and compare that to how much you theoretically burn. The difference should be included in the fat category when calculating your ratio. For example, say you are at a 180 calorie deficit, 180 cal / 9 cal/g = 20g fat. I would add 20g to the Fat variable in the formula and then calculate my ratio.

In practice I am going to attempt to identify (using my ketone meter) how much carbohydrate and protein I can eat without restricting calories to generate adequate ketones. Then I will cut back on dietary fat to generate a mild calorie deficit, until either my ketones drop too low or I become hungry or tired. Then I’ll add back until I find a happy medium of satiety, energy and weight loss. Sounds simple, eh? :)

I think the ratio is interesting, and since my nutrition software calculates it for me, it’s an easy way to gauge how close I am to my goals. However, in the context of weight loss, it becomes difficult to calculate and maybe not as relevant. My take is that as long as you are making ketones and are at a slight calorie deficit (it doesn’t have to be 500 cal / day) you will eventually lose weight**.

** With the usual disclaimer that if you have other unaddressed hormonal imbalances, even if you do all this right, you may not still lose weight.