If you're tracking calories...PLEASE buy/use a food scale

#102

If I may add one more problem to all this-we’re forgetting the psychological aspect of the game that causes problems in simple “CICO or hormones.”
I believe that telling newbies (and I was once a newbie) to eat to satiety is not beneficial, because it takes a while to become fat adapted and to recognize what the “youve had enough, stop” sign is, but they should be aware of it and see how their own bodies feel. It took me a long time to figure it out, because coming off SAD diet, as we all know, we ate larger quantities and really didn’t know when to call it quits. We were fat for a reason, we ate too much and we had no idea and/or lied to ourselves how much we actually ate. Remember how much normal pizza you could eat, followed by chips, booze, more chips, chocolate, more pizza…now I can barely finish a quarter of ketofied pizza and my body tells me “enough.”
Now that I’m in maintenance and allowing myself to relax a little, I’ve noticed some things:

  1. I’m fine as long as I stick to my basic OMAD of veggies, meats,eggs, butter, olive oil and coconut oil
    2.I’m in trouble as soon as I get my fingers on some nuts-they trigger my snacking and I just can’t stop eating them.
    3.i’m in trouble as soon as I start adding “sweet” (cakes, mug cakes,dessert, chocolate, whey protein, etc…).
    I feel as if once I add nuts or sweeteners or dessert(even if they are lchf), my satiety feeling changes and I can easily overeat in calories, because they are just so dense. I think my “hunger” during the day increases, as well. Do they trigger me to overeat? Am I stuffing my feelings again? Is it my cranial response? It’s a slippery slope…
    Now I understand why tell tell us to lay off replacement foods in the beginning, it just triggers the inner cause that made us overeat in the first place. It’s a combination of deranged metabolisms, foods we ate(calories) and the feelings we stuffed(psychological). Once low-carb sorts out your metabolic pathways and you learn how much you actually need to eat, you are finally free to work on your head-game. We know better and we do better.

I believe that if I would add nuts and desserts to my diet, I would overshoot my caloric intake and definitely gain weight…but i’m not willing to try and go back to where I was pre-keto.

(Karim Wassef) #103

so you found that cutting out nuts was important to you…

did you achieve that by calorie counting?

I came to the same conclusion for a lot of dairy and veggies and some nuts… without calorie counting.

(Karim Wassef) #104

If you’re going to track anything, I recommend tracking blood glucose and ketones. That is a direct measure of your metabolic state.

Dr Boz compares two different types of keto - one strict and the other is carb cycled… both lost the same weight, but the strict keto lost 2x more fat. The carb cycled lost more lean mass.

The primary indicator was their ketone levels…

(Alec) #105

Now that is really interesting… theories?

(Carl Keller) #106

IMO, we all need to learn this skill if we wish to have a healthy and lasting relationship with eating. The sooner we start practicing, the sooner we can earn our keto black belt. I think the danger is in telling people to eat a specific amount. If they constantly under eat, they risk their metabolism and are more likely to become frustrated and make poor decisions.

It took me a while but I learned through trial and error that satiety is something I feel, 15 minutes after I’ve stopped eating and that it does not mean feeling full. It means that I have eaten enough to not be hungry for at least the next 12 hours. It means I have to balance the desire to continue eating delicious food vs not overfilling my gas tank. It means I have to put a reasonable amount of food on my plate and stop when it’s gone. Finding out that reasonable amount is the key to it all.

Moreover, I believe my capacity for food has increased since becoming fat adapted. I can easily crush a pound and a half of steak without feeling stuffed where as when I was on the SAD, half of that would leave me just shy of bloated. It’s as if my body understands that not eating for long periods of time is the new normal and it is much more accepting of the quality fuel I’ve been giving it.

(mole person) #107

I think her point is that there are plenty of foods that you can have on keto that don’t break the carb bank but also mess with satiation. Nut, dairy, sweeteners, fat bombs, bpc’s, as well as eating too many times a day.

I’m at maintenance and if I allowed any of those (other than dairy, in my case) into my diet I’d not only not lose weight but I’d gain weight fast.

Now if I were a newbie I might not know that there was a problem unless I could see that my calories were way out of whack. I don’t think we should tell anyone to count calories in order to decide how much to eat. But I think it’s a tool that should be brought out reasonably quickly when newbies say they aren’t losing.

(Scott) #108

I think telling newbies to do anything other than the basic keto guidelines is putting too much restriction on them. This includes counting calories. Keep it as simple as possible. They are already stressing over weight, have a messed up body and have been living in a world of low fat, eat less, move more. Basic keto guide is carbs below 20G, adequate protein and the rest of your diet in fat. They are likely going to feel bad and not like it for a good week. Once they are on the other side of ketosis they may want to be mindful of what they eat it is still too early to control calories other then 20g carb and no snacking. Once fat adapted the scale, tape and hunger should be able to drive a change in marcos or caloric intake. No science just my opinion and kind of how I stumbled into keto without strips, meters.and finger pricks.

(Windmill Tilter) #109

I had no idea where carbs were hiding until I started tracking macros. A very large % of people here track macros in an app when they start out, because carbs are so sneaky. When you track carbs in an app, you also get calories whether you like it or not. There is no additional work or complexity.

Personally, I want to track calories, but I never want to see them on the day that I’m eating them. Here is a handy thread I started that shows the available smart phone apps that let you track macros but hide calories, and how to do it.

(mole person) #110

I didn’t use to track anything. I started tracking when I hit my second stall about 15 pounds from my goal. I really thought I was doing keto right but after one day of tracking I realized that I was averaging 500 calories in coffee and cream alone and more than half my carb allowance.

(Jenny) #111

it really amazes me how devisive this topic is. I do count. I have lost 107 pounds. how can anyone argue counting must work for me? (and if it works for me is it impossible it may work for another?) why is it so wrong to suggest measuring ones food to someone who asks for suggestions and who wants to lose weight? (not on this topic; just generally speaking). If someone is posting they are getting disheartened and not losing weight people say eat more. Some of us are 40+, female, maybe a slow metabolism who the hell knows why I cant eat as much as you, and why does it matter? To succeed, I have to find what works. I cant say “look here ass fat, the internet says you are supposed to be melted away by now!”. I don’t come here that much anymore because of it. i am a results based person. sorry. that’s my piece. And you dont have to agree. The arguing just gets old.

(Karim Wassef) #112

Counting macros is helpful.

Counting calories can be deceptive because you don’t know what the hormonal change in your metabolic use due to the food you ate is. Some foods increase it, other decrease it.

Counting macros can be used to determine calories… it’s the output, not the input

(Karim Wassef) #113

When they carb cycled, those subjects dropped to 1/4 of the ketones of the strict keto… even though their calories were the same.

This meant that their bodies were getting the energy from somewhere else while being calorically restricted.

In a low ketone biology, that comes from making more glucose… since you’re already training your body to use glucose part of the time. That comes from gluconeogenesis by breaking down lean mass to make up the deficit.

In a high ketone biology, growth hormone and testosterone are upregulated so the body rebuilds the lean mass as fast as it breaks it down. The energy comes from fat.

This is why measuring ketones has been so important. It’s a real indicator of whether your body is really using fat or if you’re losing lean mass and signaling a lower metabolism.

#114

I know I’ve seen references to studies that demonstrate that people re-gain weight and that re-gain is likely related to their metabolism having slowed significantly due to calorie restriction (such as the “Biggest Loser” study). Are there studies that demonstrate this idea of returning to homeostasis or is that based on what we know about human biology or something else?

It’s my understanding that calorie restriction of any kind will slow your RMR over time. I have also read that keto seems to boost one’s RMR by a couple hundred calories per day (someone referenced a study that I saw in the last couple of days, I’ll see if I can dig it up), so this might put us at a higher starting point. But I haven’t read anything that contradicts the idea that eating at a calorie deficit on keto (which one is if you’re losing weight, regardless of whether you track or count calories or use some other more innate mechanism, like finely tuned satiety signals) will prevent your metabolism from slowing over time.

(Karim Wassef) #115

This is fundamental to keto…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1373635/
Very-low-carbohydrate diets and preservation of muscle mass

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4271639/
The effects of ketogenic dieting on skeletal muscle and fat mass

(Karim Wassef) #116

please review the articles I cited.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #117

It has to do with using the carbohydrate to raise insulin levels.

(Alec) #118

But losing the same amount of weight?? Shouldn’t the body limit the expenditure and preserve muscle mass by lowering metabolism if fat burning is blocked by insulin. Are we saying that if your fat burning is blocked by insulin then the body burns as much muscle as fat to keep things going?? I thought it would slow expenditure down and not burn muscle?

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #119

The body is known to preserve fat mass at the expense of lean tissue well into the process of starvation. That was the sign of how terrible conditions truly were at Auschwitz and Buchenwald: the inmates had lost most of their fat. Remember that not all of the rescuees survived, because some were already too far gone.

(Karim Wassef) #120

If you just fast - no food at all, then the body gets fat adapted. If you keto, the body eventually gets fat adapted.

The problem is in providing just enough carbs to keep insulin high… then you TRAP the body into a no-win scenario.

  1. It can’t access the fat because of insulin.
  2. It will turn down metabolic rate as much as it can.
  3. It will run on glucose in a caloric deficit … the available source is lean mass.

ketones are protective of lean mass. BUT with low ketones, the body will stay in sugar burning mode = consume lean mass.

image
image.jpg1245×717 132 KB

image
image.jpg1200×684 150 KB

It’s a good video - I recommend watching it.

(Karim Wassef) #121

Satiety