Do calories matter?

#1

I guess this has been asked before but here I go. I’m a 66yo male. I’ve been doing keto for about 3-1/2 months. I have lost about 15lbs from 245 to 230 but am stalled there.
I feel I do quite well about not eating high carb foods or sugar but I do eat a lot. I have seen videos saying just eat till your full & don’t worry about calories.
I have not been eating before noon but I have a tendency to snack after dinner. I mostly snack on pork rinds, cheese, or celery & cheese spread.

All things CICO - back from the dead thread
(*Tame Those Ghrelin Gremlins) #2

Hello! I know you haven’t posted too much information about your meals so I will keep it simple, why are you snacking? If you’re eating a lot at meals you should be able to make it from one meal to the next without snacking.

The longer you can go between meals the better because this is when your insulin is low. Calories aren’t too big a worry but are you staying under 20 carbs a day? Personally for me I will eat more protein if I’m feeling more hungry then usual. (this fills me up more then fat)

Also it would help more to know exactly what a typical day of eating is like for you.

(Consensus is Politics) #3

The total number of calories mean less than the kind of calories.

Take two identical people. Their recomended caloric intake should be, lets say 2,000 calories.

One eates a high carb diet, the other its a low carb Keto diet. Now, lets Increase their calories to 2500. The general consensus in medicine and the ohysical fitness world is that both people will gain extra weight. But what actually happens is only the carb burner gains weight on that. The ketonian doesnt. His BMR can asjust to that, and just burn more energy using the extra calories since it has them. A carb burner doesnt. That extra just gets stored as fat.

I use myself as an example. Eating 2,000 calories a day I became a diabetic. I was gaining weight. I tried losing weight, by reducing calroic intake by 500 calories and riding my stationary bike for an hour and a half a day, just over 25 miles worth. All I did was get hungrier and hungrier and lose no weight. Oh, and feel cold all the time.

I was 245 pounds. I started Keto, two weeks later I was down to 205 pounds. Yes it was water weight, so what? I was no longer abusing my body lugging around 40 pounds of excess weight.

Soon after that, a couple of werks or so, I was down to 195. There was a problem. I was felt cold all the time. I thought at first it was due to shedding off all that fat. I calculated how many calories I had been eating, about 1800. I figured that should be good. Seeing as I get pretty much no exercise, i gave up on the bike.

I held my weight at 195 pounds for probably a couple of months. I read somewhere that not eating enough could cause a weight stall, and lowing of BMR and that could be whybI was cold. So I tested it.

I increased my caloric intake to 2500 calories. I was no longer cold, and I began to slowly loose more weight. I’m now down to 188 pounds, and still trending down.

Sure, this experiment I did isnt using scientific method, but it did work for me. I began to read up on this, and seem to find wherever its mentioned, it receives plenty of damnation from the body building gurus.

One of the first things they say is, “it’s Thermodynamics” you can’t lose weight if you are eating more, and vis-a-vis. That would be true if the number of calories where the inly variable that changed. But it isnt. BMR changes to adapt to the amount of energy available. Kind of like a car. How far can you get on a tank of gasoline? That all depends on how you drive. What gears you use and when. Stay in first gear all the time and you wont go far at all. Shift gears to keep engine RPMs at the best torque for your speed, and you will go a lot farther. Its not a perfect analogy, but i think it makes a point. VARIABLES.

(I know my shifing analogy and torque are flawed, but its just a thought experiment)

Keto Vitae!

(Carl Keller) #4

Do calories matter?

Yes they do… but we shouldn’t count them. Keto is carb restriction, not calorie restriction. If you are restricting carbs and eating moderate protein and fat to satiety, the process will be self-regulating. Make the right food choices and let your hunger determine how much you need to eat.

The sooner you can break that habit, the better results you should see on the scale. Try to eat more food when you do eat and get rid of snacking. As someone who used to habitually snack before bedtime, I know you can do it. It’s more of a mental habit than it is a response to true hunger.

What are you eating in a day? It’s likely you are fat adapted by now… especially if your energy is consistent and if you have good control of your hunger and cravings. If so, it’s not necessary to make fat a part of your every bite of food. By eating less fat at this point, it encourages your body to use its fat storage as fuel.

(Liz Ellen) #5

Thank you for sharing this, Robert! I can’t exactly call it a stall, but I’ve been hovering around the same weight for a few weeks and wondering what’s going on. I’ve also been really cold (and not just because it’s still winter here in the Midwest). I’m wondering if I need to increase my calories to see a change. I might throw caution to the wind and give it a shot.

(Scott) #6

I lost 25 pounds in three months and then stalled for three months. I don’t count calories but I did lower my added fat at breakfast and the scale started moving again. I stopped adding MCT oil to coffee, cheese and heavy whipping cream to my scrambled eggs and have only bacon or sausage instead of both. I don’t feel anymore hungry than before so I will call it “extra fat” that I cut out.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #7

@brigeton The reason for this is that carbohydrates are nothing more than long strings of glucose molecules, and high levels of glucose in the blood stimulate high levels of insuln, to get that glucose out of the blood stream, where it does damage, and into muscle and fat cells, to be metabolized and to be stored, respectively.

Insulin, among its many other jobs, is the body’s fat-storage hormone. So keeping it elevated prevents the fat cells from letting fatty acids out to be metabolized. Low insulin, on the other hand, allows the fats to leave the fat cells to fuel the metabolism.

The moral of the story is that, as already noted, the absolute number of calories is not as important as the foods we eat. Eating in a way that keeps insulin low does more for weight loss (as well as promoting bodily health in so many ways) than merely restricting calories. In fact, restricting calories too much can cause the body to hang on to its excess fat in order to get us through the famine! Giving it enough calories, on the other hand, will prompt it to let go of that excess fat. Weird, huh?

#8

Keep you daily intake of gross carbs under 20 and caloric intake under 2000 and your weight loss should resume. Drink your body weight in ounces of water daily, i.e. if you weigh 200lbs then drink 200 ounce. This worked for me and I lost 80 pounds.

(Jill F.) #9

I am in my 40s and female. I find that calories do matter in my case. If I eat and do not pay attention to calories I stop losing. For me just eating to satiety and adding some light cardio makes my scale move. My hubby on the other hand eats stacks of steak and cheese and loses. You may want to change it up sometimes and see what works for you.

(Consensus is Politics) #10

Ok, show off :cowboy_hat_face:, say the same thing i was trying to in a much less verbose way :rofl:

(Consensus is Politics) #11

And the most important bit in the formula. Not everyone reacts exactly the same! Some people are allergic to “xxx” while others can thrive on it. Some people get the screaming, umm… :poop: while others carry on like normal.

Keto Vitae!

(Marianne) #12

Great post. When you talk about BMR in this analogy, are you referring to increasing it by exercise? Not ready to do that. Hoping once I become fat adapted, I’ll have the urge to walk or do something.

(Marianne) #13

Is this why IF is recommended? Haven’t really done that yet and will have to dip my toe, although many days I eat a good, clean, high fat breakfast and am satisfied until dinner. I don’t snack. Other days I’ll have a keto coffee (BPC) and then lunch and dinner. Is this somewhat a form of IF??

(Marianne) #14

I had thought the recommendation was to drink half your body weight in water a day (200 lbs. = 100 oz. of water).

(Alec) #15

Oh My Lord, here we go again… :joy::joy::joy:

(Marianne) #16

Is this a regular controversy? IDN

(Alec) #17

Marianne, not water, but whether calories matter. This has been thrashed to death a few times on here, with some quite strongly differing opinions, and not much movement of positions. I ain’t going there again, I don’t have the strength.

#18

Drink to thirst, not to some arbitrary number. And I’m definitely not drinking 1:1 ounces:weight, because 26 cups of water (or 1.6 gallons) is ridiculous.

(Marianne) #19

Ohhh, thank you. Seems to me that they don’t really matter, but then you probably don’t want to know that. :laughing:

(Alec) #20

Oh, I so have this problem. Terrible pre-bed snacker. I MUST STOP THIS. :flushed: