Hi everyone. I am new to Keto (apparently been doing it wrong for 3 weeks!).
So I started following Dr. Berg on Youtube. I love his content, but he doesn’t give examples as photos or videos of plate sizes. So I had been eating for 3 weeks wayyyyy above what I found out today is my suggested caloric intake. There are things that I don’t understand, actually many things, but one is, how the heck am I suppose to survive on 100 grams of steak per day. That is a tiny amount!
I have cut out all glucose, it’s been 3 weeks now, and have drastically increased my fat and protein intake, and although eating 3 steaks a day, with about 4 eggs, broccoli, tomatoes and cheddar cheese, I still managed to lose some weight, I’ve lost 2 KG in 3 weeks, which is not what I expected, I wanted to lose more weight.
How do you all survive by eating 100-150 grams of meat a day??
Thank you!
New to Keto, need protein intake help
When I am not fasting I eat much more than 150 grams
100 gram will stick between my teeth
Where this 150 gram came from?
That would likely be 100-150grams of protein, not meat. Protein is roughly 25% of your meat’s total weight on average. For example I just had 336 grams of steak for lunch (cronometer has that as roughly 100g protein) and will likely have more protein for my second meal
I use cronometer and enter the cut of meat and weight and it will provide you with the grams of protein. I am sure you can also Google it and enter the weight and type of meat and get totals that way as well.
I just found out I have exhausted my daily protein intake and I’m trying to keep carbs as close to 0 as possible. What can I have for dinner? Should I just eat the grass fed butter, If so, how many grams? Or just an avocado?
Thanks!
You’ll find people here either love him or hate him… always causes much debate. There are way better people to follow and learn from.
@Voyager Welcome to the forum … you’ve got the spirit, but may be getting bogged down a bit in the math.
Sure, you can track macronutrients, and if you’re the scientific type, may enjoy amassing lots of data about what you’re eating and how you’re doing.
But honestly, it sounds like you’re trying to over-control things beyond any benefit…
- Avoid the carbs (20g/day or less if possible).
- Eat healthy animal fats/proteins to your satisfaction.
- Pay attention to your hunger level - it will tell you when you’ve had enough food, or perhaps need some more.
- Stay well hydrated and keep your salt (electrolytes) up to a level where you avoid feeling like crap as your body adjusts to this new healthier lifestyle.
Best wishes!
Dr. Stephen Phinney, in The Art and Science of a Low-Carboyhydrate Lifestyle, recommends the following: no more than 50 g/day of carbohydrate (we recommend a limit of 20 g/day, here on the Ketogenic Forums), adequate protein (in the range of 1.0-1.5 g per kilo of lean mass a day), and fat to satiety. No calculating of macros or counting calories needed.
If your lean body mass is, for example, 100 kg, then you can eat 100-150 g of protein, which is more or less 400-600 g (14-21 ounces) of meat, most meats being somewhere around 1/4 protein by weight. A hundred grams of steak would most likely be far too little to replace your daily nitrogen loss.
A ketogenic diet is not a quick weight-loss diet, it is a low-insulin, metabolically healthy diet, in which weight normalisation is a happy side effect. The people in the stories about rapid, massive fat loss on keto had massive amounts of fat to lose, and even they found that the first 100 kg came off much faster than the last 10. You don’t say how much your starting weight was, or how much fat you hope to lose, but it is not likely to happen swiftly, and that is actually a good thing. Slow fat loss means that you are more likely to keep the fat off over the long term.
Also, as a side note, be sure to keep track of the fit of your clothing. Some people actually add lean mass on keto, even while shedding excess fat, and as you can imagine, this is a disappointment to people whose sole measure of success is the number on their scale. Think of it this way: would you rather look as though you’d lost 30 lbs. but remain the same weight, or lose 30 lbs. and still look just as heavy?
Have a steak. Seriously, you are undereating protein, if you think you should limit your meat intake to 100 g/day. You can afford to eat four to six times as much.
Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be hanging on every word of that self-promoting, profiteering charlatan…
“How do you all survive by eating 100-150 grams of meat a day??”
As others have said, that is way low. I tried to eat to gain muscle, and 1 gr of protein per pound was suggested. I don’t know if I ever reached that goal… You have to eat a lot to reach that goal. But as others are pointing out that 100 -150 gr was probably the amount of protein suggested, and most beef is max about 29% protein…usually more like 25% protein, so you have to multiply that number by four to get the amount of meat necessary to give you that much protein, and it is going to be about 1 pound of meat. I only ate about a half a pound every night. However, I had 3 eggs for breakfast with cheddar cheese which is casein protein, and the eggs gave me about 25 gr of protein. I also had a protein smoothie most days with about another 25-30 gr of protein. Add it up and I was eating about 100 gr of protein a day until I realized I was way short of 180 gr of protein, and I had to step it up a little.
If you use a phone app, you should be able to find something which will give you approximate protein amounts for various foods.
As for Dr Berg I discounted him when I heard him suggest very high fat diets in general. Since about half of the American population is probably insulin resistant, and this is the half that is going to want to try keto, that is going to be a disasterous start for most of these people, who are going to gain weight and get discouraged. Sadly, I probably had some insulin resistance, but I chose to focus more on protein, and probably barely increased my fat intake. I believe people who want to do keto after eating the SAD, are probably best served by doing a blood panel first. There are definitely people who shouldn’t do keto or who should first try to get their insulin down so they don’t gain weight on a higher fat diet.
You don’t, eat at least 1g/lb of bodyweight. Don’t take nutritional advise (especially when it comes to protein) from a muscle-less Chiropractor that simply makes videos copying content from others to shill his products.
Your (fat) loss goals are unrealistic then. That’s a huge loss, if you were to even maintain that rate of loss for long, it’d be because you were losing as much muscle as fat. Be realistic.
1.0-1.5 grams of protein per kilo of lean body mass puts me at 52-78 grams of protein a day which, for me, feels like nothing! I’m eating less than 20 grams of total carbs and then I choose some of the following - fatty cuts of meat, eggs, cheese, cream cheese (occasionally) some lamb liver sometimes, greek yoghurt and a small drizzle of cream in my coffee. I’ve stopped the constant weighing and calculating of how much protein and how much fat is in everything I eat. It was making me miserable. Plus every damn site I go to on the internet gives different numbers for things like meat. The only thing I watch very closely is carbs. Most of the time all I want to eat is meat and I go over 78 grams of protein. I must admit I’m feeling fed up and pissed off with keto, but that’s probably for another post.
I hear you. Seven to eleven ounces (208-312 g) of meat a day would not be enough for me, either. Do what works for you. You may be one of those people who need more, rather than less, protein.
I can relate. My numbers would be about the same. My minimum (and target though I am flexible) amount of protein (except very rare and usually very low-cal days) is about 120 grams a day. I can’t function below, it’s what I need, those numbers just never worked in my case… My body surely knows what it does, it always nudges me if I eat wrong and it never ever had any problem with my 120-220 (sometimes higher, I can’t avoid that but if I do it right, I stay in this range) g protein intake. So I keep it, not like I have much control over it… There was a time when I tried to keep it low and failed each and every day. Now I know better and don’t even try.
Anyway, I only eat a pound of meat on my meatier days (and a little dairy and a few eggs), it’s a quite small piece! No way I go much below that but I would be hungry and jump the fridge at midnight anyway, it nearly always happens when I don’t have my 120g during the day.
Listening to our body is not a bad advice. It isn’t good in every cases but mine is smart enough. I was always exceptionally bad at following other people’s ideas about how I should eat. The 1-2g/kg for LBM protein intake is something I even agree with - but it doesn’t work for my individual case so I go beyond as I have no other options and because it never caused any problems for me.
So eat more meat, sure 
There is a thing as too much protein but most of us hardly can go that high.