Let’s take a look at this picture.

We have a woman who is new to the keto diet and lifestyle. She’s trying what she thinks is intermittent fasting, and this is her day. 

She wakes up at 7 a.m. to do her normal routine and then has her keto breakfast of keto pancakes made with almond flour. Almonds just like other nuts are okay on the keto diet and approved. Whether she used almond flour, coconut flour, wheat flour, or any other kind of flour, she still will trigger her second (I will get to it) insulin magnifier.

It’s not about the ingredients like wheat versus almonds, it’s about the particle size. I call this insulin magnifier “Bite-Size.” The smaller something is broken down and in our food the higher the insulin response becomes.

She also delays her first meal more than 3 hours after rising. That’s another insulin magnifier (#1). If you wait too long to eat your breakfast, as in more than 3 hours after you wake up you start to have negative metabolic risk consequences and your insulin response goes up for the rest of the day, this is the hidden insulin magnifier called “Meal Timing.”

Also, insulin magnifier. Number 3 is having a high insulin breakfast which will set the insulin cascade up to secrete more than if you had a low insulin meal throughout the entire day due to the insulin magnifier “Meal Compounding.”

Then she moves on to lunch. For lunch, she decides to have a low-carb lunch with fish, salad, and veggies. It all looks good and it’s well under 20 grams for the meal so she decides to have some sweet potato fries as an appetizer but doesn’t eat them all.

Regardless of the macronutrients in that meal, the number of carbs, or your Ketone reading, if you start a meal with a starch or sugar carbohydrate you will magnify the total response from whatever is in that meal by up to 300%. So that’s another magnifier, “Meal Architecture.” (#4)

She decides to have a quick snack before dinner, eating a keto snack. She is very happy about choosing this keto snack and skipping the usual foo-foo coffee she usually has. She doesn’t realize that she’s magnifying her insulin yet again for number 5 by eating a snack after her already magnified lunch and increasing the ”Meal Frequency” magnifier and therefore the insulin response. 

Not to mention a snack packaged keto food will have processed stuff in it that will offend “Bite-Size ” yet again and this processed food likely has non-ingredients that trigger the magnifier “Double Jeopardy” number 6.

She moves on to eat her third meal or her dinner at 8 p.m. She makes a big dinner for her and her family like she usually does and it’s the biggest meal of the day. This is actually two magnifiers. 

One is having your biggest meal as your last meal this day which increases the normal insulin response. The other is that she’s eating after 6 at the latest 7 p.m. and therefore she’s eating into the Twilight hours and it’s another magnifier racking up 7 and 8.

Eating time has ended, and the latest meal of the day for dinner is compounding all the other magnifiers she had before as she decides to eat a very keto and healthy snack of avocados and cheese shortly after dinner bringing in number 9 with “Meal Spacing” This nighttime snack is just adding fuel to the fire by eating too late, even if it is keto or considered healthy.

The last one is not really an insulin magnifier but I count it as a close cousin. This one is practicing intermittent fasting or skipping breakfast or an eight-hour window with a late onset of eating every day.

There is a way to do intermittent fasting correctly but that’s not how you do it. If you do that every day for an extended period of time it will start to backfire and can be very bad for people who are susceptible metabolically.

So there you go, what seems to be a very reasonable and well-planned and well-executed keto diet day ends up being a tremendously high insulin magnification day. 

We have no idea how these insulin magnifiers play on each other and compound throughout the day. We’ve only tested insulin in the fasted state in clinics and labs. In research, they do it with one meal showcasing one food at a time, one concept at a time, and they have just started to really scratch the surface with that and all functional testing insulin.

We won’t know the true magnification that can occur from these magnifiers for a long time and during that time I’m not willing to wait to see if it’s good or bad.

Because I know alone that each of these insulin magnifiers can increase your normal insulin response from our healthy meals, even keto-approved meals, upward of 50% to 700% higher than normal. So I can only imagine what is happening as they compound throughout a day, week, month, and years from this behavior.

This is a BIG part as to why very well executed diets that used to work don’t anymore and why we suddenly stop after losing the initial 10-15 lbs. when starting a new plan. It doesn’t matter which plan you’re on or which diet you’re doing if it has worked for you in the past it should work for you again if you eliminate these hidden insulin magnifiers.

Now I’m not condoning dieting as a general rule nor the conventional dieting models of any kind but I am saying that if it did work there’s a reason why it’s not working now and this could be it. 

So much more on the concept of Hidden Insulin Magnifiers, if you want more articles, posts, videos, and graphics, to learn more please join my Facebook Group, Insulin Friendly Fasting Secrets, and join my newsletter.

We can do better!

Dr. Don