Hey yall,
Okay. . so i am aware that 20 Net is the safe and comfortable threshold that we tell everyone to abide by… BUT if your fat adapted and its the holidays and your sticking to Keto… what is an upper limit of NET carbs you could have without going out of Keto?
I want to enjoy Keto treats over Christmas and so far i have been averaging 25-30 Net carbs per day. So I would like to know if that could kick me out? Or can i go up to a certain number like 30 or 40 net or?
If you’re fat adapted then personally I wouldn’t worry as even if you’re kicked out of ketosis, you’ll go straight back in when the glucose has been used up. Just have fun and enjoy yourself.
It varies per individual. Some people can go up to 50g per day or even higher. For a short term (1 or 2 days) a small increase shouldn’t cause you problems if you go over a bit.
The amount of carbs I can eat and stay in ketosis varies dramatically depending on things like how well I’m feeling and sleeping, how active I am, what and how much I’ve been recently eating. And it is much different for me now than it was a year ago, in part because of changes in my health and fitness and partly because of changes in my goals and the ways I evaluate how I’m achieving my goals.
Sorry, I don’t know. That number came from a few articles and podcast transcripts from Dr. Eric Westman. I don’t have a definitive answer for you about what you should or should not do.
I agree with @Shortstuff.
Enjoy your holiday treats, don’t go overboard or binge and on the 26th go right back to eating keto. Stay off the scale for a week. It may stall your weight loss for the week (or may not!) but it’s only one week in a long journey.
Don’t stress over it!
Getting kicked out is not really a big deal because you can easily get right back into ketosis. The bigger fear should be “how will my body react”? Will you become bloated and have carb withdrawal symptoms like some do? Or will it just mean your body needs time to burn up all the glucose before returning to a fat burning state?
My n=1 experience with higher carbs while in ketosis (Thanksgiving) went without noticeable incident. I ate 60 net carbs that day, but I avoided refined sugars and all of my carbs were from vegetables. I didn’t really notice any difference in how I felt afterward.
On the forum here I’ve read quite a few stories about how others have experienced bloating, the return of cravings, roller coaster energy levels and flu like symptoms etc…, afterward.
So personally, I think it depends on what you overeat moreso than how much you overeat your macros… plus how fat adapted you are and who knows how many other variables. I literally doubled my net carbs without significant problems, but I honestly don’t know if the same will happen to you. There’s only one way to truly know for sure.
See… this is why im trying to stay in Keto.
Getting into Keto was a beast for me… i had waaaay too many cravings and it took multiple attempts to restart over the course of several months so its really important that Keto=life!
So thats why im asking… i want to enjoy Keto treats but not put myself in a position where im knocked out and trying to restart over and over.
Im a recovering food addict and sugar addict. Going out of Keto is no bueno!
You are going to have to figure out how to reconcile these two things.
My approach was to completely cut out sweet tasting foods. You need to break the “snack and treat” mindset if you are a food addict.
Otherwise,this is going to keep happening to you:
Ah, this makes a difference. Blood ketones would tell you but if you don’t have a meter and those crazy expensive test strips you are just guessing.
Nobody can tell you because the answer is different for everyone. My husband can eat 100 carbs a day and still registers decent blood ketones. I can’t eat near that many. I’m not sure where my limit is - would have to use a lot of test strips to find out over a couple of days.
I do know if I am knocked out of ketosis I am back in within 24 hours (using a breathylizer to confirm). Not near what it takes initially when you start eating keto.
I just passed eight months. Probably eat off plan two days a month. Had two days of Christmas carbs (didn’t track how many grams, but it involved Thai food, tamales and chocolate) but today I was 0.8. So I think it really depends how long you have been doing keto. I started testing blood at around five months, so can’t speak to what my twice-a-month off-plan meals did to my ketogenic diet earlier.
You’ll have to experiment to find out your actual threshold. Some people can get into ketosis eating around 100-125 grams of carbohydrate a day—that was the figure Dr. Phinney was talking about in all his videos on nutritional ketosis that I watched before going keto. But it depends on how insulin-resistant you are. The limit Dr. Phinney talks about to his patients at Virta Health is now 50 g/day, because they are all insulin-resistant to one degree or another. The Dudes say 20 g/day, because it’s safe for almost everyone. I read somewhere here that they really wanted to say 0 g, but didn’t want to put people off, lol!
If you are a sugar/carb addict, consider very carefully whether risking a binge is a good idea. For an addict, the old A.A. saying, “One is too many, and a thousand aren’t enough,” applies here. I’ve known alcoholics whose relapses started with one near-beer, and since I consider myself to be a sugar/carb addict, I personally feel a need to treat carbs as though they are alcohol. Sugar for sure—sucrose is half glucose and half fructose, and fructose affects the same liver and brain pathways as alcohol and causes the same long-term problems. The only difference is that fructose is less likely to make you crash your car or try to sleep with your boss’s spouse.