New to keto: I'm 17 and need help

(Josiah) #1

Hello, I’m a male that weighs 270 pounds and I am 5’6. I’ve always struggled with losing weight since I was a young kid. I loss weight on and off because of sports but I want to get serious about losing weight and trying this diet out. I am currently in high school and I want to know if someone can help or suggest to me what type of food I should eat hence I have to eat it around high school like snacks and meals and even far as diet plan because my mom wants to buy me certain foods for my diet. Any help would dramatically help me change my life for the better.

(Linda) #2

I have a young nephew who dropped 60 pounds in three months just by restricting carbohydrates. Give up sugar, grains, and starchy vegetables and as a young guy, I have no doubt losing weight will be a breeze for you. Snack on nuts, cheeses and pepperoni or other meat snacks.

(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #3

Not too many nuts and the good ones. Stay away from peanuts, cashews. Look up good and bad nuts for keto.

(Stephanie ) #4

Pork rinds and cheese sticks are my go to snacks.

(Jan Wyatt) #5

My 17 year old son has gone to OMAD and no soft drink. Lost 8kgs over months and now it’s his perfect weight.

(Elya) #6

I bet this would be a great plan for you! Make sure you have enough food and a good variety! It’d be great if your mom could buy you food or even have a job where you could buy your own.

(Carl Keller) #7

I referenced this site a lot when I first started. Just try to avoid processed foods, sugar and carbs. Eat fresh and eat all natural. Read nutrition labels and keep your carbs low. Good luck and remember that your health is your most valuable possession.

https://www.perfectketo.com/full-ketogenic-diet-food-list/

(Running from stupidity) #8

Good for you, being self-aware enough at 17 to research into best health practices. Puts you in about the top 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent, I reckon.

Generally speaking, this is a HORMONE control diet rather than a CALORIE control diet. (“Diet” being used to mean “the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats” not society’s current usage.) So don’t be afraid to eat plenty of good keto food, especially at your age.

Also, if you’re looking for some reading material, I highly recommend The Obesity Code by Dr Jason Fung. It’s a mostly good and easy read.

(Ken) #9

Eat all the cheeseburgers you want, but no fries and ditch the buns. Same goes with pizza, but ditch the crust. Have bacon and eggs for breakfast. Pork rinds instead of chips, dip with them is OK as long as its sour cream based. Guacamole is good as well. Brats and sausages are great, but no buns.

I leaned one of my sons out between Sophomore and Junior years. He went from fat to being a Cross Country star. Now he’s 28 and still lean.

(Cynthia Anderson) #10

Wow I’m surprised no one mentioned real butter yet.

(Carl Keller) #11

Butter is mentioned in the link I posted. :wink:

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #12

@ImHitch Welcome to the forums, Josiah, and good luck embarking on a keto way of eating.

The key to a well-formulated ketogenic diet is keeping carbohydrate as low as possible. The reason for this is to keep insulin levels in the bloodstream as low as we can. Everyone has a different carbohydrate tolerance, and yours may be higher or lower than other people’s. But for right now, we recommend keeping your carbohydrate intake under 20 grams a day. We also recommend eating leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli and cauliflower, and avoiding starchy vegetables (i.e., potatoes) and all grains. Especially avoid sugar like the plague. (This means that really sugary fruits, such as bananas, are not a good idea.)

Don’t worry about your protein, just be sure to eat enough. You will see recommendations on these forums for limiting protein—ignore them until your growth spurt has ended. In the meantime, eat lots, because you are putting on muscle and bone mass. Eat meat, eggs, bacon. Also eat plenty of healthy fats, which will give you energy. Fat is delicious and satisfying, so eat as much as it takes to eliminate your hunger, then stop eating and don’t eat again until you are hungry. Let your body tell you how much to eat—you can’t out-think two million years of evolution!

By “healthy fats” I mean something quite different from what you’ve been told all your life. Eat saturated fats, the kind that comes attached to steak and pork, and in the skins of chickens. Eat butter, bacon grease, that sort of thing. You need saturated fats to keep your body healthy, and then monounsaturated fats for energy. Butter, beef fat, and bacon fat are about 50-50 saturated and monounsaturated fats. Avoid vegetable oils, because they contain too many polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are by and large unhealthy. You do need omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, but not all that much. Eating wild-caught fish or taking a fish oil supplement will get you enough.

If you can tolerate dairy, cheese can be a good source of fat, as well as heavy cream and yoghurt. Dairy generally contains carbohydrate, however, so be sure to count it towards your daily limit. Some people, even if lactose is not a problem for them, find that dairy still isn’t good for them, so if you don’t feel quite right while eating dairy, cut it out for a few weeks to see if you have a problem with it.

There is real, solid science behind all these recommendations, and we can get into it when you’re ready. Just bear in mind that a lot of the official dietary guidance is actually not based on science, but people treat it as Gospel anyway, and may give you grief for trying to eat this way. You don’t have to listen to them, and we’ll be happy to explain the science, so that you know why you’re doing what you’re doing.

There are a couple of young folks on these forums, who will be happy to share their experience with you. @kidketo, are you listening?

Good luck, my friend, and keep us posted on how you’re doing.

(Erica) #13

Watching “what I eat in a day keto” videos on YouTube really helped me get a handle on what to eat when I first started!

(Hyperbole- best thing in the universe!) #14

If people at school give you a hard time about your food choices, one tactic is just to say you are sensitive to grains and have to eat this way for your health. Which happens to be true. If they seem sincerely interested and you feel like going into more detail you can explain keto. But don’t feel the need to do that every time someone comments.

("Don't call it calories, call it food") #15

Shopping list for your mom:

If she shops at Costco:

Large block of Dubliner cheese
Box of kerrygold butter
Fully cooked twr beef sausages or similar
Pecans
Package of hard salami (I just bought the trio which came in a white net thingy)
Fresh mozzarella cheese (comes with two pieces)
Eggs!
Bacon (sugar free)!
Cucumbers if you like them
Pickles too but no sugar added
Guacamole - most brands they sell are fine
Full fat Greek yogurt
Olives
The six pack of sustainable tuna cans
Mayo - if you can afford it, the avocado oil kind

Other places:
Green veges - spinach, lettuce, broccoli, asparagus
Cauliflower
Cream for your coffee

Things to make:
Tuna salad
Egg salad
Boiled eggs
Greek yogurt with a smattering of blueberries
Cut up chunks of salami and cheese
Nuts (one handful a day)
Slice of cucumbers (one handful a day)
Half a handful of olives a day
Tuna melt (tuna, Mayo, cheese cooked)
Salads with either oil And vinegar or a healthy fatty dressing (ranch, blue cheese) – ETA : if you like bell peppers or radish these are good in small quantities to add some crunch and taste to salads.
Any type of meat! Steak, pork chop, chicken etc
Spicy chicken wings with ranch or blue cheese! (Your friends will be jealous)

And… Fill yourself up at breakfast with lots of protein and fat. Learn how to quickly microwave bacon, scramble some eggs, or make an omelette. Eat as much as you can. Add a squirt of coconut oil or butter to your coffee. You’ll be less worried about snacks and lunch then. Don’t be afraid to eat lots of food, especially if it is fat and protein. Cheese and ham slices, salami, jerky (sugar free) etc

(Consensus is Politics) #16

Unless you ended up curing your diabetes. It’s such a miracle that you just can’t shut up about it. :cowboy_hat_face: (pointing at myself).

I went ZERO carb on October 17th 2017 because diabetes control with diet and medicine wasn’t working. When I say diet, I mean the official diet recommended by the American Diabetes Association. Why would they give out false info, right?

Question everything. I did. I discovered keto by happenstance. Way before I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Then I did research about low carb that led me here. So I went zero carb lost 40 pounds in two weeks. Not a typo. Forty pounds in 2 weeks. Everyone is different. Some lose more some less. I went from 245 to 205 in that time. I’m currently at 195 and hover around that number now for about the past 8 months.

I usually only eat one meal a day (OMAD), and it’s not a light meal either. For example, today was 1 pound of hamburger made into patties that I cut into cubes after cooking. Put in a bowl with about a cup of sour cream. Chopped up some jalapeños (pickled ones from a jar), some salt, a lot of salt really (research keto and salt and learn something new!) and poured this mornings bacon grease from the wife’s breakfast, which is what I cooked the hamburger in, and ALL that hamburger fat in the pan into the mix as well. Makes something similar to beef stroganoff, minus the pasta :sunglasses:.

Good on ya for researching this.

Keto Vitae!

(Running from stupidity) #17

I’m guessing money and entrenched positions, Bob.

#possiblyacycnicaloldjournalist #whodoesntunderstandthewordrhetorical

(Carl Keller) #18

They want healthy diabetics, not dead ones and certainly not ones that cure their condition. They need diabetics… or they don’t exist.

(Consensus is Politics) #19

I was being… facetious :sunglasses:

(Consensus is Politics) #20

I had to read your reply about 5 times before I figured out what you meant. :sunglasses:

I’ve been spending a few hours struggling with my PC to get the following lab results in a somewhat friendly format. I’m using OpenOffice. Similar enough to Office, but some features are just lost on me to where they would put them. Then I swear, it moves them to another menu somewhere when I try to use it again :roll_eyes:

So, if the formatting is screwed, my apologies. I had to copy the text, in the tables from the VA website. Then paste into spread sheet, then past into note pad (that was a nightmare, control codes screwing everything up there). So I just cooied the spreadsheet cells, pasted into gmail, and then pasted to this forum from my iPhone. Yes, I’m too lazy to just type all this in.

So one year in keto, and here’s an overload of lab work!

Note: 29 Aug 2017 my HBa1c was 11.7%
4 months later it was down to 5.7% (just in the pre-diabetic range).

PSA 0.71 ng/mL 0.1-4.0
HGB A1C 5.6 % 4.1-6.4
Test Name Result Units Reference Range
WBC 5.16 K/cmm 4.8-10.8
RBC 5.03 M/cmm 4.7-6.1
HGB 15.3 g/dL 14-18
HCT 46.5 % 42-52
MCV 92.4 fL 80-94
MCH 30.4 pg 27.0-31.0
MCHC 32.9 Low g/dL 33-37
RDW 13.9 % 11/14/18
PLT 216 K/cmm 130-400
MPV 10.2 fL 7.4-10.4
NEUTRO# 3.15 K/cmm 1.4-6.5
NEUTRO% 60.9 %
LYMPH# 1.16 Low K/cmm 1.2-3.4
LYMPH% 22.5 %
MONOS# 0.38 K/cmm 0.2-1.0
MONO% 7.4 %
EOS# 0.38 K/cmm 0-0.7
EOS% 7.4 %
BASO# 0.07 K/cmm 0-0.2
BASO% 1.4 %
NRBC# 0.00 K/cmm <0
NRBC% 0.0 %/100WBC
IG# 0.02 K/cmm 0.01-0.03
IG% 0.4 %
Plasma Substance
CHOLESTEROL 233 mg/dL
TRIGLYCERIDE 169 mg/dL
HDL 61 mg/dL >40
LDL 151 mg/dL
VLDL 34 High mg/dL 0-30
GLUCOSE 88 mg/dL 74-106
BUN 13 mg/dL 07/18/18
CREATININE 1.0 mg/dL 0.6-1.3
SODIUM 142 mmol/L 136-145
POTASSIUM 4.5 mmol/L 3.5-5.1
CHLORIDE 103 mmol/L 98-107
CO2 28 mmol/L 21-32
CALCIUM 9.1 mg/dL 8.5-10.1
EGFR 77.6 mL/min/1.7 <>90
TOTAL PROTEIN 7.5 g/dL 6.4-8.2
ALBUMIN 4.4 mg/dL 3.4-5.0
TBIL 0.4 mg/dL 0.2-1.0
ALP 79 U/L 45-117
ALT 29 U/L 12/01/78
AST 19 U/L 15-37
TSH 1.040 uIU/mL 0.358-3.74
Urine Substance #1
SPECIFIC GRAVITY 1.020 1.002-1.035
URINE BLOOD Negative Negative
URINE BILIRUBIN Negative Negative
URINE PH 5 05/09/18
URINE NITRITE Negative Negative
URINE LEUKOCYTE ESTERASE Negative WBC/uL Negative
URINE PROTEIN Negative mg/dL Negative
URINE KETONES 1+ Negative
URINE GLUCOSE Negative Negative
URINE COLOR Yellow YELLOW
URINE CLARITY Clear CLEAR
UROBILINOGEN NORM mg/dL NORM-2
Urine #2
MICROALBUMIN (QUANT) 2.44 mg/dL
MICROALBUMIN/CREAT RATIO 15.8 mg/gCr 0-30
URINE CREATININE 154 mg/dL