I’ve been doing Keto for almost two month and need some help. At first, I just focused on cutting carbs to only incidentals from veg and nuts and a little in milk/cream. Ate lots of fat and protein till I was satiated, trying to get fat adapted. I monitored ketones from urine output and got some mid-level readings on the strips. Never really experienced keto flu or anything like that. Did some intermittent fasting in the 5:2 style. Down from 285 -> 273 but am slowing a bit. Think I’m in ketosis but not totally sure.
Now I am starting to track food with Carb manager and feel like I am doing it all wrong. Keeping my carbs in the net 20-40g range which is good but I am having trouble with calories and protein where I am going way over. It’s making me feel like I am eating way too much. Used macro calculator and came up with figures below. What do you think?
Am also just confused how to keep within these ranges and still feel satiated. I ate some roasted chicken at lunch today and almost blew through my protein. Now I know chicken is lean but I dont think I can eat bacon and beef all the time. I used to do Weight Watchers in the past and I always got tired of the portion restriction and the tracking of everything. I’m not missing bread that much and not craving carby snacks. I want keto to be a way of life for the long term and I am willing to track in the short term so that I learn but am feeling a little lost. Thanks for listening.
2000 kcal Daily Calorie Intake
25 g Carbs (5%, 100 kcal)
137 g Protein (27%, 548 kcal)
150 g Fat (68%, 1352 kcal)
welcome to the forum…I hope we can help you on your journey!
A few quick thoughts…counting calories (for restriction) usually doesn’t help with keto. Just watch you carb level, with a starter’s template of 20 grams or less per day, and after a few weeks, you can adjust (up or down depending on your progress). Protein target is typically around 1 gram protein per kg lean body mass.
Can you provide us with your typical foods in your daily meals and snacks? This info will help us diagnose the issue and provide better advice.
I’ve been at it for about two months so I thought I was ready for adjustment. Any clue how to calculate lean body mass?
Breakfast: typically bacon eggs and cheese or sausage egg and cheese sometimes with a small side salad and a vinaigrette. Other days full fat no sugar yogurt with a small amount of frozen berries and maybe a little peanut only peanut butter. Coffee with heavy cream or half and half, maybe some liquid stevia. Still need to try BPC.
Lunch: Salad with chicken, cheese, and ranch. Tuna and mayo. Roasted chicken.
Just as a quick look at the foods, and with some assumptions I am making because you did not provide quantity, it looks like you are going over 20 grams carbs. Carbs are pretty sneaky and add up very quickly.
I think the fat content in your meals is too low, too. An easy way to increase fat is melting butter, and adding flavouring to it (like herbs or garlic powder or onion powder or cayenne, etc). Imagine if you had a gravy boat like this for every meal, filled with flavoured melted butter, to pour all over your food:
Another thing you can do is make hollandaise sauce, which is yummy and very fatty, great with eggs for breakfast or salads for lunch or steak for dinner. Recipe is here:
When it comes to snacking or desserts…two strategies that I find work for many is (1) no snacking and no dessert…just eat your meals without snacking or dessert, or (2) only eat high fat, animal-sourced snacks…for example, for snacks eat boiled eggs, bacon strips, pork rinds, and for dessert eat whipped cream without any berries or chocolate.
You can get a lot of variety if you consider all your protein sources, like:
Beef - meatballs, steaks, sauteed strips, slices of roast beef, sausages, ribs, stewed cubes
Pork - meatballs, pork chops, sauteed strips, slices of tenderloin, sausages, bacon, ribs
Chicken - wings, drumsticks, thighs, breast
Eggs - boiled, cheesy fritatta, veggie + cheese omelette, poached, fried, scrambled
Fish - fresh filet (salmon, sole, haddock, etc), canned (tuna, salmon)
Seafood - shrimp, calamari, scallops, etc
A good thing to do is buy a big hunk of meat (usually cheaper than buying small packs), and roast it. Then you have leftovers for breakfast and lunch (add to salad or veggies).
There are great recipes in this forum, many are quick and tasty…like 2 keto dudes chicken wings
Hi. Ill keep it short and please take it with a grain of salt. I was doing similar to but ive found great results. firstly i agree with others about counting calories but still i like to count calories. However understanding the argument against it i shoot for 3000-3500 calories per day which i rarely hit but it allows me to count and be sure not to restrict. Next i keep my protein to less than 120 per day most days. Lastly and most importantly, i think, is i mix it up. Sometimes i fast for 12 hours somedays its 18 hours. Other times i fast for 3 days or 6 days or whatever. But on eating days i always eat a lot as specified in the beginning. Further there, i dont even count my carbs. I love spinach and letusses with a ton of olive oil and some mothers vinegar. Frozen veggies done up in the frying pan but with 4 tbsp of butter, its almost like veggie cereal. So deliciously yummy. Anyway thats my rambling response. Hope it may help someone somehow somewhere somewhen. I think its simple and when youre confused about what to eat there is ALWAYS bacon and eggs. Or just bacon.
I’m not necessarily an expert but I have researched quite a bit and dropped ~30lbs in 3.5 months.
I don’t mind being boring if it gets me to where I want to be. After I’ve had great success I’ll look to expand my menu more once I reach my target (another 60 or so pounds and I’ll be skinny and at my cycling weight).
Breakfast for me is an raw Avocado cut in half salted and some form of fish. Right now it’s sardines, clams, mussels, anchovies or smoked salmon. All are pretty high fat content, protein. Canned anchovies tend to be VERY salty. I prefer fresh. With that type of breakfast I’m good for 6 or so hours till lunch. Oh, I’ll have coffee with a dash of heavy whipping cream.
Lunch is generally a salad. Handful of spinach, blue cheese, blue cheese dressing, salami and a little bit of a fatty meat. something like that keeps me good for another 6hrs. If I need a snack I’ve been leaning toward one oberto sausage stick (high fat). Just one will boost me for 1.5-2.5hrs.
Dinner is more interesting because of family… Ideally a fatty meat, low net carb veggie and I’m good. Another type of evening snack is to roll a piece of cheese with salami or pepperoni. One or two rocks and is minimal carb.
Ketone pee strips can be funky wrt measuring ketones after you become fat adapted. Even though you are burning fat the quantity and type of ketones being spilled out through your urine goes down. Listen to the 2 keto dudes ketone podcast to learn more.
I avoid low fat protein sources because meat is an excellent fat source and if it’s lean then I need to specifically add a bunch of fat to compensate. Milk is a needless carb. HWC tastes great and is zero carb. You only need a little bit in your coffee. Nuts are tough too. Some are worse than others for carbs. I think Macadamia and Almonds tend to be lower carbs. It’s easy to blow the budget if you’re not careful.
Once you’re really fat adapted hunger kind of wanes quite a bit and then hankering for specific things doesn’t seem to weigh on me nearly as much.
You’re doing great! Tinker a bit and don’t sweat the keto strips. Lastly if you stall for 1-6 weeks this far in it could be PISS (post induction stall syndrome). Keep at it and it will pass. If not there’s techniques for dealing with that too.
If you haven’t started feeling like skipping meals then your calories are probably too low. As others have said keep the carbs as low as possible until you find your threshold. Watch the protein and really try to fill up on the fat, butter, olive oil, avocado oil.
Don’t set at upper calorie threshold, ignore it for now. Eating more calories will likely start you down a path of intermittent fasting. Track macros to ensure ratio only (80 fat/15 pro/5 carb or whatever you are shooting for).
That is one area that it seems to me you could improve upon. If you eat less often, even if it is larger meals when you do eat, you may improve insulin response and maybe more weight loss, even at a higher caloric intake.
My wife is doing “dirty keto” and having similar issues getting into ketosis, she has to tightly regulate all but total caloric intake. That may change after further weight loss but for now, it’s almost zero total carbs for her, u are not alone…
I hate restricting portions too. I like that with this WOE you only have to pay strict attention to carbs (I know, you eat protein to your body mass, but I’m way less strict with that number than the carbs). I think you’ve gotten great advice thus far, I will agree that adding fat to your meals may be helpful, as it looks a little low to me as well. I find this hard to do too - I don’t know if it’s a mental block or what. I found that a bottle of “light tasting” olive oil is my BFF. I buy the small glass organic bottle and put it on everything. It’s easy, you can take it places, and it doesn’t have the strong flavor I’d rather avoid.
Also, I know there are websites you can find that will show you pics of what certain body fat percentages look like if you don’t have access to a DEXA scan. That’s the method I use, so it is a bit of a guess, but it’s an educated guess.
2 Keto dudes have a podcast where they discuss it also.
Postulation from what I understand:
In the beginning with this diet you body flushes a bunch for water weight, inflammation. Also your body initially scavenges stored glycogen. As it depletes these it is forced to start ramping up fat burning. That takes time. During this time most people stall. Once it ramps up fat burning you’re good to go and then weight loss continues. For me it was about 2 weeks or so. I just stuck it out. However, I think I also was less hungry and was able to drop my caloric intake, still with plenty of fat, w/o effort during that time.
I am on my first fast & " chicken bouillon w/1-2 T butter" is my new best friend! It’s like drinking a cup of yummy chicken soup only with added benefit of fat! I will be incorporating this daily as a delicious way to increase fat!
You got a lot of great advice here! Welcome! KCKO
Sorry about disappearing. Been sick. Based on this calculator, Male, 36yrs, 6’1", 273lbs, I am 177.9lbs lean body mass and should eat about 80 grams of protein. That seems like so little.
yes, at 1 gram per kg LBM it will be in the 80 gram range. Some people can easily bring that to 1.5 g per kg LBM, so that yields approx 120 grams protein.
This is a great opportunity for you to do some n=1 testing to see what works.
