To avoid unnecessary debate, let’s assume I can stay in ketosis at 20gr to 40gr
I eat mostly fatty meat and fat “from butter, cream cheese and cheddar cheese” But after my meal I sometimes eat small piece of homemade pie “From sweet potato, carrots and coconut milk” May also eat half a slice or full slice of thin wheat bread " 5gr carbs to 10 grabs carbs" Rarely eat half a plantain. Total carbs daily usually is around 20gr to 40gr
Does it apply if my carbs come from sources I mentioned? Or must it be lower glycemic carbs?
Does it apply if the individual does not also eat a lot of fat? Example a person only eat 20gr to 40gr of carbs or less a day and rest is protein, very low to 0 fat, will that still induce ketosis?
Can amount of carbs be increased as long as Fat is also dramatically increased to maintain 5 - 10% carbs? Example you eat 1000 grams of fat and 100 grams carbs.
Most of us on the forum do 20 grams or less of carbs, no sugar, adequate proteins and healthy fats (trying to get enough of the last two, not low fat… kind of defeats the essence of Keto going low fat).
Everyone’s body is different, but those are the general recommendations that we make to people starting Keto. The carbs are meant to be low, if I ate 100 grams of carbs I would gain heaps of weight… and I have only lost 46 pounds and still have a lot to lose so I make sure I keep under 20 grams a day.
Some people manage to increase their carbs a bit when they are doing Maintenance after they have reached their desired weight. I know some people that are at their goal weight manage to keep at it by keeping Keto but doing about 50 grams a day.
Can amount of carbs be increased as long as Fat is also dramatically increased to maintain 5 - 10% carbs? Example you eat 1000 grams of fat and 100 grams carbs.
1,000g of fat is 9,000 calories.
100g of carbs is 400 calories.
its also not a good idea to go by %s. A hard number is much easier to work with! Going by % will lead you to eating more carbs than tolerated. 5-10% carbs based is based on calories, not by weight. Going strictly by percentage can be slippery.
As an EXTREME example, lets say you are eating 4,000 calories / day. If you took 10% as carbs that would be 400 calories, or (400/4) 100g. That’s not the same thing as a hard number (20-50g) of carbs.
amwassil
(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.)
#5
It’s not an ‘allowance’. It’s a ‘tax’ you must pay in order to eat certain foods that are otherwise nutritious and worth paying the tax. Like all taxes, the intent is pay as little as possible, not as much as you can get away with.
To some extent, it really does not matter what the source of your carbohydrate intake is, the relevant datum is whether your intake is above or below your threshold of tolerance. Table sugar is the exception to this, since each molecule of sucrose consists of a molecule of glucose bonded to a molecule of fructose, and fructose can cause fatty liver and also has addictive properties, so it is best avoided altogether. All other carbohydrates, especially starches, are long strings of glucose molecules arranged in different ways.
All food has an effect on insulin secretion, since we need a minimum amount of insulin in order to live. Carbohydrate, being long strings of glucose molecules, stimulates insulin secretion the most. The effect of protein on insulin depends to a great extent on how much carbohydrate there is in the diet. In the standard high-carbohydrate American diet, the effect of protein on insulin is about half that of carbohydrate; if the diet is low in carbohydrate, the effect of protein on insulin has been shown to be minimal. Fat has almost no effect on insulin secretion at all.
The body has two main fuels: glucose and fatty acids. Ketones are partially-metabolised fatty acids, similar to how charcoal is partially-burned wood. If you eat a very low amount of carbohydrate, the liver makes a small amount of glucose from the protein you eat (gluconeogenesis) and produces ketones from fatty acids (ketogenesis). The muscles can metabolise ketones instead of glucose, but they prefer fatty acids. The brain does much better on ketones than it does on glucose, and the same for the heart muscle, which actually prefers ketones to fatty acids, unlike other muscles.
If you eat very little carbohydrate, your body eventually switches to fatty acid metabolism, but in the absence of fat, it is forced to start metabolising protein, which is a very inefficient process, since it requires a lot more energy than fatty acid metabolism to produce the same amount of ATP (adenosine tri-phosphate), which is the actual form of cellular energy produced by all metabolic pathways.
If you eat too much carbohydrate, it halts ketogenesis and fatty-acid metabolism. That is why we give a hard limit in grams, not a percentage of calories consumed. Too much carbohydrate becomes too much glucose in the blood, resulting in the production of too high a level of insulin to permit ketogenesis or to let fat out of fat cells. Your carbohydrate tolerance is unique to you, but you are safer eating less carbohydrate than more. Too high a level of glucose in the blood causes damage, a consistently high insulin level also causes damage, and when too much glucose is forced into the muscles and stored as fat in the fat cells, they become insulin-resistant, and we get fat, develop diabetes, heart disease, atherosclerosis, high blood pressure, fatty liver, Alzheimer’s disease, and even certain types of cancer.
