I have now spent 2 weeks in a state of nutritional ketosis.

How is it going? In short, great.

My need/desire for stimulants (caffeine & energy drinks) has been gone since I became fat adapted on Sunday the 19th.

My net mental state seems to have leveled off to something better than it was before being in a state of nutritional ketosis but, not the same euphoria the I experienced for the first couple days of being fat adapted.

The ritual of tracking all of my meals in myfitnesspal alone likely causes me to be more mindful about what I am putting into my body and what I should be putting into my body (water).

I continue to bounce between the “slow carb” rules and the more keto rules; this likely has disadvantaged the speed of my weight loss but, I like experimenting with what I am eating.

New Gear:

I was able to pick up a Fitbit Aria for $20 out of my pocket after I got 20% off and along with my co-op member rewards. This has made the logging of my weight more accurate then the old scale that I have been using for 10+ years and I now have an additional metric to track, Body Fat %.

On Exercise:

Saturday the 25th and Sunday the 26th of this week I went for what I call a “run walk jog” on both days for 2 hours both days. This is not something that I could have done while my body was burning glycogen because my muscles would be “feeling the burn” far too much due to the normal build up of lactic acid, also I am totally out of shape and I “feel the burn” far to early in a workout as intense as sustaining 135bpm average on Saturday and 146bpm on Sunday with my peak cardio in the bouncing around 180 for 45mins on each run.  What I am trying to say for someone in the current shape that I am in, I should be hurting after exercise like that. What I found was that I did not “feel the burn” while exercising both days which allowed me to be more comfortable while exercising and push myself further (…than I should have pushed myself).

I am not a chemist, BUT I am about to play one on the internet… but after being perplexed by why I could run for such an extended period without feeling any burning in my muscles I stumbled across this video of a talk by Peter Attia.

It turns out that the accumulation of lactic acid which causes the sensation of “burning” when exercising is a product of the conversion of glycogen into pyruvate which is then converted into Acetyl CoA which then frees up 2 units of ATP, ATP feeds the Krebs Cycle; there is insufficient cellular O2 to allow this process to work without causing the creation of Lactic acid.

The above process is inefficient compared to the conversion of ketone bodies directly into Acetyl CoA which frees up 34 ATP that then feeds the Krebs Cycle.

The following graphic from Peter Attia’s eating institute explains the reason that lactic acid doesn’t accumulate while burning ketones,

Ironically, I ended up slightly injuring my left ankle from exerting myself like this, because I didn’t slow down because of the “burn” from the lactic acid accumulation.