KETO and/or Intermittent Fasting - Thoughts and Experiences?

Forums › Health and fitness › KETO and/or Intermittent Fasting - Thoughts and Experiences?

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Awrrr
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#3406744 23-Aug-2025 10:20

I seem to have been blessed with good genes. At the age of 80+ I never get ill and I’m not on any medications. I was a very heavy smoker until my 60s and I have been diagnosed with COPD but it doesn’t bother me much and I don’t use an inhaler.

I have never bothered with specific diets or other health measures, but for reasons I cannot take any credit for, I tend to avoid salt and sugar as a matter of taste and I have also been a Piscean vegetarian for most of my life. I don’t avoid salt but I feel I get enough in my food and I don’t add any, also not during cooking. It is a matter of taste, nothing more.

I gave up eating meat because I didn’t like it much. I always found it unpleasantly heavy and greasy. I also don’t care much for sugar. I like a few sweet things but I don’t crave them. I don’t put sugar on or in anything. Occasionally I will eat a chocolate chip biscuit.

I have never been skinny or overweight. I notice in my old age I am starting to gain some weight but it is not excessive, just a result of slowing metabolism. I am on my own now and usually can’t be bothered to make meals so I take daily multivitamins to compensate but that is all. The only time I ever see the doctor is to renew my driving licence.

I have played with intermittent fasting in the past. I find it easy to go a day without any food. I never eat breakfast in any case. Laziness is the only reason I am not still doing that. I don't find not eating difficult, but it takes a certain amount of willpower. In my old age it is just too much trouble.

My biggest issue is chronic back pain from osteoporosis. As a result I avoid exercise beyond daily chores like chopping kindling and cleaning the house.
I don’t claim any particular credit for my relatively good physical condition. I haven’t done anything to achieve this. It just happens to be the way I am.

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LookingUp

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#3406759 23-Aug-2025 12:52

I'd certainly give IF a go, as it's worked for me in the past. I generally didn't eat breakfast, and found that it kept weight gain more or less under control, but when I retired from work a couple of years back it became too easy to have a leisurely breakfast with my wife, and the weight started piling on. Last December I got a wake up call in the form of a blood test suggesting a seriously fatty liver, so it was time to do something about it. I started skipping breakfast again, often skipping lunch as well, and once a week I'd try to skip a day and a half - ie. dinner, nothing the next day, and nothing until dinner the following day. I also exercised a bit more (walking and cycling). In 12 weeks I dropped 11kg (81->70kg, so significant %-wise), and the liver stress blood markers were back in the middle of the normal range when previously some were 2x the top of normal. It did next to nothing for my high cholesterol, which is still high, but it certainly cleared up the liver stress.

I found a couple of things very interesting with fasting:

1. The first 24hrs is the hardest. After that I felt a lot less hungry, and didn't even think about it if I kept busy.

2. It got easier the more I did it. Don't give up if you find it hard initially, it does get easier.

3. I did feel a little weak when I first started, but my body seemed to adapt, and some serious hill walking and cycling was quite do-able.

4. It pulled back my regular appetite, as I assume my stomach was slowly shrinking.

Unfortunately a recent holiday that was a food and drink free-for-all has undone a bit of the good work, so I'll be back into IF and exercise again next week.

Good luck, and share how you get on.

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#3407099 24-Aug-2025 19:29

Rikki and LookingUp

Firstly Rikki, sorry to read that "I am on my own now"

I am not a doctor or health professional. But I have learn a lot from YouTube, after deciphering the science from the likes

Whats bad?

Sugar. It raises insulin, the fat storage hormone, found in table sugar, the many sugars added to processed food. Yes, its bad

Red Meat. Bad, but its not, its high protein and natural fats, the body need fats, its used for energy, but not the artificial fats

Eggs. Bad, but its not. Cholesterol. The body needs it. Eggs help HDL (High Density Lipoproteins). AFAIK eggs also increase LDL (low density lipoproteins). But LDL isnt inherently had, its the very low density LDL that can affect arteries and eggs dont add to that. Superfood

Butter, lard, tallow, bad. But they arent, they are natural fats, used for energy after sugars (glucose. fructose, lactose and other "oses"

Chicken, great, but its not. Its lean which is fine, eat the skin as thats natural fats that you need. But most chickens are feed pellets and hormones, to grow fast. Unhealthy. Pasture raised eat greens, worms and insects, that gives them healthy meat, but most are not fed that way

Beef is pasture raised, so you get genuine nutrients.

Tuna. Bad. They are BIG so they live many years, accumulate mercury

Salmon, mackerel, sardines. Great. Small fish, small life, high in Omega 3, and natural fats, and as long as the salmon are wild caught you get high value meat. Farmed are fed pellets and pink food colouring, poor

Cooking Oils. Bad. Canola etc are super heated, hydrogenated, and they are rancid. More additives are added so they are doable, but they are toxic. EVOO is cold pressed, non toxic and its healthy. In salads or cooking. It doesnt do high heat well, but frying, baking, roasting at 180 or so is well will within its capability

Orange juice. Bad. Yes its high in vitamin C but so many other foods are as well. Its high in fructose, so drinking multi glasses a day of premium unprocessed orange juice is an insulin overload.

Animals have evolved to use food. Feast, the sugars are glucose, and carbs turn to glucose, fat storing, the insulin hormone. When food is scarce, the stored fat is used. Harmony. It takes 100,000's of year to evolve, if not much more. But in the human animal world its like climate change (which can also evolve over millennia) Todays humans are a couple of hundred or less years from normality to the SAD diet (Standard American Diet) High in processed foods, breakfast, lunch, dinner, with snacks in between, then dessert. A lot of fat storage going on there. In recent decades we are more desk bound, that exacerbates the issues of energy storage and energy usage

IF is the normality of our bodies. Take in energy and use it, not store it. The fasting period is where autophagy can kick in, detoxing used cells, old cells, damaged cells, pre cancerous cells. Thats not a fad, its normal, but in our SAD diet, that doesnt happen much, or as much

KETO isnt so much a diet but a lifestyle, and not an out there lifestyle, it matches todays world. Skip breakfast (breakfast means break the fast) and you have a 18/6 intermittent fasting. Not hard. Go detoxing and repair Autophagy. Reduce carbs means you reduce glucose so you reduce the periods in the day when insulin spikes. Insulin spikes are normal, they stored unused sugars into body fat for when you need it, but in todays world many of us dont need that.

Dinner time now LOL

timmmay

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#3407114 24-Aug-2025 20:47

Earlier this year I started eating whole foods exclusively - not even close to keto, but nothing processed. Potatoes, kumara (orange and purple), salads, pumpkin seeds, halloumi (which is probably slightly processed but not bad), tomatoes, spinach, cucumber, eggs, cottage cheese, a few crisps occasionally - proper crisps. Olive oil, no other oils. Meat counts as whole foods, not bacon / salami / etc of course, but beef, chicken, etc. No fruit, no sugar, no chocolate, to bread (yeast trigers migraines), no cheeses not listed, no alcohol, no nuts (migraine thing), no grains (they may cause inflammation), no caffeine, no soy, no legumes, nothing processed. Basically meat, vegetables, salads, seeds, two cheeses. I lost 15kg in 3-4 months and my chronic migraines largely went away.

Once I did this I didn't get hungry much any more, so I stopped eating breakfast. I fast for 24 hours twice a week, though less lately. I eat lunch between 10am and 1pm depending on my work schedule, I don't get hungry until 6pm or later most days.

Keto is meant to be good. Make sure you go for natural keto, whole foods, not a bunch of processed stuff. I wouldn't worry too much about carbs, Once you get used to eating real food it's much better, you don't get so hungry, your body knows how to process it. I did Atkins many years ago and was very successful, noting though it's largely a whole foods diet you don't eat much processed food.

Have a read of this as well.

rhy7s

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#3407115 24-Aug-2025 21:04

You can find a lot of background on keto in the transcripts here

tdgeek

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#3407453 26-Aug-2025 09:32

timmmay:

Earlier this year I started eating whole foods exclusively - not even close to keto, but nothing processed. Potatoes, kumara (orange and purple), salads, pumpkin seeds, halloumi (which is probably slightly processed but not bad), tomatoes, spinach, cucumber, eggs, cottage cheese, a few crisps occasionally - proper crisps. Olive oil, no other oils. Meat counts as whole foods, not bacon / salami / etc of course, but beef, chicken, etc. No fruit, no sugar, no chocolate, to bread (yeast trigers migraines), no cheeses not listed, no alcohol, no nuts (migraine thing), no grains (they may cause inflammation), no caffeine, no soy, no legumes, nothing processed. Basically meat, vegetables, salads, seeds, two cheeses. I lost 15kg in 3-4 months and my chronic migraines largely went away.

Once I did this I didn't get hungry much any more, so I stopped eating breakfast. I fast for 24 hours twice a week, though less lately. I eat lunch between 10am and 1pm depending on my work schedule, I don't get hungry until 6pm or later most days.

Keto is meant to be good. Make sure you go for natural keto, whole foods, not a bunch of processed stuff. I wouldn't worry too much about carbs, Once you get used to eating real food it's much better, you don't get so hungry, your body knows how to process it. I did Atkins many years ago and was very successful, noting though it's largely a whole foods diet you don't eat much processed food.

Have a read of this as well.

Nice article on whole foods. In fact if the mass influx of processed foods never happened, we wouldn't be talking about diets and Keto

But not worrying about carbs on Keto? That wont make it a Keto regime AFAIK.

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timmmay

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#3407456 26-Aug-2025 09:47

tdgeek:

Nice article on whole foods. In fact if the mass influx of processed foods never happened, we wouldn't be talking about diets and Keto

But not worrying about carbs on Keto? That wont make it a Keto regime AFAIK.

True, ketogenic is low carbohydrate. I was trying to say that keto is best with whole foods rather than processed foods, and a whole foods approach can work without low carb for some people. Ketogenic has additional neurological benefits that help some conditions such as migraines, epilepsy, and probably others.

mudguard

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#3407457 26-Aug-2025 09:50

I might be an outlier but I'd struggle to give up breakfast. Ever since I had my gallbladder out a few years ago I feel like I need breakfast not long after I wake up otherwise I feel very average. I need to deal to sugar a bit, but since finishing my job (hotels, motels and restaurants every night) weight is dropping off as I've ramped up my time on bike. I've probably got away with eating whatever I like but I need to deal to cholesterol.

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#3407511 26-Aug-2025 10:39

I think the moral of the story is that people are different. No one size fits all diet exists, which is why I don't take diet fads seriously. I used to enjoy experimenting a little with my body when I was younger, but basically I have always just eaten what I wanted. I am lucky in the sense that what I want is usually what is good for me.

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johno1234

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#3407518 26-Aug-2025 10:57

timmmay:

tdgeek:

Nice article on whole foods. In fact if the mass influx of processed foods never happened, we wouldn't be talking about diets and Keto

But not worrying about carbs on Keto? That wont make it a Keto regime AFAIK.

True, ketogenic is low carbohydrate. I was trying to say that keto is best with whole foods rather than processed foods, and a whole foods approach can work without low carb for some people. Ketogenic has additional neurological benefits that help some conditions such as migraines, epilepsy, and probably others.

Interesting that you mention migraines. I used to be bedevilled by headaches but rarely get them these days. I wonder if it is a coincidence or if it is from avoiding sugar and carbs? I am not hard out on keto anymore but continue to avoid where I can.

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#3407523 26-Aug-2025 11:15

johno1234:

Interesting that you mention migraines. I used to be bedevilled by headaches but rarely get them these days. I wonder if it is a coincidence or if it is from avoiding sugar and carbs? I am not hard out on keto anymore but continue to avoid where I can.

I've read extensively in this area. I've taken myself from chronic daily migraines to virtually no migraines by changing my diet, lifestyle, and supplements. Sugar is one of the primary drivers of migraines, along with alcohol, yeast, fruit (sugar), cheese, etc - there are many triggers. Complex carbs are fine, vegetables, even roasted potatoes and such, particularly if they're cooked, cooled, then cooked again which increases resistant starch lowering the GI. Supplements are essential for some people, they help the mitochondria convert glucose to ATP which the body uses for energy. Exogenous ketones can also be super useful, they're the same as what the liver produces during fasting or low carb diets, an alternate energy source for the brain.

Anyone wants to know more about migraines can PM me. Maybe I start a thread about it some time.

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#3407598 26-Aug-2025 14:08

Sounds like a worthy thread topic. I suspect a lot of people suffering from migraines don't realise because they think a migraine is just a strong headache and they have all sorts of other symptoms of soreness, fatigue, nausea etc.

tdgeek

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#3407623 26-Aug-2025 16:37

johno1234:

Sounds like a worthy thread topic. I suspect a lot of people suffering from migraines don't realise because they think a migraine is just a strong headache and they have all sorts of other symptoms of soreness, fatigue, nausea etc.

Agree, as Timmmay posted "Ketogenic has additional neurological benefits that help some conditions such as migraines, epilepsy, and probably others."

Ketones work wonders from what I have seen online

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#3407624 26-Aug-2025 16:40

Ketones, probably combined with low sugar, good quality food, and if people are doing that probably exercise as well.

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#3407656 26-Aug-2025 19:52

people like to throw around the word "keto" without knowing what it means, most people refer to low carbs when they say "keto".

the actual "keto" refers to ketogenic diet. it is an extremely restrictive diet, only fat and protein are allowed.

people have to eat near zero carbs for this (no bread no potatoes no milo no milk no fruits).

to check whether you are in ketosis you need to measure ketones in the blood (or urine i guess) to see the fruition of the ketogenic diet.

but nevertheless eating less carbs is likely good for most people, but it is not "keto" in a purist sense, just marketing.

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