How bad was this?

(Dirty Lazy Keto'er, Sucralose freak ;)) #1

So a couple nights ago, I needed to take a quick dinner break, and give my GF (also doing Keto) a break from making dinner, and so I got her an In and Out, double, double, lettuce wrap, and I got myself 2 of them :slight_smile: Come on now, I’m 235 lbs, and she’s 110. Anyway, I checked before and found that these have 16gms of carbs… So I know I went a little over (although I feel like the 20gm recommendation is probably a little light for me anyway, as Im a big 6ft guy, and my daily cals are higher than most to begin with)

Then, this morning at 3am, on the way home from a 15hr day of driving, I had not eaten anything for close to 12hrs. So, I got the big idea, of swinging into a 24hr Mexican food place, and ordering one of those big bombing breakfast burritos, which had “only” eggs, bacon, and cheese (I should have added sour cream). Grabbed a spoon out of my glove box, and ate all the good stuff, then threw the whole tortilla away. Still it was a pretty big meal at 3 am.

How bad are these cheats ?

(Ken) #2

As long as they are infrequent, they really don’t hurt you. The danger is that they become frequent enough that sustained lipolysis is interrupted. Make sure you limit frequency to only a couple of instances per week, with several normal days in between.

(Dirty Lazy Keto'er, Sucralose freak ;)) #3

Thank you. That’s what I would suspect. But now I want to look into lipolysis…

(Full Metal KETO AF) #4

Chris this wasn’t what I would call a cheat, but you could have done a little better. I think the main carbs were from some kind of special sauce maybe? You could just use plain mayo or mustard. The tomato, onion and iceberg lettuce are pretty low and the cheese might be a carb or two per slice. 16 grams per burger sounds kind of high?

The burrito hack was just fine. Good job avoiding the tortilla. You might even get more by asking them to put it in a bowl.

I don’t know where you live but I love Machaca, some taquerias make it. Carnitas and Carne Asada rock. :cowboy_hat_face:

(Full Metal KETO AF) #5

Second reading of your post this stuck out. It doesn’t really matter what percentage of your calories are from carbohydrates, 20g carbs is recommended for everyone starting out.

Let’s say one guy weighs 400 lbs and 5% of his macros calculated by percentage means you he gets more carbs than a guy who weighs 175 lbs? This doesn’t make sense. The heavier guy with more to lose needs to be more on top of keeping carbs minimal. There isn’t a RDA for carbohydrates, they are completely unnecessary as a fuel source. While you do get nutrients from vegetables eating carbohydrates triggers an insulin release and eventual fat storage.

Also thinking in terms of your daily calories isn’t really a thing with keto. Many people don’t count at all and lose weight only by monitoring carb intake and only eating when they’re actually hungry. This means more calories some days less on others dictated by what your body tells you it needs. So in retrospect was eating at 3am a cheat? Not if you were actually feeling hungry and not just eating because the opportunity arose.

Eat to satiety not a calorie amount.

I don’t imagine that your wife is trying to lose a single pound at 110. She could probably get away with more carbs than you can if her metabolism is speedy and she’s active and healthy.

But if weight loss is your goal it might hurt your progress more. You’re at 235 and I don’t know what you imagine as your goal weight. It depends on your build but it sounds like you want to lose some. :cowboy_hat_face:

(David Brown) #6

I’m sorry but calories matter whether you keto or not. Im not an cico fan but if you are giving your body more means of creating energy than expending it then they are going to put on fat. This is especially the case when an individual gets very lean. Even on keto I have seen competitors drop down to sub 1500 calories.

I have some clients that are very good and listening to their body and I have others that keep a very strick regime and track macros as their hunger signalling is off

(Jane) #7

How do you measure what you are expending?

(David Brown) #8

By monitoring the scales or your body measurements. I always ask someone "is your weight staying the same, going up or going down.

If it’s going down then good Job
Staying the same then drop calories 15%
Going up. Drop calories 25%

(Full Metal KETO AF) #9

@dave_3 Once you’re hormonal response on keto has been repaired the hunger signals will regulate appetite. People ate ketogenic for 1000’s of years without tracking every little bit of food they put in their mouths. Nobody said that calories didn’t matter, it’s that your caloric intake will adjust to what you need if you learn to listen to your body telling you what it needs rather than eating a planned out menu of a certain amount of calories per day.

On days when energy expended was high the next day you may feel a need to eat more. On a lazy rainy day you may not be doing much, hanging out inside and you won’t feel like you need as much to eat.

If you push new people who aren’t getting results by cutting their calories intentionally you run the risk of their BMR slowing down to match the caloric intake and triggering a food shortage mode in their metabolism, especially telling them to cut 25%. A daily calorie reduction that high will definitely slow down your BMR. This causes people to hang on to fat when they’re new to keto especially but it can happen just as well with old timers who start restricting calories instead of doing EF and feasting, or IF with varied scheduling when they need to get loosing. Or examining the food choices which maybe more relevant than the quantity of calories when stalled.

:cowboy_hat_face:

(David Brown) #10

Your living in a fantasy world if you think that most people can listen to what their body needs. The body naturally wants to store fat to protect against famine. Asking someone to base their food intake based on their hunger signalling is poor advice in my opinion and have never once come a across an athlete or model that uses this approach. And let’s remember that these people rely on diet to make a living.
Tracking macro’s especially in the early stages is very important imo and it the only way to accurately set out a plan for long term success.

I would agree to an extent that you could maybe trust your hunger signals if you wanted to maintain weight but when it comes to shedding pounds your brain can do some crazy stuff. Ghrelin and leptin are both hormones that can not be ignore no matter how much of a hormonal change you think you are going through.

As. For metabolic adjustment. This is a real thing and once I reach a certain level I will not drop calories anymore and rely on exercise to create a deficit. I was just generalising on my earlier post

(Full Metal KETO AF) #11

Maybe starting out. And I believe that the majority of people on this site who’ve been at keto for 6 months to several years including myself have done exactly that. I track carbs. I track protein, fats and calories (or should I say Cronometer does) but they’re only a curiosity. Carbs are the only thing I care about. And there’s loads of others here that do the same. I’m kind of surprised that we’re having this discussion without anyone getting in, holiday I guess.

Anyway with my lax system of trusting my hunger signals after fat adaptation I have lost 40 lbs. in 8 months. I was only 205/5’10” when I started. And you probably would have considered what I ate when I started as excessive. But I was still dropping weight. Eating twice as much protein as a macro calculator said I should. Plenty of fat too. A bit sloppy learning how to monitor my carbs but I still lost weight. I tightened up later and re-evaluated the amount of food and the variety. I cut back on protein some and more on fat.

Still my daily calorie fluxuates even now. I tweaked my diet and started dropping again after a 6 week stall. I at that time quit eating snacks and three meals a day and weight loss continued.

I am feeling less quantity of food is needed lately and reduced fats again as I approach my goal weight with reversed diabetes in spite of being on a steroid drug that jacks up my BG.

If no one else is chiming in I’ll have to ring the KETO HOTLINE @CarlKeller @PaulL @CrackerJax (Nurse Jacki) @PetaMarie @richard dare I say @atomicspacebunny and all enlightened ketonians :satellite: :phone: :telephone_receiver: :cowboy_hat_face:

(David Brown) #12

Every time you post I can clearly see that you are a driven and a very keto educated person that has tried and tested and learned from you experiences. Then made necessary changes. I comend you for all this and I wish you was on my books because you would be an ideal candidate for me.

However you and no doubt many people you have tagged on this forum are similar to yourself. The trouble is with these groups is people get so blinkered and see things from the inside looking out. This is how I spent the first years of my career and struggled to pay bills and get people on the books. I could never understand why something so black and white was difficult for people to grasp. It was when I started looking from the outside in that I started to get better results and make a decent living.

To be able to monitor progress or failure you have to be able to hold something accountable. If a client says to me I’ve put on a 1lb this week but I don’t know what I’ve eaten or how much I’ve trained I struggle to help. If a seasoned keto person such as your self appoaches me I would most likely take a different view but I would still need to know what you’re eating and training

I can use myself as an example here as when I go keto I struggle to eat. I’m just never hungry and could easily. Manage on 500 calories a day. This being unhealthy I have to track my food to ensure I’m getting what I need. I always feel like I’m force feeding so I have to know when enough is enough. I also have a client that is always ravenous on a keto diet and can easily destroy 4000 calories a day. I have put him on a 16/8 plan and he thrives on it

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #13

Good morning! It sounds like what I’m reading is two people with well developed N=1 experiences. It’s great if someone like me can do it not tracking anything and keeping carbs below 20 grams a day (based on memorized carb count, head count). It’s also really informative and educational if someone new to nutrition keeps strict records while learning about their own body.

The bottom line is that people asking the initial question are going to get many different responses and it’s up to them to look into each and decide for themselves. I’m not a fan of the scale for many reasons, it doesn’t tell me what I’m gaining or losing so I don’t use it in the way David suggests. If mine goes up, I would cut carbs and look at the times I eat and the quality of my food v. just subtracting part of my daily intake and calling it a day. But calorie counting works for some people and that’s okay too. (My scale is stuck but my body measurements are going down.)

(Carl Keller) #14

Perhaps the greatest gift I received from LCHF is that I have formed a better relationship with my hunger. For once in my life, I understand how my hunger hormones are supposed to behave. The key to this understanding was removing the foods that were corrupting the performance of my hormones.

I agree that the concept of listening to what your ghrelin and leptin is signaling is a bit alien, especially for someone who is used to being hungry all the time (because of processed food interference) but with time and practice those hormones can be rehab’ed. When I think about it in ancestral terms, our digestive system and all their complex hormones are a product of a million+ years of evolution and I doubt we would have survived this long if the hormonal communication had not been perfected.

Speaking of ancestors, they had no scales for weighing foods, had no supplements and had no way of tracking macros or counting calories, yet they thrived and obesity was rare. Their bodies told them what they needed via cravings. Low on electrolytes? They craved salt. Low on iodine? They craved red meat… etc.

Fat adapation was one of my many eureka moments in keto. The first time I went more than a day without food, it was a shocker that I wasn’t cranky or even hungry in the slightest. My energy was through the roof and consistent so it was obvious that energy was coming from somewhere since I was not eating it. It was as if my ghrelin and leptin went on vacation. I had little appetite and I became full with abnormally small amounts of food. So I went with it… I listened to those hormones and simply ate the amounts that I found satisfying and I lost weight faster than I ever had in my life.

I honestly believe that almost everyone has the biological ability to communicate properly with their hormones. It’s encoded in our DNA. It’s the lies that our brains tell us that we need to be suspicious about. The only way to undo the brainwashing caused by processed foods is to remove them from our diet and practice listening and responding to our hormones.

I will submit an escape clause to my belief: if someone has a defective pituitary gland, hormonal signaling may be wonky.

(Jane) #15

Are most of your clients men? Because with women’s hormones fluctuating all the time the scale can be a poor indicator of fat storage over the short term.

(David Brown) #16

No. Mostly women that compete in competitions. I only consider using scales for women if they are quite over weight as a menstral cycle and birth control does play a factor is what the scales say but compared to the amount of fat they have it usually enough to still see progress. My preference is to use skin fold calipers on multiple locations. Especially when they are getting leaner.

(David Brown) #17

I can’t argue with what you saying but the point I’m trying to make is there absolutely has to me a management system in place to make progress possible while adaptations are happening. Not only is this period a fantastic time to strike while the iron is hot and make some significant fat loss but the person needs to see results or they will give up.

(Carl Keller) #18

My n=1 humbly disagrees. Perhaps some people need a structured path to walk along but lazies like me have made great strides simply by keeping carbohydrate low and making quality responses to hunger.

I can’t argue with that. I see countless people ignore the NSVs and discount their reduced inflammation, better energy, fading cravings, improved sleep etc and say that LCHF is not working. I suppose it’s a blessing to have peers like us to remind them that healing is a priceless gift even when the scale is not moving. :slight_smile:

(Jane) #19

Carl, you and I aren’t trying to make a living selling structured plans so our perspective is different :wink:

But some people do need that and if they pay for it they will be extra motivated to stick with it so their money isn’t wasted. Human nature. :slightly_smiling_face:

(Carl Keller) #20

Hehe. I was starting to feel that vibe. :smiley: