Plant Based Keto diet - anyone tried it

John93

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I'm new to the site so excuse me if I'm not using the right forum....... I have tried keto a few times but much prefer to be on a vegan diet, which is pretty hard on the keto/low carb ones I tried before. I felt terribly unwell after a week or 2 of trying and gave it up. Still struggling though to make a dent in my type 2 diabetes and very keen to avoid getting onto medications. I mainly control blood sugar levels with a lot of well targeted exercise but not always possible if time is short or bad weather.

Wondering has anyone tried a diabetes reversal program thats known as the Lime program and uses some diet I have never heard of called the Karbeto diet? Apparently its very low carb and suits vegans. Love to hear if anyone has tried it or knows anyone who has.
 

Diakat

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Do you have links or references for those programs? I’m veggie so always useful to hear of new info.
 

John93

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Do you have links or references for those programs? I’m veggie so always useful to hear of new info.
Its mentioned on some Australian website called Reversediabetes.com.au but they dont give much detail on what the Lime Program is all about and I was hoping someone may know something on this site. From what I can gather it might be something like the Dr Fuhrman diabetes reversal program in the USA. his programs are very expensive, run in luxury resorts, which is a bit unaffordable for me given the low Aussie dollar exchange rate.
 

John93

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thanks for the tips on vegan options. The Dr Carrie site looks interesting. I'm familiar with the Mastering Diabetes guys from a few years ago - they are absolutely dead against keto and give it a caning on their website. However, they both have type 1 diabetes I notice and eat carbs like there is no tomorrow and have no problems, so must be doing something right. I'll reacquaint myself with their website and see what they are up to. last time I looked it was a very fruit heavy program, which seemed a bit hard to maintain.
 

Lotties

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thanks for the tips on vegan options. The Dr Carrie site looks interesting. I'm familiar with the Mastering Diabetes guys from a few years ago - they are absolutely dead against keto and give it a caning on their website. However, they both have type 1 diabetes I notice and eat carbs like there is no tomorrow and have no problems, so must be doing something right. I'll reacquaint myself with their website and see what they are up to. last time I looked it was a very fruit heavy program, which seemed a bit hard to maintain.
Be a little careful with too much fructose from anywhere including fruit. It can sneak past easily available blood markers until excess fructose producing fat deposíts are noticeable by BG raises. By that time, prediabetes may be well on the way.
 

John93

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Taking enough insulin exogenously I guess..
I checked their website and one of the founders, Robby Barbaro, who has been Type 1 for about 15 years, gave the following stats on his regime - quite amazing..

  • My A1C has ranged from 5.3% to 6.2%, with just one A1C result at 6.6% in the past 12+ years

  • My latest A1C is 5.4%

  • 90-day time-in-range as of writing is 88%, 4% low, <1% urgent low and 8% high (range is set as 70-180 mg/dL)

  • Average glucose of 124 mg/dL and a standard deviation of 39 mg/dL

  • I eat ~700 grams of total carbohydrate per day and inject ~26 total units of insulin (14 long-acting and 12 short-acting)

  • My fasting c-peptide is <0.01, essentially undetectable, which means I don’t have endogenous insulin production helping to improve my insulin sensitivity
Pretty hard to argue with stats like this

the full article here for anyone interested https://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/plant-based-tackling-diabetes#7
 

Brunneria

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I checked their website and one of the founders, Robby Barbaro, who has been Type 1 for about 15 years, gave the following stats on his regime - quite amazing..

  • My A1C has ranged from 5.3% to 6.2%, with just one A1C result at 6.6% in the past 12+ years

  • My latest A1C is 5.4%

  • 90-day time-in-range as of writing is 88%, 4% low, <1% urgent low and 8% high (range is set as 70-180 mg/dL)

  • Average glucose of 124 mg/dL and a standard deviation of 39 mg/dL

  • I eat ~700 grams of total carbohydrate per day and inject ~26 total units of insulin (14 long-acting and 12 short-acting)

  • My fasting c-peptide is <0.01, essentially undetectable, which means I don’t have endogenous insulin production helping to improve my insulin sensitivity
Pretty hard to argue with stats like this

The full article here for anyone interested https://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/plant-based-tackling-diabetes#7

I don’t see anyone arguing with the statement that a type 1 diabetic on insulin can cope with a high carb diet (assuming they manage their insulin very carefully).

My question is why you think it is relevant to you? You say in your opening post that you are a type 2 struggling to control your blood glucose levels without going onto medication. So your insulin resistance and insulin needs, and reaction to carb intake will be very different from that of a type 1.
 

John93

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it was a response to the 2 posts before which suggested the person must have been using lots of exogenous insulin and how fructose was a problem. Out of curiosity, I fact checked and passed on the info as it may help people who believe it is not possible to eat lots of carbs and use only small amounts of insulin whether that be type 1 or type 2. High levels of insulin for type 2's is bad for cardio-vascular disease and weight gain. clearly the referenced article showed there is another paradigm. I'm exploring my own situation and this site has been very helpful in that regard as its starting to show there is no need to have a life deprived of carbs to have good blood glucose levels. Really appreciate you taking interest and replying though. many thanks.
 

Tophat1900

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it was a response to the 2 posts before which suggested the person must have been using lots of exogenous insulin and how fructose was a problem. Out of curiosity, I fact checked and passed on the info as it may help people who believe it is not possible to eat lots of carbs and use only small amounts of insulin whether that be type 1 or type 2. High levels of insulin for type 2's is bad for cardio-vascular disease and weight gain. clearly the referenced article showed there is another paradigm. I'm exploring my own situation and this site has been very helpful in that regard as its starting to show there is no need to have a life deprived of carbs to have good blood glucose levels. Really appreciate you taking interest and replying though. many thanks.

Which two posts suggested the person must be using lots of insulin?
 

Chook

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I have tried a plant based keto diet - basically just counting carbs - and found it difficult. I then re-introduced cheese and eggs for a couple of weeks which i am slowly working on reducing - this sliw approach seems to be working better for me.

I think these set diets can be useful for some people but JMO its better to base any long term eating plan on foods you enjoy. Basically I just looked up the carb count of my favourites and devised my own way of eating.
 

EBBeech

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I tried this briefly, (type 1 though) and it was a disaster, just back to normal keto now, much easier to maintain my levels. As another poster said, beware of sugar in fruit
 

Oldvatr

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Which two posts suggested the person must be using lots of insulin?
#5. #6. #7
The OP himself posted #5 where the referred participants were declared as Type 1, and #7 was a reference to fructose being a potential problem for T2D, which I believe might be of relevance to the OP.
 
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Member496333

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To be fair, @bulkbiker said "enough" insulin, which doesn't imply a little or a lot. It just means enough, which may not be much at all if there is no hyperinsulinemia (resistance) already in place. Unless I've misunderstood, in which case I apologise :angelic:
 

Oldvatr

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I'm new to the site so excuse me if I'm not using the right forum....... I have tried keto a few times but much prefer to be on a vegan diet, which is pretty hard on the keto/low carb ones I tried before. I felt terribly unwell after a week or 2 of trying and gave it up. Still struggling though to make a dent in my type 2 diabetes and very keen to avoid getting onto medications. I mainly control blood sugar levels with a lot of well targeted exercise but not always possible if time is short or bad weather.

Wondering has anyone tried a diabetes reversal program thats known as the Lime program and uses some diet I have never heard of called the Karbeto diet? Apparently its very low carb and suits vegans. Love to hear if anyone has tried it or knows anyone who has.
From what I have seen the Lime Diet is a fairly standard low carb weightloss program over 28 days. It is not vegan, but could include vegan food sources. The sample menus I saw all mentioned chicken strips as a basic ingredient.

The plan seems to limit beverages to glasses of lime water, hence the name. Lime is purported to increase metabolism of fats, and when combined withexercise will lead to weight loss. I would suggest this is a marketing statement that is not backed up by scientific study.

It is not a diabetic orientated diet, and is a one shot quick buck approach for weight loss only, and is not sustainable in the same way as some of the keto plans followed on this website.
 

hyponilla

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I don't get vegan keto and I keep reading about it. I low carb and I would be happy to cut meat and dairy out of some of my meals, but I how do you get the protein without the carbs?

When I moved to 40g of carbs per day, I stopped eating beans and lentils and most people on keto aim for half of that so they're out. Nuts are high in protein, like peanuts with 25g of protein per 100g, but they also have 15g of carbs. Soybean products like tempeh have 10g carbs per 20g protein. Tofu is the best thing I can find, google says 2.5g carbs per 10g protein.

If you weigh 60kg and aim for 70g of protein a day, eating only tofu gets you 17.5g of carbs alone. There's almost nothing left for the vegetables, and a bottle of olive oil and packet of tofu can't be what most people envision on this diet.

I'm not bashing vegans, and I can see vegetarian keto or vegan low carb working fine. It's the vegan keto that doesn't make sense. Am I missing something?
 

Chook

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I don't get vegan keto and I keep reading about it. I low carb and I would be happy to cut meat and dairy out of some of my meals, but I how do you get the protein without the carbs?

When I moved to 40g of carbs per day, I stopped eating beans and lentils and most people on keto aim for half of that so they're out. Nuts are high in protein, like peanuts with 25g of protein per 100g, but they also have 15g of carbs. Soybean products like tempeh have 10g carbs per 20g protein. Tofu is the best thing I can find, google says 2.5g carbs per 10g protein.

If you weigh 60kg and aim for 70g of protein a day, eating only tofu gets you 17.5g of carbs alone. There's almost nothing left for the vegetables, and a bottle of olive oil and packet of tofu can't be what most people envision on this diet.

I'm not bashing vegans, and I can see vegetarian keto or vegan low carb working fine. It's the vegan keto that doesn't make sense. Am I missing something?

Have a look on any of the big supermarkets' websites - search vegetarian or vegan - there are lots of vegan and vegetarian protein options. I'm relatively new to the vegetarian way of eating but I'm finding tofu, textured vegetable protein products, Quorn, seitan, tempeh, lentils and pulses - all in moderation keep me in the keto range, giving me plenty of protein with a level of carbs that I am currently producing keytones. Its just a question of wanting to eat this way enough (for whatever reason) and then searching for protein alternatives and being open to solutions.