New to Keto Diet

(Ashlea Terry) #21

How do I calculate net carbs. I have read a couple different ways and they conflict each other. You cannot believe most of the stuff you read on the internet and so if anyone has any suggestions on that, I would be grateful. Thanks

(Ashlea Terry) #22

Thank you for helping me out. I really appreciate it. I would love any advice that you give me. I saw that you have lost 18 lbs since May. That is amazing. Congrats

(shane ) #23

Carbs minus fiber and sugar alcohol is how I do it.

Example:

Carbs 20
Fiber 15
Sugar alcohol 3
Net carbs 2.

This is definitely a subject that people can argue though. Some only say to take fiber from whole foods like broccoli and vegetables.

Good idea, but I like to have a quest bar from time to time and they don’t seem to effect my ketone levels when I do.

(TJ Borden) #24

Net carbs are basically the total carbs minus fiber.

(TJ Borden) #25

Actually to be conservative, at least until you can experiment and find out which artificial sweeteners affect you and how, sugar alcohols should be counted as half the value

(Annalee Haley) #26

You can definitely go by net carbs as it is a great start. While I don’t recommend getting caught up in macros at this point, I do recommend a tracking app so you can learn about carbs. I personally use Chronometer and you don’t have to pay attention to any settings… you can ignore everything and just log your food to see your carbs until and if you want to track other things. There are many keto tracking apps, but I find Chronometer finds the sneaky carb creep better than most. You can also do things the old fashioned way and look up the USDA nutritional info and calculate on paper.

I personally keep track of total carbs simply because not all fiber is equal and some will impact insulin levels. Keeping my carbs to total carbs takes in account for this . I also really like Dr. Berry’s advice for counting carbs… count net carbs for all real foods (foods that don’t require a nutrition label such as produce and meat) and total carbs for anything the requires a nutrition label.

Keep reading and you till learn much. The Dudes podcast is also a great place for sound advice.

#27

Well said, Annalee. Well said!

(shane ) #28

May 28th I was 268 pounds. Today I am 236.6.

Hoping to hit 220 by vacation time this September. This will put me outside my 12 week window, but I am going to the beach the 2nd week of September and I want to get as lean as possible.

Advice.

Eat to satiation the first 2 weeks to get into ketosis. Make sure you read up on keto flu and electrolytes.

Join Myfitnesspal. This is a calorie journal and calorie estimator. Estimator being key as everyone is a little different… You don’t need the pay version.

Track what you eat without trying to eat to a calorie goal. Eat to satiation and see how this effects your weight gains/losses.

The first couple of weeks you are going to lose weight via glycogen. AKA water weight.

In your third week you should be keto adapted and glycogen depleted. This week the tracking gets real.

Track this week what you eat to satiation and see how it effects your weight loss/gain. You might gain weight and that is no big deal. Use a food scale. Especially on highly caloric items so you can learn what an actual portion size looks like.

1 pound of fat is 3500 calories. 500 calorie deficit daily will net you 1 pound loss per week.

Sodium/sleep/hormones can effect and cause slight weight fluctuations daily. We are looking for trends. Your weight should be trending down over time. My weight daily looks more like a mountain range of weigh ins, but the mountain is trending down and getting smaller over the long haul.

I really like to keep my deficits small. A big mistake people make counting cals is choosing to try to lose 2 pounds a week. That is really hard and it will discourage people because of hunger and not losing what they want to lose.

The goal is to lose weight, at a steady rate, while eating as much as possible.

That should get you very much so started. That is how I do it. It is also probably really unpopular on this forum. I don’t care. LoL.

(TJ Borden) #29

Sorry that this got derailed a bit. Like what @Annababy said. Keep it simple, especially for now. Keto is amazingly easy and unfortunately can get over complicated by companies trying to make a buck (exogenous ketones), which isn’t easy to do with keto because there’s not really money to be made.

Keto is NOT a calorie counting way of eating. As far as tracking macros (carbs, protein, and fat), it can be helpful to learn where hidden carbs and to learn roughly what grams of of protein equate to in volumes of different meat, but it’s certainly NOT a requirement. As I stated in my initial response, the basics of keto are:

  • 20 grams or less of carbs
  • moderate protein scaled to lean body mass
  • fat to satiety

There are a few people that eating to satiety won’t work for (although I have yet to run across any that don’t regularly use artificial sweeteners), but for MOST, satiety will kick in and work just fine once you’re eating be foods we were designed to eat.

The caloric restriction will happen naturally once you become fat adapted and your body starts to recognize stored fat as available energy. At that point your appetite will generally drop significantly and you may find yourself skipping meals.

Many people will lose water weight right out of the gate, and that’s exciting, but weight/fat loss is not linear. Weight doesn’t go on at a steady pace, and it often doesn’t come off that way either.

The fact is, weight loss is a side affect of the body healing itself through keto and fat adaptation. While many start a ketogenic way of eating with that as their primary goal, it offen becomes secondary to the other benefits.

(TJ Borden) #30

You still haven’t answered how you determine your daily caloric expenditure.

(shane ) #31

I use the basic Katch McArdle formula.

Myfitnesspal is pretty good at using it as well and spitting out a number.

I then use simple math to see how my weight fluctuates of a 2 to 3 week period.

Lose to fast, my TDEE is higher than I thought and I add cals.

No loss, I need to first check to make sure I am actually measuring my foods correctly and am actually logging the calories that I think I am eating.

Food scales and a scale at the house is about all I need man. I track it, it gets measured, and I control how I gain or lose weight.

Keto makes this easy in a lot of ways. Which is why I really think it is a bad idea to just throw out calorie counting.

Counting/tracking calories is NOT the same as CICO. You seem to have a stigma against counting cals and thinking it automatically means CICO. I do not think all calories are created equal.

(Lonnie Hedley) #32

You don’t really though. I see lots of people with added stress because of the color of the strip. Keep carbs under 20g net (total-fiber), and your in ketosis.

#33

While I hesitate to insert myself into the count-calories-or-not debate once again (as I think people here tend to follow what seems to work for them individually and of course that’s fine), I just wanted to mention that I don’t think for most of us who had/have broken satiety signals, calorie counting ever solves that particular problem. Has intentional calorie restriction ever fixed satiety signals for anyone? In my personal experience, it only leads to feelings of deprivation and an eventual fall off the wagon. Being in ketosis eventually leads to improved satiety signals, and even if you’re arguing that it’s ultimately calorie restriction that causes weight loss, it’s still not intentional calorie restriction that was the root solution to the satiety-signal problem. But I think you’re right that it often takes more than being in ketosis to fix the emotional aspects of eating beyond satiety, it often takes being much more observant of physical cues than most of us were used to doing.

(shane ) #34

Even in ketosis you can over indulge and eat past satiation. So I wouldn’t say ketosis fixes that either.

It does improve signalling, I will agree.

I would say what it does best is, eliminates foods that people binge the most on. Additionally the added fats increase satiation, which allows for extended periods of not being hungry. Finally, it allows the body to shift from utilizing fat stores as fuel much easier than a glucose dependent diet.

Those 3 things are what make Keto so powerful in regards to weight loss, in my opinion.

(TJ Borden) #35

So the answer is, you don’t actually know day to day, it’s a guess. The problem with online calculators is there’s only so much they can account for. By the calculator, two people with the same: age, height, weight, lean body mass, gender, and hair color (okay, I just through that one in) should have the same metabolism and same caloric expenditure. Do you really believe it’s that simple?

What if person A is sitting on a beach in Fiji and person B is hiking in the mountains of Alaska, in the winter.

Obviously you would argue they have different caloric expenditures and needs at that point, but how do you calculate the difference. Calculators take averages, and “basic math”, as you put it, doesn’t often apply itself well in nature.

(shane ) #36

And its verified by your weight loss. You are way to hung up on the simplest part of this formula. The calorie calculation is just that. It is calculation. Over a period of time If you track your cals, with a food scale, and you weigh yourself you will get a good idea of what your ACTUAL TDEE is.

And speaking of variables, it is not going to vary that much that it makes it pointless to use.

You are missing the TRACK it part. Once it is tracked then you KNOW how to adjust. And yes, I burn more cals on some days than others. And yes, on those days I lose more than on others. Trend it and you have a repeatable model that you can use to take the confusion out of “why am I not losing weight.”

People who use OMAD, EF, etc are all doing the same thing and are restricting calories. If you are losing weight this is happening whether you want to admit it or not. All I am doing differently than you is keeping track of it so I can really control that rate at which I lose weight. Really, that is it.

(TJ Borden) #37

So even though you criticized my “shot in the dark” comment, you do actually admit that you don’t know your calorie expenditure, but instead follow a “guess and check” way of trying to figure it out.

If that works for you, great. You do you, but don’t expect me NOT to challenge you on an issue like this when you’re telling newbies it’s something they NEED to do, because it’s not.

All the extra bullshit that people over complicate keto with is what causes many people not to stick it out and let it work.

You’ve lost weight and you’re feeling good? Great. I’ve lost 80 lbs and kept off for nearly a year and I’ve NEVER counted a single calorie. In fact, I don’t even have a ball park idea of how many I consume, so counting is definitely not a requirement.

This just demonstrates you don’t understand fasting, because calorie restriction and fasting are not even close to being the same thing.

(shane ) #38

If you are going to bring autophagy into this I am really not interested as it pertains to weight loss. Sorry.
.
I would rather track something I can absolutely control. Like the amount of food I put in my mouth.

Congrats on your 80 pound weight loss. That is significant. If you don’t want to count cals, which you don’t have to, that is fine. However when a person who comes in here who is at 1300 cals, lets say that again 1300, asks questions about macros and you tell her to forget about counting calories. You have lost your mind. 1300 cals is what a very small or very inactive female uses in a day. What does that have to do with a guy who could probably eat 2.5 times that a and still lose weight on have in common? How do you 2 compare in your weight loss goals and the points at which you are in your weight loss?

Is that not of ANY consideration to you?

1300 cals tells me she is probably in WAY to steep of a deficit to start with. She also probably has a lot less weight to lose than you and has made her mind up to count cals and macros so making this more difficult for her shouldn’t even be part of this argument.

Maybe every question regarding how many cals/macros should I eat shouldn’t be met with you preaching about forgetting about all of those things and do it MY WAY.

(Lonnie Hedley) #39

It’s not the purpose of OMAD, but I think a side effect is accidental calorie restriction. I missed lunch one day months ago and tried to get 1800+ calories in one meal. :face_vomiting::face_vomiting::face_vomiting: Well, not literally but figuratively felt like it was way too much. Obviously something people doing OMAD need to work up to if they aren’t restricting calories.

(A Tabitha Ann Swanks) #40

I’m on day 10. I like the strips but be warned they will drive you crazy. My first two days (using strip almost every time I peed)on the strips show very little to almost no amounts. This was after 7 days of under 20 carbs. But after digging I found that if you are showing pink at all, it means you are expelling some ketones. A darker color means you’re expelling alot of ketones. The idea is to be using them so light is not necessarily bad. Do keep an eye on your lables. You’d be surprised what you find that is high in carbs (Hardee’s grilled chicken no bun 39g). And drinks… Water (blah) is your best option. You can flavor it but watch which ones you use. The biggest thing that has helped me is this forum. Good luck.