Keto or Vegan

[AnnaBeth]

I have high blood sugar and hypothyroid have done keto before which was good for blood sugar but I didn’t find it long term sustainable.

I’m planning to do a keto period again and then try vegan/wfpb after.

I felt well on keto and I’m sure the high fat feeds hormones but get concerned about the animal hormone effect so won’t do it long term.

Just wondered if people have good/bad experiences on either and if people do either long term for health?

I’m on the fence, can you tell!!!!

I’ll post in both thyroid and diabetes forums.

[MMaud]

I have been low carb, oftentimes keto, although for me keto and ketosis is unimportant, for 6.5 years.

My last A1c was 27, and from around 3 months after starting low carb, it has never been above 33.

I was not hypo thyroid when I began low carbing, so can't make specific comment on that.

Personally, I'm a gluten-free omnivore. Again, personally, I wouldn't go veggie as I understand maintaining certain vitamin and mineral levels are an additional challenge, without supplementation.

In the low carb communities, a proportion of vegetarians find going low carb a challenge, due to the available and preferred meal options. Many vegetarian foods are (relatively) carb-heavy.

That said, I respect others choices to eat and drink whatever they choose, and much will depend on to what extent your blood sugar challenges are in play. If that aspect of your metabolic health is efficient, maybe it won't cause you issues, or even a second thought, but if you haven't compared the impacts of each way of eating in the past, it could be worthwhile undertaking a programme of blood glucose finger prick testing to make rough comparisons.

I say rough comparisons as so many factors can impact out blood glucose readings.

If you didn't find your historic keto period sustainable, what or which aspects did you find a challenge? Often the challenges are not including sufficient variety in the menues or plain old eating enough. On keto, hunger really shouldn't be an issue.

[greygoose]

One problem is that vegans and végétariens tend to rely heavily on soy to replace the meat. And, that really is not a good idea - especially not when you're hypo.

[Angel_of_the_North]

Why not vegan keto, then? It does mean eating alot of what I would call processed foods, but it can be done. If you use FB, there is a vegan keto group with guidance and recipes. Having said that, I don't think that organic butter and cream are harmful (nor any organic meats, even though I'm vegan). What hormones are you worried about? We need hormones to live. If doing vegan keto, avoid soy, which is difficult.