Feeling fat and depressed on keto? You may have a defect on your carnitine-transporter

Try adding a slice - yes just a single slice - of wholegrain or sourdough bread with your usual veggies, fat and protein lunch and see how much of a difference it makes later in the day. Many people find it helps both with satiety and afternoon cravings to include smart carbs into your meals - simply because carbs are easily converted to fuel for the body and provide a spike in serotonin (feel good hormone) and tends to lower our hunger hormone ghrelin fast. BUT you always want to combine your carbs with protein and/or fats to avoid the downfall of carbs. When carbs are consumed on their own it leads to a blood sugar spike and crash (before it balances out) which leads to an increase in stress hormones and increase in hunger hormone ghrelin!

Are you following keto and find that you CANNOT lose weight and rather you are actually gaining weight?

Then it may be because you belong to the group that has a defect in the carnitine transporter.

No one is designed to follow an extreme diet like keto for the rest of their lives - but there may be times when restrictions on certain food groups are necessary due to illness and imbalances.

Even though we humans are bio-individual, we are still built very similarly in terms of how we convert energy in the body and build muscles etc.

There is no good science behind all of these come-and-go theories that exclude carbohydrates for everyone, or fat for everyone, or animal protein for all.

Some of us can thrive on these diets because we - perhaps for the first time in our lives - clean up our bad eating habits and decide to now completely exclude junk food and finally eat "real food". It's always a good idea to eat "real food" from nature, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the ratio or exclusion of carbohydrates/proteins/fats.

However, for people with a defect in the carnitine-transporter, it can be very harmful to eat keto because they have a reduced ability to convert fat (ketones) into energy - and instead store it in the body.

You can either be genetically conditioned for a defect in the carnitine-transporter or you can create a reduced function of the carnitine-transporter yourself by consuming a diet low in carnitine or via excessive fasting.

Yes fasting - too many of us forget that there are side effects to everything when it gets too extreme. For women we see side effects from fasting when it is done daily over 12-14 hours and for men when it is done daily over 14-16 hours. If your nervous system is stressed, you should NOT stress the body further with long fasting windows, and you should aim for the lowest recommended window - i.e. 12 for women and 14 for men.

Fasting can become a stress for the body, and therefore it is crucial that the strategies you follow in terms of diet are recommended by a nutritionally trained practitioner who understands exactly your complex health situation and nutritional science, so as not to result in more harm than good being done.

HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE Carnitine transporter defect (CTD)?

About one in every 50,000 babies in the United States is born with CTD.

CTD occurs in all ethnic groups. It is more common in people from the Faroe Islands in the United Kingdom. About 1 in 300 babies born in the Faroe Island has CTD.

Especially if you struggle with not feeling satisfied og energetic on the keto diet, you might want to simple add back in some good carb sources of fiber and energy like potatoes, sweet potatoes, sour dough bread, rice, oats etc.

Carbs are not the devil - I promise you that.