After about 10 years of being paleo-ish, I've found my body has become quite adaptable, even when I get sloppy, or eat a tonne of carbs.

I do the intermittent fasting out of preference and never seem to be hungry, even after I've had a high-carb day (sometimes gorge on potatoes/other root veggies/ice cream) or gone too hard on the wine (alcohol metabolism is a third pathway and takes precedence over all others)

It drives people nuts that I can go the entire day and never need to eat.

Awesome post! I have similar experiences as HeMan mentioned in his comments. I typically IF by eating in an 8-hour feeding window during the day, have stable energy and mood regardless of for how long I've fasted or whether my previous day was a high-carb day (which I do occasionally just for the pure pleasure of it), or a low-carb day, or anywhere in between. I've gravitated towards the Perfect-Health Diet even before I discovered the website and book by the Drs. Jaminet.

It's funny but even with ketoacidosis, people focus on the ketones as the cause of the problem but actually, in diabetics, what they really need to be worrying about is that uncontrolled blood sugar--the ketones are there to begin with because the body just can't do anything with the sugar, for some reason. Ketosis occurs in the absence of sugar availability and, well, if you can't respond to your own insulin anymore, that's the same thing as having no access to sugar.

Could be that the massive amount of ketones is causing the metabolic acidosis but if they don't get the sugar thing solved they won't solve the extreme ketosis thing either. But I wonder whether the glucose is not also contributing to the acidosis. I don't know enough about this to say.

I don't mind being in ketosis and in fact appear to switch back and forth into it without much problem, not much more than a day or two of grouchiness. I have a tendency to migraine and/or cluster headaches, which ketosis seems to help on top of letting me burn off my excess body fat. I don't want to have to run ten miles a day to lose the fat--that's ridiculous. I should be able to do that while sitting down, it'd suck if I broke my leg on that ten-mile run and then couldn't lose weight for six weeks while I healed up! People don't think about that when they over-focus on exercise as a weight loss method. Exercise is vital for health, obviously, but people who are temporarily or permanently disabled need to be able to not use it as a calorie-burning crutch.

[...] from the meat and cheese. This article is long, but very relevant to what you're experiencing: The Science Behind The “Low Carb Flu”, and How To Regain Your Metabolic Flexibility &#45... Reply With Quote   + Reply to Thread « Previous Thread | [...]

[...] it is their mission to store fat and they don’t want to let it go.” In people with a healthy flexible metabolism, the collection of fat cells is more like a gas tank in a car, simply a reservoir of stored energy [...]

Interesting thoughts. Well thought I'd google 'new diet headaches' and found that there were a number of people asking about their headaches on a lower cal diet, (not low carb, just standard low cal). And same kind of pattern, start off fine for 3 - 4 days then start feeling bad / headachy etc (hence the common notion of 'detoxing' when going on a diet)
http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/symptoms-during-dietary-transition/some-unpleasant-symptoms-and-their-causes.html

Also I saw a study some time back that showed toxins stored in fat cells were released when dieting. Can't find it right now - but this could also cause problems.

If not AA (or perhaps it is LA release) - why then do inflammatory symptoms increase like an eczema or asthma?

Why do only about 25% people get these symptoms? Even though they had the same change in calorie / carb on the new diet?

I'll have to back and research this some more.

[...] Thanks for the rant, it's a good reminder for me too! I just read this post yesterday, and it also helped immensely. Now I know I am working on my metabolic flexibility and [...]

I made this comment over on perfecthealthdiet.com, but my desire is to moderate my carbs at a level that's healthful, but flexible.

It may be the addict in me, but I'd like to periodically have a higher carb meal without it being the equivalent of an OGTT on a VLC diet ... with the kind of resulting BG spikes that will get you diagnosed as a diabetic!

I've been tossing over the idea of paleo meets carb addict's diet ... you moderate carbs a la paleo, but you keep the bulk of the carbs/starches to one meal a day.

[...] it is their mission to store fat and they don’t want to let it go.” In people with a healthy flexible metabolism, the collection of fat cells is more like a gas tank in a car, simply a reservoir of stored energy [...]