My Start - question about fruits

(Kerri) #1

So today is my day. I’ve been researching for a little while and decided that this was worth an attempt.

I’m 40 years old. I’ve been overweight since puberty. I’ve tried a variety of diets and been on exercise regimens. I’ve lost significant weight 3 times; each time was because my activity level was significant. Each time it went back up because my activity level became insignificant.

18 months ago I decided enough was enough and I started counting all my calories, exercising (cardio & weight training) 4-5 times a week. I concentrated on protein and mid range carbs and fats. I lost weight in the first 8 weeks and then no weight change or body change for 3 months. I spoke with a nutritionist and they just said to keep doing what I was doing. I was doing everything correctly. I ended up quitting and I didn’t put on anymore than a few pounds.

In November and December I noticed that I was putting on more weight than I wanted and decided to start again. I started working out consistently again and watching my food. No weight loss, no body changes.

I can’t see my primary until March so I went to Dr. Google and put in my history “puberty, infertility, overweight”. It came back and said I might have PCOS. The best diet for PCOS seems to be keto and since everything else didn’t seem to work and I can’t increase my activity level to what it was before (life commitments, foot injury) I thought I would try and see if this would work.

There is a list of foods that are “keto” approved. My breakfast was yogurt, PB2, strawberries, blueberries. This put my carb way above because of the fruits. How do you stay in the 20-30 range and still eat healthy “keto” approved fruits and veggies?

(bulkbiker) #2

Simply put you don’t… fruits especially out of season really aren’t that healthy and as you can see usually come with a significant carb load. The fructose has also been associated with NAFLD so doubly “bad”.

Green veg (anything grown above ground) are ok providing they fit in the 20g or fewer category.

(Jack Bennett) #3

Fruits are tough on keto because they are quite energy dense and essentially all that energy is carb. Blackberries and blueberries are good but you’ll quickly reach your limits if you eat a lot of them.

Same with sweet or starchy vegetables like carrots, onions, and tomatoes.

You can probably get away with a lot more leafy greens (kale, collard, bok choy, spinach, lettuce, etc).

As you get more familiar with nutrition data you will develop more intuition for what different foods deliver in carb grams.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #4

One of the first questions we all ask when starting keto is probably “How am I going to eat less than 20 grams of carbs per day, every day?” Followed quickly by “Do I really have to?”

Eating SAD or some variation all our previous lives, consuming literally hundreds of grams of carbs per day, it’s understandable to wonder how on earth can one possibly do it. Pretty much all of us wonder “what am I going to eat?”

First the bad news. There is no perfect keto food that contains zero carbs but has the perfect ratio of fats and protein plus micro-nutrients and is as cheap as the carbs you’ve been eating. If there were, we’d all be eating it every day and telling you to do so.

The good news is, there are many alternatives to the carb-loaded foods you’re accustomed to eating that have low to no carbs and good if not perfect fat to protein ratios. In combination, you can devise a varied, nutritious and appetizing menu that reduces carbs to a minimum and maximizes healthy nutrition. And tastes far better than you think. Probably better than you have ever experienced, and doubt can.

And the better news is you will figure it for yourself! Believe it or not, over the course of the first few months you will discover how to eliminate carbs from your life, not miss them a bit and start to enjoy the full benefits of ketogenic eating. You will learn to read food labels. That’s a simple thing, and a necessary thing. You will learn to look up nutritional data online. That’s a simple thing, and a necessary thing. You will learn that this is not rocket science, but it does require diligence and not fooling yourself with wishful thinking. You will discover many helpful suggestions on this forum. You can live without carbs, no matter what anyone says.

“Yes, but do I really have to keep sub-20 grams of carbs per day?”

Even Phinney and Volek say 50 grams per day or less. Many folks on this forum say they can maintain ketosis while eating 60, 70 or even 100 grams of carbs per day. Whaaaa…!

My advice is this. There is no essential carbohydrate, thus no necessary nutrient that is not available in fat and/or protein. Carbohydrate is just another name for sugar; our metabolism synthesizes all the sugar (glucose) we need so there is no need to eat it. Eating sugar in anything more than insignificant and incidental quantities introduces risk of metabolic disorder and disease. Maintaining ketosis brings a host of healthful benefits. Eating carbs not so much. And if you are dealing with obesity, Type 2 diabetes and/or insulin resistance, eating carbs is the worst thing you can do to yourself. I don’t care what your doctor says about it.

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The above is from here. I didn’t just post the link because it’s long topic with lots of contradictory commentary, which just might confuse you as a newbie. But if you’re curious, dive in!

Why do we sometimes get thrown out of Ketosis 2
Type of carbs within macros?
#5

Hi Kerrbear and welcome
One of the hardest things to realise when switching to Keto is that everything one was told in the past that is BAD for you is now GOOD for you. I had not eaten butter in 4 decades and now everything I eat is swimming in butter and fat. Because as it turns out- its the sugar that will kill you, not the fat. So instead of your so-called “healthy” breakfast of yoghurt and berries - try 3 scrambled eggs and bacon. Its a totally new ballgame to do this Kerrbear- and it takes some adjustment after being told for your whole life what healthy eating is supposed to look like. Just keep hammering it into your head: THEY WERE WRONG THEY WERE WRONG THEY WERE WRONG
I make myself a mean mac and cheese with cauliflower instead of macaroni and it is soooo good. The food is so rich. I eat like a queen and I have lost 8 lbs. Who knew? I have also lost really terrible IBS with cramping and it looks like I was allergic to grains as well. I can’t go back to bread even if I wanted to because it would make me very sick.

#6

Berries are usually(?) fine but you eat too much of them. I am good with ridiculous amounts and never cared about what is keto-friendly, I ate whatever I wanted and was able to squeeze into my day :smiley: When I started keto, I ate banana with chocolate almost every day and sometimes 6 different fruits and it was usually 3g net carbs… When I want a bit more fruit, I use raspberries but still a small amount. If you sacrifice most of your carb intake for fruits, you can have a not too little amount of berries, plan and see how much.
The mentioned dish is carbs with carbs and little satiation effect. It’s fine if you can fit it into your diet and it’s worth it for you. But every items have carbs, too much for their calories. Your other meals should be way better then, it might work. It it’s doable and fine for you.

One easily can eat lots of carbs from “keto-friendly” food. I could eat 30g carbs in a meal without any plants if I really wanted…

(Kerri) #7

Thank you for all the replies. I gave the fruit to my wife and daughter and made a change to my eating plan for the rest of this week. If it weren’t for the fruit I would have hit 20 grams today. Net grams for today was 38.

(Rebecca ) #8

Welcome! It’s hard at first to reverse all of the “nutritional propaganda” from the past. Read info here, listen to 2 KetoDude podcasts and learn! Before you know it, changes and healings begin and it starts to make sense!

(BuckRimfire) #9

One thing to keep in mind: all the conventional wisdom of the past fifty years that says “you’re going to kill yourself with a heart attack eating like that!!!1!!” overlooks the fact that even those guys thought it would take you many years or decades to do that. A few months or a couple of years of high fat eating don’t matter AT ALL, even if they’re right (which they’re not…it’s called the “diet-heart hypothesis” not “The Diet-Heart Theory” for a reason: unlike Newton’s Theory of Universal Gravitation or Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, there’s not enough evidence to elevate it to the level of a “theory,” which in science means an idea with a compelling conceptual underpinning AND a solid amount of supporting evidence…a gazillion recent studies show that a low triglyceride/HDL ratio is a stronger predictor of good health than low fat or low LDL-C, and TG/HDL is improved by a low-carb diet).

The tough part is the first few days and weeks. Maybe if you are careful enough to reduce your carbs by 50 grams per day each week for however long it takes to get below 50 per day, you can ease into it with no ill-feelings.

I wasn’t that smart or patient and crashed in one Saturday with a change from >1000 calories per day in carbs to <100 calories per day. My spousal critter and I felt pretty crappy after a couple of days. Luckily, we were told by the guy who pitched low-carb to us that drinking some salt-water would help. Turns out, your kidneys are responsive to insulin and going from a chronically high-insulin state to low insulin means your water and salt balance is screwed up a bit for a while. This is also part of why people lose some “water weight” in the first few days. Having your water/electrolyte balance thrown off will make you feel pretty weird, so you’ll want to address this problem.

The cure seems to be to drink a cup of salty water two or three times a day. Search online for “ketoade” or “ketoaide” and you’ll find various recipes. Sodium is key, but if you include some potassium and magnesium, so much the better. You don’t need to buy Powerade Zero. A few pennies worth of salts and tap water will do fine. Your kidneys will figure out how to deal with the new normal pretty soon. We only had to drink ketoade for a few days.

You may want to also reduce your expectations WRT to exercise for a while. I’m a big fan of exercise, but I did feel a bit weak during gym workouts for some time after starting low carb. EXTREMELY intense exercise may require carbs, but most recreational activities don’t. Do what you like, physically (I was able to go on a fairly intense six-hour mid-aerobic trek without food after a couple of month on keto), but if you feel like you are a bit off, don’t worry about it while you adapt to doing without mountains of carbs every day. Your liver can take it, but after decades on the Standard American Diet, a period of adjustment is to be expected.

(BuckRimfire) #10

Another thing to make clear: count carbs, NOT calories. If you’re hungry, eat, as long as it’s low-carb, high healthy fat and moderate protein. Be patient. If limiting carbs but not limiting calories doesn’t work after a few months, you can take another look at the issue, but for now, just enjoy looking for a decent level of satiation. It works for most people because fat is satiating and insulin is hunger-inducing (and fat-storing).

And I hope you like cabbage!

(Scott) #11

I haven’t had a piece of fruit in eighteen months and I am still alive to tell this tale.

#12

A few years ago, CNN news had a report on the uselessness of margarine. They said that butter had been maligned for decades and it just wasn’t true. Margarine was NOT better than butter. My own father ate margarine religiously for decades thinking that he was saving himself from arteriosclerosis by doing so. He died of sclerotic dementia at 79. If you look into youtube, you will find all sorts of medical myths debunked. The sugar industry is so powerful and wealthier than the pope. They have placed sugars into everything to keep the shelf life and preserve foods. The obesity epidemic in America is due to this, and not fats.

(Kerri) #13

I’m using my fitbit to log my food. using this, I subtract the total fiber from the total carbs? I was reading in another forum or post about the carbs already have the fiber subtracted on the nutrition labels? Maybe it is for the UK only that it is like that??? Other than Monday with the fruit I ate. My carbs - fiber have been averaging 15g.

(Polly) #14

I think that labels carry net carbs in the UK. One thing to bear in mind is that 20g carbs is a limit not a goal so perhaps counting total carbs [including fibre] gives you a safer margin. Also real food tends not to have packaging or labels in the first place.

(Richard Hanson) #15

Good Morning Kerri,

Welcome to the Ketogenic forum, most welcome.

I don’t eat fruit. Once in a blue moon, i might have a few bitter berries, but fruits are simply not part of my diet. I eat mostly animal products and a modest amount of vegetables.

  • broccoli
  • cauliflower
  • Brussels sprouts
  • asparagus
  • spinach
  • cabbage
  • mushrooms
  • arugula
  • avocado
  • avocado
  • avocado
  • okra

Nothing that grows below the ground or stores much in energy. Just one or two cups of vegetables a day and mostly as a substrate for fats.

One thing I noticed in your post, and this is certainly not meant as a criticism, is a pattern of loosing and gaining weight that is inversely related to exercise. Clearly, you have a lot of disapline else you would not have lost a lot of weight several times in your life, but for weight loss to be sustainable it must not be a function of willpower. Please forgive me for offering advice, but if you enjoy exercise then just exercise for the enjoyment. Decouple you exercise from you weight loss goals. In the long run, over the rest of your life, do what ever exercise you desire just because that is part of your life.

I would also stay away from terms such as “healthy” foods, keto approved or otherwise. Even the idea of “healthy” fats v. bad fats. One of the realities I have learned is that we are mostly stupid and we truly don’t have an accurate understanding of what is or is not a healthy food, or healthy eating, or what the hell is a clean food? Such ideas carry an emotional payload, everyone feels good about themselves when they are eating healthy,or clean, or organic even when they are unhealthy. For years we where told not to eat eggs, then we should eat eggs, then we should not eat eggs. Science is a bit confused at times. I try to focus on what healthy peoples eat and how they live, peoples that had almost no diseases in their population before science told them what was or was not good for them to eat, I think that is a good dietary model. I try to stay away from modern process foods that lots of sick people eat.

If food in a box, a jar, or a can, is advertised as heart healthy, mostly likely it is not. I read such labels as food industry profit healthy. The food industry has no idea what is or is not healthy to eat, but they have a very good idea about how to market processed foods to the general population.

On keto, I gave up a great number of foods I loved to eat. Perhaps I miss bread the most, but I also gave up all of my diabetic medications. I might not be able to eat some foods I like, but I also never eat anything I don’t like. For a few weeks, I did choke down a green smoothie each day, packed with all the best “super foods”, but I no longer engage in such foolishness.

From you history, sustainability appears to be the biggest issue, not what you are eating or how vigorously you are exercising. I would focus on the foods and activities that you enjoy and make this a new way of living, not a diet, not a program, not a temporary change to reach a short term goal. What is a happy life other then doing the things you enjoy doing and eating what you like to eat with the people you love the most?

Once again, welcome to the forum.

Keto for Life,
Richard