Need help with Macros

(Ryan) #1

I am new to keto and I have type 2 I am 6’3” and weigh 275. I am scared of my diagnosis and know that keto can help me. I am trying to understand how to calculate my macros and how many calories I should eat to lose weight.

Thanks in advance

(Geoffrey) #2

I’m probably no help but I would just lean more towards carnivore and just focus on eating fat, protein, salt and water.

#3

I never ate according to plan even when I had one… But first I couldn’t have. How would anyone know, including you, how much food do you need on any given day?
Anyway, let’s start with the simplest approach and eat to satiation. It may work just fine, it happened to many people.

But for a newbie, the most important thing is to get used to keto and enjoy it enough to stick to it. If you have a healh conscious determination, it’s less important but we still should enjoy our food most of the time I say :smiley:

So that’s about amounts. Whatever feels best, in the beginning at least.
Macros, grams, ratios… It’s individual. You want little carbs and enough protein. And enough fat to get you enough energy. Apart from that, try to find that works and feels best for you. I don’t go over 65% fat because I would overeat there (high protein need, not high energy need, fat-loss goals. my taste drags me a bit higher but it can be trained to some extent). While some people need 80% fat. Or even way more but 80% may have therapeutic purposes. Our “ideal” macro percentage (or ranges as it’s possible one has a huge wriggle room. I don’t, normally) depends on various things, energy and protein need, goals, even personal taste matters… We can’t all just eat according to any keto macros, our bodies may not let us. And it often knows what it needs and wants so good to listen to it. In some cases, it doesn’t do, something is messed up and we need to guide it…

I don’t know anything about you so I can’t give an advise about what and how much to eat. When I was a newbie, I needed plenty of carbs (though little compared to my previous low-carb diet) and lots of sweets :smiley: I ate zero meat. Now my default chosen woe is carnivore(-ish, tiny extras of certain kind), much better but I needed a lot of time to be ready for it. Even if you can just do a drastic change, who knows what works best for you? Some people on this forum only feels right on carnivore. Others tried it and it didn’t work for them. Some even goes to low-carb as keto isn’t the right one…

Good luck!

By the way, there are calculators for keto, I just wouldn’t trust them. I like to figure out for myself anyway but they truly can’t surely tell what your body will be comfortable with. I couldn’t ever eat according to what calculators give to me. I would be starving (just the feeling, not the real lack of nutrition) all the time! But that depends on the chosen items too. It’s super important, one protein source may not satiate you, some items is known to trigger overeating in many people…etc. But it takes some time to figure it out what is right for you.

#4

Nothing to be scared of, easy enough to fix, and with time it should stay that way.

If you’ve you’ve never tracked before, and don’t have a mental starting point, the easy way is with a tracker like Macro Factor that will figure out everything for you and adjust macros as needed to keep you on track, won’t let you over eat and more importantly show you if you’re UNDER eating. Aside from good muscle mass being important for health and longevity (and lets be real, how you look) muscle is the ultimate glucose disposal agent.

The other way is start with a good macro calc, id recommend the MAPS Macro Calulator, let it come up with it’s numbers for your goal, then slide the carbs down to where you want them, and it’ll readjust the others automatically. Only thing there or with any macro calc is it’s just a baseline guess, you need to tweak as needed and constantly to keep it right.

Berberine is also a great supplement to help improve insulin sensitivity.

(Allie) #5

You don’t need a plan at first. Just get used to eating as low carb as possible and tweak as you go.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #6

“Need help with macros”? Ignore them.

Eat as little carbohydrate as you can manage. Under 20 g/day is good. Cut sugar, starches, and grains out of your diet and stick to salad greens and other non-grain vegetables that grow above ground. That eliminates peas and maize/corn and leaves you with broccoli, cauliflower, and the like. Tomatoes are okay, if you don’t go overboard. Nuts can be low- or high-carb; you’ll have to find out which are which.

The carbohydrate we eat is all glucose, which seriously raises our blood sugar. Normally, insulin can keep it under control, but there comes a point where the body becomes too insulin-resistant for that to work any longer. That’s why diabetes is so strongly related to obesity, because insulin is the primary fat-storage hormone (among its many, many other duties). So the treatment is to eat very little carbohydrate, so as to allow insulin to drop out of the fat-storage range and back into the fat-metabolising range. The presence of ketones is a sign that this has occurred.

And that’s why our advice is to eat less than 20 g/day of carbohydrate, eat a reasonable amount of protein, and get the rest of your energy from fat. Protein has very little effect on insulin, in the absence of carbohydrate–and fat has no effect, under any circumstances, which makes it a good source of energy on a ketogenic diet.

If we eat mostly protein and fat, our body will tell us when we’ve eaten enough. During the first few weeks, eating to satisfy hunger will be a lot of food, but as the appetite hormones insulin was interfering with re-regulate themselves, your food intake will drop, because your body will tell you when it’s eaten enough.

So you see, “macros” (as percentages of calorie intake) are irrelevant. Just get enough protein and fat, while eating as little carbohydrate as you can manage. Trust your body to let you know what it needs.

(Alec) #7

As everyone has said, keto is real simple: just don’t eat carbs… or as few carbs as you can manage.

If you are T2D, then treat this seriously. Your food is your medicine. And this is completely fixable. If you don’t eat carbs you will put your T2D into remission very quickly.

And as a by-product you will lose weight, and you will start feeling fantastic!

(Marianne) #8

Always love your posts, Paul. Just wanted clarification on the above. If our carbs are <20, we can eat as much fat as we want? I ask because I love fat, especially in the form of cheese, cream cheese and HWC (in soup). I don’t have trouble keeping the carbs low, but I think the cheese/cream cheese is keeping my weight the same, probably because I am pretty sedentary. Can’t seem to drop any more pounds.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #9

Yes. Fat doesn’t affect insulin at all (well, except for the bare minimum consistent with staying alive).

Protein combined with carbohydrate elevates insulin (above what the carbohydrate does, I mean). Protein alone without carbohydrate does stimulate insulin, but it also stimulates an equivalent amount of glucagon, so the insulin/glucagon ratio remains low, which Bikman has shown is actually the controlling factor for whether we are in ketosis or not. We tend to speak of insulin alone, but it’s really the combination of insulin and glucagon that regulates our metabolic functions.

So the determining factor in whether we are in fat-metabolising or fat-storing mode is how much carbohydrate we are eating.

Some people do find that dairy is a hindrance, but my understanding is that it’s not because of the fat, but because of the dairy proteins. Dairy is on Paul Mason’s list of foods that can be problematic for certain people.

(Alec) #10

I am in the dairy industry. Cheese and cream cheese have a fair bit of protein, it is not just fat. And as PaulL says, protein raises insulin. Not spectacularly, but it does.

My strategy is to always make any cheese or cream cheese intake part of a meal. If you are eating a steak anyway, this is a mix of protein and fat, so you’re eating a decent amount of protein anyway. Just make the cheese/cream cheese part of that meal. Another way of looking at it: don’t snack on cheese/cream cheese.

Double cream is slightly different as it has a higher fat to protein ratio. I have a little double cream quite regularly in my coffee with no bad results.

(Allie) #11

While this may be true in some respects, my own experience is that once adapted, reducing dietary fats will result in more body fat being used as fuel.

#12

There may be different problems with dairy. I can’t eat much dairy and expect any fat-loss as it makes me overeating fat. Dairy is very fatty (or I deny its existence. except quark. I only deny the existence of low-fat quark, the “half-fat”, still very low-fat if you ask me kind is nice. if I mix it with enough sour cream and cream) while it doesn’t satiate me (except quark, probably). So I just eat, like, 1000 kcal over my normal food. Or more if I don’t keep myself back I suppose but I do keep myself back. I have struggled with much dairy but finally I could reduce the amount. I still very much depend on them but it doesn’t mean a big amount, just variety, addition, they wonderful items make having desserts possible and enjoyable even on carnivore…

I never noticed my body cares about protein or carbs when it comes to fat-loss, just how much I eat. I can’t keep my calories low with much dairy or carbs. And there are more important reasons not to overdo them.
I can imagine there is a big difference when it comes to maintenance but that never really was my problem. But losing fat, that requires me to eat as little fat as possible and then some less. So I try to eat as lean as possible but it easily fails unless I am strict with my dairy amounts. Things get automatic with little dairy, that’s nice.

Obviously it’s highly individual for various reasons. I tend to overeat fat and protein and minimizing both is a good attitude. I still eat plenty of them. And if I eat protein, meat works much better than dairy. But dairy has its little but important role as well.

(Marianne) #13

That’s what I’m doing.

Thank you!

(Bob M) #14

OK, this might not be true, if the idea is that “eating less fat means you burn more fat off your body”. If you reduce fat, you’re going to be increasing protein. Increasing protein means you’ll burn more calories just because it takes more calories to process protein. Also, protein has some satiety effect. (Some people think the satiety effect is very high, but I’m a doubter – it has some satiety effect, but won’t prevent me from eating 2 bowls of ice cream if given the chance).

And some people can do well on an animal-fat based diet (actual fat of an animal that’s not dairy fat). Dairy is a different issue, as some seem to have issues with dairy.

#15

Not necessarily, it hardly ever happens to me… It stays the same or get reduced, it depends. (Well I eat too much fat before I reduce it… And I am bad at changing my fat/protein ratio… So of course this happens to me.)

I believe many people work like that but satiation is one thing where people are very different. Protein is key in my satiation but I need high-fat too. Maybe not for every meal but a low-fat meal probably will make me hungry soon if my fat intake on that day isn’t decent already. Meat is special so sometimes it may last longer but I instinctively crave fat and meat alike, preferably together (still, I had odd days and I could say I usually can’t get satiated without much protein and much fat).
The protein doesn’t work if it’s not the satiating type for me. It’s quite complicated but I pretty much figured myself out in several years so now I know what I need for satiation (probably. as there are no 2 days that are alike. but my guess is pretty good now).

I don’t think the two has much to do with each other. It’s a feat to get satiated in my life - but just because I am perfectly satiated and could fast for 20-26 hours, I still can eat a lot of food especially carbs but fat too, and some protein as well (I have an upper limit for protein of about 250g a day. handy!)… It’s a talent. I need no hunger, appetite, lack of satiation or need for fuel to eat a lot. Just a not too early hour and the right type of food. And carbs are special regarding that. Eating enough to be unable to eat more? I don’t easily have that either. I suppose if I eat 5000 kcal fatty protein (or almost anything as it’s over my comfortable upper limit), I inevitably reach that and usually WAY earlier. But some people easily eat 10000 or more as they are used to it. As long as we can eat properly too, it’s not bad.

But if I WAIT after my big, super satiating meal, I can get the “I can’t eat more” state. I resist the idea of eating when I am not at the very beginning of my fasting window anymore, being satisfied and perfectly satiated. I COULD eat if I really wanted but it doesn’t come naturally at all.
I suppose we humans are wildly different at this. Some people don’t seem to have a problem with stopping eating after getting satiated… Lucky ones. (But I can stop when hungry quite often too so it’s not as bad as it could be :smiley: Only after a decent sized meal, though. I can’t do small meals when hungry. Or if it’s very late and I entered my bottomless pit Gremlin time. People have so weird things when it comes to food…)

(Allie) #16

I’ve never found fats to be satiating, can very easily overeat them because of that. Protein however, definitely, but not on its own, it needs to be fatty protein.

#17

I experienced exactly the same.
I can somewhat reduce my calorie intake using leaner protein but it has its limits (due to my taste and need for energy). It’s not so bad on keto as we need a bigger amount of fat too (at least in percentages). I can add 100+ g fat without a problem (or a conscious effort, it just happens… but it’s not much food, easy to eat, not really satiating so of course. I could eat it any time) though I never tried it for multiple days as my aim is to minimize fat since I went low-carb and it’s pretty much active all the time. I still tend to overeat fat but carnivore (or OMAD if I can pull it off) helps.
It would be nice if I wouldn’t love fat and many fatty items so very much. It would be much worse if I disliked fatty food, though…