Shed Keto

Most people who "fail" keto quit in the first week because they feel terrible. They blame the diet. In reality, they're experiencing preventable electrolyte deficiency. Fix this, and the flu disappears.

On a normal high-carb diet, Insulin tells your kidneys: "Hold onto Sodium." On keto, Insulin stays low, so your kidneys flush Sodium at a rate of grams per day. This triggers a cascade:

1. Sodium Loss: Blood volume drops (Hypovolemia) because water follows sodium.
2. Potassium Dumping: To maintain electrical balance (the Sodium-Potassium Pump), the body dumps Potassium to match lost Sodium.
3. Magnesium Depletion: Stress from adaptation increases Magnesium use; it's also flushed with excess water.

The Symptoms (Keto Flu): Headaches, dizziness, fatigue, muscle cramps, brain fog, heart palpitations (Tachycardia). These are NOT carb withdrawal—they're low blood pressure and mineral deficiency.

You can eat the "right" amount of protein and still lose muscle if you distribute it wrong. The key is triggering the muscle-building signal with each meal.

MPS is not a dimmer switch; it's a binary ON/OFF trigger. It requires a rapid rise in blood amino acid levels, specifically Leucine (~3g per meal).

What Happens at Each Level:

• Below Threshold (< 3g Leucine): The protein is treated as fuel (calories). It gets converted to glucose and burned for energy. Zero muscle repair happens. You ate the protein, but got none of the structural benefit.
• Above Threshold (> 3g Leucine): The body recognizes "building materials have arrived" and activates mTOR (the master growth signal), initiating muscle repair and preservation.

• Grazing (Bad): 20g protein × 6 meals = 120g total. Each meal has ~2g Leucine (below threshold). Result: 120g burned as fuel. Zero muscle preservation.
• Bolus (Good): 60g protein × 2 meals = 120g total. Each meal has ~6-8g Leucine (above threshold). Result: MPS triggered twice. Maximum muscle preservation.

Poor sleep is often blamed on stress or screens. The deeper issue is usually a de-synced body clock. Morning light is the single most powerful tool to fix it.

The SCN is your brain's "Master Clock," located behind your eyes. It's calibrated by specific wavelengths of blue/amber light hitting special cells called ipRGCs (intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells) in your lower retina.

How the Timer Works:

• The Start Gun: Morning light tells your SCN "It's daytime." This starts a ~14-16 hour countdown to Melatonin release. Light at 7 AM = Melatonin at 9-11 PM.
• The Drift: Without morning light, your clock "free-runs" and typically drifts ~30 mins later each day. After a week, you're going to bed at 2 AM wondering why you're not tired at 10 PM.
• "Tired but Wired": When you miss morning light, Melatonin release is delayed or blunted. You feel exhausted but can't fall asleep because the chemical "sleep now" signal never arrived.

To understand caffeine, you first need to understand Adenosine—the molecule that makes you feel sleepy.

Caffeine doesn't give you energy or remove tiredness. It masks it. Here's what actually happens:

1. The Block: Caffeine molecules are shaped similarly to Adenosine. They fit into the same receptors but don't activate them. It's like putting a dummy key in a lock—the real key (Adenosine) can't get in.
2. The Buildup: While caffeine is blocking the receptors, Adenosine keeps being produced. It piles up in your system, waiting.
3. The Crash: When caffeine wears off (half-life: 5-6 hours), all that accumulated Adenosine floods the now-unblocked receptors at once. This is the "caffeine crash"—you feel MORE tired than you would have naturally.

When you wake up, you still have residual Adenosine in your system. Your body naturally clears this over the first 90 minutes through a process involving Cortisol (your natural "wake up" hormone).

• If you drink caffeine immediately: You block the Adenosine before your body clears it naturally. When caffeine wears off mid-afternoon, that morning Adenosine + afternoon Adenosine hits you together = massive crash.
• If you wait 90 mins: Your body clears the morning Adenosine naturally. Caffeine only blocks the NEW Adenosine. Result: smoother energy, no afternoon crash.

Caffeine has a half-life of 5-6 hours. This means if you drink 200mg at 2 PM:

• At 8 PM: 100mg still in your system
• At 2 AM: 50mg still in your system

Even 50mg is enough to reduce Deep Sleep quality by 20%. You might fall asleep, but you won't get the restorative sleep that burns fat (Growth Hormone) and clears Cortisol (the water-retention hormone).

Cheat meals aren't inherently bad, but they're dangerous if you don't understand what's happening metabolically. Done wrong, a single cheat can undo weeks of progress—not from the calories, but from the hormonal cascade it triggers.

The Potential Benefit:

• Carbohydrates spike Leptin more than protein or fat.
• A Leptin spike tells your brain "food is abundant," which can temporarily boost thyroid function and metabolic rate.
• This can break a weight-loss plateau by "resetting" the starvation signal.

The Danger (Why It's Labeled "High Risk"):

• Metabolic Switching Cost: Your body has spent days/weeks building the enzymatic machinery to burn fat (Ketosis). Eating carbs forces a "fuel switch" back to glucose. It takes 24-72 hours to switch back to fat-burning mode. During this time, fat loss is paused.
• Water Weight Illusion: Carbs pull water into muscles (glycogen storage). You will gain 3-7 lbs overnight. This is water, not fat—but it can be psychologically devastating if you don't expect it.
• The Craving Cascade: Sugar/carbs trigger dopamine in the reward center of your brain. This can reactivate cravings that were dormant. One cheat meal can turn into a cheat week if willpower is low.

The first month is the adaptation phase. During this time:

• Your body is building new mitochondria optimized for fat burning.
• Your brain is reducing its dependence on glucose.
• Cravings are at their peak but fading daily.
• A single cheat resets this process to Day 1.

After Week 4, you are "fat-adapted." Your body can switch fuels more easily, and you have the psychological momentum to handle a controlled refeed without spiraling.

This simple habit reduces blood sugar spikes, improves digestion, and prevents fat storage—all with minimal effort.

Think of your muscle cell as a nightclub with two entrances:

• The Main Entrance (Insulin Dependent): Normally, glucose floats in the blood until Insulin comes along, talks to the bouncer, and opens the door. This is slow and keeps your body in "Storage Mode."
• The Service Door (GLUT4 Translocation): When a muscle physically contracts (flexes), it pushes a transporter protein called GLUT4 to the cell surface. This acts like a backdoor that sucks glucose directly out of the blood without needing Insulin.

The Result: By walking, you bypass the "Insulin cost" of the meal. Energy is cleared from the blood immediately and used by muscles—not stored as fat.

Most people do cardio wrong: too intense, too short. Zone 2 is the sweet spot where you train your body to become a better fat-burning machine.

Zone 2 specifically trains Type I muscle fibers (slow-twitch, endurance fibers) to become more efficient at burning fat for fuel.

The Adaptation:

• Mitochondrial Biogenesis: You grow MORE mitochondria (the "power plants" in your cells). More mitochondria = more capacity to burn fat.
• Fat Oxidation: Your muscles learn to preferentially use fat instead of sugar at lower intensities. This is "metabolic flexibility."
• 24/7 Benefit: Unlike HIIT (which burns calories only during exercise), Zone 2 changes your baseline. You burn more fat even while sleeping.

You can exercise for an hour and still undo it by sitting for 8 hours. The body has a "use it or lose it" switch for fat burning that gets flipped OFF when you're sedentary.

LPL is an enzyme attached to blood vessel walls in your muscles. Its job is to grab fat (Triglycerides) floating in your blood and pull it into the muscle to be burned for energy. Think of it as the "vacuum cleaner" that sucks fat out of your bloodstream.

The Failure Mode:

• Physical inactivity causes LPL gene expression to plummet.
• After ~60 minutes of continuous sitting, LPL activity drops by 90%.
• Your fat-burning "valve" effectively closes. Fat floats in the blood with nowhere to go—eventually stored.
• This happens EVEN IF you exercised that morning. An hour workout doesn't offset 8 hours of sitting.

The benefits of fasting come from the extended time WITHOUT food, not from eating less overall. Your body has cleanup processes that only run when digestion stops.

The MMC is a rhythmic wave of muscle contractions (peristalsis) that sweeps bacteria, debris, and leftover food particles from your small intestine into your colon. Think of it as the "self-cleaning" cycle of your digestive system.

The Critical Constraint:

• The MMC only activates when your stomach is completely empty (fasted state).
• Eating even 10 calories stops the wave immediately.
• Without regular MMC cycles, bacteria overgrow in the small intestine (SIBO), causing bloating, gas, and nutrient malabsorption.

Anything that triggers an Insulin or digestive response breaks the fast:

• Breaks fast: Food, cream, milk, sugar, sweeteners (even zero-cal), BCAAs, collagen, bone broth.
• Does NOT break fast: Water, black coffee, plain tea, electrolytes (without sweeteners), salt.

Most people track cooked weight using raw nutrition data (or vice versa). This single mistake can cause 20-40% tracking errors, stalling fat loss for weeks without knowing why.

Cooking removes water but preserves macronutrients. Typical weight loss from cooking:

• Chicken breast: ~25-30% water loss
• Ground beef: ~25-35% water + fat loss
• Steak: ~20-30% water loss
• Fish: ~20-25% water loss

The PROTEIN and FAT content stays nearly the same—only water (and some rendered fat) leaves.