Elemental is Ketogenic

So I did some poking around last night because I was really curious about the quick weight loss and even quicker weight gain while on the homemade elemental diet.  Turns out the homemade elemental diet can be ketogenic if you are not eating enough carbs (in my case in the form of honey).  I tried my best to consume all the honey but it's so incredibly sweet tasting I just couldn't get down 2-3 tablespoons per meal.

For the first 1-2 weeks while on a ketogenic diet you end up losing a lot of water weight.  In real simple terms, cause I'm a simple girl :) your body burns off all the glycogen stores which releases a lot of water initially. Then your body turns to your fat stores for fuel and the byproduct is ketones which for some reason causes a diuretic effect on the kidneys and the water continues to go. Once you end the diet and start eating carbs again this whole effect reverses and you restore your water reserves.  

So it's interesting because you don't really lose much actual weight if you only do the homemade elemental diet for 2 weeks because in those first couple of weeks the only thing you really lose is water and it bounces right back within a week of stopping the diet.  Especially since you only do the elemental diet for 2 weeks and it takes longer than that to start to really burning off body fat.

I'd still do the homemade elemental diet again and will do it if it turns out I still have bacteria lingering around in my gut.  It would be much easier to pack food for camping if all I needed to bring was coconut oil, aminos, multis and honey :)