Okay, 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 routine and then has her keto breakfast of keto pancakes made with almond flour and almonds, which is approved by the keto diet. 

Whether she used almond flour, coconut flour, wheat flour, or any other flour, she will still trigger her second insulin magnifier (I will get to it).

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 in our food, the higher the insulin response.

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 breakfast, 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.”

She decides to have a low-carb lunch with fish, salad, and veggies. 

It all looks good, and the meal is well under 20 grams, so she decides to have some sweet potato fries as an appetizer but only eats some of them.

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 is pleased 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 again for number 5 by eating a snack after her already magnified lunch, increasing the ”Meal Frequency” magnifier and, therefore, the insulin response.

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

She eats her dinner at 8 p.m., and like usual, she makes a big dinner for herself and her family. It’s the biggest meal of the day. These are two magnifiers.

One is having your biggest meal as your last meal that day, which increases the normal insulin response. 

The other is that she eats after six at 7 p.m.; therefore, she eats into the Twilight hours, 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 adds fuel to the fire by eating too late, even if it is keto or healthy.

The last one is not an insulin magnifier, but I consider it a close cousin. This one involves practicing intermittent fasting, skipping breakfast, or having an eight-hour window with a late onset of eating daily.

There is a way to do intermittent fasting correctly, but that’s different from how you do it. Doing that daily for an extended time will start to backfire and can be very bad for metabolically susceptible people.

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

Because I know alone that 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 the day, week, month, and years from this behavior.

This is a BIG part of why very well-executed diets that used to work don’t work anymore and why we suddenly stop after losing the initial 10-15 lbs when starting a new plan. 

It doesn’t matter which plan or diet you’re on; 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 or conventional dieting models of any kind, but if it did work, there’s a reason why it’s not working now, and this could be it.

We can do better!

Dr. Don

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