Pork Rinds and Maltodextrin

This past weekend I tried a new brand of Pork Rinds, for some reason I couldn’t handle eating pork rinds before. I can’t handle the texture and knowledge of a pork rind. I’m kind of shocked I’m not a vegetarian sometimes. And this past weekend I bought some pork rinds that had sea salt and cracked pepper. I was like I might as well try this again because, with the keto diet, I’ve eaten foods I never would have before. Like Brussels sprouts and cauliflower. I’ve learned that sometimes it’s about how the food is cooked that was my issue as to why I didn’t like them.

I bought the pork rinds and ate the whole bag in two days (that’s about 560 calories). I had the calories in my days so I wasn’t really over. Until Sunday and Monday. I had overeaten on both my calories and my carbs. And I was thinking wait what was so different in my hunger because it didn’t feel the same. I felt like I couldn’t get full. I actually thought it was from boredom or lack of exercise.

Tuesday morning I get on the scale like normal and my weight jumped three pounds. I could feel inflamed and part of me wanted to panic but then I’m like no let’s figure out what’s going on. Of course, as I’m writing this and seeing the reality of the extra two bags or a total extra 1120 over three to four days it makes sense why my weight jumped up.

My other concern was the feeling of not feeling full. I hadn’t had that in a long time. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy the keto diet, I don’t struggle with feeling full. I also was feeling bloated. I started to look at what was so different about my diet and I noticed the pork rinds. My calories and carbs weren’t that much higher for the weight gain though.

I look at the bag and I saw maltodextrin so then I looked it up. It’s filler and for that brand, it was from corn. I actually have a food sensitivity for corn. Looking more into maltodextrin I learned a lot of what I was feeling was caused by that additive. I’m pretty sure now that maltodextrin was causing the hunger I was feeling.

Maltodextrin has a very similar chemical makeup to glucose and a higher glycemic index than glucose. Basically, by eating those pork rinds my brain was triggering my body to look for the glucose in my body to use. I was kicking myself out of ketosis and that hunger coming back was from the maltodextrin.

Pork Rinds are very keto-friendly but if you get a brand with maltodextrin more than likely it will kick you out of ketosis or make you hungry. I actually noticed the sugar high I got from them even though they were 0 carbs.

It was definitely a learning experience and interesting how I saw the weight gain instead of being like “oh I might as well quit” I saw the weight gain as an opportunity to investigate what I was eating. With weight loss, I’m learning you have to find ways to make a healthy lifestyle fit for you.

It was also kind of cool to see how my body and mind reacted to the maltodextrin. I’m never going to eat it again and I’ve already established that my body doesn’t “like” it.

It was a nice lesson in checking the ingredients in your food even if it says zero carbs.