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Starting the ketogenic diet, unsupported for adults
Thu, 10/22/2009 - 06:26Topic: Epilepsy.com Help
I'm Interested talking to any other Adults on the Ketogenic Diet or Atkins Modified Diet. My Nurologist is not very supportive of Alternative medicines. I have been Trying to do it on my own for about 3 weeks but i'm not sure if i'm on the right track.
I have not been able to find a dietition that was familiar with the diet in my area to help me out. (I'm in Australia and travel is an issue as i'm sure you all understand)
Having really been a health nut in the past i'm really missing my fruit. And finding it difficult to adjust to the high fat content
Any advice would be welcome.
Comments
Re: Starting the ketogenic diet, unsupported for adults
Submitted by jderry on Sat, 2009-10-24 - 09:51
this is funny. I tried to explain this diet to my jewish friend Mitch. He laughed and said I should go to koser classes with him & his family.
Re: Starting the ketogenic diet, unsupported for adults
Submitted by StaceyM on Fri, 2009-10-23 - 20:22
Hi, there. I tried a modified Atkins diet for a few months last year at the advice of my neuro, although he didn't provide me with a referral for a nutritionist or any resources. I bought a couple of books online about the ketogenic diet, then Atkins book. The food I seemed to relish the most for overall satisfaction was full fat greek yogurt with a few raspberries on top. I also added flax meal for fiber/ omegas. That and half and half lattes. Yum. Cutting out the carbs was painfully hard, but getting enough fat to accumulate ketones was really hard for me. I measured my ketones with the strips and was never able to get above the "moderate" level. So I didn't experience a marked reduction in seizures (I have 12-30 complex partials per day.) I think I tried to keep my carb intake at around 15-20 grams/ day (I eased into it, though) I ate a lot of macadamia nuts and cheese as snacks, then meat and low-carb vegetables. A couple of resources I found useful were the option of using coconut flour for cooking if you absolutely have to have something bread-like. Here is a good cookbook: http://tinyurl.com/ygzbqlr I also found a net zero carb sweetener called xylitol that is derived from birch bark. From all of my reading, it seems to be safe and it doesn't taste disgusting like Stevia. And my favorite dessert was a teaspoon of sugarfree chocolate pudding mixed in with whipped cream. Good luck and let me know how it goes. I might go back to a less rigid version of the diet just because it forced me to evaluate each thing I put into my body and it's overall worth for my functioning. Stacey M.