Low(er) fat keto?

(Marie) #22

I’m a keto newbie (end of 7th week), so if this comment seems to display a lack of knowledge, please bear with me.

This post caught my attention because just this morning I was looking at my macros from start day, and now that I’ve lost weight and a little body fat, I was wondering if I should recalculate my essential data to reflect current weight and body fat and readjust my daily intakes, or keep the intakes the same as day one. Hope this makes sense. If this is way off subject and I should post in a separate thread, please let me know.

(Khara) #23

@HudsMarie Congrats on your success! Have you gotten yet to where you feel you can listen to your body and can sense satiety? I personally use calculated macros and keto percentage ratios as a general guideline and do not hit them consistently every day. My numbers fluctuate around the general area. Some days I need more, some days less. So I personally would not recalculate and try to stick hard to new numbers after just 7 weeks because I don’t think the weight loss would be significant enough to change the target numbers more than the general window that my daily fluctuations fall inside of.

(Marie) #24

Thanks. I do know it’s early to start making big changes, but I wondered in principle. I definitely know when I am satiated, and stop eating, but yesterday, for the first time I made myself finish my plate (old bad habit) and regretted it afterwards. So now I know I need to listen to my body when it tells me I’ve had enough.

(What The Fast?!) #25

What about coffee with only a teaspoon of butter or coconut or MCT oil? I like cream in my coffee but wanted to eliminate dairy, so I make blended coffee with a tsp of either butter or coconut oil or MCT oil and it gives it enough creaminess but with just 5g of fat instead of 15-30g fat.

#26

A teaspoon? Pfft. I wouldn’t worry or double think about that! I think when we get into TBSP+++ land, it can have different effects and consequences consistently over time.

(Chris) #27

I agree unless you’re following some weird bleeding-edge macros, which from your log I know you’re not. Moderation comes into play here and a teensy amount of butter is probably not going to be a dealbreaker. @KetoLikeaLady

(What The Fast?!) #28

Agreed! Incidentally, a tsp of coco oil, MCT oil, butter all have roughly 5g fat - as does 1T of heavy creamer.

#29

Right. I don’t sweat stuff like this. I’ve been catching myself lately with touches of orthorexia and have been reminding myself that if we can’t have a tsp of butter in our coffee (especially instead of cream!) on a LCHF WOe, then heaven help us all. But again, your approach is much different than most BPC approaches you see, and seems quite within the realm of reason, actually.

(Khara) #30

Hmm. That’s a good point. The early BPC recipes I saw when first learning had big scoops of both coconut oil and butter plus the cream. We really can get a similar experience even with much reduced ingredient amounts. Definitely tailorable to our individual needs.

My current usuals are black coffee during the work day and some cream when off and relaxing. I was a HUGE coffee and cream drinker previously. Actually for several years before Keto it was coffee with cream and sugar. And pretty much chain drinking all day long. Computer job and really long days. It was kind of my sanity during the long work hours. Went Keto and successfully stopped the sugar. It was easier than I expected. Like quitting sugar, switching to black was also easier than I’d expected.

If I find that I need to try zero dairy I’ll keep your suggestions in mind. Having greatly reduced it recently, it will be interesting to see if there are any effects. I have a few reasons for doing this personally - trying to reduce fat in an effort for more body fat to be used for energy (subject of this thread), experimenting due to being a hyper-responder, and cream was sort of becoming an addiction like sugar had been so I want to practice some self control with it. :expressionless:

(What The Fast?!) #31

Welcome to my world. :slight_smile: I track everything so I have the data and can look back and see what finally works for me.

Yeah - I don’t know for sure if I have an issue with dairy but because I’m not getting results with anything else, I figured I’d try that just in case it’s part of the problem. Though, honestly, I kind of think eliminating things is making it worse (both in terms of weight gain and also being orthopedic). I’ve lost a lot of the “freedom” that comes with the idea of eating keto - which means increased stress, etc.

I’m also a hyper-responder so I decided to try and start doing more olive oil and less coconut oil, butter, etc.

(Khara) #32

Thanks for this Brian… Mentioning the existence of orthorexia I mean. It can easily snowball out of control. Thankfully I have a fairly relaxed attitude with this particular WOE and mostly my obsession is rooted in excitement and curiosity over the science. I try to keep an attitude of just allowing time to go by and seeing how this goes but the research and learning tends to fill all free time.

(Annette) #33

This is exactly the topic that brought me to the forum this evening. There have been several articles posted of late about the body using added fat prior to using body fat (as the Dudes say, the Krispy Kreme we ate years ago). This just makes sense. Where I get confused is when people who have stalled begin to lose again when they up their fat intake.

I have been doing keto for a year and a half and have had barely any of the weight loss or inches loss that people are reporting in their transformation posts. This makes me so sad. I keep my mouth shut and don’t mention anything about being ketogenic, other than saying that I don’t eat sugar, starches, or grains. People don’t see any changes in me. I can hardly be the poster girl for eating keto. I have a long way to go before I can pay it forward by perhaps leading someone to keto by example.

(Sonia A.) #34

Those people probably didn’t eat enough calories to support a healthy metabolism. When they added more fat to their diet, it revved up their metabolism and they started to lose weight

Another possibility is that by eating more fat, those people can lower their carb and protein intake, which leads to less insulin and weight loss.

(Tim W) #35

To summarize what I think I’m getting from this post (just to make it easier for some to follow):

  1. Drop the carbs, that’s rule number one of this process, if you can’t drop the carbs, fat amounts don’t matter. Once you are low/no sugar and low/no carbs, then focus more on the “other” macros.

  2. Eat fat to satiety, maybe over-indulge a little (it’s easy to do thanks to BPC and other easy to ingest foods, other fats are not, imagine drinking bacon grease straight for 10 minutes…).

  3. At some point, you might start feeling the desire to fast intermittently, this could provide the same benefit as lowering calories/fats the same as a calorie/fat restriction diet, example, if you are only eating once a day because that’s all you feel like eating, as long as you are not gorging and distending the stomach (causing an insulin response?) then you may continue to lose weight, even if eating high fat within your smaller eating window.

  4. If you are eating fat ad litbitum and not losing pounds, consider lowering the the fat levels while being careful not to raise protein too high, and it goes without saying that carb levels stay low this entire time!

I’ll add a few points to consider:

  • It may not be the fat causing folks not to lose weight, they might be consuming a fake sugar (ACE-K etc) in their diet that could be causing an insulin response without a glucose response (Doc Nally has a good article on his website about this). Coffee creamers are a place to look for items like this, coke zero is another. Even as a sugar burner I could not lose weight drinking coke zero (just speaking anecdotally here) although I was exercising 2-3 times a day. I dropped the coke zero and the pounds fell off (people thought I had cancer…)

  • If you are eating “net carbs” (subtracting fiber from carb content) you might be fooling yourself, I’d suggest going under 20 true carbs for a few weeks and see how you react to that.

  • Dairy has been troublesome for some, might be helpful to cut that out and/or while you are at it, try one of the many suggested restriction diets to see how you fare. Maybe eat bacon and eggs/butter/olive oil only for a few weeks, how did that work out, then add in some of the other foods, one food group at a time and test reactions.

Just a few random thoughts, I don’t disagree with the working hypothesis that some folks may have to lower fat intake to achieve their desired weight loss, however, the concept of fat until satiated will probably work to help with weight loss in the early stages and help keep those on maintenance at their desired ranges.

(Linda Culbreth) #36

I agree, Biff. Good words of advace.

#37

On many different diets people up their calories to con the body it isn’t starving. It breaks the plateau

(bulkbiker) #38

I think that you should really say that fasting has far more benefits than a low calorie diet.
It will increase your metabolism rather than slowing it and by eating in a restricted window trigger fewer insulin responses.

Dread's Progress Thread - Extended Fasting & Carnivore
(Sonia A.) #39

IMO, BPC is a great tool when you begin your Keto journey. It helps to increase your fat intake and become fat adapted. When you stall, it needs to go.

#40

Not only artificial sugar, and even sugar substitutes may induce insulin response. Artificial sugar damage your gut microbiome, which acts as blood sugar buffer and responsible for your overall health.

Dairy from conventional have more estrogen in them (grain & soy) as well as hormones which can impact your IGF level and be contributing to weight gain. Milk is a bad idea for weight loss imo, as it have sugar and blood sugar effects, as well as IGF. However, good full fat dairy from 100% grassfed have conjugated linoleic acid which help with weight loss.

There are other things like thyroid health and household toxins like hygiene and laundry products that’s inhibiting your ability to lose weight. My personal belief is detoxing is an important aspect of weight loss. For several years now I only use Dr. Bronner’s organic soap and non-toxic laundry products.

Maybe I haven’t come across this, but I’d like to see a study of fat loss effectiveness of a diet higher in monounsaturated fat vs saturated, and vice versa. I wonder if shifting a bit toward monounsaturated help as it is a good fat for energy burning (see links: 1, 2 , 3). Also protein might even be a more satiating macro than fat, doesn’t mean you should over do it, but something to consider. Tidbit on body composition and macronutrient ratio, reducing fat intake may help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd8QFD5Ht18&t=26m5s

(Tim W) #41

Great point!

That topic is currently being discussed in my other posts (in the fasting section of the forums). :smile: