It’s hard not to lower calories if you are giving up fat @ 9 cals per gram and adding protein @ 4 cals per gram, unless you eat a lot more protein. Only you can determine the correct formula for weight loss but yes I agree that you can drop some fat and add a little protein.
For me, it was simple as eliminating all the extra fats I was dumping into my meals. I stopped doing the extra cheese, sour cream and butter on everything. I cut back on coconut oil usage by 50% and went from chicken thighs to chicken wings. All of this led to me going from 160g of fat per day to anywhere from 80g to 120g.
The key to cutting back fat is that you must be fat adapted or you run the risk of slowing your metabolism. And only you can determine how much fat is enough and how much protein to replace that fat with.
Given all of that, it might be easiest to try OMAD For a few days of the week. It would be easier to eat to satiety and still eat less overall fat than you are used to, without going overboard on added protein. It would also be a good test to prove that you are fat adapted. If you can go 24hours without really noticeable hunger and still have consistent energy, then you most likely are fat adapted.
PS, try your best to relax. Stress only complicates our hormones and that’s bad for weight loss.
ava_ad0re
(Katie the Quiche Scoffing Stick Ninja )
#22
You should be fat adapted
You are still eating quite a lot of dietary fat
Have you stopped eating as much as your macros when you first calculated to allow that fat to come from your body?
Are you fasting at all?
I remember your first post, and how cool to see that you’ve had so much success. A bit of rebound I wouldn’t be too concerned about in the short term, but a drop in energy plus the rebound probably means that you need to tweak something. I want to echo a lot of what’s above: follow carb and protein grams (not percentages, since what you want is for your body to tap its own fat for fuel - endogenous calories!); to look at stress and sleep as well as food; and to consider fasting. Once you’re fat-adapted fasting is like a super power
And… wow, what an arrogant $%^#%$ that doctor is. There’s no need for you to see your own results?! Please find another doc if you can.
My Macros have changed since the beginning, but just taking a peek back at my document where I have been tracking everything I have noticed that things haven’t changed as much as I thought. Honestly, I have been using Cronometer and have just been using the targets there.
During the work week I am OMAD, on the weekend I tend to have brunch and supper. I have done a few 36-40 hour fasts when the mood strikes and one 90h.
On the Dr front, I called another clinic to see if anyone was accepting new patients. I have to call back on the 16th to see if there are any openings.
ava_ad0re
(Katie the Quiche Scoffing Stick Ninja )
#25
OMAD can be considered ‘maintenance’ during KETO
You may find you have better results by eating two meals a day during the week as well as the weekend but this is only my opinion and I am saying so because I had the same issue.
Initially I lost weight on OMAD but then I started stalling until I started either eating two meals a day or just fasting through them both. Good luck
Daisy
Not all doctors here in Alberta are arseholes. I have a really good guy who is very encouraging and helpful.Prints out my blood results if I ask etc. But I get that you may not have a large choice of family doctors to see. I suggest you search for another if at all possible, you need someone who works WITH you, and is not dictating to you.
I have found some doctors a bit weird here in Canada about sharing hospital notes etc with me. But I have always been honest and said, “why would you want to keep anything from me?.”
If keto is helping you move some weight off and you are feeling well enough following this way of eating, then stick with it! Well done and keep it up.
I opened a few macro calculators to try and get some sense where to adjust my numbers to, and again I feel overwhelmed by the discrepancies I find. Protein 60- 79 Fat 91-175. I think I will lessen my fat intake and know that I need to decrease my protein (this is what I always want to eat) bit by bit. I was thinking about all of this amazing support on my drive home tonight and was wondering: if I cut back the fat and keep carbs minimal will this in effect become Atkins? And then I was dreaming about trying full-on carnivore… So tonight for supper we had eggs, steak and avocado.
Yeah, I might have said something to that effect in my accountability thread[1] recently - I’m way over my protein macro on a constant basis, but it seems to be working just fine for me currently. Not saying it will forever, but right now it seems great.
[1] Can’t remember where exactly, but there is a good bet.
ava_ad0re
(Katie the Quiche Scoffing Stick Ninja )
#29
Not in my opinion.
Once you are fat adapted, a general rule of thumb is to reduce your dietary fat, why continue eating so much dietary fat when the whole point of adaption is teaching your body to fuel itself with its own fat.
If you continue eating a high fat diet, you are using that fat for fuel rather than your body fat.
See, that’s where I get confused. I was under the impression that you need to put the fat in to get it burning, but how can it burn fat off your body if it’s got all the fat you’ve ingested to deal with first? I’m at a stall after 2 months, lost 10 lbs since Nov 2, but I feel maybe I’ve been eating too much dairy(fat) and nuts(more fat). Probably need more water but had bone graft in mouth and was excruciating to sip anything for a month, no matter the temp. Anyhow, should I stick w/meat, eggs and low carb veggies sans the cheese and cream sauces? I’m running out of side dishes other than cauliflower, broccoli and Brussels, all of which are sooo much better w/dairy.
You definitely need a new doctor. that information is yours not his. Unless he paid for it. What possible reason could he have for not giving you the info you paid for?
There are different phases to keto. In the first one, we are changing hormonal behavior by lowering carbs and eating a lot of fat. It might take a month or two, but our bodies will adapt and become quite proficient in using fat for fuel.
In the next phase, after we are fat adapted, we can lower our dietary fat so that our bodies will start burning more of our body fat. The best part of this is that our metabolism will not suffer if we are in caloric deficit since our body fat means there’s always an ample supply of energy to tap into.
Getting fat adapted takes a month or 2 months for most people and the questions you need to ask yourself so that you can tell if you are fat adapted are:
Do I have consistent all day energy?
Can I go long periods of time without being overly hungry?
Are my cravings gone?
Do I sleep well?
If you can answer yes to those, then you are most likely fat adapted. It’s at this point that you can stop focusing on making fat a part of your every bite of food. Don’t worry about butter in the coffee or the extra butter on your steak or the dollop of sour cream or mayo with your salad or whatever. Just focus on basic foods without the extra fats. This might mean reducing nuts and dairy but it’s not a bad trade in the end.
Sometimes I feel this way. I don’t necessarily think it’s a terrible thing but I could stand to eat more veggies. I notice I’m around 10 carbs per day for about half the week, without trying to keep it that low.
Just typing this out convinced me to add some broccoli to my dinner tonight: Ribeye and zucchini spirals.
Get yourself to a female MD stat. No offense boys, but male doctors are notorious for being condescending to female patients, especially middle aged, overweight ones. I didn’t think it made a difference but when I had a mystery illness back in 1998 (turned out to be fibromyalgia triggered by SSRI withdrawal - I had gotten pregnant and had stopped cold turkey - then miscarried. Nobody admitted SSRI withdrawal was a thing back then) I learned the hard way about how so many male doctors don’t take women seriously. It’s true this guy might just be complete [spoiler]asshole[/spoiler] or he could be letting his sexists and what ever you call someone who disdains the obese views get in the way of providing you care. And frankly, what is wrong with ‘doctor shopping’ If you met with a lawyer you didn’t like or an accountant you didn’t like, you would go find another to do business with.
Donna, some people refer to fat adaptation (or using ketones for fuel) as this “magical” place you get to. It’s not that complicated. Your body either uses glucose or ketones for fuel. The easier, more readily available fuel is glucose, either in the form you eat (carbs, sugar, etc) or the storage form in your body (glycogen). But if the sugar isn’t available, your body will start generating ketones for fuel. It doesn’t have a choice.
For most people, it only takes a couple of days to use up glycogen stores when you stop eating carbs. Sure, at first, your body is going to scream for carbs because the high levels of insulin are triggering hunger and cravings…but your body is still going to generate ketones when the sugar isn’t available.
I think people use the term “fat-adapted” to mean that you’re no longer getting those intense sugar cravings or hunger signals because insulin levels have dropped. But whatever it’s called doesn’t really matter. Two fuel types, fat (ketones) or sugar. Two fuel sources, stored and eaten.
Now, as for reducing BMR. I think that when insulin levels high, when you restrict quantities (calories), the body sees that as a deficit because you don’t have a lot of sugar stored in muscles and the liver. And at that time, that’s the bio-feedback mechanism in progress (sugar, insulin, need more SUGAR!). That can lead to a lower BMR because the body simply can’t store that much sugar. But once those insulin levels go down and your body is using fat as a fuel, there’s often plenty of fat in storage. Your body isn’t going to care whether or not it’s dietary fat or stored fat. There’s a readily available supply of it, so no reduction in BMR.
When people talk about it taking weeks to become fat-adapted, I think that’s misleading. After about 2 days, your glycogen/sugar stores are GONE…so you HAVE to be using fat as fuel or you’d die. Now, if they mean “fat-adapted” in reference to when the carb cravings are gone and insulin levels drop…I think that can take longer, but however it’s meant, if you’re not giving your body carbs/sugar, you will be burning fat for energy.
Where it gets that fat FROM is up to you. If you need larger amounts of fat in your diet to feel satisfied, then eat it. Better to use more dietary fats and be able to keep this as a way of life, feel satisfied, have flavor, etc, than to go in the opposite direction of low fat. Sure, your body will then access stored fat faster, but you’re going to risk hunger more, lose the flavor in your food, feel deprived, etc.
It means more then this. Phinney explains it well. At the start of a ketogenic diet our cells and mitochondria are poorly set up for using fatty acids and ketones as the primary fuel sources and the can leave us lethargic and feeling generally crappy for a while while they adjust.
This is why people are told to lay off heavy exercise for a couple of weeks and not expect to perform at the same level in the gym or on runs etc. even for weeks after that. It’s also why pee sticks stop working so well. As we become adapted we begin to spill fewer ketones in our breath, sweat and urine.
One of the main ways to tell when you are fat adapted is not just when you hunger has declined markedly but when your energy levels have jumped very noticeabley.
I understand that. Notice I said that “people use the term fat-adapted.” I was just trying to stress that its not a “special place” that requires a “special” amount of fats. As in, you have to be eating 80% fat to get fat-adapted or something like that.
Your body only has 2 pathways for energy needs…sugar and ketones. So at the beginning of a ketogenic diet, you WILL start using fat for fuel quickly if your carbs are very low.
Yes, it takes time to become efficient at it, but using up fat stores (which is what many people coming to keto want) will happen even before fat adaptation. I think if people thought about it that way, it might help eliminate some of the butter drinking, fat bomb chugging, excessively high fat consumption that bothers @gabe. People are given the wrong impression that to become fat burners, you have to be fat-adapted, and those aren’t the same things.
We’re all fat burners as soon as we stop eating carbs (and our glycogen stores are depleted), but we’re not fat-adapted until we become efficient at it.
Edited to add: If I’ve got that wrong, as in, I need to force myself to drink butter to get to fat adaptation (vs eliminating carbs and allowing myself to eat fat for satiety), please let me know! But I’ve got at leas 50 lbs of fat in storage…so even though I intentionally add avocado to a salad, eat more olives, eat the ribeye instead of the sirloin, etc, I don’t go any further than that.
I couldn’t agree more. I don’t mention it a lot here but I never did the ultra high fat consumption when I started this. Sure I was a bit hungry on and off for a few weeks until I adapted but it was no great hardship and as a result I was losing fat at a good rate from day one even though I only had about 20 lbs to lose in total.
