Over thinking.
My advice would be to keep it simple.
Rediscover the joy of cooking whole, unprocessed foods (except Tabasco sauce!).
Enjoy the journey and the results will follow. 
Fat loss on keto. Help
Shinita
#22
Our TDEE canât be calculated. Itâs just a guess. There is a huge individual factor. Even for BMR as TDEE brings the activity and that is a total mystery. Even when I had a good guess about my BMR (calculated from my fat-loss, itâs simple enough in my case and I was inactive at that time), my TDEE is a mystery. I am not super active and I have some guess but itâs far from accurate.
Good as my CI canât be tracked either 
But inaccurate info helps me too, I just donât overvalue it.
I would just eat normal and see what happens. If no fat-loss happens for several weeks, I would try to change something in my diet that hopefully solves the problem. (But even before several weeks, I probably would get curious, look at my macros, wonder about things and make easy changes. no extra work for fat-loss when I donât know it IS a stall but I like experimenting and making my woe better. There are points where I like to change like diminishing my sweetener consumption - but only to the extent I am comfortable with. It may or may not help with fat-loss and health though. And it goes slowly for me but no problem, eating mostly proper food in my last several decades is still better than forgetting about it because it wonât be so perfect in the next months.)
I donât know your stats but many men have ~2800 kcal TDEE, my SO included. Of course some are 60kg and some are 200+ kg⌠Height and weight are just two things, there is activity, muscularity and the individual factorâŚ
Calculators notoriously tend to wildly overestimate the weight of activity, I have read that everywhere. But regular activity tend to get an optimized energy need too.
Itâs fine, we donât need to know these numbers, we do something and see if it helps and change if it doesnât. If we can. Itâs quite hard for some of us, my SO and I both have very different but bothersome difficulties when it comes to fat-loss. But I believe there is an easy enough method for nearly everyone.
PaulL
(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?)
#23
Probably not, but Iâm glad to see a healthy amount of calories recommended. An online calculator is only as good as its algorithm, and itâs extremely difficult to estimate a personâs metabolic rate on-line.
For reference, the standard nutritional advice is 2500 kcal a day for men and 2000 a day for women, so this on-line calculator is not far off.
The best guide is to eat to satisfy oneâs hunger. This generally works, but sometimes people have depressed their metabolic rate from years of calorie-cutting and need to work to get their metabolism back up. The advantage to a low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic diet is that it puts the metabolism into a state where it is using primarily fatty acids as fuel, both directly and in the form of ketones. The bodyâs ability to metabolise fat and ketones actually increases noticeably on a ketogenic diet. Also, by lowering the overal level of circulating insulin, the diet helps liberate stored fat to be metabolised. This is a very useful side-effect of the diet to many people.
The upshot of all this is that it is possible to eat quite a lot of food on a ketogenic diet without getting fat. In a number of studies of obese people on an ad libitum ketogenic diet, some participants have eaten quite a bit more food than others and still lost fat at the same rate. It appears that when we eat the right foods, the bodyâs hormonal responses to those foods is different from what it is on the standard Western diet, and so the amount of calories is far less important than eating in a way that facilitates proper metabolism.
ctviggen
(Bob M)
#25
If you like fasting, then do the âfeastâ and fast idea: when you eat, eat well. When you fast, fast a while.
lfod14
#26
The numbers the calcs give are based on averages from other people your size, weight, height, age etc, then they factor in what you give them as an activity level (guessing that or using it for fat loss is a losing battle). For many people theyâre close enough, then you have outliers like me, that theyâll be WAY off on. But most people also use them wrong, theyâre only a starting point for people that have no clue, youâre supposed to tweak from that point forward.
Iâm a huge shill for the MacroFactor app, it takes all your info, does an initial calculation, but then starts adapting to your actual TDEE based on your weigh ins. So as long as you track your intake accuratly, and weigh in much as possible (every day is best, but at least a couple times a week) based on the goals you set whether it be gain, loss, maintenance and the timeframe and gain/loss speed you go with, itâll keep adapting and the end result will be finding your true TDEE.
So if you did that, and it gave you close to that same number, but say you knew it was way off, you could either override it, or just eat less/more and itâd just speed up how quick it honed in on you, because either way it still sees your intake vs your end result. It also figures out your day to day flucuations so it wonât over react to them when making decisions.
As far as Calcs go, none of them are perfect, but this one (for me) has always been the closest. IIRC, they use a combo of a couple of the different calculation methods and average them.
ctviggen
(Bob M)
#27
There is no way any of those are anything but a guess. According to the book Burn, if you exercise more, thereâs a maximal calories you can burn per day. That is, the theory is you have a set basal expenditure, and if you exercise 20 minutes and burn 100 calories, then if you exercise 60 minutes, you should burn 300 calories more. But thatâs not what happens. Instead, your basal expenditure goes DOWN when you exercise more, meaning that your daily energy expenditure doesnât go up much at all, even though youâre exercising 3 times more.
And that was done using doubly-labeled water, which provides a good estimate of calorie consumption per day.
And to the extent that they get anywhere near what youâre actually eating or need to eat, then any time you make a change such as more or less exercise, theyâll be wrong again. Ditto for if you lower the amount you eat, as your body can lower basal metabolic rate anyway.
PaulL
(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?)
#28
So much for âeat less, move more,â huh?
lfod14
#29
All about that context! Eating less and moving more will burn fat off you, not a lie. They just leave out the fact of how that ends long term when you canât eat anymore because youâve destroyed your RMR. I canât even imagine what itâs like for the people doing that for YEARS on end, I did some pretty respectable damage in a very short amount of time, and it still took me over a year to fix it.
Thatâs why I love Gabbie Lyon, sheâs supposedly starting some training cert for Docâs that want to wake up and realize why people need to start putting on muscle and getting their engines revâd up, instead of permanently stalling them.
ffskier
#30
While I concur with the author that energy compensation exists, this is separate from the fact that exercise still increases total daily energy expenditure and promotes weight loss in most exercisers. When exercise doses are higher than, say, public health recommendations, weight loss is considerably greater than lower exercise doses and tends to be clinically significant. The devil is in the dose.
Shinita
#31
Losing fat for years? Sounds bad. I did it for months (still longer than my SO but I donât do starvation) but I had higher-cal days every week, they probably helped if my teeny tiny deficit didnât but that probably made problems unlikely already. Of course one shouldnât starve but I couldnât ever do it by my own will. I tend to have the opposite problem.
Eating little and being active is a great idea to me, I canât expect success without it, my experiences shows. I am simple like that as far as I know from my very little experience with fat-loss. Exercise is mostly for other benefits though, not in its potential help in fat-loss.
Chetogenico
#32
Yesterday was a working from home day, therefore no OMAD and I cooked two meals.
At lunch, I started with a big salad with mixed leaf and rucola, enriched with Emmental cheese, olives, capern, and an extremely fat Caesar Salad sauce. One glass of cider with it.
Then I had eggs (I think, three) with four rashers of streaky bacon and cheese.
Then I had a lot of pine kerns.
That was a lot. Particularly the pine kerns were addictive (always loved them). I indulged as they are very much keto. I knew I would be eating less at dinner.
For dinner, I just made two beef hamburgers with a sort of creamed cabbage and I finished the cabbage but did not finish the meat.
I try to eat slowly and to listen to the signals that my stomach sends. If it says âenoughâ, I stop as I fear that further, âforcedâ eating could be interpreted by my organism as âpre-famine stuffing phaseâ and react by reducing the metabolic rate and/or simply âstoringâ the food straight as fat.
Would be interesting to know what others think about this.
Shinita
#33
Wow, never heard about that before. Is that a thing for some people? Could be, human mind and body is complicated. My metabolic rate shoots up when I stuff myself, at least how else could I explain that I never gained much fat in my massive overeating timesâŚ? (With sugar, of course. I donât overeat long term on very low-carb, thankfully.) It makes little sense that eating a lot would slow down oneâs metabolism but not every human body works logicallyâŚ
Corals
#34
If I understood it well, youâre prediabetic and doing fasts and extreme low carb. I didnât read all the posts in the thread.
Iâd test my blood glucose (BG) to keep an eye on a few things. When I was doing the same as you, after a while Iâve noticed my fasting BG (FBG) was getting higher, instead of lower. And itâd keep going up in the morning until Iâd eat something. So, fasting was counter productive for my goal. My goal was to decrease my FBG to values below 100 mg/dL.
Nowadays, Iâm forcing myself to eat more often. If I donât, my liver just dumps glucose, even if Iâve been fasting for over 24h.
I may be wrong, but I think at least for some people, like myself, the blood glucose regulation is just like weight regulation: if I cut carbs too much, like not eating, or going carnivore, my body panics and dumps glucose like mad in my blood. But since that kind of feeding pattern makes you insulin resistant (very low carb), that extra glucose just stays in the blood, instead of being stored in cells.
Weight is the same: if you eat a lot less than you need, or simply used to, your body panics and decreases your metabolism, or whatever, so itâs more difficult to lose weight. Thatâs with keto and any other diet.
If your glucose is high-ish even when you arenât eating carbs, it means your body is making it (glucose) out of something. If it is canibalizing your muscles, or other important tissue, itâs just going to be that more difficult to lose weight (or keep it off), I suppose.
So, Iâd encourage anyone new to this and whoâs prediabetic to be cautious and keep a watchful eye on FBG.
Itâs something else of youâre diabetic: your postprandial will be lower if low carb. For a diabetic, having higher FBG, but lower BG may end up being a good compromise.
But if you arenât diabetic and your postprandial isnât bad to begin with, perhaps the best compromise is to eat enough carbs that wonât mess up your FBG, and still will keep your postprandial low enough (normal levels).
By the way, I also exercise and doing it in an empty stomach, or simply while on carnivore, or keto, would give me the worst BG. Mainly when Iâd do HIIT. Now that I allow more carbs, my BG during workouts isnât exploding anymore.
Thatâs perhaps just me, but I think itâs worth keeping an eye, just to make sure you donât suffer the same problems.
For the record, I eat low carb. The lowest I can, but not so low that my FBG is above 99 mg/dL and not so low that my exercise BG is above 140 mg/dL. And now I avoid fasting.
Chetogenico
#35
âWow, never heard about that before. Is that a thing for some people? Could be, human mind and body is complicatedâ
Well I never tested it myself because I really hate âcleaning the plateâ. However, I remember reading this in one of the very many books I read on nutrition during the years. It might have been âI can make you thinâ, but canât really say.
It was many years before any low carb or keto diet, so I am not interested in re-reading the book now as there will certainly be a lot I am not interested in or donât agree with.
However, the assertion struck me as sensible, as it can be that, a very long time ago, humans stuffed themselves when they were in danger of not being able to eat for some time later, and this sent to their body the signal that it is wise to accumulate as fat this excess energy it had not asked for but the human⌠insisted on giving it.
Shinita
#36
But to get more fat, the body must sacrifice things. It must work less well. I doubt a healthy human body readily do that especially when there is plenty of food. The opposite is more logical to me, okay, maybe because I know it is a thing and not a rare one 
Too much food - higher metabolism. Maybe not but in many cases it happens.
MAYBE if one has a feast/famine past, the body fears famine and lowers metabolism? I donât know. I always thought the body still keeps itself in great shape until the famine actually happens and then spares energy⌠
Chetogenico
#37
Provided it is true (it might not be true), could it be that it depends on the level of insuline in the blood?
If I am in ketosis and I keep eating when I am sated, my body will still struggle to create excess fat because⌠there is a low level of insulin?
On the other hand, your typical SAD eater, who must in many cases have insuline aplenty in his blood, will find it easier to store this excess food as fat?
Just thinkingâŚ
Shinita
#38
Hormones are known to affect these things so I think yes, it can be easier but just the truly excess food. Why would it store more and rob the body from energy it needs for optimal functioning? Maybe itâs possible but there must require some unusual factors, maybe some mutation or something, some human bodies work weirdly in some regard, after allâŚ
I am pretty sure fat gain is possible on keto, even while eating to satiation. It must be super rare though. I can overeat while eating to satiation but I canât gain fat with that level of overeating even with sugars⌠I need a very serious overeating for months to gain a noticeable amount of fat. My SO responds quickly to eating more or less but he canât do low-carb let alone keto. So I canât test it. There is info about people gaining fat rapidly on forced fat eating on carnivore but it is forced⌠But no way there isnât some people who can eat a ton just to get satiated while not having the energy need for it or my nice âif CI goes up, CO goes upâ thing I have at a pretty admirable level, at least I had in my past, I never overeat longer term now.
Some people donât even feel satiation! If I had breakfast every day, I surely would overeat all the time, I just have my nice safety thing to avoid gain. But most people donât have it. Can hormones keep them from gaining? Probably not as people CAN gain fat on keto, even when not very thin (when the body wants to gain), while wouldnât they can do it just because we put âeat to satietyâ in the mix? Satiety is a weird thing, mine only has a quite weak correlation to my energy need, even on keto. Timing and food choice matter a lot. If I ate as fatty as I wished (not like I am not pleased with my food now⌠itâs just not the most preferred and natural eating for me), I would overeat fat all the time unless I would have OMAD sized meals. Give me breakfast and I almost inevitably will overeat just to avoid hunger. So I easily can imagine people where all the necessary factors meet. Hormones are important and can do surprising things but they still arenât magic.