Confused about Keto rules

newbies
(Jack) #1

Why do some people say “You don’t need to count your calories, just eat whatever fits into keto and you’ll eat less food and lose weight, you won’t be that hungry on keto.” While others say “Yeah but watch out don’t overeat, yeah count those calories, oh don’t eat that you’ll go over calories easy eating that certain type of food.”

Well which is it?? Do I just eat whatever I want that’s keto including as much ranch and mayonaisse or will I overeat? What happened to “you won’t eat that much because you won’t be that hungry.”

#2

Biggest argument in Keto my friend! Many don’t count and it works, I lost a LOT of weight not counting. I also stalled for over a year… from not counting. If you over eat you won’t loose and may gain. If you don’t track you won’t know you’re overeating in most cases. Fat isn’t unlimited. Best way is to track so you’ll KNOW what works for you and what doesn’t. If I tracked from the beginning I would have seen the trends in progress long before I stalled out indefinitely.

Long story short, I lost a lot of “Weight”. Much of it was muscle I could have probably kept. Me continuing to not want to track and lots of fasting ended with my slowing my metabolism. I screwed myself from all angles. My hunger / satiety signals betrayed me. I took not being hungry and not needing food. Which I didn’t… because my RMR kept slowing to adapt to all the food I wasn’t eating. At this point although not confirmed with an RMR test (last reading was) My caloric intake is about 1000 calories a day higher than my last test and I’m still able to loose a little every day/week. So recovery is going well, but shouldn’t have had to happen in the first place.

#3

I find it helpful to focus on the macros instead of the calories, because how the calories are spent is more important. I see keto as simply “Minimal carbs. Adequate proteins. Fats as needed (for satiety).”

So, two priorities for keto:

  • You need to keep carbs low to stay in ketosis.
  • You need to make sure you get enough proteins. Your body needs them. Being significantly low on them over an extended period can cause the body to get it elsewhere. That may mean break-down of muscle tissue. Not good.

After that, ideally, it should be hunger that determines how many fats (and thus calories) that you need to be eating, because stored body fat can make up for fats you’re not eating. But leaving yourself hungry all the time means keto won’t be sustainable. But … hunger is not habitual eating. Hunger is not emotional eating. Hunger is not mindless eating.

A calculator guesstimate of a fats macro can’t account for how much of your need for fats will be satisfied by stored body fat. Hopefully, hunger can.

I do keto for two reasons:

  • It helps to control my hunger. I am no longer ravenously hungry all the time.
  • It helps to control my blood sugars. I am a type 2 diabetic.
(Jack) #4

I think I’m eating like 1400-1600 calories a day at 203 pounds sitting on my ass all day and a calorie maintenance calculator said I need like 2200 just to maintain my weight, so I guess I’m doing good.

(Jack) #5

Well the past two days I had a burger with lettuce as the buns, added some regular salt to it, cheddar cheese, mayo, mustard and bacon. I also had salad with baby tomatoes, light ranch, cheddar cheese, roasted chicken pieces, and of course lettuce. I had a big salad today with quite a bit of light ranch which was delicious. Then I’ve also had scrambled eggs with green pepper and ham in them and salt on it.

Pretty tasty diet so far, am I doing this right? I’ve only been drinking water the past 53 days since I came from the carnivore diet as of a few days ago, which I had been on for 51 days.

#6

We are different so we need different personal rules… I don’t automatically lose fat on keto even if I have much to lose (only if I have very much to lose) but with some more strictness, I do. Tracking doesn’t help me as it has no effect on my calorie intake - but it is useful to ensure I eat little enough carbs when i don’t do carnivore or something very close to that.
Some people need tracking to see if they eat enough calories or protein…

And in the very beginning it may be useful to track to see how much you eat. Before my fat-loss, way before keto I tracked a bit when my new woe got stable for a while. I saw where I am, stopped tracking but ate similarly and lost fat just fine. Whenever I make drastic changes, I like to see how my macros changed. Later I may stop tracking, it depends.

First it’s important to stick to keto, get used to it, maybe figuring out what style suits you now, it may change later. Don’t worry about calories if you can’t afford that extra stress or work… Only if it’s no big deal or if you really want to lose fat right away for some reason, maybe?
And you will see if a more relaxed attitude is enough or not. Fat adaptation may change things too. I had no chance to lose fat in the first months, I was hungry and had to eat at least as much as before and it was maintenance for me. But my life improved in other ways, it’s not all about fat-loss…

It’s possible to overeat on keto. Not for everyone but for many of us. It’s merely possible for me, it’s easy not to, losing is the super hard one… Some people too easily overeat on keto and some people too easily undereat… Choosing your food items well is probably important, timing matters too… Some people only overeat if they use too much fat without a real need or focus on sweets very much… Good choices and they are okay. For me, small eating window is important - but pretty natural too.
There is the common advice to only eat when hungry. It’s not realistic or good for everyone but I consider it a good advice in general. Some of us easily can eat a big meal without any hunger, day after day… I am quite skilled at that and while a good woe help with satiation, it doesn’t necessarily keep me from eating too much if I eat without a real need. My best woe does but I needed years to arrive to it.

But there is no type of food that causes overeating for everyone. Or food that can’t cause it for anyone. It’s very individual. You need to figure out for yourself how you should eat. There are educated guesses but they might be off in your case.

(Jack) #7

Thanks I think I’m used to eating less from carnivore. Only eating prob like 1600 cals a day when 2200+ is my maintaining weight amount of calories.

#8

There is no Pope of keto. Many self-professed Cardinals however. You know the basic ideas and trust me there are people who fit on every part of the “doctrinaire” scale. Don’t eat anything with more that (insert small integer) ingredients. PUFAs are the worst thing you can eat besides cyanide doughnuts. Don’t eat too much protein. Yikes! Peanut butter! Spinach? are you kidding me with all those oxylates!

You will be fine if you can find a version of keto you can stick with. Trust me that is way better than a more perfect version you can’t stick with.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #9

A well-formulated ketogenic diet is a low-insulin diet, because you are keeping carbohydrate intake low enough to prevent chronically elevated serum insulin.

Insulin has many jobs in the body, and without it we die. But one of its jobs is to remove excess glucose (from carbohydrate in the diet) from the bloodstream, and it does this by stuffing it into muscles to be metabolised and into fat cells (adipose tissue) to be stored. When serum insulin is high, fatty acids are trapped in the adipose tissue and cannot be released to be metabolised, hence we get fat if we continually eat an excess of carbohydrate.

Insulin also blocks the receptors in the brain that register the hormonal signal from the adipose tissue, secreted when we have enough energy in storage to last us for a while. The brain therefore does not shut off the hunger signal, which is why people on a high-carbohydrate diet are generally hungry all the time. If you think about it, this makes sense, as our ancestors would generally only have had access to carbohydrates in the fall (when the berries were ripe). When you want to be putting on weight for the winter, you want to be hungry enough to keep on eating as you pack on the pounds.

On a low-carbohydrate diet, however, insulin stays generally pretty low (except at meal times), and the brain can register the hormonal signal from the adipose tissue and shut off our hunger. This is why people say to eat to satiety. When we let hunger be our guide, our body can adjust our appetite to a level that lets us metabolise both excess stored fat and fat in our food. Another reason to eat to satiety is that deliberately restricting calories signals the body that there is a famine going on, and its reaction is to slow the metabolism and to hang onto its reserves (fat) for as long as possible. If we eat enough food, however, the metabolism speeds up and the body becomes willing to shed excess stored fat.

(Allie) #10

Whichever works for you, everyone is different. For a long time I weighed and counted and measured, then I got fed up and stopped but have maintained my weight (actually lost a couple more pounds without trying) since then.

Some need to count and track and monitor to the tiniest of details, but others don’t and do just as well. It’s certainly less stressful and way less time consuming to just get on with it without counting.

#11

Perhaps what actually happens is that when we become truly fat adapted, which takes weeks to months, we lose our hunger. And we naturally eat less without trying so hard. So then people fast- ( IF or EF) and lose a lot MORE weight. But we have to watch for our hunger signals. I think I eat often when I am not even really hungry out of boredom or because it always was a source of comfort or pleasure. But there have been times when I just woke up not hungry at all and then I can have my first meal at 2pm with ease. Some dont eat for the whole day - did that once too. But I am more of an IF than an EF because for some reason, not eating at all for days scares me.

#12

Very well said! Some people forget that we don’t all are able to do whatever they think best and what worked for them just fine (and it’s not necessarily the best for us anyway).
Even if our version isn’t quite enough for us in the beginning, we might need it to become stricter later.

(Bunny) #13

If you have to count your food then maybe you are eating too much and too often?

Counting macros does not truly tell you what’s in the food your eating, so what a waste of time is the sum of the whole…lol

Crazy thing is you could eat Nutty Bars or Twinkie’s every three hours and lose body fat rapidly and what’s even crazier nobody wants to figure out why?

(Kirk Wolak) #14

Jack,
First, the barrier to ENTRY is part of the problem. The best thing you can do is track everything!
How willing would you be to start, if I told you to do this:

  1. Measure your BLOOD Sugar/Ketones daily
  2. Measure every ounce of food, and log it
  3. Keep Carbs low enough to keep you in ketosis in the AM (0.5 Ketones)
  4. Count TOTAL cabs, not net carbs
  5. Avoid too much protein, or measure it’s affect on you, SOME people react with glucose spike (me)
    6 - 99) … More finite details, all true to some degree for some people …

You see the problem. So, there are 3 camps in my mind:

  1. It’s about Macros and ease of getting started, STAMPING out Hunger and Fake Hunger
  2. It’s about Details/Measuring (But this is usually a phase II, or after stalling/failing a bit)
  3. Pure Simplicity… Go Zero Carb, eat boring foods, same ones all the time… Then lets see what else.

Each one sells differently to different people. We want a LARGE TENT where everyone is welcome. So it covers all of these.

One challenge is that our BODIES respond differently over time to the SAME EXACT Stimuli!

For example, if I fasted EARLY on for 24hrs, I was KNOCKING OUT 3.5 Ketones the next morning!
Now, it’s like “0.8”, LOL. That’s why you hear “don’t chase ketones”.

So, the old-timers get different results. Newbies get different results. And there is progression.
Every Body Is Different! And even YOUR body will be different AS YOU LOSE WEIGHT!

The last 10-15 pounds is MUCH harder to lose than the first 10-15 when you start 100 lbs over weight!
And what you have to do is different.

Exercise is another example. I IGNORED it in the start. But as my energy went up, I ENJOY it, and even MISS it if I don’t do it. WOW. Like a thin person. My Body CHANGED!

==
Next, there are TRIGGER foods (Pepperoni for me), I have eaten 3lbs in one day. But hey, it’s keto, right? LOL. If you can eat a food NONSTOP all day… It might not be a good food for YOU. Honestly, I have a REALLY hard time avoiding it. When I get stressed. I will drive to the store, and buy a pack, and eat it. Is this better than a candy bar? HELL YEAH. Is it STILL STRESS Eating? Yep, it is.

But it is Hyper-palatable (Like Soda). Meaning as you eat it, the overwheling FATTY taste is countered by the PEPPER. Then too much pepper taste is countered by the FATTY taste, and you cycle back and forth and NEVER get tired of it. (Why eating salty popcorn with soda causes you to have more of both).

HTH