Hello, I'm new, and here is my story from the last two weeks... need help

(Cris) #1

So I need to test my ketosis huh, but I don’t know the most affordable way, so I’ll go without the tests for a while… Here is what is going on after 2 weeks…

2 weeks ago, my weight was 270lbs (height 6’4") . My goal is around 220lbs min, but I’d be happy with 230lbs, depending if I want to start doing a real workout routine. I don’t want to lose strength, don’t care about definition so much but it would be ok.

I started what I thought would be Paleo, as I couldn’t see myself going full Keto, or even Atkins but then after the 1st day I realized I can do it, so I’ve been trying to do keto.

Daily, I eat lots of fatty meats, eggs and a small amount of vegetables with the meat, like lettuce or some broccoli with a fatty sauce.
At night if I do eat I usually eat a fat yoghurt, like 200g with maybe a few berries, like 3 strawberries and 10 small blueberries. Sometimes I eat some nuts (not cashews or pistachios). I really really want to add a teaspoon of honey to my yoghurt but apparently I can’t do that, which is the ONE thing that bothers me. I mean I already have to give up mashed taters and rice (pasta is no biggie for me), and I have given that up, but man, HONEY!!

I’m not sure if I am overdoing the carbs even with that small amount, when I try to count it seems I’m below 30g for sure, maybe even below 20g daily.

I think my fat/protein is 50/50, I try to increase fat and decrease protein but that is tough for sure, even for a southeastern european like me for whom it should be easy.

Today it’s been 2 weeks since I started and I am 252lbs, I couldn’t believe it. Wifey said for sure I lost, I wasn’t so sure, but here it is, 18lbs in 2 weeks, and I eat A LOT! I mean it feels like I am eating MORE than I did before the KETO, just that I don’t eat carbs.

The number one thing I noticed is the lack of hunger and energy drops. The crazy thing is that even when I eat a huge meal, like 3 egg omelet and a fat steak, I can finish it and 10 mins later I have no pains, don’t feel bloated or bigger, I don’t feel like I have to eat at all anymore, but also I’m not “not hungry”. Also, I barely ever feel truly hungry, I just eat when it’s time to eat.

About activity tho, here it is, I’m completely inactive, I mean besides walking a bit here and there, I haven’t been active since I had a medical thing (not related to health, it’s a physical accident type thing). Next week I’m getting some plastic and metal taken out of my body and I’ll be able to be active again. So without any activity I lost 18lbs which is a good thing, and next week I’ll start with the weights and some low level cardio, maybe walking 3km per day kind of thing.

Any input on what happened so far in the last 2 week, if I have to adjust anything, and also what I can expect once I start activity back up, any of that would be appreciated.

So far I’ve done without ANY snacks, but I have been looking at keto cheesesticks, keto bread/muffin mixes, pizza dough, which I may incorporate, I hope those are ok (like almond flour, psyllium hust powder etc.).

Thank you in advance and I’ll be coming back to check if anyone wants to chat this up a bit more.

(Robert C) #2

You might want to rethink the 20 gram limit if it is giving you compliance issues or stress.

That 20 gram limit was chosen just because it was so low that just about everyone would go into ketosis.
That includes a 4’10" female that weighs 100 pounds soaking wet (i.e. less than half of your goal weight).
A much larger person might stay in ketosis and become fat-adapted on 40 or 50 grams of carbs.

If carbs are a slippery slope for you then best to keep them as incidental from vegetables.
But if they aren’t and you really think a little more would help overall compliance - have more.

(Cris) #3

Oh wow really? I don’t know how you got the slippery slope thing, nah. I have no problem not eating what I can’t eat, I just wish I could cheat once in a while, and you just gave me the answer. 50g is easy for me as far as a limit goes. I don’t know how many carbs I eat daily now, I am guessing it’s low but not ultra low.

For example, so far today I had a 3 egg omelet with cheese, a few grams of a bell pepper, a tiny amount of onions, one blue cheese stuffed olive, fatty bacon (3 strips), and 2 coffees with 18% cream.

For dinner I will have a big porkchop with fat-on and a few mushrooms in a brown flourless sauce. With a small portion of ceasar salad with bacon, some seeds, a sauce with 1g of carbs, and I usually try to eat only the green part of the lettuce, the crispy white seems to be more starchy or something, i don’t know.

For a snack I will have 200g of 6% plain unsweetened yoghurt with 3 strawberries, 10 wild blueberries and maybe a couple brazil nuts.

What do you think of that as far as a day?

I will eventually start cooking with coconut oil, I have to figure out what to do with that, and almond flour, but until then, the above is pretty much my daily, except I switch the meat between pork/beef/chicken and fish, and the salad between ceasar and just lettuce with oil and vinegar.

Any comments?

(Running from stupidity) #4

Blueberries are cranking your carb count. They’re small but deadly, especially when combined with nuts.

(Full Metal KETO AF) #5

Hi Cris, 18% cream sounds like what we call half and half, cream and milk mixed. Look for 36-40% cream, the kind used for whipped cream. You’ll save some carbs for sure especially if you’re using more than a couple of tablespoons. Oh and don’t worry about the white part of lettuce! I would suggest that you consider using the Cronometer app and a kitchen scale to get an idea of what your true carb intake is at least until you are more comfortable at estimating your daily intake. Don’t stress protein/fat macros much. Especially this early on. Get your carb counts together and see what you’re really eating daily.

I think the walking is a great idea, keep your weight workouts light for a while so you don’t cause cortisol spiking which can stall weight loss.

Don’t worry about testing, many of us (maybe the majority) have never tested or given it up. Just stay under 20 net carbs and you WILL BE IN KETOSIS. Spend that hard earned money of some good meat or fatty fish instead. :yum:

About your weight goals, unless you’re really tall or extremely muscular you’re weight might just go quite a bit below your goals! Stay with this eating as a lifestyle and your body will go where it wants to be, optimal for your health.

You’re making fantastic progress, keep up the good work and avoid eating off plan (cheat meals as you call them). There’s no such thing as a cheat meal because cheating implies that you’re gaining an unfair advantage to reach your goals. And there is no getting away with anything. Everything we eat has consequences good or bad. If anything you’re cheating yourself out of reaching your goals as soon as you’d like to. There’s lots of replacement foods as you’re discovering. The more you stay keto the less the urge for off plan eating is. I like the way ketogenic foods make me feel as you also stated. Would a half hour of pleasure eating wheat based pasta or bread and the following low energy crash and cravings for more carbs really be worth it? I reserve eating off plan for something like a holiday meal, and even then I keep it as close to low carb as I can not overbinging on things for a whole day let alone days or more. And it’s really best to be fully fat adapted before you even consider an off plan meal, it can set back fat adaptation.

I hope some of this is helpful. :cowboy_hat_face:

(Little Miss Scare-All) #6

I feel you on the honey. One of my favorite “healthy” desserts was plain yogurt, raw honey and strawberries. Id tear that up fierce. It was soooo good.

But alas, as good as raw honey is for you, it packs a carby kick in the butt. Even the yogurt itself has more carbs than you think, the plain one even! It drives me mad because there can still be 12g of sugar in plain, non-flavored yogurt. Its stupid.

Maybe what you should do is at first, track your total carb intake. I know it can be a pain, but its an eye opening endeavor. Its worth it because you can realize 3 things: 1) youre eating barely any carbs at all. 2) youre eating way more carbs than you think. 3) youre doing just what you need to be doing for your body.

All 3 bits of info are invaluable esp starting out.

RIP honey tho. I have a nice big glass mason.jar at work of raw blueberry blossom honey thats just sitting there catching feelings. Tho raw honey does create a more gradual insulin spike than the fake stuff in the lil cute bear bottle.

(Robert C) #7

I would not worry about affordability but instead accuracy.

A Precision Xtra meter is $25 and strips are about one dollar each (on Amazon) - you also need a lancet but those are really cheap per check.

The best way (in my opinion) to use them is not daily or multiple times a day constant monitoring.

Instead, eat as you plan to long term on Keto and spot check once or twice a week upon waking.

If you can hold your diet relatively constant then, you really want to know if your blood ketones are down at 0.2 or 0.3 vs. being consistently up in the 1.5 to 3.0+.

0.2 or 0.3 might mean you are overdoing the blueberries or honey or something else.

But, if you enjoy those snacks without otherwise overeating and can keep in the 1.5 to 3.0+ range - then your metabolism is going in the right direction, you are fat-adapting and you can leverage that to burn off body fat soon.

(Carl Keller) #8

The longer I ate LCHF, the less my desire became to cheat. With the reduced inflammation, increased energy and eating plenty of delicious real food, came the realization that I was eating poison for most of my life.

The few times I tried non-keto foods, they weren’t how my taste buds remembered them. Fried chicken and mashed potatoes were favorites of mine but now they taste unremarkably bland. Either my taste buds have evolved or they have awakened. In either case, I’m so over loving foods that don’t love me back and I hope you one day understand how liberating this is. Focus on the foods that love you back. You won’t be disappointed. :wink:

(Tony ) #9

Brilliant post ! ( I just Made an overweight mate read it, to prove that its just not me who also has lost weight on keto ). My diet is very similar to yours, but I made the choice to throw out the honey in the end, after keeping and looking at it on the shelf for six or so months. I suggest for a bit of that sweetness from time to time, to try raspberries or even non sugar ( artificially sweetened - arrgghhh ) fruit flavoured jelly with cream instead. It does trick in an emergency sweetness situation. Its interesting that after many months that what constitutes " sweet" changes dramatically, and now if for what ever reason I get a spoonfall of something suger sweeted, it tastes almost nauseatingly sweet… I’m into bodybuilding which I’m told isn’t that comparable with keto but I haven’t personally found anything detrimental to my progress. I started it just before I started keto and have for some time now been able to “Max out” all the pin machines with high multiple reps at my local gym. Over the same time I have lost over 66 lbs…and have gone from 46" waist 501s jeans to a now loose 36" !!!. Keep up the great work !!!

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #10

It is not your weight that determines your carbohydrate threshold, but your degree of insulin-resistance. The issue with the 20 g/day limit is that this site attracts a lot of insulin-resistant diabetics and pre-diabetics, who need to cut carbohydrate very low in order to get their insulin low enough to get into nutritional ketosis. Twenty grams a day is a level of carb intake at which everyone except those with the greatest amount of metabolic damage can be sure of getting into ketosis.

Once you are fat-adapted, you can certainly explore how much more carbohydrate your body can tolerate before generating enough insulin to halt ketogenesis. On the one hand, there is the famous case study of a patient on a low-carb ketogenic diet who could not eat an extra apple without gaining weight; on the other, when Dr. Phinney was working with fat-adapted athletes, he regularly spoke of 100-125 g of carbohydrate a day as a ketogenic diet. I notice that, now that he is working with a diabetic population, he recommends no more than 50 g/day.

(Cris) #11

I’m so very happy about all the responses… I wish I could respond to every one of you, but again, thank you very much, I read each post carefully.

But to get to a couple issues that you guys brought up. yoghurt… Yes, I found that the 3.25% yoghurt has 5g of fat and 9g of carbs per serving, wtf!! I mean come on! I will check out 6% but even that has the same carbs, just more fat, which is good but I don’t know what to do without yoghurt.

I did buy the urine sticks, and tested my wife and myself, and she is not on the diet (yet), it showed 0 in her urine, I did that to see if they work, and sure enough, I’m definitely in ketosis, it was half way on the chart, not very dark purple, but definitely purple. I figure that’s better than dark because dark may mean that I’m producing ketones but not using them.

Another thing is, I’ve been doing 20-30g per day, 30g probably only by accident on a couple days, if that, but I’d really feel better with 50g. I mean I am still 250lbs, 20lbs off 2 week ago but still big guy (I won’t weigh again until the weekend), there is no way I have to be at the minimum 20g on a daily basis. I’m only saying cuz I’m driving my wife crazy, we argue a bit even when I refuse to eat something that she knows I love… But, like PualL saus, I’ll keep it at 20-30g until I’m used to it then maybe add a bit, if I feel like it, but still test, maybe a better test at that point.

Hey TonyPi, I gotta tell you, the first 3-4 days I was only eating meat basically, but then on the 4th night I was there watching a flick with the wife, and all of a sudden I just said “GIVE ME A PIECE OF CHOCOLATE NOW!” She laughed her ass off, but I did take one bite and was good until now, I just needed the sweet taste cuz I felt like I was burping pork, argh…

CarlK I don’t know if I can give up mashed potatoes for life, it’ll be tough. Definitely I won’t do it anytime soon, but wife made me promise I’ll eat them the way she knows I love them once a month… Maybe… Maybe…

Oh, and honey I’ll eat once in a while, even a teaspoon is ok, the days when I want to have something sweet I just lower all other carbs then have 20g of something carby that I love, problem solved…

And lastly, 18% cream here in Canada is considered full cream, it’s what I use in coffee in the morning, and 36% is called whipping cream, which I also use in coffee in the morning, but I found out that they both have identical amounts of carbs, just that 36% has more fat, so same thing really.

Thanks all, and I’ll post again after I see anything from you, and definitely on Sunday to give a weight update.

(Scott) #12

Cris,

I do fine on <50g carbs and about half of that is wine related. The one thing I don’t do is cheat with any sweeteners, pizza, potatoes etc. I need those extra carbs for important things like beer.

(Cris) #13

Yeah, like I try to tell my wife, if I’m going to have carbs, I’m not going to waste my daily allowance on some carbs I don’t care for, I’d rather go with 0 then have 20g of something I really love in the evening, in combination with something fatty:)