A low carb diet is an island of safety.  It’s not just cutting out sugars and starches and flours from the diet.  It’s finding the right mix of nutrients.  For me it’s been a 30 year odyssey.  I’ve figured out a lot.  But you can’t do it part time.

I look at it as a commitment, in the same way that it’s a commitment if you decide to fly to Hawaii.  You fly half way to Hawaii, you’re going to end up in the water which has sharks in it.  If you do a low-carb diet half way, meaning mostly low-carb but then a high-carb meal on the weekends, then you’ll never get low-carb adapted the way you would if you just gave up the higher carbs for good.Go all the way there and give your body time to adapt.  And once you’ve got it, treasure it.   Because, if you do load up on carbs, your can’t ignore those carbohydrates.  Normally, you’ve got around 2 teaspoons of sugar floating around in the blood. That’s when blood sugar is normal — between 60 and 100.

If you eat a big plate of pasta and your body can’t handle it properly, suddenly you’ll have 20 or so teaspoons of sugar in your blood.  If your body isn’t able to move it into your muscles quickly, you’re going to have blood sugars of 300 or so.

It’s dangerous for your body to have blood sugars stuck that high.

Now, personally, my body has the capacity to put those sugars away rather quickly, so for me, it wouldn’t be a dangerous situation, but it would be an embarrassment I’ve inflicted on my body.  And to deal with it, my body would completely throw away the weeks and months and years of adaptation that I’ve stuck with.  I would feel lousy for a number of days after that, but my blood sugars would be down to normal, so in way, it wouldn’t be a big deal.  But in another way it would, because that single carbohydrate meal, that high, would be such an insult to my body, it would for it to completely drop my low carbohydrate adaptation.  And it would take a while for me to get it back.  Probably at least two weeks, and then even longer to fine-tune the adaptation.

So once you’ve made the commitment, put in the time, you treasure the keto- adapted state. Steve Phinney

Dr. STEPHEN PHINNEY a physician scientist who has spent 35 years studying diet, exercise, fatty acids, and inflammation. He has held academic positions at the Universities of Vermont, Minnesota, and California at Davis; and leadership positions at Monsanto, Galileo Laboratories, and Efficas. He received his MD from Stanford University, PhD in Nutritional Biochemistry from MIT, and did post-doctoral research at Harvard.

He has designed, completed, and published data from more than 20 clinical protocols involving foods, diets, exercise, oxidative stress, and inflammation. His recent work in the private sector has resulted in several issued and pending patents. He has authored more than 70 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters on a wide variety of topics, including the effects of diets and specific nutrients on inflammation, the interaction between diet and exercise and their effects on obesity, body composition, physical performance, and cellular membrane structure.

Dr. Phinney's clinical experience includes 20 years of inpatient and outpatient clinical nutrition, including directing multidisciplinary weight management programs in 3 locations. As an internationally recognized expert in obesity, carbohydrate-restricted diets, diet and performance, and essential fatty acid metabolism, he has given hundreds of presentations to industry, health care professional, and lay audiences.

In collaboration with Dr. Eric Westman and Dr. Jeff Volek, he co-authored the New York Times Best Selling “ The New Atkins for a New You ” published in March 2010.