Ketosis?

It suddenly occurred to me yesterday that the post-surgical diet is really all about low-to-no carbs and high protein. Which will naturally put you into a state of ketosis, right? Does your surgeon/doctor/nutritionist ever discuss this aspect? I am going to ask mine about this, but I wondered if anyone had also wondered about it.

Yes, you will be in ketosis, usually whenever you consume under 50 gm of carbs. No big deal. If you've ever done Atkins, that's the goal there. Your breath may be bad, you may have low-carb constipation.... but you will lose weight and post surgery yu won't be hungry! So much easier to sustain, believe me.

Yah, ketosis (thank you Dr. Atkins) is an old friend of mine, so I am not worried so much as amazed that the light bulb finally turned on and I made the connection, LOL! Thanks for the confirmation.

So your doc never said that being in ketosis for extended periods is an issue?

Definitely discuss it with your surgeon. For many, ketosis is an excellent tool used for boosting weight loss, but in a select few (diabetics especially) it can be dangerous. My surgeon prefers his patients to avoid it in the long-term, but it was kind of unavoidable for me in the beginning when I was working to meet my protein goals. Best to talk it over with your surgeon, who knows your medical history, just to be safe.

Best of luck!

This comes up occasionally in our support group meetings (at least the symptomatic effects,) to which the usual reply is simply that your diet is low in carbs at the moment. It is not a goal of the program, nor is carb counting an emphasis (though minimizing sugars and simple carbs is a part of it,) but since we're burning fat it can happen as a natural result of that irrespective intent. I was certainly dropping ketones as detected in my labs, but never experienced any of the classic symptoms of ketosis, but I was avoiding the extreme low carb diet as I couldn't afford the common side effects and it's not a particularly necessary thing to make the WLS work.