How on earth is it possible to keep protein low?

#21

Hahaha! We are friends then.

#22

Protein is a lower limit.

Net carbohydrate is an upper limit.

Fat is a “lever”. You only need enough to feed your hunger. For people that have stored body fat, the body can use it in place of consumed fat.

A keto mantra of mine is “Eat when hungry. Stop when full. Mostly meat.”

(Carl Keller) #23

Hello and welcome Oli.

To me, keto is not just a weight loss program. It’s about healing your digestive system and getting your hormones right, by whatever amounts of protein or fat are necessary. Once you can accomplish that, hunger goes down and cravings go away and then it’s much easier to impose limits on yourself. But those limits shouldn’t mean stuffing yourself or going hungry. Your best guide is your sense of satiety and no macro can tell you exactly what that is.

For me, lots and lots of fat helped in the first week or two. It kept my cravings down and helped my hormones (hunger mainly) adjust to the fat burning process. I honestly believe there’s no such thing as too much fat in the intial stage if satiey is your guide. You literally can’t overeat fat unless you stuff yourself silly and even then you won’t gain any weight.

(Brian) #24

Real foods such as meat with some fat still in it, real fish fillets like salmon, or eggs are a nice amount of both fat and protein in reasonable amounts of each.

Trying to eat fat bombs or sticks of butter… I dunno, that doesn’t quite seem right to me. I just want to eat real food, which is pretty much what I do anymore. I don’t count either protein or fat grams. I don’t really count carbs anymore either but I do try to be mindful of them as I don’t want to consume a lot of them. I don’t stick to 20g but I really do try to be under about 50g. Others might have to be more strict about it, we’re all a little different.

Good luck!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #25

@tigerprawn How are you figuring “low”? Remember that percentages are percentages of total calories, not total weight. so if you eat equal weights of protein and fat, you are getting 30% protein and 70% fat (more or less).

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 16 oz./454 g of ribeye steak contains 85 g protein and 89 g fat. This would give you (85 × 4) + (89 × 9) = 340 + 801 = 1141 kcals, or 29.8% protein and 70.2% fat.

#26

I make sure I nail the carbs.

I eat a normal amount of protein, for example a steak or fish or whatever.

And then I just use the magic ingredient called butter for example on steamed veggies – that’s my variable if I need more energy I’ll have 2 tablespoons Instead of the usual one.

If I’m having salad the the variable is olive oil.

Things like butter and olive oil can be used as variables and added to just about everything. Same goes for coconut oil…

Apart from avoiding straight out sugars, bread, rice and pasta my diet looks pretty similar to what everyone ate about 50 years ago.

Edit;
Simply - meat and veggies with butter. Bacon and eggs for breakfast. Amazingly simple. Avoid processed food, all that = keto.

(Janelle) #27

You won’t find an answer here. I started a thread like this and some people basically made me feel like I was crazy for asking and then took over the thread. You can search for that and see if anything they said was valuable for you.

(Bunny) #28

…very very true! Doing the ketogenic diet (the floor, not the ceiling) is one thing but sustainability requires a little adjusting? (e.g. I can add more carbs eventually because I’m more directly burning the fuel I’m choosing to use for energy and being AWARE of what caused the problem to begin with {…THAT’S SO IMPORTANT?} and not having my dietary intake storing it directly as fat, but that takes a lot of ingenuity and time to get to that level?)

Excellent point!

(Todd Batitis) #29

It really depends on the person. LOTS of people are already doing 16:8 IF without knowing what it was. I know lots of people who aren’t doing keto that are doing it simply because they don’t really like to eat breakfast so they don’t typically eat their first meal until around lunchtime.

Personally, I went from LCHP and eating every 2 hours to learning what IF was and since it made sense, I jumped right into 20:4. Learning about IF I learned how well keto matched up with it both from a mechanics side of things and from a health benefit standpoint and simply added that in.

To answer the @tigerprawn’s question, for me protein is roughly 105g per day with fat being 176g. While there are a lot of foods that are close to even in the ratio, I very often do things like tuna/chicken salads in a bowl where I will chop up some dill pickle, around 100g chicken or a can of tuna and around 85-100g of avocado mayo and eat it with a spoon since I don’t put it on bread anymore. For more crunch or volume I might mix in a little radish/daikon, a raw jalapeno, green olives or something else. I do a lot of omlettes/fritatta/scrambles that are cooked in butter or bacon grease which boosts the fat a lot. One of my favorite snacks at the end of the night is to toss a serving or two (30-60 grams) of pecans in a pan and toast them up and them toss in around 20-30g of butter and salt and make buttered pecans. This is a a great end of the day for me and I love the browned butter. You can also do it with coconut oil and cinnamon for a less savory taste. :slight_smile:

#30

I have a key question for you @tigerprawn. How do you feel eating the way you are eating? Are you getting the results you were looking for? OK so that is two questions :smiley:

#31

I absolutely agree 100% that you should eat as much fat as you want, especially at the beginning. It helps with cravings, it helps with not snacking, and it helps with satiety. However, I don’t agree that you won’t gain weight. If you are super fat, like me, you have elevated insulin levels due to likely insulin resistance. Research shows that people carrying a lot of extra fat put up higher fasted insulin levels. In the presence of that insulin, your body may store some of that extra energy coming from all that fat as fat. But that’s ok because I also agree with your first point, which is that this is about healing your gut and hormones. And if that is truly our goal, then weight loss is a side effect. I love this way of thinking about it because then I’m reminded that this is a long slow process and it’s about my insides and living a nice healthy life and if I can reap all the benefits, a smaller body will never be the most important one.

(Carl Keller) #32

I think priority number 1 should be to keep from relapsing to our old ways of eating. So overeating a macro (that isn’t carbs) is a trivial price to pay if it keeps you on plan.

That’s fair. Please forgive me from speaking from my perspective and not considering people with severely misbehaving hormones. Stuffing ourselves silly with fat is not something I recommend but tried to use as an extreme example. Thanks for correcting that. :slight_smile:

Well said! If we can accomplish the former then that the latter is easier and not a temporary thing.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #33

You sound as though you are feeling a bit burned, and for that I am very sorry.

However, aside from the standard advice to eat fatty foods and to cook with healthy fats, such as butter, lard, tallow, bacon grease, or avocado, coconut, or olive oils, I’m not sure what more there is to say, unfortunately. Is there something else you’d particularly like to know?

In this thread, my impression of the original post is that there is some misunderstanding going on, which I tried to address in my earlier post. I know that won’t necessarily have helped you, but I hope it will help the original poster.

If you have, or the OP has, questions that have not yet been addressed, please try again, and we can keep trying to see if we can provide an answer.

(Todd Allen) #34

I like to cycle protein. I mostly shoot for the upper half of my recommended range, sometimes go much lower, sometimes I fast, and sometimes I feast. Appropriate protein level seems to be quite flexible and I have to work at it to experience issues of too much or too little.

To shift the balance towards fat there are so many good options, lard, tallow, suet, beef cap fat, 55% lean ground beef, pork belly, and chicken fat - recently got more than a quart of gorgeous bright yellow fat from an old plump back yard hen who badly injured a leg after flying too high during a predator scare. My staples include olive oil, coconut oil, butter, HWC, high fat cheeses, nut butters, etc.

I don’t fear macros, especially not fat or protein and less and less carbs so long as my blood sugar is excellent. I only fear crappy unhealthful food.

(Oli) #35

Hello Daisy- yes i’m generally good with the diet… actually my diet before was mostly ribeye steaks and belly pork anyway :slightly_smiling_face:

…in terms of results…actually i am heading into this with an open and enquiring mind… no particular goal in mind other than to give my pancreas a bit of a break.

i would however like to actually be in ketosis…hence my concern about protein as i understand eating too much will knock you out of it due to glucogenesis.

@PaulL - thanks for reminding me that it’s by calorie and not by weight… i keep forgetting!

@CatGirl - thanks for chipping in…

thanks everybody…i think i’m going to attempt some sort of cream omelette creation…that should do it…

#36

Then I am assuming you have just dropped your carbs so golden.

Have you tested saying you are not? “Eating too much” protein is unlikely a thing unless you are going nuts and need to watch amounts because you are T2D and even then plenty of people do fine at a higher protein level. It’s all relative but unless you have suddenly doubled the amount you eat I would;t be too concerned. Protein amounts rarely change significantly pre and post starting keto - its the level of carbs and fat that changes. It sounds like you are eating yummy fatty protein so, again, golden :slight_smile:

GNG and turning protein to sugar is a twisted version of events. Check out some articles by Amy Berger at tuitnutrition.com who writes eloquently on the subject.

After all that is said and done, if you are feeling good and have improved health markers then what you are doing is working well even if you aren’t hitting the ketosis numbers you may have been expecting. Everyone is different and being “in ketosis” is not necessarily everything. Again, it comes down to your goals.

(outlawpirate) #37

Add more fat to your protein to up your fat macros, limit your daily protein intake (because you will be satiated) and make food delicious. Creamy sauces, gravies, herbed butter on meats. Mmmmmm!

(Cindy) #38

I did that too. My go to snack when craving carbs was a 1/2 slice of bacon. But a key word (in my opinion) in your reply is EAT fat. I agree that it’s difficult to overeat fat, but when people resort to putting it in their drinks, I think it’s possible. Especially for those people who don’t recognize true hunger from habit. If the fat helps to not eat carbs initially, I say go for it. If they’re eating fat because they’re hungry, go for it. But if they’re eating (or drinking) fat because some online calculator says it’s needed, then NO. A big NO.

I also DO think you can gain weight from too much fat. It’s more difficult to do than over eating carbs, but if you’re going way over what your body needs, then it’s going to get stored.

(Carl Keller) #39

This was pointed out by @misshannah and I did amend the point I was trying to make.

(Adam Kirby) #40

None of this is a problem, at all. It’s a much better way to eat than adding oils to meet some arbitrary macro.

You can still be in ketosis with significant protein consumption.