Not eating enough

(Jenell Rachelle) #1

My carbs are very low (15 g) protein lower then fat and fat average around (100g)… I’m not that hungry and can’t take in more the 900 calories… I’m will try to add the bulletproof coffee in the morning to be able to reach my target but real question is: can I still be in Ketosis with low macros? And what’s simple and high in fat to get me there?

#2

I have almost the same question. Hubby & I are 5 weeks in. He has lost 10 pounds and really is not following the plan as he should, but is getting better due to my encouragement (i.e. nagging!). I have followed it, but guesstimated on my macros. I’ve only lost 2 or 3 pounds, but have lost girth around my waist and belly which I am happy about. I decided I HAVE to track my intake so started using an app called Carb Manager. I felt that I might be eating too many carbs, or too little fat, or ??? After several days of tracking I do come up short on fat and protein some days so I add some fat with coconut oil in coffee or make an iced latte with heavy cream. I use keto strips to check my ketones and I’m usually in the moderate range. Today despite best efforts I have only gotten 1058 calories in but my goal is 1350.

(Chris W) #3

Ketosis and calories are not dependent upon one another for the most part, the big exception being carbs, protein can also cause issues also with over consumption.
Things that effect ketosis.
Carb intake above your personal threshold, which is why we tell everyone 20g.
Excessive sustained protein, that amount is a something you will have to figure on your own everyone is different, and proteins act differently upon our bodies.
Glycogen stores not depleted
Blood glucose too high which will also effect insulin
insulin too high for various reasons, mainly too much carb ingestion and the result is the above. Insulin will shut down ketosis/fat burning if it becomes too high and keep it off until it drops via the control of glucagon.
glucagon too low(and is almost always inverse to insulin) which is the actual controlling hormone for ketosis.

For the most part having low carbs is the primary path to ketosis, but if you don’t deplete your glycogen stores or have high blood glucose you will have a hard to time being ketogenic as well. Those can both come from ingesting too much protein, but this is being over the macros not below. This is often a problem that T2D encounter at the beginning of the WOE(way of eating) and can take a couple days if you were carb heavy and not exercising.
The worry for being below macros is that you are not providing your body with ample energy input so it will after a extended amounts of time slow your BMR(Basal Metabolic Rate) down. This makes you feel like poo, slows fat burning, increases fat retention, and shuts down body functions that are important. For a few days or at the very start of the WOE its not a big worry. In general the closer too your maintain macros you are the better off you will feel and in the long run things will work better.

So the biggest and best advice outside of eating less than 20g of carbs for anyone new is to eat to your maintain macros for protein and fat. If you are just starting it will take a few days to a week to get things working, many people have increased hunger in the second week. If that is the case follow it, try to keep the protein macro close and eat fat until you are full. After that make sure you are drinking enough water, and increasing your salt ingestion after a few days in.

If you want to share your macros, stats and meals we can help.

(LeeAnn Brooks) #4

900 is way too low to be eating on a regular basis. It will slow down your metabolism and lower your BMR.

Could you give us a breakdown as to a typical daily food intake with as much detail as possible? We might be able to help see where you can add more fat/calories or sub out items.

(Chris W) #5

Both those number are low unless you are 5’2 and weigh 120 pounds.
As many will tell you if you are low on your intake and have been for a while you will loose slowly. Your BF% will also make a difference as well as activity level. Having low on either or both will make it slower go. Women often start slow, and tend to stay steady, men start strong and tend to slow down without intervention or changing up.

(Ron) #6

I question how you are tracking because-
carbs - 15g = 60
fats -100g = 900
protein -50g ?? = 200
TOTAL - 1160 kcal
and this is low protein consumption that I would bet your eating more than.
This is almost 300 calories more that you listed so I am wondering if your tracking is not right?

#7

Your body running more efficiently is a bad thing?

(LeeAnn Brooks) #8

Yes! Your body needing 1200 calories vs 1700 to maintain the exact weight is a bad thing.

It also causes increases in hunger inducing hormones, making it a recipie for failure.

It’s what causes stalls and makes additional weight loss that much more difficult, because if you still try to use CICO to lose weight, you then have to go to 1000 calories.

It’s why universally 95% of those who do CICO diets fail.

#9

Only if you want or need to overindulge.

Why would the body increase hunger inducing hormones if 1200 calories is the body’s new consumption rate of fuel? It wouldn’t need the additional calories. If anything, I’ve seen the reverse. Many long term keto devotees don’t have a lot of hunger.

Yes, there will be a stall in weight loss if there are no changes in eating habits, but that’s because that new deficit needs to be set. If someone still needs to lose weight, they’ll still have plenty of fat for the body to burn to make up for that new deficit.

The problem isn’t that BMR is reducing, the problem is bad eating habits. We want an excuse to consume a lot of food. Instead of thinking of food as simply fuel.

The question should be, how efficiently can the body run? And why do so many of us allow it to run so inefficiently? We wouldn’t do that with a gas-guzzling car.

For me, they always failed because I felt deprived. I don’t feel that on Keto. My biggest problems now are that I eat out of habit and for pleasure, when I don’t need to. Before keto, I had a constant, ravenous hunger all the time, no matter how much I ate. No more. And I’m probably consuming less than 20-30% of the calories I used to. I should reduce it more.

(Chris W) #10

No offence but it sounds like you are rationalizing your own poor habits. You yourself say that you used to eat way more than you should, you would have to base that amount on something correct? Well the exact opposite is possible as well and I think you would agree that being too far on the over side can be just as bad too far on the negative side.

I trained my body to be inefficient as possible,that came at a cost of exercise increases, feeling really good, fixing numerous medical problems, and losing a fair amount of weight in s short period while gaining the muscle that provided the effective but noticeable inefficiency. Had I gone your route (and I did try it for a while) I would have been slower to lose fat, less energetic, felt like crap most of the time, and probably not fixed a good portion of the things that were wrong medically. Its not that you can or cannot eat at deficit, its why would you want to if you can feel better, achieve better results and do more with the energy you are taking in.

if your desire is to sit and be in active all day long while maintaining a minimal amount of TDEE so be it. Its not wrong but its not the only way. I did find it much easier to be that way when my BF% was higher, and to be fair I was not as broken in a metabolic sense as you were.

#11

Personally, this resonates with me: I can easily put away more than 3000 calories/day and I think it would likely be better for my long-term health to be more efficient. However, if our RMR is low because of years of calorie-restriction and yo-yo dieting, that’s not ideal!

Strong, healthy metabolism is probably a good goal for folks with years of dieting behind them. Once we’re at a goal size, working toward a more efficient system seems like it makes sense for longevity and health.

#12

Well, I’m more active than I used to be. I’ve lowered by blood sugars to the point I no longer need insulin and metformin for my diabetes. And I’ve lost a lot of weight.

I definitely have bad eating habits. I used to have an eating disorder – binge eating. And, yes, I may be deluding myself that I don’t have a different one now.

Keep in mind there are some that would claim all of us here have an eating disorder because we am restricting carbs and not eating a “balanced” and “moderate” diet…

But I experience less hunger with my lowered BMR, not more. And it’s something I see a bit of on keto boards (such as this very topic). So how can I accept the statement that a lowered BMR will “increase hunger inducing hormones”?

(LeeAnn Brooks) #13

I’m sorry, but if you consider wanting to be able to eat over 1200 calorie and still maintain weight “over indulging” you have an issue with food in the same way an anerxic person does. That is not a healthy stance.

Please read The Obesity Code. There’s a lot of science to this, and yes, eating at a deficit is proven to increase hunger hormones. It’s a way the body works to maintain a level of stasis. Just as your metabolism slows down to conserve energy.

#14

So why is having trouble getting enough calories such a common keto problem with all of this increase in hunger hormones?

(Chris W) #15

I can only answer from my own experience, but while I was in deficit mode I was more hungry after about 2 days at it. The few times when I was really low on my intake for more than a day by chance it has also effected my hunger. If I am at or just above my macros for the most part I am not terribly hungry unless I have expened a lot of energy or I was knocked out of keto.
When I stayed at maintain I rarely had times were I was really hungry, I won’t say never but in comparison to while in deficit or being a carb burner much less.

I also to increase my BMR had to eat more than I was hungry for, so I had no hunger signals to tell me I was hungry, these boosts did a lot for me. I did not do this every day but I did do a couple times a week for several months. So my hunger was effected by this, it took a little bit figure it out. I would actually under eat on very high expenditure days and sometimes I would run out of energy mid day, this would happen the day after I would boost my BMR with fat. Now at this point I was running 15-18% body fat and working hard and long days not normal by any stretch. The bad part is once I did start to eat i often did over eat, so it was not a perfect way to operate but once I got a handle on it I could maintain my weight/BF easily. This is almost the exact polar opposite of the problem I had when I was under eating at normal expenditure.

(Chris W) #16

Outstanding, and yes I agree about the people who think we are all going to a die a miserable carbless death.

(LeeAnn Brooks) #17

Keto can (not always) suppress appetite in ways that typical CICO diets don’t, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t slow the metabolism and lower BMR. A low BMR is not a good thing, regardless of what WOE one is on.

Have you read any of the information on the Biggest Loser contestant studies? They almost all gained their weight back and then some. And it’s because their BMR was lowered. So if it took 2400 calories to maintain their 290 pound frame before their weight loss, after restricting calories, losing weight and subsequently gaining it back, at the same point as pre weight loss, the 290 pounds, it took an average of almost 500 calories less to maintain that same frame. So 1900 in this example. Add to that the increase in hunger hormones and it’s no wonder they all gained it back. It’s simply not maintainable. If they got down to 140, they would have to continue to reduce calories or increase energy expenditure just to maintain the weight loss. No one can be expected to do that indefinitely.

You hunger may be more in control by maintaing a ketogenic woe, but a continual restriction of calories will have the same effect on the BMR.

You will still approach a stall as your body finds ways to equalize the reduced energy input, and you will still have to cut more calories to continue to lose weight, and this approach is still unmaintainable, albeit not as torturous as it would be without Keto.

Fasting is a far better way to compensate for lack of appetite than simply reducing daily consumption as it’s been shown to not lower metabolism.

Why would you want to slow down fat burning?

#18

Lower metabolism, less food burned = less oxidative stress overall (all else being equal)

I’m not saying that’s everyone’s goal all the time, but there’s some decent reasoning behind it.

(Chris W) #19

Being keto is less oxidation stress, far less free radicals are created the need for antioxidants is less. And a lower metabolism does not equate to less food burned, it equates to it taking longer to do so. I would also ask if you are doing damage at a lower BMR that a normal or higher one would repair are you better off by saying you have used less food in a given time vs being healthy?

#20

Yes, I agree - that’s why I specified “all else being equal”

I’m not particularly advocating a lower metabolism, and certainly not one that’s artificially low because of calorie restriction. I was just answering LeeAnn’s question of basically “why on earth would anyone want a lower metabolism?”

I think that if you’re healthy and your metabolism’s in a great place, finding a way to get your nutrients and energy with relatively less intake can make sense in the long-term.