Makes sense?
But I struggle how to put this into practice. How do you know how much fat will satisfy you when you prepare the meal. I find protein to be the most satisfying nutrient so I can eat a meal with a lot of protein and not feel any need for adding fat.
Well Keto is medium protein, high fat so you have to keep that in mind. So what I do is pick a fatty cut of meat and if I fry it up I use butter or coconut oil. Then I pick what to go with it. Tonight was zucchini and mushrooms. I cooked those in butter then put a bit of alfredo sauce on over the top. When I was full, I stopped eating. Iād eaten all the meat and had about 1/4 left of the other. Put that up to eat tomorrow night.
This flags one of the problems I have with this. Without numbers āmediumā protein or fat or whatever is kinda meaningless. Sure I have macros, but they donāt always work in real life. I personally have found that I need at least 120g protein a day. Less than that and, no matter how much fat i include (up to abot 60g at most iāve added to a meal), Iām left hungry.
So itās not practical to prepare meals this way. Now you might have a lot of food you cook at once, but I donāt. I canāt afford to do things that way.
It doesnāt seem to be the fat that sates me, but the protein, at least in the main
Errrr ā¦ no, I donāt have a lot of food to cook at once. Was just my dinner shrugs with a bit left over. Just cooked for myself. Will have to repeat when hubby gets home.
If itās protein and not fat that keeps you full maybe keto isnāt for you? Donāt anybody kill me for saying that!
Thatās just how it feels to me. Meals with less protein and more fat werenāt filling. Maybe they were too low in protein, iāve no idea. But i seem to need more protein that the 1g per kg of LBM ratio that goes around
how far are you along the keto ride? if you are just beginning i would not be so worried about how much protein, really just eating fat and protein to get your through the fat adaptation process is keyā¦ once fat adapted you can get dialed in so to speakā¦
I still eat fat till iām feeling full, i try not to eat to much protein as i understand the liver will turn excess to glucose, but i try and add enough fat into my diet to keep me satisfiedā¦ Iām not the most strict keto in that i keep tight reigns on my fat and protein, i do limit my carb intake to as little as possible, if i get close to 20 its rareā¦ but life is for living, Iāve allowed food to rule me for far to longā¦
I put leftover food in the refrigerator, but Iām crazy that way. I usually make more than I need or want, except for when I donāt.
But, Iām crazy that way.
Of course, Dr. Axe (A real hatchet man), had this to say on the topic:
He seems to like his proteins and fruits. But, maybe it is a good thing for him in his current state of health.
Yes, satiety eludes me as well! Iām not sure what the deal is, but I donāt ever āeat to satietyā because Iād for sure eat way too much. Iām not sure if thatās the right or wrong attitude, but everything Iāve read has said that if you eat TOO much fat, thereās no reason for your body to āeatā the fat on your body. So, I try to keep my fat intake as the largest percentage, but without binging on fat.
Thoughts?
I ate over 7000 calories of mostly fat one day, to see what it felt like. It was difficult to do, but I pulled it off. I did it as a challenge, because I wanted to know if I could do it. I ate fat bombs, quickly, one right after the other. It was difficult to do. I did not gain weight from the experiment, other than a temporary thing.
I think many people are afraid to eat like that, because they fear gaining weight, which I do not fear. Iām not saying that this is your case, but you may just want to play with it and see what happens. Itās interesting to know the limits of your body, and how long it takes to get there. These limits, of course, change over time.
Ok maybe this will help, maybe it wonāt. My hunger cues use to be all messed up. Was I hungry? Was I thirsty? I had no idea how to tell the difference! Iād eat to the point of being stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey. I thought that was satiety. That feeling you get when you want to roll down your hallway and climb into bed. I think that comes from being raised with āeat all thatās on your plate.ā
When I very first started to eat keto, I measured everything because I still had the CICO thing going on. In fact I only dropped it maybe 2 months ago now. I am not or was not an intuitive fat eater so there was a lot of trial and error going on. Now that it has clicked and I understand how my body feels and what itās SUPPOSE to feel like it has gotten much easier and I just do what I do.
@tdseest Thanks! I think Iād be more willing to experiment if I was positive that I was fat-adapted. I donāt have many of the signals of being fat-adapted just yetā¦and the dumb keto sticks donāt show anything for me, so Iām nervous that Iām not āthereā yet. Maybe Iāll go buy a blood glucose/ketone meter. I think that having some degree certainty that Iām in ketosis would make me feel more comfortable experimenting.
@KetoFied Do you find that youāre eating more or less after having moved away from CICO? I feel like if I ate what I actually wanted, my calories would be way higher.
Yes. Thatās why I said I wasnāt sure it would be your case.
In my case, I ate a lot of fat before I knew I was Keto Adapted. In fact, I never wanted any hunger at all. So, anytime I was hungry, I ate butter layered on cheese as a snack. It was easy to track. I did that for three months, along with butter and eggs for breakfast. I focused on getting adapted, and conquering hunger, and NOT on weight loss which is why I probably gained the 4 pounds those first three months.
But, then it melted off like butter after that.
Great way to keep your focus on what matters. Keep up the good eating and work.
I find I cycle! I think it works out to be about the same in the end. Just instead of logging it and fussing I let my body tell me. There are days, like yesterday, where if I had to guess, I probably ate somewhere around 3,000 calories. Today, maybe I hit 1,000. I actually didnāt eat from about 8:30 last night until 5:00 this evening because I wasnāt hungry. So I just had dinner today. Now if I could turn days like today into a real fast Iād be golden! LOL
Weāre all unique though, so we need to find out what works for us.
I did an experiment in January where I ate the Australian reference value for protein, which for a 52 yo man is 0.84g/kg [LBM]. For my LBM of 80.38kgs that is 67.5 g/day of protein. I didnāt gain or lose a significant amount of lean mass (according to DEXA scans).
The interesting thing is that when I was that low, if I was short one day (like one day I only ate 59g) the following day I had intense cravings for umami tasting food (like meat/mushrooms/sea weed/ vegemite). This is the first time I have ever experienced protein hunger. But if I was over about 65g then I didnāt experience that at all. So I believe for me that does appear to be my minimum daily intake.
But that doesnāt mean everyone should be at those levels. Because we have significant variance in protein requirements, and you have to drill into the data to see that.
The meta study upon which the Australian Nutrient reference values for protein were based is
That study worked out how much protein we need to eat to remain in nitrogen balance. This is what that population of data looks like;
It may not be obvious what is happening here so let me convert the horizontal scale from Nitrogen intake per kilo of lean body mass to Protein (divide by 160 and multiply by 1000).
It should be apparent that people in this population are able to remain in nitrogen balance, in that goldilocks zone, from about 0.35 to 1.0 g/kg LBM. That is a pretty large variance. Somewhere on this planet is a mutant who needs only 0.35g/kg [LBM] of protein a day, and another who needs almost 3x that.
Most people who are not over producers of insulin can eat an excess amount of protein, nothing bad will happen. Youāll just chuck excess on the metabolic bonfire, and you might have a slight odour of ammonia, rotten egg gas, or fish on your breath as you waste protein for calories and the waste products of that become volatile and out gas from the surface of your lungs.
For someone who has a problem making too much insulin ā¦ any protein will cause you to start pumping the stuff out. So itās probably a good strategy to try to get close to the minimum you need to maintain your body.
Whatās keeping you from your n=1 following this way of eating for an extended period and testing to ensure youāre in ketosis? If it works for you stop trying to fit into someone elseās macros.
