Calories or not? Which to believe?

newbies
calories
(Jen) #1

Hi all! This is my first post and I’m so happy to have found the 2 Keto Dudes podcasts and this forum. I’ve been scouring every topic since I joined yesterday. Thanks for having me!

I started my keto WOE on July 4th with a good 50 lbs to lose and I feel so optimistic that this is finally the ‘thing’ I’ve been looking for all my life. I already feel so much less bloated and it’s amazing to not be hungry every second of the day!

Since first considering keto a couple months back, I have read everything I can get my hands on, There’s so much great info out there, but something I’ve been struggling with is the topic of calories. I find a lot of contradictory information/opinions on the subject and being new, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to believe. Half of what I read says to forget about calories and just make sure you stay below 20g of carbs… that losing weight on keto is “hormonal, not caloric.” Then the other half of what I read says you absolutely cannot lose weight unless you’re at a caloric deficit, so you have to count calories.

So which is true? Coming from my old school (low fat, low cal) diet indoctrination, I can’t help but think calories must be important, but maybe I’m missing something? So many people say they’re not important, I feel like I’m missing something for sure.

Would love to know what some of you long-time keto-ers have figured out. I’m all ears!

(Susan) #2

I’ve been keto for almost 5 weeks now; have been trying to keep my calories around 1800 but generally focus more on keeping carbs as low as I can (most days it’s around 50g). Have lost 13 pounds since my start date so pretty happy with that! The more “seasoned” ketoers will be responding to your post soon with better information I’m sure. :slight_smile:

(A ham loving ham! - VA6KD) #3

Hi! Welcome to this WOE.

Calories matter, but not as much as you might think. Most here believe that insulin is the primary driver to being able to access fat stores and that it acts as a switch to either have your fat cells take up or release fat. We know that metabolism is highly variable, not only person to person, but even minute to minute in the same person. Calorie calculators lump everyone in the same set of basal metabolic rate models, and we know that just doesn’t work…everyone is different and sometimes the differences are huge. So, the aim for most of us here is to get insulin response under control and then we find that hunger signaling becomes stronger and if you just eat when hungry, the vast majority of people fall into a natural calorie deficit as excess fat stores are used up. Most people continue like this until their bodies reach their natural weight set-point and then they try other things like deliberately dropping calories or intermittent fasting (not the same a chronic calorie restriction which can have undesirable side effects) to further lower that weight set-point. Of course, this doesn’t work for absolutely everyone, but it seems to work for the vast majority.

In general, the mantra is to not sweat over whatever precise numbers any calculators provide, but to keep carbs to under 20g, eat moderate protein and add fat to satiety. Learn to listen to your body. Keep calm and keto on. :smile:

#4

No need to count them. Do keto right, keep the fat up and your body will tell you when to eat, and when to stop. Like many long timers I started back in the early 2000’s on Atkins which taught you not to count them. Most of us that got brought in that way will tell you we ate MORE calories than we previously did and lost. I know I did. The CICO crowd will go stupid and then when they have no explanation they’ll start receipting the laws of thermodynamics blah blah blah. One of the biggest pluses for me was not having to count which I did miserably for years without success, like most people. It’s definitely more hormones than calories. Are calories COMPLETELY useless? No, but it’s not as simple as burning more than you take in.

(John) #5

Yes and no. If I started not losing, which has happened several times, the order in which I look at thins is:

  • Hidden carbs- Does something I am eating have carbs I don’t know about? Did the recipe change or the type of sweetner used?

  • Quantity- Have I got some portion creep going on? I am pretty lazy keto anymore, pretty good at estimating the things I eat, but from time to time I see that for example the Halo Top only gave me 3 servings instead of 4. This is most important to track with higher carb items.

  • Cravings- Am I having unusual cravings, or cravings at odd times of the day. Sometimes I get really hungry one day and eat a lot, and I am usually not hungry much at all the next day, but once in a while my hunger seems to go a little haywire and my brain is telling me I need to eat when I probably just need more liquids, some salt or potassium or the like. If everything else seems good a day or 2 fasted shuts it up and gets things back in order.

  • Calories- This would be my last thing to check, and since I listen to my hunger, like the step above, this is just another way of telling me my hunger signals are off and I need to check things.

One last thing, most of the CICO people necessarily believe that a calorie is a calorie, and it doesn’t matter if it is carbs or fat, you just have to burn it. If this were the case, they should be willing to let their kids eat cake and ice cream all day with donuts for snack as long as they burned it off. But they don’t. They intuitively know that is wrong though their ‘science’ says the opposite. On a similar note I may have brought up my youngest wanted cake for breakfast and I laughed, but looked it up; chocolate cake was about 50% sugar but did contain some good nutrients from milk, eggs and butter. I then checked her box of Lucky Charms to see it has 22 grams of carbs in a 27 gram serving! That is 81.5%. Ounce for ounce cake is WAY better than cereal, if we only knew not to feed them that like we know not to feed them cake.

(KCKO, KCFO) #6

I stopped counting them, I’d been logging my food for over 900 days on My Fitness Pal, after I started eating this way. I knew I was not overeating any more. I started Atkins induction last July at and I met my goal weight in April this year. I lost over 30 lbs. and I loved the food I was eating this way. Calories were the last thing on my mind. I had a stall out from Jan to beginning of April when I learned about IF and extended fasting, that took me off my stall and below my goal weight by the end of that month.

I highly suggest you read this post:

As others have said, eat your goal for protein, keep carbs less than 20 net grams, and eat fat to satiety. If you do that the hunger will take care of itself. Rarely will your calories for the day be too high.

(Clare) #7

Yep - echoing the above. Also, counterintuitive though it may seem, a calorie deficit will lower your metabolism if it is kept up. That’s why fasting and feasting are important. You’ve got to change things up a bit to keep your body guessing. If you really want to calories count, do it for a longer period like a week rather than a day - which allows you to fast and feast. But my advice would be to not worry about it.
With this way of eating, your body will automatically be in deficit a lot of the time because you just won’t be as hungry and when you do eat a bit more, your body will either burn it by prompting you to be active or you’ll go longer before you next need to eat.
Good luck!

(carl) #8

CICO is an effect, an observation. Not a cause. Your toilet gets clogged and water spills on the floor. You would observe that there’s more water going in the toilet than going down the drain. That, however, does not explain the root cause: in our case, high insulin. How do you look wer insulin? Lower carb intake.

Lowering insulin increases calories out, or metabolic rate.

Hope that helps.

(mezz_2000) #9

Hi there, welcome to keto.
My experience has been slightly different. I fit perfectly into the category that Dr Lustig mentioned in the podcast he starred in recently in that I am metabolically “normal” so no diabetes etc but had excess weight to loss. DR Lustig said that in his experience these women do have to count calories. I’ve been keto for 3 years (ex. Pregnancy) and I only lost weight when I counted calories and kept below 1800 (i was breast feeding also). Now that I am maintaining u don’t count calories and am maintaining my weight to the kg.

Good luck.

(Robert Burress) #10

I’ll just put it like this. On EVERY other diet I’ve done I obsessed about calories. With high numbers allowed you never felt like it mattered if you went over by 10%. That’s a lot of calories. I never got anywhere.

I still use MFP. I count things but I’m only interested in carbs. Also. With such a small number (10s instead 1000s) you are more acutely aware when you track something that has a negative impact. 4 carbs…hmmm. That’s 20% of my day…no thanks.

The calories kinda just fell into place.

(Alan Williamson) #11

Calories matter, but hormones are the key. Lower insulin, body fat literally melts off. So eating no sugar and carbs for 2 weeks (2 week test), a person will lose body fat like mad. The first couple days are tough, brain is in a funk, but things get better. At the end of 2 weeks, people report they have never felt better in their life.

https://philmaffetone.com/2-week-test/

If a person just lowers calories, they will feel tired and hungry. Sooner or later, they give in to the hunger.

Good guide: Obesity Code book by Dr. Jason Fung


(Barbara Greenwood) #12

The first part of that sentence is true. The second part is not, and here’s why.

Conservation of energy and basic physics means you cannot reduce your non-water weight unless you expend more energy than you take in. The key error people make is to assume that energy expenditure is independent of food intake. It isn’t. Give your body lots of energy, it will use more, though not necessarily enough to prevent weight gain. Turn off the tap, it will economise. That’s why sustained caloric deprivation leads to a reduction in BMR.

Possibly even more important is that different types of food affect your hormones and metabolism in different ways. There’s all the stuff about getting access to your fat stores as described above… then there’s the effect of diet composition and meal timing on hunger. Eat the wrong things and you will be constantly hungry, nibbling and grazing. Eat the right things, you will be well satisfied at meal times and go many hours in between. When that happens, and you start out overweight, you spontaneously reduce calorie intake below maintenance, without hunger and without reducing BMR.

Diet composition and meal timing are the two important levers. You need to get them in the right range for your personal metabolism.

When you get it right - right for you, because we don’t all respond equally to different food compositions - your body’s appetite signalling starts to work again and your weight moves in the direction of health. If you get it wrong for you, or if your appetite control system is fundamentally broken, or if you are overriding it for psychological reasons, then you may need to count calories to achieve weight loss.

Hth.

(Jen) #13

Thank you all so much for your thoughtful answers. They make a lot of sense!

I think what has started my panic about this topic is — I lost 8 lbs the first two weeks I was on keto, and then this week I actually ended up GAINING three pounds! I have been following all the “rules” very strictly… never going over 20g of carbs, hitting my protein goals and eating between 70-75% fat. I’ve also been really strict about keeping my calories under 1500 (as suggested by all the calculators I hit up).

So when I see the scale go up, I automatically think Oh no! I’m doing something wrong! And of course because of my 40 years of Weight Watchers-type thinking, I automatically think “I must need to lower my calories!” It’s a hard habit to break, especially since I still don’t completely understand this insulin/hormone stuff (I’m trying to learn though!), but I’m working on it. Y’all have helped a lot. Thank you!

And don’t worry… I’m not even tempted for one second to jump off the keto wagon. I know this is what my body needs. I’ll definitely keep keto-ing on and hope these mysterious pounds go away and I get back to losing! :slight_smile:

(Linda Culbreth) #14

Enjoy another piece of :bacon and keto on!

#15

Document a few menstrual cycles as you go. This woe has an affect on that too and can give you new symptoms as you adjust. It changed my days on me and I gained right before my new shark week.

(Sonia A.) #16

Are you feeling satiated when you eat no more than 1500 calories ? Because if you’re still hungry, you may slow down your metabolism. It’s good that you’re staying below 20 g of carbs, but you should also eat fat to satiety.

(Clare) #17

One thing to remember is that with women, our weight can bounce around a lot over a month. Don’t eat yourself up - keep a food diary and eat mindfully but don’t obsess over calories - it’s genuinely counterproductive.

(Allie) #18

I’ve stopped tracking now, don’t feel the need after two successful years on keto. I still test ketones so know things are OK. But when I was tracking, I set MFP by grams and had carbs at 20, protein at 89, and fat at 110 - BUT, I set the exercise calories to only add extra to the fat macro and not the protein or carbs, so the more active I was, the higher the fat macro was. I never worried about actually consuming all the calories it then allowed me, always came in under on my active days, normally with around 1800 calories consumed. This way worked really well for me. It does require the MFP premium but the annual subscription works out really cheap.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #19

I’m brand new to this and am still figuring things out myself, but another point to bear in mind is something Dr. Phinney mentioned in a lecture of his that I saw on YouTube: he described a participant in one of his studies who only lost ten pounds, when all the other women had lost twenty. It turned out when they investigated that she had lost twenty pounds of fat but gained ten pounds of muscle. He figured she had been restricting her calories for so long that her body had stunted her lean tissue in order to keep up her fat store (insulin resistance at work!). Apparently this is somewhat common with women, so he advised the women in the audience not to be so concerned about what the scale says, as long as their waistline keeps shrinking. I offer this for whatever it’s worth.

(Jen) #20

Thanks, Paul, that’s very interesting! I do have to keep reminding myself of things like that, because 7 weeks in and I’m only down 12 pounds (while everyone else my size seems to be down MUCH more than that at this point). I was stupid and didn’t measure when I started so I don’t have hard numbers, but my clothes are fitting way different now. I can comfortably wear jeans I haven’t been able to wear in years!

Logically, I know I should be very happy with that, even if the scale isn’t moving fast… but there’s something about that stupid number on the scale. sigh