Intermittent Fasting and Keto Diet

diet, fasting, keto

One of the most buzz diet around the globe now is the so-called “Keto Diet” which means fewer carbs and more fats, more protein, combining with non-stashy and greeny leaf vegetables. Thousands of people claim across nations that this diet is very effective. But for some, to make it more effective, many believe this should match with Intermittent Fasting or “IF”.

History

Not so long ago, before Keto and Paleo diet becomes part of my dictionary, I been reading a research blog post from Bee Wilder. Her blog is the product of her 30 years research started way back 1985 when she got ill and looking for medicines. I discovered her website way back to 2011 when my father was looking for a natural way to heal himself due to massive fallback of being a cigarette smoker.

Bee Wilder’s website “Healing Naturally By Bee”, is an informative website that contains information about getting your health back by using the natural way thus by saying “Let the food be your medicine”. Since then, I learned a lot from what food does harm to you, and what food are good for you. She also describes the false theory of cholesterol and the best enemy of us, Sugar. Currently, there are many success stories can be found on her website and the Yahoo Group.

Bee Wilder’s profile can be found here

While here are list of precious articles:

The Trial

After some time, when a co-worker was dealing with Keto and IF, he was able to encourage me to try the two combination technique for getting lose weight. Since the approach is very identical to my understanding of healthy food, he was able to convince me to give it try.

For the past 2 weeks, I’m doing an Intermittent Fasting given with 16 hrs. of fasting with no food at all and just water while 6 hrs. of window eating every day. During window eating time, I intake food 2-3 times based on a Keto diet approach. Which means no rice at all, fewer carbs as much as possible, and more fats and green veggies.

The first 3 days were very challenging, tough and hard to resist. Cutting out the regular habit was the first thing to beat. For a guy like me that likes to eat a large amount of food, combining with juice or ice tea, that makes a lot of challenges.

During the first week, the next battle is coping with stress. As you can imagine, I’m doing with a Keto diet and “IF” while working at night. This battle is kinda crazy and hard to win. Luckily for me, I was able to compose some tricks which are I’m doing my window eating time during my work at night, while the fasting is working while I sleep.

The days go by and I am able to manage. I was able to control my bowel movement and my cravings. I feel I’m getting thinner in and out and having this light feeling making my shirts fit well and relaxed. Then I started cooking more food with olive oils, coconut oil (MCT), and more natural fat from meat.

Everything goes well until…

Worst Decision

Well after doing the Keto diet and “IF” for the last two weeks, a friend of mine called me telling me that they are going to celebrate something and course of, that will deal with tons foods and drinks.

During that time, to my mind, I’m thinking about “Cheat Day”. From my perspective before, a diet should have a cheat day, that you can at least eat the food you want and drink alcohol because you know, you are not doing it for quite some time now and maybe a cheat day just for once after two weeks would not be bad at all.

So the day comes, I drank tons of beers, ate a lot of food mixing from meats, fruits, sweets plus I also drink coke. Well, it turns out, around 5 pm in the afternoon, I am started to realize, that’s the worst decision I ever made.

The “party” started around 10 am and after 5 pm during that day, I am beginning to feel so much stomach pain. The pain is somehow unimaginable that I never felt before in my entire life. It aches so much that I am having a hard time to breathe, walk or stand.

After an hour, the pain goes to my lower back. It’s crazy that my stomach and lower back aches the same time which prevents me from laying from a bed or leaning my back on a chair. During that moment, I know myself, this is not a regular pain, this is not something that you can fix using the over the counter medicine and this is a thing that needs a help from a Doctor.

Aftermath

I ended up in the hospital and was confined for the entire week or exactly as 7 days. It turns out the doctors found a twisted small intestine or they called small bowel volvulus due to small bowel obstruction.

When I heard this terms, I already thought I was going to under operation. I was already introduced to a surgeon doctor and everything syncing in after that.

The doctors asking me to take NGT or Nasogastric intubation to release the fluids and gas in my stomach. All of these things making a lot of emotional stress as for me that never been hospitalized.

Luckily, my best friend came over with her nurse girlfriend. They explain to me all this stuff that I really don’t understand. After a while, when the pain reliever effect no longer works and the pain is coming back, I was encouraged and brave to put that NGT on my nose going to my stomach.

Overnight, it releases all of the fluids and gas from my stomach. The first morning, I was able to poop 3 times in the morning. That’s somehow I got relief and no longer feel the pain. I do not feel bloated or anything. And that leads my twisted small intestine to collapse, putting it back in the normal state through series of X-Rays and CT-Scans.

Analysis

The crazy things that happened to me are the very rare case due to most of the time, people that getting that twisted small intestine are only for those people who had past surgical operation. So it may be the amount of the alcohol or the amount of food or both.

But during my last day in the hospital, I tried to research and google my case. I was unconvinced that it was just the alcohol or the food. So while scrolling to the search results, I found an article about a 45-year-old woman who died in the same case as mine. But unlike her, after ultrasound and X-ray, the doctors did not find anything. When she comes home, she died and after the autopsy, they found she died to due blockage of blood in her stomach.

On that page, the author pointed out that the same case happens to people mostly to Asians after they had Ramadan or series or fasting then ate high fiber food. It seems to me that’s where I can relate. I have been doing intensive fasting and diet then suddenly I thought cheat day would not be bad at all.

It turns, that is causing our small intestine to twist, which I’d like to think it might due to the amount of food intake after fasting.