Hoping someone can help with a few of my newbie Qs

#1

Hi everyone. A few questions to those who have been around the block:
Started two weeks ago tomorrow. Down 13lbs (SW 245, GW 199, CW 232).

  • I love my BPC. It keeps me full until dinner every day. And my calories are way down, but I’m having trouble finding a good, hearty meal that will fill me up until the rest of the night, meets my macros, AND doesn’t make me want to snack after dinner. If I eat a light lunch I can balance it better, but it feels like one of the points of BPC is to get you through to dinner. Thoughts?

  • I am getting about 100oz of water each day. A lot of it is after dinner, which helps any snack cravings (mostly behavioral) that I might have. But then I wake up to pee all night. Any suggestions?

  • I had to travel two days ago, ate at a BBQ place where I thought I did really well, but I think their cucumber salad (which I loved) had a dressing that was carb-filled. Now my ketone strips are BARELY colored - if at all. I was in a great place on them for almost 2 weeks, so I know I was solidly in ketosis up to that point. I haven’t felt any symptoms at all that would make me think I fell out…anyway. Should I just get back on the horse? Or is there something different I have to do?

Thanks in advance.

(John) #2

I have never tried bulletproof coffee. It doesn’t sound very appetizing to me. I drink my coffee black, have for decades. I prefer 2-3 eggs, fried, scrambled, or made into an omelet, along with some form of meat - usually bacon, and sometimes a couple of ounces of berries and maybe some full-fat yogurt.

For lunch, a serving of meat (chicken thigh or breast, 4-oz hamburger patty with or without cheese, tuna or salmon salad made with full-fat mayo, hard boiled egg, and chopped celery or green onion) and a medium salad with a full-fat dressing is my go-to. Maybe a handful of nuts either on the salad or as a side or snack.

Dinner is typically a normal sized portion of meat (any kind), 6 - 8 oz, and a couple of keto friendly sides - squash, broccoli, mushrooms, cauliflower, asparagus, maybe another salad. Veggies either cooked in healthy fats or used as a sauce or part oft the recipe.

If you eat too many carbs one day just go back to your normal routine the next day. It’ll settle back down to normal again.

Also: Getting up to pee is a sign you are losing weight. If I sleep a full night without having to get up and pee, I know the scales aren’t going to move the next day. If I have to get up at 2:00 AM and pee, it’s going to be a good day on the scales. Your body does its maintenance work when you are sleeping, which includes emptying those fat cells of all the water they have been storing in place of the fat you burned up in them.

(Laurie) #3

Congratulations on your success so far!

BPC: For some people, the point might be to get through to dinner, but if eating lunch might work better for you, then by all means try eating lunch.

Water: Why not drink more water in the daytime? Also, I’ve found that strengthening my abs made a big difference in how many times I had to get up during the night. I still get up once a night, but that’s no biggie. In my case, it was my hula hooping hobby that strengthened my abs, but another hooper on here said it didn’t help her. A daily walk or other activities might do it for you. Or do actual ab exercises! Also, consider doing pelvic floor exercises–they’re not just for women.

Getting out of ketosis: Yes, sometimes we eat carby stuff by mistake. Don’t worry about it. As for ketone strips, don’t take them too seriously. In the first place, they only measure one kind of ketone (out of 3), and for many people the readings are high at first and then go down as your body becomes adapted. We are all different. I stayed at 4.0 (moderate) for three months before I decided to stop using them.

You’re doing fine. Keep asking questions and tweaking; you’ll find out what works best for you.

#4

Great answers. Thanks so much

(Robert C) #5

Just picking on this point - if you are so hungry that eating a keto dinner does not feel like enough - was the BPC really getting you through to dinner?
OR
Is the fact the you love BPC making you want the BPC to get you to dinner so much that you are ignoring signals that you should really eat earlier?

One of the important parts of making long-term keto work is (in my opinion) to cultivate a sensitivity for both true hunger and true satiety.

The two good ideas I got from this thread were to think about having lunch instead of fighting post-dinner hunger or to have a “real” breakfast (eggs and bacon etc.) and see if that truly gets you through dinner without the feeling of needing more afterward.

#6

Of course you just get back on. Why quit? You have too much invested now. Step back, look at what you’ve done and what you intend to do next – meaning that day. What other options do you have? Pig out?

I’m not supposed to recommend this here but when I hit a wall or overeat I embark on a 36- to 48-hour fast. Try it sometime, it might surprise you. (OK, back into my rabbit hole.)

#7

Nothing wrong with fasting at all but after only two weeks of Keto and not fully fat adapted, fasting for 1-2 days might be a really hard slog.

(Katie the Quiche Scoffing Stick Ninja ) #8

I will tell you what worked for me, and it may work for you, it’s just a schedule adjustment…

I drank my BPC every day at 8am, in ketosis
I would eat lunch around 12-1pm, and then dinner around 7pm.
As the weeks went on, and as I became more fat adapted, I start pushing that lunch time meal out til around 3pm, then I was finding when I was getting home, that I was cooking dinner later also.
It got to the point, roughly when I became fat adapted, that my BPC would keep me full until 3-4pm, then I’d eat one big meal, focusing on protein, cooked in fat, with little to no carbs.

I did that for a few weeks, then I was able to cut out the BPC completely (don’t need as much fat when you’re adapted, you let it come from your body) and then eat OMAD around 7pm. I did that for 8 weeks and then I experimented with extended fasting, which is where a majority of my weight has dropped off.