Metabolic and Mental Health
Here’s How Amy Entered Ketosis without Following a Ketogenic Diet.
Three tips to increase ketone bodies with healthy lifestyle habits without changing the diet radically.
This is a story of a middle-aged woman who achieved ketosis without using a keto diet. She greatly benefitted from mild and occasional deep ketosis giving her metabolic flexibility, ideal weight, and better mental health.
What is ketosis, and why does it matter?
Ketosis is a unique metabolic state of the body. When the body has lower glucose from glycogen stores or food in the digestive system, it creates ketones from fat molecules.
Ketosis provides alternative energy for the brain and other organs like the heart. In addition, ketone bodies, especially β-hydroxybutyrate, serve as a signaling molecule, making epigenetic effects and reducing inflammation.
β-hydroxybutyrate can influence gene expression and enhance BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor), a protective signaling protein in the brain. BDNF is created in the cortex, hippocampus, basal forebrain, and cerebrum.
Ketosis can also make the body more insulin-sensitive and more leptin receptive. These metabolic shifts might prevent obesity, metabolic syndrome, type II diabetes, neurodegenerative disorders, and some cancers.
β-hydroxybutyrate has been a handy tool for my health and fitness improvement for decades. As a result, I pay enormous attention to this molecule for various reasons. Thus, I try to read almost every piece of research conducted and published by credible sources.
The reason for my focus on this molecule is that it changed my metabolic and mental health more than any other nutrients, as I explained in an article titled Here’s Why I Choose Ketosis as a Lifestyle Habit.
For me, the most significant contribution of this molecule is reducing my dependence on glucose and giving required physical and mental energy without consuming any sugar with near-zero carb diets for many years.
Ketosis indicates that the body runs out of glucose. However, not consuming dietary glucose does not mean the body has no sugar in the bloodstream. The body can create necessary blood glucose by converting it from amino acids and fatty acids. The processes are known as gluconeogenesis and lipolysis.
Like all good things, ketosis might not work for everyone posing risks for people with underlying health conditions. For example, one of the well-documented risks for attempting ketosis relates to people with type I diabetes whose bodies don’t create adequate insulin or with type II diabetes experiencing high alcohol consumption.
The critical issue is a condition known as ketoacidosis different from natural ketosis. Due to metabolic disorders, excessive ketones in order of magnitude can be toxic to the body and cause serious side effects.
A Brief Background to Amy’s Lifestyle
Amy is a middle-aged woman married to a farmer who loves eating meat, poultry, eggs, dairy, and fish. Her grown-up kids also love animal products like their fathers. However, Amy enjoys eating plants and loves seasonal fruits very much.
They have a farm with cattle, vegetable patches, and an orchard, including mangoes, olives, citrus fruits, melons, kiwi, and berries. She is addicted to blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries.
Amy’s friend teases her as a health and fitness freak as she loves experimenting with different lifestyles, keeps herself active on the farm, and does long walks with her friends.
As a librarian in a small town in Victoria, Australia, Amy reads a lot and participates in book clubs which she runs with the help of a few volunteers in the public library she works.
Amy read a lot about the benefits of ketosis in books and magazines. She joined online health and fitness communities and heard a lot about the importance of ketone bodies for the brain.
Nonetheless, she did not like to follow a ketogenic diet as it did not work for her. The main issue was a keto diet caused sleep disturbances and mocked up her hormones in her words.
Her family doctor also advised her that a keto diet was not suitable for her. So she got disappointed because she wanted to enter ketosis.
Amy loves carbs, especially vegetables, fruits, and legumes. However, she does not want to eat too many animal products, such as meat and fish. In fact, she dislikes the smell of fish. Furthermore, she is allergic to seafood.
Even worse, she felt awful about not being able to eat eggs and dairy as she loved them. On their farm, chickens, ducks, and geese produce free-range eggs and have organic dairy from their cows, goats, and sheep.
Nevertheless, her body tolerated butter, fermented milk like kefir, sour cream, and double cream with low lactose. So she consumed them in moderation.
Amy knows how much I focus on ketosis in my lifestyle for various health and well-being reasons. So one day, we invited them to dinner.
During our conversation, she asked me whether there was any chance for her to enter ketosis without doing a keto diet. She knew I achieved ketosis mainly by replacing carbs with healthy fats. I said yes and gave her a few tips as several other friends achieved it without changing their diets.
At first, I thought the keto-vegan diet could be a solution for her. However, she wanted to eat a little meat, butter, and cheese, so she did not consider herself vegan even though she loved plant-based diets very much.
Amy also did not want to consume too much fat, which was her reason for stopping a keto diet. Then, I offered her three options without compromising her diet.
In the next section, I briefly introduce them, highlighting the key points without going into detail.
1 — Skipped a meal or performed time-restricted eating.
Like the ketogenic diet, Amy also heard a lot about time-restricted eating, but she did not know how to implement it. She is also concerned that she might lose her muscles.
When I explained to Amy how ketosis could protect muscles due to increased growth hormone when fasting and the signaling effects of ketone bodies, she got convinced.
Amy had no difficulty skipping one meal a day. She sometimes tried to skip breakfast, lunch, or dinner. However, breakfast was the easiest for her, as I explained in section three below.
Since Amy consumes healthy whole foods, she has no nutritional deficiencies. The only necessary items for her are to increase protein and calories a little more in other meals.
Fortunately, like me, she never enjoyed snacking. Thus she always has a few hours of fasting windows that give her metabolic flexibility.
So following time-restricted eating allowing her to eat within ten hours and fasting for 14 hours efficiently put her into mild ketosis.
However, Amy wanted to intensify her ketosis a bit. So I offered her the next option.
2 — Increased movement and timed workouts.
As mentioned before, Amy loved to exercise. She used to walk around 10,000 steps a day with her friends. I asked how about 20,000 steps on some days when she wanted to enter deeper ketosis. She loved the idea as she heard about the mature couple who reversed their diabetes with long walks.
As an early bird, Amy loved the morning walk, but she always ate some breakfast and consumed sugary drinks before walking. I asked how about not having breakfast but having a black coffee before the walk and eating breakfast after a 90-minute walk. She said it would work for her.
Amy also enjoyed evening walks with her friends. She asked whether she should eat dinner after walks. I wondered how about eating dinner earlier and starting walking around two hours after dinner. She also liked this idea. She preferred consuming her dinner earlier as her husband also liked the idea.
I explained to her that the food we consume turns energy after around two hours. Walking an hour or two hours after dinner could burn immediate calories and send sugar mainly to muscles. Thus, it can make her body more insulin sensitive. She understood that when the body gets insulin-sensitive, it can be much easier to enter ketosis.
Amy also wanted to keep her muscles as she got older. I introduced her to my friend Adrian who created a resistance training program with small weights and gradually increased it.
Adrian also taught some calisthenics and isometric exercises such as push-ups, pull-ups, squats, and planks.
So Amy used resistance training on the days she walked 10,000 steps. But she rested and took a break from resistance training on the days she walked 20,000 steps. Interestingly, on the days she combined walking and resistance training, she entered deep ketosis much more quickly.
3 — Supplemented with ketone drinks or MCT oil.
Amy wanted to know whether there were other options. I introduced her to ketone drinks which many high-carb athletes love. These drinks quickly put people into ketosis.
When I tried, it took only half an hour to see ketone bodies substantially increase in my bloodstream. Amy purchased the supplement from a reliable health store and tried it. She couldn’t believe she was entering ketosis even after eating a meal with at least 300 grams of carbs.
However, Amy did not want to drink them too often as we still don’t know their long-term effects even though they look safe in the short term. She wanted to consume them on days she couldn’t exercise or couldn’t do time-restricted eating.
Amy loves coffee. One of her friends introduced bullet coffee with a little MCT oil and organic butter. First, she purchased the original brand. Nevertheless, she found it expensive. Therefore, she learned to create her own bulletproof coffee. MCT oil is usually extracted from coconut.
Drinking coffee with MCT oil and organic butter, and sometimes dairy cream in the morning reduced her appetite. She did not want to eat anything until lunchtime. When she walked for 90 minutes with only coffee, her ketones significantly increased.
Ketone drinks had no side effects for Amy, but MCT oil had a little causing diarrhea when she consumed more than a teaspoon. So she found the sweet spot of one teaspoon in her coffee with butter, which worked well for her.
She also had a teaspoonful of MCT oil with her lunch and dinner, which always kept her in mild ketosis. Amy thought that MCT oil enabled her to do a pseudo-keto diet. I loved the term and introduced her to a similar concept called a fast-mimicking diet.
Conclusions and Takeaways
In addition to being an alternative energy source for the brain and other organs, ketone bodies can also affect our genes and hormones as signaling molecules.
Therefore, ketosis might bring many health benefits. It has been used for effectively treating some mental disorders, such as seizures, for decades.
Since ketosis puts the body in a metabolically advantaged position, mild ketosis might be a preventative measure for metabolic disorders such as type II diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and fatty liver disease.
Entering ketosis requires dietary shifts such as reducing carbs and increasing healthy fats. This approach is known as a keto diet with low carb, moderate protein, and high fat.
However, as I exemplified and explained in this article, it is also possible to enter ketosis without following a ketogenic diet.
The key points are time-restricted eating, occasionally skipping meals, increasing physical exercise, and supplementing with ketone salts or MCT oil.
Time-restricted eating is not too difficult. For example, delaying her breakfast gave Amy 16 hours of fasting window, which allowed her to enter mild ketosis easily without reducing carbs or proteins from her diet.
In Amy’s case, increasing movement, skipping meals, and supplementing with ketone drinks or MCT oil had a combined effect. She managed to stay in ketosis without following a ketogenic diet.
From my observations eating carbs is not a roadblock to ketosis. However, eating them too frequently and especially consuming excessive refined carbs from sugary desserts and drinks can be problematic.
Amy also tried three-day water fasting every six months. Her reason was to go into more profound ketosis and leverage the power of autophagy and mitophagy.
She felt incredibly happy after each long-term fast giving her beautiful skin and a trimmed body.
According to her doctor, Amy created a flexible metabolism allowing glucose and fat to burn efficiently, giving her body and brain alternative energy. As a result, her body became fat-adapted without a ketogenic diet.
These three approaches did not cause any noticeable side effects to Amy. Therefore, she has been continuing them for many years happily.
Amy’s metabolic and mental health is excellent, as evident in her blood markers and subjective experience, inspiring her friends, loved ones, and colleagues consistently. In addition, she lost visceral fat, kept lean muscles, and had a defined body with a sharp mind after 40.
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