Failing at this big time... 2+ months

#1

Started this on 1/25/19, so now well into month 3.

Have seen little to no results. Pant size still the same. No increase in energy.

OK here is my day, I appreciate anyone that can give me some insight.

AM:

2 glasses of ice water
1 tablespoon of Brain Octane
1 tablespoon of Flax Seed Oil.
1 cup of coffee with a teaspoon of heavy cream.

Afternoon

2 cups of coffee with a teaspoon of heavy cream.

PM

Dinner:
Comprised of a 12oz steak cooked in 2 tablespoons of butter, broccoli with cheddar cheese (gross carbs under 20).
3 glasses of ice water.

On Friday’s (meatless) I have 2 pieces of salmon (each are 300 calories each) with broccoli or cauliflower under 20g gross with cheese.

After dinner.

1 tablespoon of Brain Octane.

Yes, you will notice I eat one meal a day, which is something I have done most of my life. I find it impossible to eat breakfast or lunch.

I do not snack. I have no sugar. Drink no soda.

5’ 10"
200lbs (was 160 a year ago, but weight has been put on post surgery).

What the heck am I doing wrong?

I have seen others cite to eat as follows:

AM
2 eggs, 2 pieces of bacon, butter in coffee

Lunch
Chopped meat, avocado

Dinner
Steak, spinach

Do I need to go this route?

I am baffled on why this is not working for me.

I workout 3-4 times per week. Run roughly 6 miles per week.

I believe my body is simply holding onto to fat.

I have not tested my blood nor my urine, but I wake up in the am very thirsty.

Please help.

(mole person) #2

What are you taking the Brain Octane and flaxseed oil for?

(Alec) #3

Are you on any post surgery medicines?

#4

I don’t know what brain octane is, so my question would be, are you eating enough? that doesn’t seem like a lot of food for someone your height.

(Karim Wassef) #5

I think it’s just MCT

What are your macros? fat / protein / carb per day?

What was the surgery?

What meds?

First guess - you’re working out too much… you’re not eating enough… so you’re actually punishing your body and it’s going to lose muscle mass and retain water in response. Lots of inflammation.

First recommendation - do less, relax and eat more fat. Keto doesn’t need exercise. Your body needs to feel safe and it will start to let the fat go.

That’s what worked for me. I don’t know your situation, but over-stressing my mind and body didn’t work for me.

(Maria Ortiz) #6

From my experience, you may be over-exercising for the amount of food you are taking in. In this case you have 2 options: you either eat more calories or decrease exercise. Your body will hold onto fat because it senses that it’s at a huge deficit and knows it’s expending a great deal of energy at the same tims. I had this same issue and the only thing that worked was cutting 3 days off my workout and decreasing its intensity as well because I didn’t want to eat more. After that I started losing again. Yes you’ve been eating like that for a long time but some things change and we need to adapt.

#7

Failing? Nah, you’re just figuring it out. When it comes to fat loss / body comp, not everyone is the same. I respond pretty directly/linearly to diet changes. On the other hand, my wife has a stair-step response: nothing changes for a while and then BAM! I get your frustration.

I would strongly encourage you to do some kind of ketone testing. Blood test is best. Breath test is more convenient (but less accurate and doesn’t work well for some). Pee test is cheap (but doesn’t always work). If you don’t test you don’t know. Maybe not something you need to do forever, but since you’re new it could be valuable feedback.

I agree with @Maria_Ortiz about the food: make sure you’re getting enough. Restricting intake too much over a long period can be a problem both physiologically and psychologically. I often do one-meal-a-day (or warrior fast really) when I want to cut fat, but at meal time I eat everything that’s not nailed down :smiley: Consider doing some rough tracking of macros (grams of protein & fat esp; sounds like you have a handle on carbs) to make sure you’re not shorting yourself.

For some people heavy whipping cream (HWC) triggers an insulin response. The only way I know to figure it out is through elimination or testing. If it were me I would cut the liquid calories; if I’m not hungry enough to eat real food then I’m not really hungry.

I also agree with @Maria_Ortiz about the exercise. I doubt you’re going to be able to run yourself to your goals. A small dose of cardio may provide some benefit. A small dose of resistance training is probably even better. I find thinking of exercise like medication is helpful: correct dose for the correct effect, more may be worse not better. Unless you’re running as part of some sport specific conditioning, I don’t see the benefit.

(Katie the Quiche Scoffing Stick Ninja ) #8

You’re not eating enough.
If you aren’t fat adapted, you’re just damaging your BMR by being on reduced calories.
OMAD is not intended for newbies, it’s for maintenance.

(Carrie ) #9

I agree with the others that it sounds like you’re not eating enough for the amount of exercise you’re doing… and, I think you’re not getting enough fat in your diet. I’d try increasing both.

#10

No meds.

All I take is a multivitamin, zinc, vitamin c and some fish oil.

#11

See what I eat.

I am doing less than 20g of carbs gross per day.

I do not know how to calculate protein / fat.

Like I said, steak cooked in butter, broccoli with cheddar cheese and heavy cream in my coffee.

No meds.
Sigmoidectomy (removal of part of my intestine).

I have been relaxing for almost a year due to the surgery, prior to that my workout levels were 6 days a week.

Do you have a diet suggestion beyond what I am doing everyday?

(Rob Grantham) #12

You need to eat more and more often. For this amount of excersise you are eating very little.

It would be worth trying to at least do two meals a day from real food. Eat until full… mostly from fatty sources of meat… or some eggs

#13

@KetoUSA, if you’re unsure how to monitor your protein and fat, I might be able to help if you’re comfortable with Excel. As for calculating the levels you need, you need to use one of the keto macro calculators which you can easily find here or elsewhere (I don’t have a link – can someone supply one?).
I’ve intended to offer up my Excel to members in any event, but as I’m brand-new here just hadn’t done so yet. For me it’s invaluable and I think more helpful than MyFitnessPal or Cronometer. That being said, you do have to be fairly conversant in Excel. But for me, having it customized to give me exactly the information I need and want is vastly more important than it having slick graphics.
Also, should say that my database of info was put together by me and is customized for me (but anyone else using it could easily customize for themselves). I select from pull-down lists (dairy, meats, veggies, etc.) and enter the number of grams I either just ate or am thinking of eating (and want to check how it all totals up and where it puts me in relation to my daily macros). Note, however, that I said “grams” – the entire workbook is set up on the basis of nutrients per 100 grams which is the European way of doing things. As well, there is no such thing as “net carbs” (total carbs minus fiber) in the European figures as carbs given ARE net.
So, yes, to use my system, you have to weigh things. I have a scale from Ikea that I keep on my counter so easy as can be!
Without a doubt, using my system wouldn’t be as easy when much of the food you eat is American packaged food: mine’s pretty much (but not exclusively) based on pure foods. It can be done to transpose nutrition information given for – for example – a 30 ml “serving” to a 100-gram unit, but it’s not wildly entertaining :-).
Oh, and another thing that works for me and probably would work for some people here but not others: I am a pretty good cook, but I seldom follow recipes. For that reason, when I throw together, for instance, what I might dub “KetoMoussaka” I want a way of calculating what the per-100-gram nutrients are for that particular dish as a whole. This is not a feature I can get on a purchased app to the best of my knowledge …
Anyhow, should this sound appealing and you think you could handle the more hands-on approach, contact me? And obviously the same applies to anyone in this forum reading this who might be interested (although I’ll probably mention this elsewhere in a dedicated post or most-suitable thread.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #15

Apparently, those of us who actually own a scale and use it are in a minority around here. :blush:

I developed an Open Office spreadsheet for my meal planning and macro tracking. It’s nice to know there ARE other people who measure, weigh and calculate! Thanks.

#16

@amwassil, seems to just be a mental-block thing. I was raised in the U.S. and learned measuring by cups, tablespoons, etc. I thought back then that the water-displacement method was highly advanced but, boy, weighing beats it every time! You’d think that the fewer dishes to wash aspect would have people converting by droves, but evidently not :-).
And of course love it that you’ve done an Open Office sheet. Clearly we’re two peas in a pod!

(Karim Wassef) #17

Eating once a day is fine. But you need to eat more fat.

Cut the 6 days exercise and stop all dairy. Use ghee or tallow instead of butter.

Some people are very sensitive to dairy and can’t lose weight with it. Some foods may also be inflammatory- cheese and broccoli may be fighting against you.

Add eggs. They’re a good source of fat and essential protein.

Add fats from mayo, bacon, avocado, evoo. If you’re very carnivore, there are many options in the carnivore forum to check out.

How much steak (weight)? What cut of steak?

#18

Roughly guesstimated your caloric intake and it seems like you’re eating around 1100-1300 a day.

At 5’10 200 your intake should be higher. You don’t want to run into the problem where you start stalling, then you have to further decrease your already low caloric intake.

I’d eat a more fat from an actual food source and not oil. Add eggs, avocado, or a fattier cut of meat. Also focus on healing your body first, because if you only focus on what the scale says, you’ll become discouraged.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #19

So was I and now reside in Canada. As much as I dislike the metric system generally, for measuring food portions it can’t be beat! I can’t even imagine measuring food accurately by cups, -spoons, scoops, ounces, etc. That’s literally insane.

Like you I prepare all my food from individual ingredients. Unlike you I am not a good cook and tend to eat very simply and relatively monotonously. I am one of those functional people who view food the same way a driver running out of gas views a gas pump. The service station is not my destination!

#20

Here’s a good calculator to help you estimate macros: Macro calculator
For tracking, people like Cronometer, Carb Manager, or Joy. I think this is far easier than using a spreadsheet. If you use an app, you look up the food in the app and enter how much you ate. The app inputs all the values and will calculate meal and daily totals for you. If you use a spreadsheet, you will need to look up the food in a book or an online resource, then separately enter all the values (calories, fat, protein, total carbs, fiber, net carbs, and any other nutrients you want to track) for that food plus how much you ate in the spreadsheet. You will need to set up formulas to calculate for each meal and daily totals.

I think there are lots of people who weigh food and track details. I’m one of them. But it sure doesn’t save me dishes. :grin:

Some people are sensitive to dairy, but a lot of people aren’t. I wouldn’t do 47 things at once. You’ll end up not knowing which of the things fixed your problem. I think your main issue might be too much exercise and not enough food. If you are controlling carbs and getting enough protein for the amount of exercise you’re doing (likely way more than you’re eating), then you want the balance of what you eat to be fat. Once you do all this for a few weeks, if you still haven’t hit your sweet spot, you could try an elimination diet to see if you have issues with certain foods you’re eating, like dairy.

If you are eating 1300 calories of food/day and your TDEE is 2500 and you’re not losing weight, it means your metabolism is holding on to everything it can. You can eat more for a couple of weeks to try to re-set your metabolism.

Also, there are bunches of advisors around who think that too much cardio either isn’t good for you or will work contrary to weight loss (see Mark Sisson, Ben Bocchicchio, Doug McGuff, Allen Misner). General advice from these guys boils down to a couple of hard strength sessions (weights, bodyweight exercises) per week of no more than 15-30 minutes, plus lots (3–5 hours/week) of moderate movement like walking, yoga, gardening, golf, house cleaning, etc. You could head over to the Ask Coach Allen thread to get some more advice on how to switch up your exercise routine to promote weight loss.

(Karim Wassef) #21

I’m a minimalist. I say cut most things out and then slowly introduce them one at a time to learn what works for you.