Kcals?

(Angel lamb) #1

I posted somewhere but not sure where. I don’t think anyone can see it where it’s at. Basically, I have no clue how to follow my keto diet app other than blindly. It’s confusing, with the kcals. Can anyone explain them to me?

(Leslie) #2

If you live in the USA you know Kcals as calories.
The K stands for kilo. Calories are actually kilocalories.
Not something taught in school anymore, sorry

If you don’t live in the USA, the answer is the same but I don’t know how people would know :confused:

(A ham loving ham! - VA6KD) #3

I usually see the distinction as capital C in Cal means kcal, but I guess that is getting blurry nowadays.

I realised this when I heard someone say that the human body consumes about 60-100 watts of energy just to maintain life. So I started to banter around the energy math and if you convert 2000 kcal per day to calories you get 2,000,000 cal. Converting that to kJules let’s say 8400 to keep it rounded, that’s 8,400,000 Jules per day, which works our to about 98 Jules per second or 98W…sorry if that’s warped, but it opened my eyes when I start using 2 million calories as a typical daily need.

(Jay AM) #4

The official Google search definition: A calorie is a unit that is used to measure energy. The Calorie you see on a food package is actually a kilocalorie, or 1,000 calories. A Calorie (kcal) is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius.

But, I doubt that’s the way your app is using them. A kcal=calorie for most food related apps.

(Angel lamb) #5

My keto app has me eating 1500 kcals a day. So it’s actually 1500 calories? But then it detracts when I exercise. For instance, I burned over 20000 kcals on a stationary bike yesterday. So I truth, I only burned 20 something calories?

(Jay AM) #6

You lost me. The app is talking about calories and your bike is on drugs or you’re exercising for literal hours and we should definitely talk about not doing so much exercise in an effort to lose weight and “burn” calories.
I’m leaving my keto crash course newbie recommendations below for you so you can see how your app is lining up and adjust things.

We have a few sayings here, “keep calm, keto on” and “trust the process.” Keto isn’t a quick weight loss diet. It’s a health gaining way of eating with fat loss as a side effect. If the scale is an unhealthy obsession, put it away for a couple of months or give it to a neighbor you don’t like.

There are two phases to ketosis and a ketogenic lifestyle.

Nutritional ketosis is phase one. Your body begins to produce and uptake some ketones while dumping the rest. It will still search for glucose to use as fuel. In this phase it’s not an efficient process. It has to work actively to get rid of stored glycogen, clean up excess blood sugar, and turn on the ability to use ketones.

Fat adaptation is phase two. Your body is efficiently producing ketones from intake and stored body fat and is also using them efficiently for energy. It takes around 6-8 weeks of strict keto to achieve for many but not all.

The basic “rules” I go by and many others can agree with especially for beginners are:

*20g net carbs max (you might tolerate more but, starting out, 20g net carbs or less will get you into ketosis.)

*Moderate protein (1g-1.5g per kg of lean bodyweight is a good goal based on the 2 Dudes recommendations.)

*Fat to satiety (add fat to every meal and, if you are hungry, eat more fat. Don’t be afraid of fat. It is energy.)

*Do not restrict calories

*Do not exercise excessively

*Drink plenty of water

*Get plenty of sodium and other electrolytes

(Angel lamb) #7

I biked for 7minutes( 2 miles)last night at 150 watts. That’s what my diet app goes by. When I plugged that in, it had me burning those kcals, which by what half the internet says, computes to 1 calorie per 1000 kcals. Someone has kind of explained it to me, with 1000 kcals=1 food calorie, and 1 calorie burned =1000 kcals. My bike is one that is powered by using it, it has no power cord, so the watts change.

(Jay AM) #8

Actually, it’s 1000 food calories = 1000 kcal (they are the same in the context of food).

(Angel lamb) #9

Makes sense. What kind of diet do you follow? I can’t go over 19 grams of carbs, and all of these websites I’m searching keep saying stuff like eat yogurt, and no more than one piece of fruit a day, but either of those things will take up half my carbs for the day and leave nothing for satisfying food like veggies and meat.

(Jay AM) #10

I follow what I posted above as the general recommendations. I eat some meat, fat to satiety, some carbs as veggies. I don’t track, I don’t count calories. I tracked in the very beginning to make sure I ate enough calories and fat and to make sure to pay attention to what I could eat. After that, I haven’t tracked. I don’t currently test for anything or weigh myself either. I just live my life with less carbs because, ultimately, that’s what keto means to me. Living.

(Rob) #11

That’s nearer 20 than 20K, but probably around 50-60kcal burned. If you exercise under keto, at least in the early stages, you want to eat those calories rather than starve your body while it is adapting. 50 or 60 don’t matter but if you were burning 5-600kcal in a day, you would want to eat that much more so that you are not starving your body of the resources it needs to switch from carb to fat burning (which is more stressful than it sounds). It is best not to exercise that much in the first few weeks until you’ve properly fat adapted.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #12

Seems to me these apps aren’t really designed for ketonians. I advise ignoring the recommendations and using the app only to track your food intake.

The point of keto is to lower our insulin levels to allow our body to heal and to use ketone bodies and fat as its primary fuel (fat-adaptation). To achieve this, we have to keep our carbohydrate intake as low as possible, no more than 20 grams a day, for most of us. We keep protein moderate (too little or too much both cause problems), and eat fat for the rest of our energy, since it’s the only macronutrient that doesn’t stimulate insulin. Eating fat to satiety is the easiest way to do this, because it eliminates the need to count calories. Our body knows how much food it needs, and will tell us if we let it.