New(ish) and Now Struggling

(Martin Arnold) #1

Been doing this almost 5 weeks, initially i felt sated after meals.

Now notsomuch. I have a couple of issues:

  1. breakfast is a tough meal to digest; afterwards I feel almost a little woozy right after eating. If i don’t get enough, I feel weak.
  2. I tend to get hungry more quickly after a meal. So for example today’s lunch was 2 cooked chicken thighs and a couple of sausages i had left over, along with a portion of spinach and cabbage. I ate the chicken and veg and felt full, so i left the sausages. But 2-2 1/2 hours later I could feel the hunger kick in again.

Is this to be expected during adaptation? Thanks.

(John) #2

What did you have for breakfast? Do you check your glucose by any chance?

#3

Do you track how many grams of protein and carbs you are eating every day? If you do track, how many grams do you eat daily?

Also, what I have learned in the past is when starting keto, I had to eat lots of fat…to get fat adapted. So, I was in the range of 75% to 90% fat. Then, after that, I could back it down…because my body learned to burn fat, didn’t need it from food, and could feed off of my body fat.

(Martin Arnold) #4

I usually have a pork belly slice, some salmon, an avocado and 25g kale. The salmon i was advised to include (not slamon specifically) in order to get my protein up to 30g as that, i was told, was desirable.

This morning i ate just the meat, but it wasn’t enough alone and I felt rough so i then ate the veg. this probably makes no sense, but it was to see if eating no carb at all could indicate if i was consuming something that i reacted to negatively that had some carbs in it.

I came to keto to help stabilise blood sugar as i’d always suffered occasional unpleasant lows. I’ve tracked BS before, to the point it drove me crazy. I checked it this morning and it was fine. It’s been pretty much fine since i started on this.

(Martin Arnold) #5

I try and track, but i find these tracker apps to be not terribly accurate. I have used the ingredients on the packaging to get a better answer, except for meat that I buy fromt he butcher which has no such listing.

My macro is supposed to be 101g protein, but i usually eat a bit more, say 10g.

It is possible I’m not eating enough fat. Though when I first started I wasn’t having this problem. I felt sated. Now it seems that’s no longer the case. I just had a beef dinner with veg fried in butter (it used to be a big chicken leg but i wanted to try different as someone told me that too much chicken wasn’t ideal). But the meat was not teribly nice and i’m getting pangs again.

(John) #6

I had this happen and agree, I found myself trying to hit a higher protein goal, plus a little more because i’m working out and basically ended up on high protein, low carb and moderate fat. Cut down protein and ate more fat and I am fine again. You may be like me, try to cut back protein and see if that fixes it.

(Stickin' with mammoth) #7

That’s the way it went for me. I ate like a horse the first few months when water weight was being discarded and organs were being repaired–healing uses up a lot of energy. About three months in, my appetite shifted and I got down to tweaking long term ratios and food lists.

You’ve probably heard it so often it sounds like a broken record but there really is no hard and fast rule to keto. Your goal will always be to find the sweet spot that feels good and keeps you, personally, in ketosis. And even then, it’s gonna change a little over time and circumstances.

The coolest thing about keto is it teaches people to listen to their own body. Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out.

#8

Do you know how many grams carbs you are consuming daily? Personally, I need to keep them low, cannot go over 20 g. If I do go over, I will get hunger cravings. I think it is a survival mechanism from my ancestral background. As in, when the strawberries and other fruits are out, the body gets the higher carbs signal, and induces the body to gorge on carbs, to fatten up for the oncoming winter, where only low carb foods are available (fish, meat, etc).

The typical protein levels for keto are 1 gram protein per kg lean body mass, for sedentary, and 2 grams for athlete type people. Are you over that level when you eat 100 to 110 grams protein?

Reading through your posts, it looks like you are not getting enough fat. Dr Phinney recommends lots and lots of fat at the beginning, to push your body into fat adaptation. Once achieved, then you can reduce fat, and your body feeds on its own stores. Your body may be hungry for fat right now…that would be my guess.

(Martin Arnold) #9

I haven’t exceeded 20, often its around 15. However in the UK there is a discrepancy; apparently our food listings have net carbs showing as the carb listing, even though fibre is also listed. This means that what I’m eating is net. this gets weird when you consider Chia, which is supposed to be keto friendly. I have a pack that says 44g carbs (per 100g weight) on top of the greater fibre number (which is why it’s LC friendly, as you may know). Now if the UK food rule is true, that makes Chia a lot less low carb.

So i go by what’s on the package and, unless i’ve screwed up, I’m good. Pretty much all my carbs are from veg. The only exceptions are sausages, but I buy only ones which are low in carb and high in meat value (less rubbish added), and cream, and nuts.

You might be right about the fat. I do struggle to add more.

(Martin Arnold) #10

So you had hunger pangs as well?

Did you ever eat a meal that, if it didn’t fill you, made you feel worse for eating it?

If that makes sense.

(Stickin' with mammoth) #11

I had definite hunger signals, yes.

What do you mean by “worse?” Worse how?

The only keto meal that made me feel less than happy was that unfortunate period of learning how much bacon was too much bacon before bed. (Answer: four pieces.)

Every keto meal always fills me and if it doesn’t, I just eat a little more of it. If the fat ratio is too high, I get queasy. If I get too much caffeine in one punch, I get an inflammatory response. I occasionally think I’m craving sugar in the afternoon but it’s usually remedied by adding a few more carbs earlier in the day the next day. If I’m gonna be active, I definitely need to bring the protein. Those are all my keto code fixes. Any symptoms beyond those would have me wondering about allergies or hidden carbs.

#12

This is true. You will notice it says Carbohydrates and not Total carbs. They have already deducted the fibre. You can thus work out the total by adding it back again!

I need to watch the carb count when nuts are involved especially if they get ground up for use in things like pizza bases. They are just one of those things that I tend to overeat and eat without thinking. I tend to avoid them for this reason or get them occasionally and just indulge as much as I want. Same goes for cream and some dairy - check the carb count to see how much lactose is in it.

I would switch things up week by week and keep a diary of how you feel. So try higher fat one week and lower protein. Reverse another week. More veg, less veg… You get the picture. Experimentation is key really because what is the perfect combo for one person will not be for the next.

(Martin Arnold) #13

Does that mean macros aren’t that helpful? What about calorie deficits?

#14

If you struggle to up your fat intake, that could pull you back from being fat adapted. a couple of things that could help is
(1) pour melted butter on everything…like lots of it. You can even add herbs or spice to the melted butter mixture, and pour it all over your beef steak, chicken, fish, pork, meatballs, whatever. Imagine having a gravy boat like image below, next to your plate of food, filled with delicious melted butter, to pour all over your plate.

glass-gravy-boat-by-tp_4318419338213205696f.jpg800×800 22 KB

(2) make a quick hollandaise sauce…so easy, fast and delicious (see recipe below). And it adds a lot of natural good fats to anything you eat.

(Martin Arnold) #15

That sounds better than frying with butter as there’s no guarantee all the butter ends up in the food.

I must admit to still having some nagging doubts at all the fat! Even though i see this diet working for so many - in fact i’ve lost weight myself! I was 84.9kg a week ago and today Im 82.8! So there’s something there. It’s just all that dietary orthodoxy saying “don’t do it”

Ok, so, having had a not very filling evening meal, and being somehwat deficit in my fats, what should I do right now? What would you recommend?

#16

have some boiled eggs in the fridge ready for your hunger pangs.

I can eat butter with a spoon. I think it is delicious. Does that sound ok to you?

If you are in the kitchen right now, and have access to eggs and butter, I would boil or poach some eggs, make the hollandaise sauce, and have eggs with hollandaise. It’s very fast.

Tomorrow, try the added fat tricks (melted butter or hollandaise sauce), and see if it nips the hunger.

#17

oh, by the way, the hollandaise sauce recipe I showed you in the link uses clarified butter…but, no worries if you only have butter at the ready. you can replace clarified butter with just plain butter.

(Martin Arnold) #18

I guess I’m asking: is fat on its own satiating? Isn’t protein required to fill and the fat to keep you full for longer

#19

Given how the dogma of low-fat is beaten into our heads, I think you’d have to be from another solar system to not have some concerns about eating high-fat. :wink:

According to @erdoke, and what I can find on the Internet, ketogenesis (making ketones) and gluconeogenesis (making glucose from things such as protein) occur all the time in the liver, but it’s the lack of carbohydrates and relative abundance of the substrates for ketogenesis and gluconeogenesis that determines which one takes place and runs faster and we want ketogenesis to run the fastest! :runner:

In simple terms, especially when first adapting to a ketogenic diet, it is extremely important to keep carbohydrates low while providing enough of the material needed for making ketones instead of glucose from what you eat, so this means eating enough protein to sustain lean body mass, but eating plenty of fat so there’s enough fatty acids around for ketogenesis to beat out gluconeogenesis.

You might ask about body fat supplying fatty acids and eating at a caloric deficit, but most people start keto because they haven’t been using body fat effectively and reducing calories during the adaptation process means you have to cut back on protein or fat since carbs are “fixed” at under 20 grams, which ends up not meeting your nutritional needs in some way.

After you’re fat-adapted, your body should be able to more readily access your body fat to supply the fatty acids needed for ketogenesis (and energy needs) and then you can likely reduce your intake of fat, but like @Fiorella said, you might need to consume a very high percentage of fat to get through the adaptation process.

#20

Fat is a satiating on its own. You don’t need protein for that. In fact, that’s why some people do fat fasting. As in eat nothing but fat (butter, coconut oil, etc) and water or coffee/tea. In fact, that’s the idea behind bulletproof coffee (just coffee with butter and/or coconut oil).