[quote="ofonorow"]
Montgomery, anxious to hear your future reports as you seem to be an expert on Ketosis. The beauty of the Leung approach is NO KETOSIS, and if you enter it, then Leung says you may have to go up to 20 grams of B5 daily. I am not sure what "ketogenic range of the LCHF spectrum" means, but I think it may become moot with B5 
Thanks Owen, but I don't claim to be an expert. I have done a fair amount of reading around the subject, although I need to refresh my memory, perhaps from Steve Phinney's books that I have. He is an expert especially in ketogenic diets for athletes, especially racing cyclists. There appears to be a limit to the rate at which we can burn our own body fat, although I think he says that well-trained athletes on well-formulated ketogenic diets can burn it at a more rapid rate than the general population.
By "
ketogenic range of the LCHF spectrum"
I just meant keeping carbs as low as possible, but also keeping protein as low as possible as well. This was an insight I got back in early January (primarily from Jimmy Moore, actually). Figures vary, but people like Phinney usually say you need about 0.5g of protein for every kg of lean body mass. (Ron Rosedale is someone who would argue for a lower amount). The idea is that if we overdo the protein, i.e. take in more than we need for repair/rebuilding muscle, then the excess will be converted to glucose, and it will be similar to taking in excess carbs. When I learned about this, which I was unaware of during my previous attempts at LCHF, I realised that this was (possibly) why I'd never managed to lose as much weight as I'd really wanted, and why it came off so slowly.
I got myself a blood ketone meter, and started measuring my blood ketones, but not all that often as the strips are pricier than regular glucose strips. I did usually get to the levels of blood ketones that the ketogenic "experts" usually recommend, although I didn't agonise over it too much. Partly because of the cost, and the fact that I don't like pricking my fingers all the time, I haven't done it for ages now. But perhaps I ought to, at least now and again, as part of this experiment.
As you may have gathered, there seems to be a major philosophical difference between proponents of ketogenic diets and Dr Leung's ideas: the former regard ketosis as a good thing, and would not recognise the description of ketosis as being "wasteful".
But it might depend on how you define ketosis. Do you mean ketones appearing in the urine? Or ketones appearing in the blood? If the former, then yes, pehaps they are "wasted". But those in the blood are eligible to be transported to the muscles and organs, and burned as fuel.
One reason why I never agonised too much about my blood levels of ketones was the thinking that it wasn't so much the ketones that were important, but whether or not you were "fat-adapted", i.e. your body hard learned to burn fat for fuel rather than just glucose. As I understood it, ketones were a by-product of fat metabolism, but were also themselves candidates for burning as fuel, so the body got two bites at the cherry, so to speak. I've never bothered with urine ketone strips, since I kept reading that they were not reliable, and that the thing to do was measure blood ketones. But perhaps for the purposes of this experiment, I should occasionally also measure urine ketones, to see if I am "wasting" them.
Anyway, I routinely measure bodyweight (daily), and from time to time waist size, and you are welcome to the figures in due course,, together with B5 dosages. I will say I haven't felt too hungry today, on not all that much food (although I don't bother counting calories I'm afraid). And I was 1 lb down on yesterday this morning, but day-to-day fluctuations aren't that significant, I don't think.