Eating fat

(Gary hoover) #1

If I’m not exercising much (lung problem) do I still eat fat?

(Carl Keller) #2

If you are hungry, you need to eat something. If you wish to stay in ketosis, fat is still what you should focus on the most, regardless of injury.

(Alec) #3

Gary
Unless you are an ultra marathoner training every day, the majority of your calories are burnt just staying alive. The keto guidelines are 20g carbs, 1-1.5g of protein [corrected from carbs] per kg of lean body weight, and then eat fat until you are not hungry.

If you are not hungry, don’t eat the fat.

If you are starting out, just keep carbs below 20g. That’s 80% of the keto diet in just that one basic rule.

Correction: I should have said 1-1.5g of protein per kg of lean body weight. Thanks to @Taka for pointing out my terrible blunder!! :joy::joy::+1:

#4

Just had to fix it…

Eat as much fat as you want. But don’t be afraid to eat more protein than the guidelines. The only strict rule is to keep the carbs low.

(Alec) #5

OMG, what a donkey!!! :joy::joy::joy:

(Gary hoover) #6

Thanks to you all

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #7

The science behind this is that carbohydrate, being mostly long chains of glucose molecules, stimulates a strong insulin response to clear the glucose from the blood stream. (One of the places glucose goes is into our fat cells.)

Protein stimulates insulin at about half the rate, but its effect depends on how much carbohydrate we are eating (low carbohydrate -> protein stimulates glucagon as well as insulin, and body stays in ketosis; high carbohydrate -> protein stimulates insulin only, body stores fat).

Fat has almost no effect on insulin at all, which makes it a safe source of calories to replace the missing carb calories when we go keto. Ironically, on a ketogenic diet, eating fat helps us lose fat!

#8

How do we know what our lean body weight is?

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #9

That’s the problem, isn’t it?

The most accurate method, I’ve read, is when your doctor uses calipers on various parts of your body, but it’s complicated and requires training, or the results will be wrong.

There is the DEXA scan, but it can be fooled by over- or under-hydration and give wrong results.

There are impedance scales that use the conductivity of your skin to make an estimate, but they are wildly inaccurate, or so I’ve heard.

There is body mass index, but the results of that caclucation sometimes get ridiculous.

There is also the ratio of waist to height, but . . .

There are the U.S. Army and Navy calculators, which some people like and others don’t think much of.

You could make something up . . .

Dr. Phinney and Prof. Volek gave up figuring and now use the old Metropolitan Life Insurance tables to get what they call a “reference weight” (https://blog.virtahealth.com/how-much-protein-on-keto/)

(Jay Patten) #10

As a veteran of both the US Army AND the US Air Force I say for SURE not to use any military guidelines for calculating body fat. The system they use is essentially a measurement of the waist and neck which is then compared to height. It is highly inaccurate. If you happen to have a thick neck, the calculation looks good on paper. If you happen to have a thin neck, the calculation looks bad on paper.

Personally I use a scale that measures conductivity, and while I’m sure it’s not accurate, it’s at least consistent. As I lost weight, my lean body mass did lower a bit, but it was a good overall starting point for me.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #11

Consistent is good. It is often less important to know the precise value than to know the trend.

(Jay Patten) #12

@PaulL yeah, sometimes that’s all we can really ask for, lol.

#13

We don’t. The easiest thing to do is calculate an ideal lean body weight, and use that to calculate how much protein you need.