I’m brand new. Just started yesterday. I’m using my fitness pal and put in my % goals.
Carbohydrates 5 %
Fat 70 %
Protein 25 %
At 1200 calories that puts me at 15g of carbs/day. Makes sense to me. But people are telling me that’s far too few calories. But if I increase my calories to 2000, my carbs will be at 25g. Shouldn’t I be trying to stay under 20g?
Also, am I tracking total carbs or net carbs? Huge difference, right?
Please help a newbie out.
I’d just keep the carbs below 20g, then eat fatty meats and low carb cruciferous veg until you don’t need to eat more.
The idea is to get used to eating low carbs first, then you can worry about calories if you wish.
Good luck, but keep it simple to begin with.
Forget percentages and count the grams, you want 20g carbs max. Don’t worry about limiting fat / protein, just make sure you eat enough to not be hungry.
Forget percentages, your needs are limits are typically in grams…
It’s individual if net or total works better. My ketosis wasn’t affected by my very high total carbs as far as I could tell and I needed the wriggle room so I always went for net. Later both my net and total went lower and that’s where I got proper benefits so it’s a pity I couldn’t do that to begin with.
Many people found total is better for them.
20g may be too high for someone and impossibly, needlessly low for others but it’s typically pretty safe as a limit so don’t go over it if you can do it. But there may be a huge difference between low enough carbs to be in ketosis or being really low… But let’s not complicate things, stay below 20g carbs, no matter if you eat 1200 or 3800 kcal. 5% percentage doesn’t mean you will be in ketosis, you need to eat little enough carbs for it, in grams.
A lot of things are individual, it may be perfect for some or even the majority and not for you. Try to eat the right stuff and let your body guide you, hopefully it will work. There are very, very few rules in keto. Basically just one, eat low enough carbs for ketosis… The other rules are individual or related to health…
The essential of a well-formulated ketogenic diet is to eat a small enough quantity of carbohydrate to lower insulin to ketogenic levels. Insulin in the blood over a certain amount promotes fat storage and metabolic dysfunction, as witness the epidemic of chronic diseases our society has been experiencing over the past half-century.
Depending on your level of insulin-resistance, you may be able to eat a greater or a lesser amount of carbohydrate without raising your insulin level above the threshold. Below the threshold, the liver can manufacture ketones, and the muscles can metabolise fatty acids. Above the threshold, fat-storage is prioritised instead, and insulin interferes with the healthy functioning of a number of bodily systems.
So the amount of carbohydrate we eat should be strictly limited. We recommend that newcomers should stick to eating no more than 20 g of carbohydrates a day. (You can experiment to find your actual carb threshold once you are keto-adapted.) The energy lost from restricting carb intake can be made up by consuming more fat, which is safe, because fat has almost no effect on insulin secretion. The other advantage of fat is that it takes less than half the amount of fat to provide the energy of a given amount of carbohydrate. So if we cut our carb consumption by 300 g, it takes only 133 g of fat to provide the same number of calories.
Keto diet is a very broad term and everyone has there own view.
I go by
20g carbs maximum and I only allow myself to have ‘incidental’ carbs. That means that I o my eat carbs if I am eating foods that are good for me. So no little sweet treats or bits of sugar, but only carbs from veg like cabbage and avocado.
Protein for me is 150g a day. That is a minimum. I make sure I eat at least this every day.
The rest is made up from fat.
So if I want to eat 1500cals a day I would still keep to my max 20g carbs and min 150g protein.
If I want to eat 3000cals a day, I still keep 20g max carbs and 150g min protein.
The difference is how much fat I eat.
Start by finding out how many calories your body needs with a calculator to maintain your current weight.
Then eat that many calories for a week or so to get used to the diet. Then you can increase exercise or subtract calories.
Don’t try to do a full diet swap, and eat hardly anything at the same time. That’s what I did and I put my body into shock. It was a horrible time.
To add.
The traditional way of starting keto is to eat till you are full. That didn’t work for me. I like to suggest people do calorie count. It’s a very useful tool to do it for a couple of months so you know what you are eatin, how many cals and carbs are in everything and making sure you are getting enough protein.
“Full” is an ambiguous term. My experience was that for the first few weeks, I ate the same quantity of food as I had been eating on my high-carb diet. Then, one day at lunch, I was halfway through the meal, and wham! I was done. I had to put the rest of my plate into the fridge for later.
Looking back, it seems that my body actually needed the larger quantity of food for the first few weeks, but then it adapted to the new way of eating, and apparently my insulin dropped to a level that stopped interfering with my appetite hormones.
That lunch was my first experience of satiety in many, many years, if ever. The difference for me is that “full” means a stomach stuffed literally to the point where any more food might cause a rupture, whereas “enough” means I am no longer hungry. As a carb-burner, I could be “full” and still be ravenously hungry. As a ketonian, I reach the point of “enough” at what feels like no more than a half-full stomach.
The experience of satiety reminds me of a difference pointed out to me by a French professor. She said that Americans tend to say, “I’m full,” whereas she grew up saying the French equivalent for, “I’ve had enough.” This linguistic difference may reflect a difference in eating patterns. I am old enough to remember that the excessively large plates of food seen in American restaurants didn’t start appearing until after people started following the dietary recommendations. But French meals are satisfying with much smaller portions (or used to be, anyway), because they are much heavier on the meat and fat, and much less loaded with grains, starches, and sugar.
Yes. And I think that distinction is very important to point out.
For new people like myself, it is almost impossible to know when you are full when you all these different factors changing.
You body is in shock from lack of carbs, but has more fat than it knows what to do with, then many will start fasting, drink more, add electrolites, not be having enough electrolites, and many will change their eating pattern.
So its really hard to know when you have had enough when you are starting out.
Also, many of us start keto because we have been over eating for years.
I also think that tracking calories is a great thing to learn so I like to advise a more measured approach for the first couple of months till we learn about what our bodies need.
It was super easy for me to see when I had enough, I got satiated then. It was a single point like many times on carnivore, meat has that amazing stop sign and carbs didn’t interfere but it still wasn’t hard. But I understand if it doesn’t come that easily for everyone. You are right, so many factor changes and the body can be confused. I lowered my carbs in multiple jumps. I can’t even imagine how someone going from HCLF (but even from HCHF) to keto feels like…
Even so, carnivore was confusing first. I still felt when I had enough, clearer than ever but there were question marks around/in my head about when to start eating and when to stop… But I figured it out.
And I strongly dislike being full and I very nearly never am, just perfectly satiated so all is well on that front. Sometimes I wonder what people can mean they are full. I do feel I am “full” in some soft, pleasant way sometimes but it’s usually in a well-fasted state…
I just prefer “satiation”, it’s more understandable for me and don’t confuse being content and not needing food at all with some state of the stomach that I consider irrelevant (unless it’s full but I avoid that).
And I agree tracking, at least for a few days, may be a great idea in the beginning. It was pretty useful for me when I drastically changed my woe. I wanted to see my macros, they helped me to understand what I should do to keep them where they should be. Not like I don’t want to leave them in a generously big range, I do but in the beginning we can do it wrong due to our changed signs from our potentially confused body, the fat/protein ratio may be wrong for us… It’s good to catch the problems early.
Of course, tracking have its dangers, some people focus on exact and sometimes wrong grams or ratios too much… But it is quite helpful for many of us.
When I was a ketoer and still ate plants in my old usual not small amounts, I needed tracking or else my carbs would have gone overboard all the time. So not tracking wasn’t even an option.
You will find among members that this is highly individual, however, I count total carbs. When I think “carbs” on keto, I think of mainly produce as being the greatest source. To keep my carbs as low under 20 as I could, I’d confine my produce consumption to a small amount at lunch (or none), and very little at dinner.
IMO, don’t count calories, just eat clean keto foods (one ingredient foods, nothing processed). I started out eating three meals a day having never done so before. I believed what I read and what people related here and just trusted. I was never hungry and my carb and sweet cravings were removed. After 3-4 weeks, my body didn’t want to eat three times a day, and I naturally switched to two meals a day. Listen to your body. You should feel pleasantly full after your meals. Eat the clean keto foods you find delicious and tasty. If you are craving something, eat a little more at your next meal so you are satisfied and not wanting. Post your questions/concerns here. People are ready to help.
Good luck on your journey!
Congrats, you’ve figured out why going by percentages doesn’t work! Figure out what you want to do with your macros and manually put them in. A much easier way is to use this calc, give it your goals, and when it comes up with macros for you, just slide the carbs down to what you want and the rest will re-adjust. On the carbs, most do net, really no point to count carbs your body won’t treat like carbs. Some do total… but good luck with that!
Also, 1200cals is very low, what are your stats currently, height, weight, etc? Are you working out? I can’t see 1200cals/day being realistic for long unless you’re completely sedentary and have no plans of having physical activity.
Also keep in mind: carbs are max, protein is a minimum and fat to fuel your body and keep you from beung hungry in between meals. Fat is NOT A GOAL. Newbies think they have to eat their g of fat every day. Not if you aren’t hungry and have sufficient energy. Do not force fat, but do not skimp either.
You will feel tired and out of sorts until your body switches over from burning carbs to burning fat for fuel.
IMO: Net carbs if used with fiber only. I don’t buy into the sugar alcohols BS.
Resistance starch carbs should be taken w giant grain of salt.
I feel like w fiber my body naturally limits that 
I never ever felt any food tasting like cardboard, it’s such an odd thing to read for me… Expressive, I understand it but still wonder how people’s tastebuds work.
I don’t know what resistant starch are like though. But they normal are carbs, aren’t they (from my viewpoint, so taste and ingredient wise)? They taste like normal carbs then
I do as my body works that way 
Erythritol never caused any problem like net carbs did. Lucky me.
