Newbie on Keto Diet Help

#1

Hi guys.

I’m new to the forum and to the diet. I’ll give you a little background as quickly as possible.

In a nutshell i’m starting the keto diet to lose weight. I’m an ex rugby, golf and football player who unfortunately went through some bad events that resulted in me being diagnosed with chronic depression and anxiety. Luckily i have managed to conquer the terrible sides of them but still have bouts. As a result i got fat, weighing 19 1/2 stone at 186cm tall so basically ‘obese’ (yay).

Anyway, i’ve turned to the keto diet to cut out carbs and get back to a good weight. However, i’m getting a little confused with a few of the details.

The first is the net carbs vs carbs. I live in the Netherlands so our labels follow the EU rules meaning fibre and carbs are listed separately. Which one am i meant to be focusing on? Do i need to calculate net carbs?

The second is regarding cheese. Am i allowed to eat cheese like gouda, edam, cheddar, red Leicestershire or Gloucester? Information seems conflicting.

I have attached a label of a gouda my girlfriend buys which clearly states 0g carbs. However, when i added it to an app i use to track my food it said it had 25g of net carbs for a 70g portion.

Just so you don’t get confused i’ll translate the label into English.

Vetten = fat
Koolhydraten = carbs
Vezels = fibre
Eiwitten = protein
Zout = salt
Suikers = sugars

The final query is about what we call tarwezemelen (wheat bran). Is this food allowed due to the high fibre content compared to the carbs? I’ll try and attach a picture below.

#2

Many people focus on total carbs. I never had even a vague idea about my total carbs (I probably went over 100g on many days but who knows? :D), I only focused on net carbs. But when I realized I need a very low net carb intake, my total automatically went down and it’s the best. Sweeteners interfere with some people even if they don’t have net carbs. So figure out these things. I would start with net only, I think it’s the usual approach… Just keep in mind that maybe you will need to be careful with certain “keto-friendly” items…

Cheese is fine. Especially the mentioned ones, you should be more careful with the ones with more lactose.

Keto doesn’t ban anything, it just restricts your carb consumption. The carbiest items usually make little sense to eat (or in super tiny amounts… spices are typically very carby) but whatever floats your boat.
People say many things, I believe their advice work for them but for ketosis, you simply need to eat little enough carbs. It’s not even a fixed amount but 20g net works for most as far as I know. The rest is up to you, we are all individuals and different keto styles work for us. My original keto gave me fat adaptation but no fat-loss or more energy, I need a different approach for them so even our goals matter when we choose our woe.

Your gouda should be 0g carbs and that’s it, the data used by the app must be super bad or something… I eat gouda myself, it’s 0g net and total carbs…

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #3

Welcome. My understanding is that the EU ‘total carbs’ number is NET carbs. The fibre is listed separately, but it has already been included in the nutrient calculations. Thus, no math for you. As @Shinita mentions, some folks use total carbs and some use net carbs to track their daily consumption. Volek and Phinney determined that approx 50 grams of total carbs, meaning approx 20 grams of net carbs, will get most folks into nutritional ketosis. On this forum, the recommendation is 20 grams net carbs per day max. Although, some folks find they need to keep lower for various reasons. Generally speaking, the lower the overall carbs the better. Some folks will claim they can eat higher amounts of carbs without detriment. Maybe they can, but I recommend you don’t try it until you’ve been on keto for at least a year or more. Especially since you’ve got significant weight/fat to lose.

If you have no issues with dairy generally, then cheese is fine. My only recommendation is to stick to cheeses with zero or very low carb content. I eat lots of cheese every day and there are many zero carb varieties including: most parmesans, many cheddars, even a few soft cheeses.

(Jane) #4

You would lose your “Dutch card” if you turned down cheese!!! :laughing: j/k

Cheese is fine for most folks and low carb. Some find it stalls their weight loss and have to limit/eliminate but don’t worry about that for now. You may still stall but there are many reasons other than dairy that causes this - it is perfectly normal as weight loss isn’t linear.

#5

Thank you for the replies. Let me see of these worked. The site went down for me so i forgot to upload them.

Edit i can only do one as a new user :grin:

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An additional query. I’ve so far been managing on 1400 calories per day roughly but it’s really hard finding foods that have enough fat that don’t contain carbs. The only things i can think of are cheese and olives. Even cooking with butter doesn’t add much so aside from eating an entire jar of olives, half a block of cheese or munching on a bar of butter it appears tricky. My app suggests around 150g of fat and i’m lucky of i hit 50g a day so far.

#6

It’s not hard to eat little carbs, avoiding plants (and other non-animal things) does the trick but most people can squeeze a substantial amount of plant matter too…

You don’t necessarily need to eat 150g fat but that’s really not so hard to eat… There are many good fatty protein sources and many people are okay with added fat too… 50g fat… What do you eat then, lean protein galore? You must be if it’s 1400 kcal, little fat and little carbs…
You can eat eggs, fatty meat, dairy (not only cheese but be careful with the ones with more lactose), oily seeds (carb content varies) and more…

#7

At the moment i eat the following stuff:-

Salmon
Sardines
Gouda
Goat’s cheese
Chia seed
Flaxseed (linseed)
Walnuts
Pistachios
Chicken
Turkey
Beef
Endive
Spinach
Celery
Olives
Eggs

That’s it so far. I do like pretty much any food so i have no issue with buying other things. Avocados are a pain where i am because they are always as hard as rocks and they never ripen before going mouldy.

#8

I dislike avocado so I never eat it, it’s not a must :smiley:
Hiow come you don’t eat enough fat then? Do you eat tiny amounts from the fatty ones? Do you use leaner beef?
When I ate only beef one day (and not even a big amount), I probably had 120g fat or something similar, I never know the fat content of my meat.
If I focus on eggs, I get 60-70g fat only from eggs but easily more but one should love and need eggs for that.
Cheese isn’t an important fat source for me but it is for some people.
Using 50g added fat is super easy, I had that amount without trying to eat it, it was for cooking. When I ate vegetables, it brought lots of fat with it.
There are so many fat sources…
Oily seeds are fatty too, I ate 150g of them per day in the past (as a beginner vegetarian paleoer, I had little idea what to eat at that point), that’s about 80g fat? Combined with my lots of eggs, I easily reached 130-150g but often went beyond 200 due to my added fat intake… So it’s very interesting to me seeing someone drastically different. Fat comes so very easily! Protein too. And carbs if we focus on plants too much, of course.

You listed multiple leaner meat… Chicken thigh with skin and added fat isn’t that bad though, I think… Maybe use some fatty sauce on your lean meat or salad…? Or simply eat some super fatty dishes on the same day if you have them? My most fatty items are egg yolks, pork ribs, sausage but if I eat lean meat, I can afford more of non-satiating fatty items I love like cream or lard (I never snack on lard anymore but it’s easy to add to some food generously).

I basically never advice using fat bombs but maybe they are useful for some people at some point? My old favorite fat bomb is only 83% fat but I easily went over 90% too… I just could eat a ton of my homemade chocolate, 92% fat, 6% protein…
But the normal route is using “normal” food like meat and eggs, cheese is fine just usually hard to get lots of fat from it.

(bulkbiker) #9

Meat and fish ?

#10

I was under the assumption that if i eat too much fish or meat i will eat too much protein and thus it can stunt ketosis?

#11

I didn’t think of sausages actually, that’s my bad.

I can certainly get more fatty cuts of chicken but as for non-lean red meat, Jumbo (the supermarket of choice) is not too abundant with fatty cuts. The Dutch don’t have the choice like the Brits do such as 5, 10, 15 or 20% fat beef. It’s basically 5% or nothing :grin:

I think i might cook some garlic butter mushrooms for now until i go shopping next.

(bulkbiker) #12

Gluconeogenesis is thought to be a demand driven process… so if your body requires glucose it can make it.

That’s why carnivore eaters tend to be in ketosis.

#13

Wow. Maybe I am lucky to be a Hungarian, very fatty pigs (the type that has unusually much fat when it gets have) are popular here, many people eat white bacon, not me but I do love my meat fatty…
But I usually eat little meat and did vegetarian keto before. With more fat than on carnivore. Oily seeds, eggs, cheese, added fat…

You probably don’t need to worry about protein at all. There is a thing as too much regarding everything we can consume, even protein but the limit isn’t as low as many people think it to be.
Keto with little protein is super hard and unnecessary. GNG is demand driven but I am aware the old myth is stubborn. I merely don’t want to burden my body (and budget) with very clearly unnecessarily much protein but if it’s not comfortable to eat adequate amount, I go high or even very high for a single day, I never noticed any problems. Restricting protein is for people who need that because of some health condition. You still want to consume much fat if your calorie intake isn’t very low but if your protein intake is somewhat higher than advised by calculators and people but you feel great and it’s way more comfortable this way, I don’t see why to force something more unnatural.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #14

In Europe and Britain, the carbohydrate amount on nutrition labels is already net carbs. If you decide to count total carbs, you will need to add the fibre amount to the “carb” amount to get the total. (The reverse is true in North America, so it gets confusing.)

You can eat whatever you want, but the key to a ketogenic diet is to keep the carbohydrate intake as low as possbile. On these forums, we recommend an upper limit of 20 g/day, because it’s a level at which everyone is likely to be able to get into ketosis (or everyone except the people with the most metabolic damage, anyway). The softer cheeses tend to have more milk sugar remaining, whilst the harder, longer-aged cheeses tend to have less.

Many people on these forums have found fibre to be unnecessary (some have even found it detrimental) once they switched to a ketogenic diet. You may or may not find the same thing. Many other people on these forums swear by various sources of fibre. My conclusion is that your mileage (kilometrage?) is guaranteed to vary.

Wheat bran still contains gluten, I believe, in which case you may wish to avoid it. Also, be sure to count the carbohydrate against your daily limit. Although we recommend a strict limit of 20 g/day, your actual limit is likely to be different, and it will depend on how sensitive or resistant to insulin the cells in your body are (greater insulin resistance means a lower carb limit). In any case, we recommend sticking with the 20 g limit until you have fully adapted to fatty-acid metabolism, and after that, if you still wish to, you can experiment to find your individual carb tolerance.

Remember that the point of this way of eating is to lower your chronically elevated insulin level, both to avoid (and repair) metabolic damage and to allow any excess stored fat to leave the adipose tissue to be metabolised.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #15

Meat is roughly 25% protein, the rest being fat and water. Remember that dietary percentages are calculated off of total calories consumed, not the total weight of the food being eaten. Since fat contains (very roughly) 9 calories/gram whereas protein and carbohydrate contain (again, very roughly) 4 cal/g, this makes a big difference. For instance, equal amounts of fat and protein by weight are 69% fat and 31% protein by caloric value. So it may be easier to get enough fat than you are thinking.

(Also remember that in the context of food, what we mean when we write “a calorie” is what a physicist would call a kilocalorie. A calorie is defined as the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 cc [1 mL] of water 1 degree Celsius. Food caloric values were determined by burning the food in a device called a “bomb calorimeter,” and the commonly given figures of 4 or 9 calories/gram are rounded-off approximations of the actual values measured.)

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #16

I recommend dropping: Chia seed, Flaxseed (linseed), Walnuts, Pistachios, Turkey, Endive, Spinach, Celery.

Add as many of the following as you can: red palm oil, cacao butter, coconut/mct oils, lard, whipping cream, pork, ham, bacon, herring, cod, beef liver, cod liver (pate is fine, such as liverwurst but buy brand(s) with lowest carbs), hard cheeses like parmesan and cheddar. If you must eat some veggies, try baby bok choy (aka chinese cabbage, pak choi). Buy chicken with skin on; add lard to all meat that is not already moderately or more fatty; water packed tuna (or fresh) is OK, but very lean, so you’ll need to add fat, lard is OK but butter mixes and compliments flavour better; canned ham is OK if not loaded with added carbs or oils but it’s very lean so add lard. I make a very edible ‘pemmican’ with a tin of zero-carb, flaked ham and lard. Mustard and assorted ‘hot sauces’ can add a lot of variety to meals. Just make sure they’re zero-carb; most are.

Happy eating. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

PS: coffee. It’s a wonderful vehicle for additives to make a great keto meal to start the day.

PPS: too bad about avocados! If all you can get are the green rocks, let them ripen at home for a few days or at least until they start to darken. They will still be hard, but you can cut them up into chunks and use a blender either to chop them into small pieces or blend them into a slurry for addition to any beverage you like. Avocado smoothie? Blend avocado, whipping cream, casein or whey powder with a couple grams of added salt.

#18

Thank you for your replies @PaulL. I have been keeping to the 20g limit. So far over 3 days it has been 20g, 20g and today 14g.

#19

I can’t drink too much caffeine due to anxiety as it can make me go a bit ‘wappy’ :joy:

If i am sticking to my carb limit is there a reason why i should drop spinach, endive and celery?

I can’t eat liver unless it is pate as it is one of the rare foods i despise :wink:

I will have a hunt for more pork, chicken thighs and sausage meats.

Additionally i am a very enthusiastic chef and have been cooking since i was about 8 years old (28 years) so i cook everything fresh. I don’t do pre prepared stuff if i can avoid it. I make my own sauces and i cook for my girlfriend as well but she’s no fan of the keto diet as she loves her bread :grin:

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #20

Decaf. Both coffee and caffeine contain lots of good stuff, but if you don’t tolerate caffeine, at least you still get the good stuff in coffee.

They’re nutritionally dilute, so basically just useless filler. Spinach contains lots of oxalate, see here, here and here. On the other hand bok choy is nutrient dense and very low carb.

Pate is fine, just be alert to the carb content. Some have lots of added carbs, some less.

If that’s your interest, go for it! There are lots of resources for you to do so. The downside, which may get worse as time goes on, is having to prepare food for someone who refuses to share yours. @Momof5 She may be thinking you’re just going through a phase and will ‘get over it’ and then start to ‘eat normal’ again. If you don’t, it may cause a lot of stress. The least of which will be your having to prepare two different meals all the time. How long are you willing to do that? I hope I’m wrong. :innocent:

#21

Oh she’s fine about it, as am i. We have been together for over 2 years. We are not the type to sit down at a table and eat if you catch my drift. I have her dinner ready for when she comes in from work.

We can get bok choy over here so i shall buy that instead. Thank you for the heads up with that :slightly_smiling_face: