Diet for people who enjoy sticking a rubber tube through their nose and into stomach

I'll bet people who go on this diet gain their weight back shortly after they pull the tube out of their nose.

The K-E diet, which boasts promises of shedding 20 pounds in 10 days, is an increasingly popular alternative to ordinary calorie-counting programs. The program has dieters inserting a feeding tube into their nose that runs to the stomach. They're fed a constant slow drip of protein and fat, mixed with water, which contains zero carbohydrates and totals 800 calories a day. Body fat is burned off through a process called ketosis, which leaves muscle intact, Dr. Oliver Di Pietro of Bay Harbor Islands, Fla., said.

The K-E Diet (Via Neatorama)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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http://eclecti.cc nrp

Doesn’t Cinco make this?
- ridestowe
  
  somehow the best comment is also the first one
edgore

Disappointed. I was hoping for eat whatever you want And the tubes pumps it *out*.
Preston Sturges

You’d want to have hourly blood sugar checks, daily blood work, and most people would experience mental impairment.

I’m not sure that the body has any feedback mechanism that would detect blood ketone levels and preferentially target body fat. The achilles heel of the human body is that body fat can’t be used create blood sugar, but some amino acids can, so starvation makes the body attack muscle to create blood glucose. In addition, amino acids can create ketones. I believe essential organs like the brain and heart can burn blood sugar, ketones, or lipids, to keep the body alive under different scenarios.

But I’m not sure you can turn off the attack on muscle just by adding ketones. In fact, ketosis AND muscle wasting are symptoms of diabetes, so ketosis does NOT protect the muscles in diabetics.
- Surly Driver
  
  But… wedding!
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1207567648 Jake Mayer
  
  Very low carb and yes, even no carb diets are evolutionary designed, and can indeed be quite safe and healthy. Not sure why you would want it dripped down your nose, when you could just grill it and eat it, but whatever. Ketosis is a normal and healthy response to dietary intake. Muscle wasting is NOT a given in this situation, except that their caloric intake is so reduced. Source: me, with a history of diabetic tendencies, and a metabolic pathology that makes me prone to rather acute muscle wasting (rhabdo). My diet is very low carb, never felt better.
  - Preston Sturges
    
    OK, you’re prone to muscle wasting and ketosis.
    
    In terms of no carb diets like the Inuit, these were for people who were getting more than 7,000 calories a day with high basal metabolism and very high levels of physical activities. They weren’t going hypoglycemic on these diets, or they probably would have promptly died.
    - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1207567648 Jake Mayer
      
      I dont think we are disagreeing? My point was that low / no carb works. My comment about my own muscle issues were in support of the not necessarily wasting aspects at play here. ketosis is not a bad thing here (not ketoacidosis).
  - Preston Sturges
    
    The other thing about low carb/high calory diets is that skeletal muscle does burn fat, which is why exercise is better than dieting. People like the Inuit could fuel their muscles with large amounts of fats and oils, while getting plenty of gluconeogenic amino acids in the bargain.
    
    No one of these facts explains much by themselves, because the regulation of metabolism is so complex – much more complex than this diet doctor would suggest.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  ketosis =/= ketoacidosis.
  - megnesium
    
    Technically, I think all ketosis is ketoacidosis (assuming one becomes acidotic), but yes. As far as I’m aware, ketogenic diets don’t tend to throw patients into DKA or other emergent ketoacidotic states.
  - Preston Sturges
    
    >> ketosis =/= ketoacidosis.
    
    Well that’s certainly true, and if someone has had ketoacidosis then the rule of thumb is that they are full blown diabetic. At least according to the poster I used to have hanging my cubical.
- megnesium
  
  …you’re getting some stuff mixed up here. Fats are triglycerides (essentially, long-term energy storage that is a bit more of a pain to free up). You can totally break them into stuff for gluconeogenesis.
  Secondly, we’re on a 10-day time frame here with some calories, proteins, and fats. You’re not just stopping giving insulin to a Type I diabetic or something– your body has compensatory mechanisms. There are multiple steps in progressing from a fasting state (which you go into between every time you eat etc.) to a starvation state, and because I’m running out of time, I’m taking a cop-out and just typing a paragraph from my medical biochem book that might answer a bit of your questions: “Starvation. When we fast for 3 or more days, we are in the starved state. Muscle continues to burn fatty acids but decreases its use of ketone bodies. As a result, the concentration of ketone bodies rises in the blood to a level at which the brain begins to oxidized them for energy. The brain then needs less glucose, so the liver decreases its rate of gluconeogenesis. Consequently, less protein in muscle and other tissues is degraded to supply amino acids for gluconeogenesis, protein sparing preserves vital functions for as long as possible. “
  - Preston Sturges
    
    >>Fats are triglycerides…..You can totally break them into stuff for gluconeogenesis.
    
    No, no, no, you dead end down at acetyl-CoA except for a minor salvage pathway.
    
    Here’s a straightforward diagram:
    
    http://themedicalbiochemistrypage.org/fatty-acid-oxidation.php#cycle
    
    Fat is oxidized to acetyl-CoA and then goes through the TCA cycle to make NADH, FADH2, GTP (then to ATP via oxidative phosphorylation), amino acid precursors, and CO2 and H2O.
    
    Glucose is oxidized to make ATP, various precursors, and finally pyruvate and finally acetyle-CoA for the TCA cycle (etc etc) or the pyruvate can cycle back into gluconeogenesis.
    
    BUT, and here is the key, the Acetly-CoA from FA oxidation does not get made into pyruvate for gluconeogenesis. Thermodynamically, that would be climbing a mountain.
    
    And THAT is why if you eat fat you can either burn it off through exercising the skeletal muscles or you can pack it away as more fat, but dieting (and lowering your blood sugar) isn’t going to cause your body to burn fat to make blood glucose. It it did, we’s all be wearing size 32 jeans.
    - megnesium
      
      A TG is made up of 3 fatty acids and a glycerol. The FAs go through TCA. On the other hand, glycerol can be used for gluconeogenesis…granted, this isn’t the primary energy source, but really only your brain and RBCs are incredibly dependent on glucose as an energy source (and we’re talking about a starvation state- with only protein/fat added- with severe hypoglycemia pending here, so the ‘salvage pathway’ is actually pertinent). As for FAs, your knock ‘em into acetyl-CoA, then do beta oxidation to convert them to ketones (then, peripherally, ketones can be re-converted to acetyl-CoA and you can do a TCA cycle that way, yadda yadda. A wasteful system energy-wise, I agree).
      
      And I have forgotten more of the biochem than I should ever have allowed myself to. Also, if by “full blow diabetic” you mean “Type I diabetic”, or obscenely decompensated type 2 DM, then yeah. Nor do you follow a ketoacidotic state with hourly accuchecks, and any doctor doing that will probably only have their DKA patients survive by sheer luck.
      - Preston Sturges
        
        There you go, it was the glycerol pathway I alluded to but could not put my finger on it.
bcsizemo

Must make it easier to breathe having a tube up your nose while doing all that cardio you should be doing anyway….
- http://daniel.friesen.name/ Daniel Friesen
  
  …except the tube leads to your stomach, not your lungs.
  - ocker3
    
    So having one of your nostrils blocked doesn’t make it harder for you to breath? Plus there’s that extra tube in your nasal passages and throat
    - Guest
      
      maybe he’s a mouthbreather?
Fef

Yes, you’ll fit into that dress! You’ll look great, other than the scarring and redness around the nose, and the bruises from passing out and hitting your head…
- http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino
  
  I suspect that the ‘hitting head’ part already happened a while ago…
Fef

Plus: Your semi-obtunded ramblings during the ceremony will provide hours of enjoyment later on video.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Have you ever been to a wedding where the bride and groom weren’t semi-obtunded?
  - oasisob1
    
    I don’t go to weddings unless I’m fully-obtunded. Self-obtundication? Self-obtundification?
GawainLavers

This is basically Atkins’ diet for people who need radical and immediate weight loss for medical reasons, pumped through a straw.
- Lexicat
  
  Ah yes… didn’t Atkins trundle off this mortal coil at a svelte 285 pounds?
  - GawainLavers
    
    Yes:
    http://www.snopes.com/medical/doctor/atkins.asp
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    The Atkins diet works quite well for fast weight loss. You just have to stick with it. And laugh off the biliary colic.
    - Guest
      
      yeah, whooo that’s a good time. A barrel o laughs
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/OMHO6ER5QJE3SIZ35VAXIRCLYM Stephan
    
    He weighed “195 pounds upon delivery to the hospital and died 258 pounds due to excessive water retention”.
    Then the crazies of PETA distorted this into the smear campaign that people still fall for up until this day.
    Just sayin.
    No Atkins dieter here by the way.
    - dragonfrog
      
      Where do you get PETA out of all this? Is there perhaps a touch of obsession?
- Preston Sturges
  
  The diet worked pretty well for a friend of mine but his wife made him quit because fueling his brain with ketones was making him act too weird.
  - http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
    
    Knew this guy who was sticking to it pretty well, even carried around tough beef jerky like bubblegum. But when he started getting weird it was like an extremely protracted werewolf transformation.
shannigans

Interesting given the special feature BB is hosting right now that talks about how miserable feeding tubes are.
quitterjunior

If only this idea could also suck.
blissfulight

I heard not eating also works like this.
- Guest
  
  Apparently fasting isn’t fast enough
Scratcheee

This past February I spent a week in the hospital with an NG tube through my nose and down into my stomach. The nurse came to put it in, and I thought, no big deal, it’ll feel weird when she pushes it in but then it’ll be OK.

I’m a reasonably smart person, but believe it or not, it didn’t occur to me until about 3 seconds after she started pushing that a tube through my nose and down to my stomach meant a constant obstruction in my throat. For the first few hours, every time I swallowed it felt like I was swallowing a square lego.

Pro-tip: when the nurse tells you “it’ll be at least two hours,” that really means, “probably four days or more.”
- Dave Slavik
  
  Aye, I’ve had my share of NG tubes, for the life of me, I cannot understand why someone would willingly (fetishes aside) accept one.
  
  Gah, having flashbacks just from reading this article.
  - http://doran.pacifist.net/ Doran
    
    Yep, me too. Had to use one for about a month after I was released from hospital a few years ago. By then it had thoroughly chafed my nostril. Also, not as good a conversation starter as one might imagine.
    
    On the other hand, I saved a lot of time in food prep!
    - scythenoire
      
      Having Crohn’s disease, I’ve had to have it a number of times and hated it more each time. I can’t imagine doing this to get food. Even worse the longer you have to leave it in. The throat starts to get really sore and irritated. Not fun.
Doug Nelson

That’s just gross. At least when I put a tube up my nose and into my stomach its a sex thing.
Rojaws

Its easy to draw down the hate thing here, and as someone who has seriously considered this as an option, Id like to throw down a few insights…

Actually, I started writing a whole long diatribe in defense of us fatties…but in the end I decided against it…

Just like any other type of discrimination, there are going to be people who look at fat guys and girls, and do the “try skipping lunch fatso” comment, and essentially hate someone else for being different to them.

Trust me, if it was that easy, there would be 3 fat people in the world, and they would *want* to be fat. Its not. Obesity is not something *anyone* chooses to live with.

For those that just assume that fat people just sit around eating junk all day, let me just inform you, you’re wrong. True, some do. But most dont.

Walk a mile in their shoes etc…

But I fully expect people to continue to judge and hate me just because Im fat, but just dont be too quick to judge people that may choose this form of weight loss.

It may just be that this is all thats between them and an appointment with a an overdose or a razor blade.
- PNWchemist
  
  I tend to see over weight people making poor diet choices 9 times out of 10 when i’m out and about at my college. And i don’t hate fat people, my mother is fat and it’s killing her, but she eats her feelings, she eats all hours of the day and wont stick to any diet plan/exercise regimen long enough to lose more than ten pounds. She improves for three months relapses and gets worse for six, hating herself all the while.
  
  It’s a complex problem but for most people it’s poor diet + sedentary lifestyle.
  
  Nothing to hate someone for, but it’s nothing to give an incredible amount of sympathy for either.
  
  I see it as a food addiction.
- Cefeida
  
  “Obesity is not something *anyone* chooses to live with. “
  
  No, it’s something most obese people accept to live with, even though they don’t have to. Of course no one starts out saying ‘I want to be obese’ but as we progress down the road, we continue excusing our own behaviour and refusing to improve it. Until it’s too late for preventative measures, and fixing the problem turns out to be extremely difficult. I say we, because although I’ve never been obese, I’ve had moments of drastic weight gain in my life that were the result of making excuses and ignoring basic nutrition facts. Stuff tasted good, so I ate lots of it, for extended periods of time, because it couldn’t hurt, could it? And I didn’t need to exercise because I wasn’t fat, right?
  
  And then suddenly none of my clothes fit anymore. I was unhealthy, sluggish, too heavy. Crap. Thank goodness I had the sense to stop at that point and make an effort to recalibrate my diet and my schedule. But it took a stupidly huge amount of work and time to get back to a healthier weight and physical capacity. It’s hard, I appreciate that, and appreciate that it’s harder the later you start paying attention, that it can feel hopeless. No one said it was easy to do. But at the end, what we do with our bodies is our own responsibility.
  
  I don’t know why you, personally, are fat, and I wouldn’t hate you because of your body shape, that’s ridiculous. It’s also rude to assume that every fat person got there because they didn’t bother to lead a healthy lifestyle. But the sad truth is that’s usually the case. Yes, predispositions aren’t helpful, but we all deal with some sort of genetic or environmental curse. Sympathy from society won’t magic that curse away- nor will acceptance for fat people make them any healthier. You just gotta set your teeth and deal with it. If you can make yourself a better body- fight for it. (It sounds like you already are?)
  
  This is, naturally, a comment about those who are unfit due to bad habits, not because of significant medical conditions which would cause them to gain weight uncontrollably. It should be obvious after everything I said, but I still feel like I have to point it out.
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  “For those that just assume that fat people just sit around eating junk all day, let me just inform you, you’re wrong. True, some do. But most dont.”
  
  So the fact that the US has an obesity problem, and also happens to consume more food than most countries, is just a coincidence?
  
  I concede that there are several medical situations in which a person may not be able to control their weight, but the VAST majority of the time people are fat because they eat too much food. It’s really not very complicated.
  
  I don’t think anybody here is judging you or hating you (at least I’m not), but that doesn’t mean that obese people should receive automatic sympathy; no more than the average smoker or binge drinker any way.
  - Guest
    
    I think obscene serving sizes should be taxed like the above.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    So the fact that the US has an obesity problem, and also happens to consume more food than most countries, is just a coincidence?
    
    Given the huge rise in obesity rates in the Third World, I think it’s a bit more complex than that.
wibbled_pig

I agree that people don’t, and wouldn’t want to be fat, but to lose that weight requires a LOT of willpower, you have to be willing to watch the calories you eat, willing to get up and exercise, willing to stop eating before you arrive at satiation, etc.

Portions are very important, but more important than anything else is that you need to avoid simple sugars, especially when combined with fats, which due to our bodies’ preferences, are pretty close to sex :)

In the time of abundance, we’re programmed to make the most of it.. but scarcity doesn’t exist for most first worlders.

I personally try not to judge overweight people too much, I know how hard it is to lose weight, and how easy it is to gain.
- Guest
  
  “but scarcity doesn’t exist for most first worlders.”
  
  Scarcity of food, no. But there is scarcity aplenty in the ‘first world’, and it makes a simple monkey quite hungry.
http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

Weve gotta thin the heard somehow.
- kernkraftwerks
  
  Ive heard you just did.
http://twitter.com/kpkpkp Kevin Pierce

Sweathogs Approve!
Sam Gus

US is years behind, again.

In Eastern Europe few years back there began another interesting and fashionable fad. Instead of dieting, people would pay a nurse to attach an IV for a day or two. Fasting can only get you half-way through, so some diet-adjustment, then maybe fasting, than a day or two with IV instead of any food or water will do the trick. Results are actually quite positive, though, as with any diet, getting back to binge eating puts weight back.

Sure IV tube is much less painful than the nose tube. And just think of it, to give your overworked stomach and guts a break for a day or two … quite logical. Strange, that nobody ever heard of this.
- Preston Sturges
  
  I think variations of this have been around a long time, but then some quack does it without a license and uses dirty needles, and the authorities clamp down on that practice.
mccrum

I don’t think this article mentions anything about being for people who *enjoy* the tube, it’s just that they prefer it to say, eating less and moving around more.
- jimh
  
  Cue Milhouse: “Awww, can’t I just have the surgery?!”
Roy Trumbull

I love the fact that when it comes to dieting even the wildest imagination can’t come up with anything crazier than what people are actually doing. This ranks right up there with intentionally infesting yourself with tapeworms.
http://thelizardman.com The Lizardman

Life imitates art. For over 13 years I have performed a modern sideshow act often referred to as gavage or the bile beer act (developed originally by Matt ‘The Tube’ Crowley) and one of my personal variations has long been a diet pitch. In short, it involves running an NG tube on myself and then pumping things in and out. Having done this several thousand times I can attest that having the tube in place remains an inconvenience no matter how often it is done and I would imagine most people would give up after one try. Another bit of trivia, while my wife was in nursing school she and her fellow students were thrilled that I could be a live practice dummy and help them refine their technique. For those that are curious here is a youtube video of another variant on the act: http://youtu.be/fjqZpYq79Lo