I have a question (about how to eat enough calories)

#1

I’ve been eating keto since Jan. 2019. Having reversed my type 2 diabetes in a matter of weeks and now being nearly 60 lbs. lighter, there is one puzzle I can’t seem to get a handle on. I have no trouble keeping carbs low, but I really struggle to eat more than 1000 calories a day. This doesn’t seem right to me, but I don’t know what to add in to raise my calories.

I’m a 65 year old, 5’2" woman with a current weight of 140lbs. I should also add that I fast about 18 hrs. per day, and eat nothing at all on Sundays. I’m eating 70g of protein, 15-20g total carbs, and the rest is fat. I don’t do bulletproof coffee or fat bombs. I eat avocados, olives, greens with olive oil and veggies with butter almost every day. I also eat avocado oil mayonnaise, and chia seeds. The rest of my fat comes from meat and fish. I’m still losing weight, but slowly. Anyone have some advice for me?

(Susan) #2

I agree with you that you are not eating enough calories, and that you need to increase them. All you should worry about is keeping your carbs at 20 grams or less and increase your proteins and fats.

Congrats on reversing your type 2 diabetes and on the 60 pounds that you have lost so far, that is terrific!!

I will show you what I ate today to give you an idea of how you could increase your fats and calories.

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I ate 1904 calories, and this is working for me after stalling for 2.5 months from not eating enough calories. I eat my lunch at 1pm then have supper at 4:30pm. I don’t eat any calories, or snacks, nothing, from 5pm-1pm the next day for a 20:4 IF. You are doing great with your 18:6 IF too! You just need to increase your calories a lot!

Another idea I can give you that I have fallen in love with is Making your choice of coff/tea or flavoured herbal tea, and then; taking the tea bag out, add it to the blender, and add 1/2 cup of Heavy Whipping Cream (400 calories) and a bunch of icecubes, and chop it up, and you have a delicious Iced Coffee/Tea.

I have been doing it with Celestial Seasonings Black Cherry Berry Tea, but you can do it with any coffee or tea you like. It is a delicious treat and adds a nice amount of fat and 400 calories in on go =).

@David_Stilley realized that I wasn’t eating enough calories, and he helped me figure this out, and now I am feeling a lot better, sleeping better as well, and losing weight again!

I wish you the best in your continued Keto journey.

(Joey) #3

You’ve made fantastic progress from your starting point and everything @Momof5 shared above is excellent guidance.

I would only ask: How hungry are you? Are the 1000 kcal/day really satisfying you for this long a stretch in time?

As you probably know, if we continuously eat markedly less than our body requires to properly function, our metabolism begins to wind down in an effort to preserve our life. At some point, an under-eater’s incremental weight loss comes from muscle and organ tissue, not from body fat. And that’s when it becomes a downward spiral that’s hard (and slow) to correct - and it usually involves regaining some fat back, too.

I don’t know what your “required” caloric intake is (and calories are a somewhat squirrel-y way of talking about proper nutrition anyhow), but 1000 kcal/day for an adult (of any size/shape) strikes me as being far below what is a healthy for any extended length of time.

If I were in your situation and I felt truly stuffed after eating within a 6 hr “feeding window” but could only muster eating 1000 kcal, I’d seriously consider expanding that window to make room in my digestive system for more healthy animal fat. Basically, I’m repeating what @Momof5 has already encouraged you to do.

Remember: Animal fat is the macronutrient type that affects insulin levels the least. So as a T2D individual, adding fat would be the least disruptive course of caloric increase you can take up.

But, importantly, since you’re clearly fat-adapted by now, it will provide you with more of the vital energy content you need to keep your metabolism functioning properly - which in the end is what you’re trying to accomplish, right?

It may slow your weight loss pace - and if you’ve already forced your metabolic rate much lower than before, you may even gain some weight back. But either way, you will become a “healthier you” in the process.

#4

Thanks so much. This is very helpful information. Really appreciate you taking the time.

#5

Thanks for the reply. I am almost never hungry except for about 20 minutes before meals. The goal is to be healthier though, so I’m going to try and up the fat. Thanks for the advice. :slight_smile:

(Robert C) #6

You should review your exercise routine. If it is just walking or very light exercise (just light dumbbells or something) you may want to consider strength training. Something difficult a few times a week will get some hunger going.

There is another reason also. Think about it, since the beginning of the year, you body went from having to deal with 200 pounds (standing up, walking etc.) to only 140 pounds. The body does not want to keep metabolically expensive muscle it does not need so, will start letting that go. You don’t want that to happen. You want the metabolically expensive muscle both to drive hunger and increase health-span (increase the time you can live independently).

Muscle naturally goes away as we go into 50s, 60s etc. - anything you can do to maintain or reverse muscle loss will be really good for you in the long run.

(traci simpson) #7

Holy hell that’s a lot of food. I’m definitely not eating enough. Yesterday I had a cold brew w/HWC, sausage cauliflower bake which is sausage, cauliflower and cream cheese and parm on top, some greens then sausage and kale and an avocado and some frittata for dinner.

I eat TMAD during the week and OMAD on Saturdays and sometimes on Sundays also.

#8

Wait a second, everyone! She’s lost 60 pounds so far this year. That means she’s been eating 1000 calories per day supplemented with generous quantities of body fat. Isn’t that exactly what we want to see?
@alive-and-kicking, raising your calories can be a very effective strategy to kick your metabolism into gear, but you seem to be doing really well so far. In fact, you have had exactly the results most people -esp women of your age- would really love to see. Congratulations!!! :confetti_ball:
What’s the problem exactly?

(Though I agree with @RobC - muscle mass is very important and if you’re not already doing resistance training, I would start!)

(Robert C) #9

What you wrote does not necessarily logically follow (it might but, it might not). This (losing 60 pounds of body fat) could also happen with calorie restriction (i.e. daily low calories) while eating Keto macros (due potentially to psychologically suppressing hunger). Ketones may measure great also but, it still might not be “Keto” that will work long term. If calorie restriction is happening then (just as with “The Biggest Loser”) - there may be a bounce.

It seems - after reading these forums for a while, that Keto (a couple of months of fat-adaptation followed by generous eating due to a significantly raised metabolism) has two other things that usually happen - slower weight loss (along with plateaus) as well as a eating to satiety (some days just 1000 calories - where you’ll burn some body fat - but other days at 1700 or even 2500 - where you’re maintaining a nice high metabolic rate, assuring your body it doesn’t need to worry about food availability).

Of course, this is all up to the OP @Madeleine to think about - but answering that basic question might be a good idea “Have I simply calorie restricted on Keto foods or do I feel my metabolism is going as fast as it possibly can given my age and fitness level?”.

#10

What I wrote is that she’s been eating 1000 cal per day plus a whole lot of body fat. Unless you’re questioning her post (how much she’s eating and how much weight she has lost), that’s just a description of her intake and there’s no logic to follow.

Everyone’s talking about calories because they see the 1000 number but they are leaving off the 60 pounds of body fat that she’s burned through. I’m not going to do the math in part because I think CICO is incredibly misguided, but 60 pounds of body fat over 9 months for someone 5’2" is a whole lot of fuel that’s been supplementing those 1000 exogenous calories.

@alive-and-kicking, I think you’re doing great. What we all want to see when we cut back carbs is that insulin drops, thus allowing our metabolism to access stored fat. If that’s working well and you’re generally healthy, you can trust your satiety signals to fill in the rest of your needs through food that you eat. It’s a beautiful system but often doesn’t work quite so smoothly because satiety/leptin gets screwy and for many other reasons.

I would expect your hunger to increase a bit as your weight loss tapers off and I hope you’ll keep posting to let us know if that happens. In any case, if you’re not active or working out I hope you’ll consider starting, since you’re in a nice place to build some good strength and mobility.

(Robert C) #11

I guess I wasn’t clear - my point was you can lose 60 pounds of fat through Keto or through calorie restriction. It all depends on whether the food in plus body fat burned has actually been a low metabolic rate that will haunt the person later or whether it has actually been a higher metabolism all along and still going strong.

Straight CICO math would be 777 calories per day from body fat (if my math is right) if it was completely linear (no plateaus) which it might be if always consuming only 1000 dietary calories per day. 777 calories is a lot to pull from your body daily (every single day for 270 days) without it going into a “lowering metabolism to meet new restricted caloric intake” mode.

(Ken) #12

The real issue with a CICO carb based diet and a fat based Keto one is that the carb based pattern does not effectively deal with derangement issues. Every time you eat your carbs the body tries to reestablish the very metabolic resistance states that caused the fat gain and other issues. Fat based nutrition eliminates these states.

#13

Yes, this is true but she’s clearly Keto, so why bring this up? I get that there can be some concern about possibly slowing down metabolism but some folks do have functioning leptin signaling, and I don’t see a reason to assume that she can’t trust her hunger.

There’s so much speculation here - that one pound of body fat is in fact 3500 calories (it also has protein and water), that we have an agreed-upon limit of what the body can pull from reserves (we don’t, and please don’t quote Richard’s calculator because that’s based on calorie-deprived sugar burners); that you know what her metabolic rate is (I don’t think you do).

Stepping back: I guess I’m not clear on why we’re trying to create a problem where there really doesn’t seem to be one. Folks should be lining up at her door to see what she’s doing right because she’s getting results (at least on the weight loss front) that are terrific, exactly what we most want to see from keto.

(Doug) #14

It’s ~25 lbs of fat that’s need to supply those 777 calories; should not be an issue. :+1:

(Bob M) #15

I won’t tell you what I eat in a day, then. :grinning:

@Momof5 You should drop those sardines in sunflower oil if you can. Sunflower oil is really not what you want to eat.

(Robert C) #16

I would say her food choices are Keto but that does not mean “not calorie restricting”. You might think differently but, “clearly Keto” to me also means “not calorie restricting” (probably not technically correct, calorie restricting on Keto foods will likely keep you in ketosis - but maybe at the expense of lowered metabolism).

I think there is some lower caloric threshold (and different for everyone) where eating too few calories daily (even if all “Keto” type foods) becomes calorie restriction. Whether it is 1000 or 800 or 600 or whatever per day - weight will go down, ketones might be high but metabolism will slow.

1000 calories a day, 6 days a week is a very small amount of food (not very many ounces when meals are constructed from the foods the OP said she eats). I am happy for her weight loss but, plenty of people have lost a lot of weight on calorie restriction - it is just something to be wary of.

#17

Yes, that’s a small amount of food, but it’s not what she’s been living on.

(Susan) #18

I bought the 8 pack of them at Costco a few weeks ago -I don’t really like them so won’t buy again, but what I do is put them in a colander, and rinse with water, then vinegar, and drain them and then eat them, so I won’t buy again, but I don’t want to waste them either.

(John) #19

to the op I would like to know what is making you think you want more calories. It is repeted over and over to eat to satiety here and it sounds like you are. I say if you feel good and are healthier then why change whats working for you.

(traci simpson) #20

I try to eat more and I’m just full. Yesterday I wanted to eat early so that I could be done earlier, so I ate at 8:30 or at least tried to and then I got really busy at work, and was in and out of meetings so my 830 meal got stretched all the way to 12 o’clock. And so then at 1:30 I got more food and ate that and then I was done for the rest of the night at around 2.