Might be a good thread so beginners and everyone can read and avoid mistakes we’ve all made.
I’ll start it off.
I was very near fat adapted and it was Christmas day. Wife and I went to a dinner party where they served prime rib. I thought, oh, this’ll be easy then. But they served only punch to drink. So I tried a little; which turned into a lot. Dessert came. I tried ‘just a bite’ which turned into 2 whole pieces. We went home and I wasn’t hunger even at 5 pm. So I thought I better eat something. I rushed to the grocery store and bought what I thought was some great yogurt. It said GREEK. So from advertising, I thought any Greek yogurt has got to be good. Didn’t check the label. It had these pretty plump strawberries on the label so thought there’d be chunks of real strawberries inside. Turned out it was a blend of flavoring and coloring. Turned out it was almost fat free. Not good. Also it had about 9g of sugar per serving. Not good. I ended up eating the entire thing, and got around 45g of sugar. I calculated I’d eaten around 160g carbs this day. . . all because of a little sip or punch and a bite of chocolate fudge.
Read labels. Beware of that ‘just one little bite’ mentality; it’s a slippery slope. It took about 3 days to get back on track and get over the stall. Lessons learned. On the other hand, this also taught me to not beat yourself up and that we’ll all have ‘off’ days, and you can still get back on track…Keto WOE is a marathon, not a sprint.
Funny and/or Dumb Mistakes We've Made Doing Keto
Funny and/or Stupid Mistakes We've Made Doing SAD-Standard American Diet
Great idea for a thread!
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Picking up the tub of xantham gum rather than the baking powder when I was mixing up chaffle batter. Man, that batter was THICK…
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Ordering roast lamb with gravy and cavolo nero at a recent family lunch in a local pub (rather than the full-on roast potato, roast parsnip, Yorkshire pud combo of sides). Generally over here, roast lamb is served with redcurrant jelly and mint sauce on the side. I asked simply for gravy - and rather than serving it on the side (to be fair, I didn’t think to ask!) my plate came swimming in the stuff. The menu called it ‘proper’ gravy, made using the roasting juices rather than granules. It didn’t taste as I’d expected it to, but I carried on regardless… and my blood glucose meter (I’m diabetic) reminded me for the rest of the day that there must have been redcurrant jelly IN the gravy. Note to self: gravy is not necessarily keto - have it served on the SIDE.
I do know better than to make mistakes like that second one. Brain was off somewhere else that day!
When I first started I would go to a restaurant and assume things were low carb, eat them, then look them up later. I ate meatballs and sauce at an Italian restaurant not thinking and enjoyed them so much! Got home and looked them up and they had almost 5 carbs each in them plus the sauce. It was over 50 carbs, I was so disappointed! I learned after that unless I cook it myself to always check the carbs on Carb Manager first, not after I eat it.
Don’t fall into eating at a deficit intentionally limiting calories. That’s a downhill slope for your metabolism and you’ll lose weight while your BMR drops resulting in a bottoming out your metabolism and a stall. KETO is not about intentional calorie restriction. If you use a tracking app don’t fall for the 20% deficit recommended for weight loss, it’s short term effective but will work against you in the end. Instead work towards eliminating snacks by eating enough at meals to carry you through. Then when fat adapted you can add intermittent fasting as your hunger signals begin to work properly.
If you can handle it eliminate any sweet substitutes and KETO baked goods and desserts. If you must have some to stay on the wagon occasionally it might help. But in the long run you’re better breaking away from sweet flavors and substitute breads and deserts on a regular basis.
just my opinion here YMMV
AVOID KETO PRODUCTS AS A GENERAL RULE. The real KETO stuff is in the outer border of the grocery store. Fresh meats and seafood, fresh vegetables and a limited selection of full fat dairy products if you tolerate dairy. If you choose something in a container become adept at reading and analyzing nutritional labels. Carbs aren’t the only thing to check out.
I agree with your opinion. It’s mine too. I do partake at certain times, though, around the holidays or birthdays or other special occasions. But I try to limit this.
Early on I bought multiple “keto” products that were varying combinations of awful and questionable (tapioca starch).
My wife got me a jar of no sugar added sweet pickles which I ate and used in deviled eggs. I always loved sweet pickles and these didn’t really have that Sucralose taste. Yumm, Finished the jar and asked SWMBO to get some more. A few days later I saw new sweet pickles in the same place in the fridge. Made some tuna fish with them, deviled eggs with them and ate the rest. THEN I noticed they were full on sugar added sweet pickles.
Pops, there’s an extra 200 grams.
I went over board on fats, probably because of the brain washing about fats that has been the advice my whole adult life. It took me a little while to learn the good ones from the bad ones. EVOO and Avocado oils are my friends, avoid the rest unless it is a cold pressed nut oil. Butter is good too. I love coconut oil, and have to watch how much of it I use, I could put it in/on everything.
There is a reason you hear people say, “eat low carbs, moderate protein, and fat to satiety.”
Oh and if you drink alcohol, go easy, it hits most of us much faster and harder than when we ate SAD.
I wouldn’t freak out too much about this, if it’s infrequent. For instance, we had our neighbors (who sold their house and are moving) over last night for dinner. To make dinner more palatable for them (no one we know is keto), I made Einkorn bread and my wife made small potatoes from a Nom Nom Paleo recipe. And I made turkey and turkey gravy using roux (wheat + butter). I not only had all of those, but had some chocolate too. An entire “bar” (disc) of Taza chocolate and some chocolate-covered nuts. And my ketones today are 0.4 mmol/l at 7:31 and 11:30 am. And that’s high for me.
When I go to restaurants, I try to avoid PUFAs more than carbs, though I limit the amount of the latter too.
Ate a bag of Link’s Beef Jerky, thinking, hey, this is pure beef jerky! Later read the label which had it for 8g sugar.
I always tracked on keto so I never went over my vague carb limit too much (I tend to eat first and count later 
but I rarely did it on keto, I am bad at guessing).
And no way I don’t notice sugar and even carbs. Food with them just can’t hide that. But I always consulted with labels and reliable data before I ate something until fat adaptation, I took that very seriously.
But when I started, everyone talked about “too much protein”. It wasn’t really a mistake but a tad stressful to trying to keep my protein low (oh it didn’t happen, I can’t control such things, I was hungry, I needed my high protein. but I made efforts). It was the reason I “realized” I must do vegetarian keto (I do it with lots of animal protein, it’s my only way) as meat caused super high protein intake. Not like it made a difference, I couldn’t eat meat more than a few times a year back then. But whenever I ate some, it was off keto. Yep, now I know better (and resume my carnivore trial as soon as I get my ordered meat.) But I still don’t find it good to eat insane amounts of protein. I don’t worry about just a bit unnecessarily high, “wasteful” amounts as I really need it for satiation.
Don’t do this to yourself. I’ve eaten massive amounts of protein per meal, over 200 grams/meal. Does not cause a blood sugar rise or decrease for me. For me, causes reduced hunger relative to fatty foods (though see my tests with saturated fat).
Obviously, if you do get blood sugar increases or decreases or hunger, that’s a different story. But don’t assume you will.
“Try”? There is no try, there is only do. 
I do the best for me protein wise I think. Not like I have options, I just eat when I am hungry, the way I am able to.
I probably will try to eat fattier when it will be both possible and needed. But it is for the future with a bigger energy need, I am very content with my normal days nowadays.
Much protein causes problems for certain people and there is surely an upper limit for everyone. Even if I don’t reach that, I really don’t want to waste protein, I only eat the amount I need (including everything, I mentioned satiation but as I like my normal food and that’s not super fatty, more food means more protein as well) and it’s a high amount, often way over my possible real protein need. I can’t even eat 200g protein per meal because I get completely full earlier. But I can go close and do it sometimes, that’s okay. I don’t talk about tiny numbers, keeping my protein intake below 100g per day, I never could do that, not even when I thought I should because I surely don’t need more, not even on an active day and I am rarely active.
Heh, you Brits DO like the gravy eh? Me too. I’m going to miss biscuits and gravy. But will enjoy the ideal weight and more energy more. 
Our gravy isn’t the same as your ‘biscuits and gravy’ kind of gravy! It’s more of a meat ‘jus’ or reduction of pan juices - basically a dark brown meat sauce which is served with roast meat.
Or you can get evil carby ‘instant’ stuff called ‘Bisto’ to make up with boiling water - other brands are available - which seem to consist mainly of potato starch…
We don’t have ‘biscuits’ over here - well, what we call ‘biscuits’ are what you’d call ‘cookies’. I think what you call ‘biscuits’ is similar to what we’d call ‘scones’, which are part of an afternoon tea (served with clotted cream and jam), so although they’re not all that sweet, they’re served with sweet things rather than savoury ‘gravy’.
As George Bernard Shaw said, we are ‘divided by a common language’! I’m sure if I come over to the States I’ll be sounding crazy by talking about cupboards rather than closets, grills rather than broilers, coriander rather than cilantro and rocket rather than arugula!
I’d tried Keto a couple years ago. Didn’t know much about it, nor the Keto flu, and especially not about taking electrolytes (potassium, good pink salt, magnesium, etc) to avoid it. The third day I was in my 2nd day of Keto flu and felt miserable. I quit Keto at the end of that day. Went on to add another 10 quick lbs of weight by eating lots of carbs, sugar and low fat foods.
Knowledge applied is power.
Especially early on - over-buying at the grocery store. I would want to make sure I had enough low-carb vegetables on hand - broccoli, cauliflower, salad greens, green peppers, cucumbers, etc. And chicken, fish, meats, etc.
Well, that stuff is all fresh food, so you kind of need to plan to prepare it in the next few days (or freeze it) so I would have this backlog of food that I needed to prep and cook, and generally more vegetables than I really needed. And the fridge becomes pretty crowded.
So the trick is to get into a more European model of going to the grocery store 2 or 3 times a week, but only buying what you will actually prepare and consume in the next few days.
It does take a change in habits, especially if you are used to stocking up once a week or so on shelf-stable carbs. It also helps to pre-plan what you will be eating and shop for what you’ll be cooking. If you are addicted to the convenience of packaged foods and just grab and go (or sit and munch) - I was - it takes a mind-set change.
It is rare for me. I rarely track these days because I am in maintenance and know what to eat by this point, but when I do venture out off the normal keto menu I still look things up! I learned early on from seeing people not look things up, not measure, not track how easy it is to have carbs sneak in.
In maintenance mode I am much more relaxed about it and eat Lilly candy bars more often than I would like to admit. I dont freak out though, just balance it out next meal or next day.
When getting into the Keto way of eating after doing low carb for awhile, I came across some information on MCT oils as a way to get some fat in your day. I did the research and settled on one that was high in the c8 and c10 chains and promptly ignored the label advice.
“If you are new to MCT oil start with one teaspoon to avoid an upset stomach”
I went right in to a full Tablespoon and off to work I went. I really think they need to emphasize what really can happen as “upset stomach” doesn’t quite quantify what happened. In my opinion, the phrase should be changed or added to include:
"“If you are new to MCT oil start with one teaspoon to avoid 9.9 Earthquake noises coming from you general gut region and then resulting in DISASTER PANTS, Explosive Diarrhea”