Can I go over macros and still lose weight

(Dee Eichler) #1

I am having 103g fat, 67g protien and 17g carbs. I am hungry. This is my first week. I spend alot if time trying not to go over. So if I’m not satisfied how do I stay on?

#2

You can certainly go over your fat macro while you’re trying to adapt. I’d be hungry too on only 1200 odd calories a day!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #3

Seventeen grams of carbohydrate is very good. That will help keep your insulin low.

Sixty-seven grams of protein is appropriate for a lean body mass around 67 kilos, but the expert recommendations cover quite a wide range. You probably don’t need to fidlle with it, but there is room for change, if you need it.

A hundred grams of fat, on the other hand, is probably not enough, especially if you are feeling hungry eating that little. The idea is to replace all the carbohydrate calories you are no longer eating with calories from fat, because fat is the macronutrient that has the least effect on insulin secretion. Cook with butter, tallow, or lard, eat fatty cuts of meat, have an avocado—that sort of thing. The standard advice is to “eat fat to satiety”—in other words, eat enough so that you are not hungry between meals.

When figuring your menu, don’t forget that meat is by no means 100% protein. Steak, for example is only 25% by weight, the rest being water and fat. But macros are not calculated by weight, but rather as a percentage of total calories, and fat is about 9 calories per gram, whereas protein and carbohydrate are only about 4. So you don’t need as much fat, in order to get a high percentage of your calories from it.

In the beginning, especially, there is no need to count calories. Eat to assuage your hunger. If you get hungry between meals, have some fatty food (such as buttered cheese—it’s yummy!) and then eat more fat at the next meal. The less often you need to eat, the more hours each day your insulin will stay low, which is the whole point of this way of eating. As you go along and the lower insulin allows your satiety signaling to be heard again, your appetite will probably drop quite a bit, but that initial period of eating a lot seems to be something that the body needs. Better to eat too much than too little.

P.S.—If you are using macros from one of those calculators, go back and change the calculation to “maintenance.” That should give you more realistic macros. The body will manage the deficit once your satiety signaling kicks in.

#4

@PaulL said it better :rofl:

(Frank) #5

He usually does. :wink:

(Dee Eichler) #6

Thank you for all the info. I will try it all

#7

I need to stop panicking when I see the words “I am hungry” & just think to myself - what would Paul say :thinking:

(Frank) #8

He’d probably say eat. Eat smart but eat for sure.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #9

For me, the trick is telling the difference between hunger and cravings. They told me when I first started hanging around these forums that if you could cook and eat an egg, you’re hungry, otherwise it’s cravings. Salt often helps with cravings, and so does staying hydrated. And usually I can get through cravings by promising myself that I’ll definitely have some (whatever) tomorrow.

But those cravings can be hard to resist. For example, we ordered in Italian last Monday, and even though I knew it wasn’t going to taste as great as it smelled, I just had to eat some of that bread. Not only wasn’t it that great, but I felt 80% for the next two days, and my arthritis came back. I’m really glad I didn’t eat the whole piece! But as much as I ate on Thanksgiving, it was all keto, so I’ve been feeling fine.

So the moral is, if you’re going to binge, at least let it be keto!

(Clara Teixeira) #10

I ate an insane amount of keto food on Thanksgiving. :joy: 5 plate fulls of meat and fat laden veggies throughout the day. Woke up 2 lbs lighter the next morning. :+1:

(Dee Eichler) #11

It is craving for sure because I didnt want an egg. I wanted sweet and salty things. Does this really go away in time?

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #12

For a lot of people, yes. For those of us who have a disordered relationship with food (a deliberately broad category), probably not without some work. I stopped drinking a long time ago, and these days I don’t miss it, but sugar/carb cravings? Fugeddaboutit! Out the wazoo! But I’ve only been keto for a year and a half, so I do have hopes that over time, they will lessen. Then, too, a lot of the mental attitudes that helped me give up alcohol are helping with this, as well. But as I mentioned in my earlier post, sometimes . . . . !!!

One good thing I’ve noticed is that my satiety signaling has become much stronger in the past three or four months, and it wasn’t exactly negligible before that. But this current feeling makes the difference between real hunger and the cravings crystal-clear. I may still give into a craving, as I did last week (though usually I try to make the indulgence something keto and not carby), but there’s no longer any fooling myself that I am doing anything but giving in to a craving. :bacon:

(Dee Eichler) #13

I want to have a ribeye steak tonight. It weighs about 14 oz .I only have 64 protien for the day. That is more than my allowance for the entire day. Do I not eat any other protien today?

#14

If you are hugry eat it. I wouldn’t worry about the numbers except for the carb number. I have eaten steaks as big as my plate :slight_smile:

(Joanna Parszyk ) #15

From your macros it looks to me that you decided to have quite a big caloric deficit. Sometimes it can stall and if course make you hungry. Sometimes having smaller but constant deficit and eating really food will get you to your goals faster.
Also hunger issue: it maybe a sign that guard not properly fat adapted, maybe something in your diet (dairy, artificial sweeteners etc) does it to you. If u r a female then all the hormonal roller coaster is important. What about your sleep?
If l’m sleep deprived l can eat and eat and have cravings for not the most healthy stuff.

Also are you sure that it is not emotional hunger? I guess if u want steak it is your body telling you that it needs more nutrients. If u crave keto cheesecake, for example, your problem is either a bad habit, boredome, stress or comfort eating that is masking some other issues.

#16

Maybe a dark leafy salad with some cheese and yummy dressing on it that has healthy fats just to keep you satisfied until dinner cause you want to be hungry for that steak!

(Todd Batitis) #17

My last DEXA Scan back in October calculated my BMR at just under 2000 (1986 I believe) which was a drop of less than 100 calories from the one 3 months before… I log everything I eat in My Fitness Pal and since that last DEXA I am averaging around 2200-2300 calories.

My net carbs run in the 15-25 range with total carbs sometimes being as high as 45 on high fiber days (zero carb bread, added flax for extra omega 3s).

In that time I have gone from 248 pounds to 233 pounds.

Of course, I have seen gains of as much as 6 pounds after a high carb weekend where I eat differently than normal like our anniversary dinner at the Asian buffet and following up the next day with lots of carbs at the Sizzler Buffet. Getting back on track during the week with staying in my keto macros and 20:4 intermittent fasting and it came back off since half was probably water weight anyways. That is one of the things I like the best about keto and IF. Many of us find it very easy to get back on track after doing things we shouldn’t.

And as others have pointed out, you are very early on in the process and if you are female (not sure with your name) females tend to start different then males. Men tend to lose weight fast, women lose inches very often at first.

And I know you have already eaten it (assuming you did) that is a lot of protein (84g) but it isn’t going to kill you. It can be difficult to get out of the mindset of watching the macros but it is important when you are new to understand what you are eating and the effects. I will be posting a thread about this kind of thing in few minutes. :slight_smile:

(Dee Eichler) #18

What is the highest I can go on my protien. If I have an 8oz steak I can barely have on other protein for the day. Like today I skipped breakfast and had a salad with 2.5 oz chicken. I’m having a steak for dinner and pretty much cant have more than 6 or 7 oz before reaching 65g.
Need help

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #19

Do you feel that your hunger is not an adequate guide to how much to eat? People generally have a pretty accurate instinct for how much protein they need on a given day.

There is a wide range in the recommendations by various experts for how much protein to eat, and I’ve seen recommendations as high as 2 g/kg of lean body mass/day (Prof. Bikman & Dr. Naiman). Dr. Phinney recommends 1.0-1.5 g/pound of “reference” weight (taken, I believe, from those old Metropolitan Life tables of healthy weights that every doctor’s offfice used to have)—there is a page on the Virta Health site giving tables for men and women of various heights.

(mole person) #20

Dr. Bikman doesn’t recommend 2 grams of protein/kg, he says that he expects the correct amount to be somewhere between one and two grams. However, all of his science is done at 1 gram, and so any conclusions about higher amounts of protein are unwarranted.

As for Dr. Naiman, I don’t trust his interpretations of the science. I’ve seen him come to conclusions from scientific research that the studies themselves did not come to and which were completely unreasonable. His scientific interpretations make the ones that we all scoff at here look like top notch science.