Newb in New Mexico

(Eve) #21

Thanks. I am not looking to lose weight but to have some of the other benefits and having just read online about the lazy keto not being as good, l started to get worried…! Nevertheless l think l should try to get more fat in my daily intake.
What does a good amount of fat “look like” in terms of what is actually being consumed? Since l haven’t weighed anything l don’t have any idea!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #22

Get enough protein to meet your daily needs and then eat enough fat to satisfy your hunger. It is hard to give specific advice, because people’s needs differ widely.

The primary reason we need to eat protein every day is to replace nitrogen used for various purposes in the body (in particular, nitric oxide is used to help regulate blood pressure). The only source of nitrogen the body can use is in the form of amino acids, hence our need for protein. The average protein required to offset daily nitrogen loss is 0.6 g/day per kg of lean body mass. But there are a lot of people who need more than that, 0.6 is just the average across a pretty wide range. So eat enough protein to make yourself feel good. Start in the range of 1.0-2.0 g/kg and adjust from there. (And remember that meat is only 1/4 protein, so if you want 100 g of protein, you need to eat 400 g of meat.)

Fat, on the other hand, is where we get our energy from, on a ketogenic diet. That is why the advice is to eat to satiety. Start by eating to satisfy your hunger, and if it appears, down the road, that there is something wrong with your satiety hormones, you can adjust from there. But depending on your daily nitrogen needs, you might need to eat proportionately more protein and less fat, or perhaps the reverse! In any case, eating to satiety is a good guide for most of us.

#23

No one can possibly know that.
But tracking changes actually nothing if you just track and have no idea what grams or percentages are good for you. And maybe the macros are perfect for you but you choose bad items… It’s complicated.
I nearly always track but it doesn’t help me doing it right… I just have a bunch of data, I do try to use them to figure out what I am doing wrong…

Dropping carbs is the main thing, it may be enough for you and it may be not. Try it and if it doesn’t work, you still can tweak something.

There is no such things. We need different amounts and ratios and anyway, it’s not necessarily visible. Right now I have some pretty lean pork belly where I have no idea about the fat content… Oh well, I let my body guide me. I practically leave on more or less lean protein sources, it’s pretty good for maintenance, too bad I want to lose fat… But if I eat leaner meat, I make sure I consume something fattier too (it would happen anyway but usually too late, I mean, around/after midnight and I don’t like that).
Some people experience they do better with some specific fat/protein ratio and they may need to plan and track to ensure it especially if it’s quite high and doesn’t come automatically. But most people don’t need that.
So, I personally just eat my fav protein sources and they give me okay macros. But if one has a higher energy need and a smaller protein need (or a high fat/protein ratio is their way to go), they may focus on fattier food until they get used to it.

But it may not be good enough if we eat, say, too lean. Unless we start to desire fat, specifically. It happens to me but at that time I already ate twice my protein need (or will to get my fat as I don’t eat pure fat).
I strongly disagree with the advice to avoid lean meats and extra egg whites, nope, they are fine - but we shouldn’t neglect eating fat on the days with much of lean protein sources :slight_smile:

And there are the non-satiating items triggering overeating… But we eventually learn about them, well this is where tracking may help. Or we just notice it after eating 1kg chicken and feel starving…

(Eve) #24

I am slowly getting a proper understanding of how it all works. Yes, l do the egg whites, but also add lots of butter with them to compensate, plus mct powder several times a day. Eating so much fat and less veg really goes against a deeply embedded belief system, and l am realising that it is taking some time for me to fully ease into the keto way of thinking. I fully take on board your advice, particularly about always eating to satiety so the body isn’t in calorie deficit mode, and that l shouldn’t be filling up on lean protein and veg, tempting though it may be. I need to track more closely as some days the nausea is worse than others and it probably links into the carbs - type and quantity.

#25

Eating to satiation and eating to maintenance calories are two, often very different things.
Calorie deficit is fine (it’s how one loses fat) but it shouldn’t be too big, that never ends well as far as I know (the less extra fat we have, the smaller deficit we can afford, of course it’s not the only factor). And we don’t necessarily have much idea about the energy we got from food let alone the amount we use up… So it’s better if we can trust our body and eat as much as it feels okay. And eating to satiation feels the best anyway. Probably. I definitely prefer perfect satiation. Not borderline or real hunger, not being stuffed, just perfect, long lasting satiation. If the macros are wrong that way, I try to figure out what to eat (or when) to avoid that.

There may be a thought there that forcing a deficit it is problematic, I don’t know anything about it, it’s probably very individual. I am against forcing things but understand people who want results and can stand hunger… It works for many.

Due to your former beliefs? Because fatty protein is lovely though obviously lean items have their fans too…
But starving isn’t tempting, it’s clearly wrong. We need energy and most people on keto needs higher than minimal fat… (If someone can use plenty of bodyfat so they get away with a pretty big calorie deficit and/or if they eat lots of protein and higher than normal carbs, low-fat keto is possible but unusual. I personally consider <80g fat low - I probably never had a time in my life when I ate less except when I was really small, that probably influences me a lot - , surely some go significantly lower without problems.)

#26

Trust your own body. Measure so you have a baseline. (Blood work and DEXA scan) This way you know empirically what works and what may need tweaking. Keep in mind that most experts have their own biases. Their livelihood is dependent on putting forward their agenda. This would include books, pills, potions, eating plans and speaking engagements that they sell. Most will cite studies that are cherry-picked to support their claims. It is very difficult to study diets from a scientific point (DB studies etc…) because there are so many variables that cannot be isolated. Some diets work for some and other diets work for others. If there was a perfect diet then would we all be doing it? Some, not all of these doctors are Ivy-league educated, which makes what they say even more difficult to discern properly. Some will prescribe eating in such a way as to address a particular issue short-term and once the issue has been resolved then move into the maintenance phase. Most eating/diet programs involve some form of caloric reduction, this is the main reason they use weight initially.