Carbohydrate Surprise

I Wasn't Expecting This At All

29/06/24 94.2 36.73 0 0.5

28/06/24 93.8 36.78 0 0

27/06/24 94.1 36.69 0 0.5

26/06/24 94.6 0 0.5

25/06/24 93.5 0 0.5

24/06/24 0 0.5

23/06/24 93.7 36.83 0 0.5

22/06/24 94.3 36.94 0 0.5

21/06/24 94.5 36.59 0.5 0.5

20/06/24 93.8 36.72 0 0.5

19/06/24 94.1 36.66 0 0.5

18/06/24 94.1 36.8 0 0.5

17/06/24 93.5 36.85 0 0.5

16/06/24 94.5 36.76 0 0.5

15/06/24 93.8 36.65 0 0.5

14/06/24 93.7 36.73 0 0.5

13/06/24 92.4 36.69 0 0.5

12/06/24 92 36.81 0 0.5

11/06/24 92.5 36.69 0.5 0.5

10/06/24 92.8 36.66 0 0.5

So, last time I tried recarbing I immediately felt terrible and decided to go straight back into ketosis.

https://theheartattackdiet.substack.com/p/half-hearted-heart-attack-keto

After about a month of keto I felt that I should try recarbing again for a longer period:

day one

On Thursday 13th June I ate the last of my stew and cream and then I went to Sainsbury’s. I bought a load of shortbread biscuits (butter, wheat and sugar the only ingredients) and ate them one by one with some milk, with gaps in between.

I was looking after Sam that day, (Kate's dog), and so I shared the biscuits in about a 3:1 proportion with him, which seemed to give him unprecedented energy when I took him for a walk. At one point he decided that there was something in the far distance that he wanted to kill, and I felt that I was flying him like a kite. He’s a big dog.

When we come back he usually goes straight to sleep, but today he stayed awake, and he seemed to be thinking a lot about biscuits and how to scrounge more of them off me.

I was expecting the brain fog and the tiredness to come back, but they didn't. At one point I got a feeling of slight visual blurriness but that was it.

In the evening I did eventually feel a bit foggy and tired, more biscuits and milk finished me off, and I went to bed at about 2000 (very early for me), thinking I was out of ketosis and the symptoms of my malaise would be back from now on.

day two

My weight bounced up the predictable 1.5 kilos pretty much overnight, implying full restoration of glycogen stores.

The following day I woke up feeling fine, in fact lively and a bit too hot and quite hungry.

Breakfast was the three remaining shortbread biscuits with some slices of cheese, followed by an entire jar of tomato passata. It was all I had in, so a fair bit of sugar and starch and some fat and protein all at once.

I figured I'd continue in the same vein to see what happened, and so I set off to Sainsbury's and bought two more packets of shortbread, four pints of milk and a big loaf of olive bread that weirdly didn't seem to have anything nasty in it at all.

Again I was dog-sitting, so my co-experimenter Sam and I followed the same routine as before, and he helped me to remember to eat occasional biscuits every so often.

After a couple I found myself seriously overheating, splashing cold water on my face and hair to cool down.

It was cold and rainy and I took Sam for a walk in the rain and noticed that everyone else was wearing waterproofs and looking miserable while I was in a T-shirt and not too bothered by the rain (although we did hide under trees for the worst of it).

I was bouncy and enthusiastic and energetic and the energy didn't feel weirdly thin like it does in ketosis.

After the walk I started to feel a bit sluggish, my vision a bit blurred, and my energy gone. Sam scrounged a few biscuits and then went to sleep for a while like he usually does after a walk.

My lack of energy lasted an hour or so, and after that I just felt perfectly normal. I ate a couple of huge pieces of olive bread with milk and it had no effect at all.

Later in the evening I started to slow down and again went to bed quite early around 2230.

This is not what I was expecting at all.

day three

I had a weirdly disturbed night, I usually sleep like a log but I kept waking up and feeling alert throughout the night, which is most unusual for me.

Breakfast was shortbread, cheese and milk, and for a couple of hours after that I felt underpowered and blurry. I tried to read some chemistry articles and it was doable but my heart wasn't in it like it had been. I was definitely slow and stupid.

I went out to meet a friend and had three coffees and a biscuit. I perked up a bit, and we were having a friendly argument about the philosophy of mathematics and what sorts of ideas we could expect to share with aliens.

I found myself getting more and more irritated as the argument went on, feeling that he was just refusing to see my point and talking rubbish for the sake of it, and suddenly I just lost my temper and stormed out! That's just crazy. Not like me at all (and I’ve since apologised….)

I immediately ran into a couple of other friends, and I warned them that I seemed to have a screw loose but we went for a coffee anyway. I just brain-dumped the whole PUFAs and biochemistry thing on them over a couple of hours but as far as I could tell they were fascinated and it was fun and I certainly didn't get angry and my mind seemed to be working just fine.

After that, still a bit hyper, I went for a pizza, which was delicious, and I stayed hyper all day, reading and thinking. Eventually I ended up in a pub with yet more friends and I stayed there until long past midnight drinking vodka and having a generally great time.

day four

No hangover, woke up feeling lively, went shopping for more carbs. Breakfast was two huge pieces of bread dipped in honey and a pint of milk.

And again I'm far too hot. Just walking to a nearby pub has got me sweating. I had a coffee and felt a bit tired, blurry and unfocused.

But a second coffee sorted me out, and I got lost in science again. Dinner was two more huge chunks of bread, this time with maple syrup.

And again, I was buzzing energetically all evening, assisted by shortbread and coffee.

day five

And finally I crashed.

I woke up too hot, shortbread and kiwi fruit for breakfast, I was overheating and breaking sweat at the slightest exercise.

My waking temperatures have been consistently a bit too high for a week or so now and so I've pretty much stopped taking T4. The amount of exogenous thyroid I calculate is in my blood is dropping like a stone but if anything I'm showing thyrotoxic symptoms.

This morning, for the first time in a long time I didn't take any thyroid at all. I'm clearly feeling a bit too good, despite the short-lived blurry periods.

I met Kate for lunch, and I was saying that I just felt amazing, like my full foreground metabolism was actually working again in a way it hasn't done for years. Young again!

And she said that she thought I'd been very bouncy for the last few days, but that I seemed a bit subdued today.

And I realised that she was right, and went home and took my usual thyroid dose (now down to half a grain of NDT).

And then we took the dog for a walk, and I started to feel a bit lazy, thoughts not coming, just peaceful, and I noticed that my hips were aching a bit while walking, which is also unusual.

More shortbreads shared with Sam, and some milk, and then I felt sleepy, brain fog back, and a nasty pain in my stomach. I tried to read a book but I ended up just going to sleep on the sofa for a couple of hours.

I woke up hungry, but still ropy and tired, foggy and irritable, with a headache bad enough to take painkillers for.

Around 2030 I suddenly felt better but that only lasted for an hour and then I felt mangy again and went to bed. Ridiculously early for me, who's rarely tired before midnight.

day six

When I woke up I still had the same headache, which I think had gone on all night. I fixed it with ibuprofen and paracetamol and coffee and then I was fine. No longer fizzing with energy, just kind of normal and a bit lazy.

Breakfast was grapefruit and honey and two fried eggs and some cheese.

After that I was fine. Various chores got done and I felt pretty good. My headache came back, I took more painkillers and I ate several kiwi fruit with honey and maple syrup. And also took a keto-electrolyte pill, just in case that was the problem.

In the evening I went to play chess in the pub, and I played very well, enjoyed myself, and didn't lose a game. Around 2300 traces of my headache re-emerged but I was pretty bouncy and on good form otherwise.

days seven to ten

No point giving details here, I basically felt fine throughout, mainly I ate carbs of various sorts plus a steak and some cheese for protein, a couple of vodkas at one point. No headaches, brain and general mood fine, loads of energy. Lost in various biochemistry articles and essays mainly.

Unfortunately one day I followed a link to TV tropes, and found that a role playing game (Traveller) that I'd been really into when I was a teenager had undergone some interesting new developments in the thirty years since I'd last thought about it. I got completely nerd-sniped by all the things that had happened to all the characters and places that I'd once known so well.

I felt like someone who'd gone into hibernation in the peaceful world of 1913 and woken up one hundred years later in a room full of history books. I couldn't put it down.

days eleven to thirteen

TV tropes and the Traveller RPG wiki ate my life for four whole days. I kept staying up until four in the morning, and feeling shattered as a result, and then going back to it again the following day and repeating the cycle.

The last time I felt like this was when I first read Game of Thrones, and found myself reading the whole series in a week, going and buying a new book every morning and staying up late into the night finishing it.

I can't work out whether this was all just really genuinely fascinating stuff, or whether it was a sign that I wasn't quite right in the head. Probably a bit of both.

I did manage to tear myself away for long enough to read Nick Lane's Transformer for the third time in about four weeks, which book seems to get more interesting every time I read it, and at one point I met Kate and Sam for lunch. I think we had a nice time during which I just about managed to restrain myself from monologuing about doubly-labelled water at her, although it was hard. She remarked that I seemed very bouncy, which was not at all apparent to me from the inside.

I also managed to go and see a film, 'Bikeriders' which also seemed to be pretty wonderful and which I thought about a lot afterwards.

I'm not sure if Over-Interested In Cultural Artifacts Disorder is actually in the DSM. There are limits to what I can find interesting, or at least there normally are.

Throughout I was feeling too hot, but also shattered from lack of sleep. Eventually I had my fill of the story of the collapse of the Third Imperium, closed all my browser tabs, went shopping for more carbs and went to bed at a sensible-ish time.

day fourteen

Far too hot. I keep taking cold showers. The weather's lovely out but it's only about 27C and I'm behaving like I normally do when it's in the high thirties. I’m longing for Wicken and the cool waters of the fen.

Back to being fascinated by biochemistry. It's pretty clear that the brain fog and general lassitude and slow metabolism is not coming back, although I do keep getting short periods of it at seemingly random times.

As far as I can tell my foreground glucose metabolism is working fine. I'm full of energy and enthusiasm. Overstimulated at full power. I'm running far too hot, and I'm dropping my thyroid dose as fast as I dare to.

day fifteen

The weather broke and it's now 22C, and I'm still too hot. I can't even take my waking temperature this morning because I can't stand to stay under the covers when I wake up. I think it's safe to say that it would have been too high.

All day I feel fine apart from being overheated, but in the evening at choir and in the pub afterward I'm actually sweating while doing nothing at all. And I got this terrible stomach pain that felt like an alien was about to burst from my solar plexus and that carried on all night.

day sixteen

Maybe a little overstimulated? A bit too hot? Basically fine though. Went to the pub and stayed until past midnight.

day seventeen (today Friday 29th June)

Just feel great all day. Decide to write up notes from the last two weeks and see what I think.

---

what I think

I don't know what to make of all this. Apart from occasional cheese and the odd steak for protein, I've been deliberately drowning myself in carbs for more than two weeks. Fruit, honey, bread, porridge, milk, pizza, biscuits, maple syrup, anything carby that looked good to eat.

My weight seems to be stable at about 94kg, my thyroid dose is dropping like a stone, and I'm far too hot and far too bouncy.

As far as I can tell my mind is working fine. In fact I can't stop it working. Everything seems fascinating, and I can't stop focusing on things and thinking about stuff. This is what it was like to be a child.

What I was expecting was that recarbing would put me back into my usual sluggish state (glycolysis is blocked??), where things obviously just aren't working properly and I'm a bit spoony and stupid and have trouble finding the energy to do things.

I've had a bit of that, but it's in short bursts.

My best guess is that everything's mostly working normally, but that the thyroid drugs that I've been taking for a decade to keep myself awake are now causing everything to run hot. I’m mildly thyrotoxic. Even though I'm now taking about one-sixth of the stable dose I took for most of that decade.

I'm surprised and perplexed and a bit frightened, but cautiously hopeful.

I guess the next thing to try is to stride bravely into the middle of the 'metabolic swamp', and see what happens if I just eat a balanced diet. Some fat, some carbs, not too much protein.

Wish me luck.

EDIT

What even is this “metabolic swamp”? Why would mixed macros cause slow metabolism, ketosis bypass that, but glucose-only (carbosis??) works fine?

Could it be that slightly-blocked glycolysis is a problem if you're trying to do both at once, but if you're drowning in carbs the pathway works well enough for full power?

Why for God's sake? And if you're over-driving glycolysis, where else is the excess sugar pressure going? I hope not into the polyol pathway and sorbitol.....