Not losing weight on Keto vegetarian diet

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(Rob) #3

We’ll wait to see your veggie diet before pronouncing bacon fueled judgement from the top of Mount Keto :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

But… on the exercise front, it is often wise to do little to no exercise while you are fat adapting (4-8 weeks) since your body needs to divert all its energy and efforts to making that switch. While the Fitbit is good at knowing what you are doing, it is very flawed in understanding what you are actually achieving. Your actual calorie burn is very personal based on your genetic and physical capabilities and the quality/intensity of the exercise so it is somewhat irrelevant to your early keto journey for now. If you are raising your TDEE with exercise, all you are doing is increasing your calorie deficit which counter-intuitively is BAD on keto where you want to maintain your BMR while adapting and NOT lower it via a starvation response. You can reduce calories and increase burn later when fat adapted and using body fat (if you have any).

Looking forward to seeing veggie keto. :grin: :thinking:

Now they are revealed, it seems good from a macro perspective, low carb, low protein, high fat. From a quantity POV, eating 2000 kcal and burning 2700 (if Fitbit is to be believed) is creating quite a deficit. As I said above, in the early stages, a calorie deficit works against you.

My advice would be, cut out the exercise and/or eat more (fat - e.g. the macadamias) and see what happens? You could also increase the protein which is not bad but definitely on the low side.

What is your weight and Lean body mass - should have asked that first :flushed:

(Saurabh Chatterjee) #4

Hi thanks for looking into
Fixed my diary sharing settings, now you will have access to it.

(Renee Slaughter) #5

I will leave the science to @Capnbob. He knows more than I do.

#6

Like CapnBob said - this is a time to focus on fat-adapting - to get to 100% fat adaptation may take months, some people up to a year, according to Dr. Phinney. It’s a time of a lot of internal change.

The body prioritizes liver healing, changing the most dangerous fat (visceral/intraabdominal fat wrapped around organs and that you can’t see), and restoring atrophied muscles in some areas. This is about body recomposition more than it is about weight, technically. The same pound of muscle is much more dense that wobbly fat, etc. Are you measuring yourself once a month? You may find that the scale might say same weight, but fat is shrinking on upper belly etc.

I wasn’t able to view your food diary.

If you want to boost your body recomposition processes:

  1. Incorporate one short (15mins-30mins) weekly session of very slow weightlifting, either the slow burn method (small muscle groups, which I prefer) or super slow (compounds). Nothing more than that - the body is doing a lot internally and needs a lot of recovery time. As authors Fred Hahn, Drs Mary Dan Eades and Michael Eades, and Dr. Doug McGuff all point out - 99% of body recomposition is in one’s way of eating. The strength training is however a powerful lever! Buuuuut - it’s really best once you’re 100% fat adapted. I would wait a few more months and focus instead on food-as-medicine.

  2. Consider supplementing with Ginger powder capsules (I take 4 per day, which is 2.2 grams Ginger) - it is powerful for reducing insulin spiking, reducing cortisol (which is high in unmanageable stress), balancing leptin, enhacing GI circulation/absorption, suppressing appetite, and its curcumin is also has anti-depressant benefits. Its actions apparently supercede its negligible carbs. There are other posts in this forum about it.

  3. If you don’t know of him already, you might like Sahil Makhija’s “Headbanger’s Kitchen” keto cooking show onyoutube and his website with lots of veg keto dishes. He’s not veg himself, but does have many dozens of tasty keto-vegetarian south Asian cuisine recipes to replace high carb style, with paneer and eggs and caulirice etc.

  4. Intermittent Fasting should only be done because it naturally happens and is easy to do - not forced. Only if you truly have no desire to eat. It will happen naturally the more fat adapted you are, and when it does, it will be effortless. Don’t rush it - if you are hungry, eat keto foods to satiety, with plenty of fat and sea salt during these early months.

(Allison) #7

I don’t want to hijack anyone thread but this reply caught my attention. You say that exercise should wait the first few months…what if the individual was already regularly active and just continued on with their normal workout routine, would the same advice apply or just to those who are just beginning a fitness regimen? The reason I’m asking is because I have lifted weights 3-5 days a week for the last 4 years but have only been following Keto for the past 4 months. Having said that, I’m curious to find out if that is one of the reasons I have not had any success as well.

(Allison) #8

Oh I’m sorry just 1 more thing…I see a plethora of posts stating to eat more fat, but how does anyone know how much fat or how much more fat to eat? If you have the body fat to lose/burn and you’re eating this over abundance of dietary fat then the only fat burned is the fat you ingest right?

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #9

Here is a good resource on vegan keto, so should work well forvegetarians who do dairy/eggs as well. Paired with some IFing this should show you results. It does take longer to become fat adapted because it is harder to get to the fat burner phase when your protein comes from plants. But it can be done. So all the best in your efforts.
http://www.veganatheart.org/vegan-ketogenic-diet-plan/

(Rob) #10

Lots of people with good workout regimes struggle while adapting to keto with low energy etc. as they move from glycogen fueled to ketones. It seems to be good general advice but it’s relevance probably has less to do with how much exercise you were doing pre keto and more to do with how deranged your metabolism is or how “bad” your prior diet was. The harder the adaptation the more you are going to want to not stress your body beyond the metabolic stress of going keto. If you are coming from paleo you can probably keep up your regime more.

4 months in you are probably adapted already but if you kept up your lifting, maintained a major calorie restriction, didn’t eat enough fat, etc. then you could have prevented fat adaptation. As to how much fat is “enough” use one of the keto macro calculators to give you some idea. If you keep lifting, you will want to eat more fat than the basic level but it’s fine to reduce workouts for a while.

(Cristian Lopez) #11

I would cut out all dairy like I did,stopped bloating and in 2 months my abs finally toned down

And I would recommend eating a lot more eggs, they are like perfect for thermogenic response and fat burn

Dairy also slows down fat loss from the Caesin

Eat more nuts like pumpkin and flax and try unsweetened almond milk as a cream substitute

If you do want dairy then I would Minor it down too just whey or nonfat Greek yogurt(lower in carbs and caesin apposed todo keeping fat intact) and maybe some sprinkles of Parmesan at most

(Allison) #12

Thank you for taking the time out to explain it to me. It will be out of my comfort zone but I will give the reduction in workouts a try. 4 weeks should be long enough to tell me if I’m on the right path or short enough that I can correct any errors made. I will also try to do so slowly, in the meantime, I’ll increase the dietary fat to compensate. Again thank you for taking time out to help me.

(Rob) #13

Moving less and eating more is the polar opposite of what we are told by dietary authorities so it can be so hard to even contemplate it let alone do it.
Kudos on giving it a go.

Are you already lean and doing keto for longevity/health/prevention? If so, there are other people in a better position to advise you so searching the forum for that experience would probably help as well.

(Allison) #14

No, I am not lean at all. I have about 40% body fat. I’m getting married in September and hope to start a family soon after so I needed a way of eating that would keep up with a busy life and bring in the benefits of weight loss and good health. I’ve been ketoing for 4 months but haven’t seen much of any results so far.

(Saurabh Chatterjee) #15

Thanks for all the detailed explanations. I do admit that I have been in a calorie deficit for many years now and have been involved in physical exercises like swimming, cycling, weight training, hiking etc. I have been anticipating that my metabolism has slowed down over time.

I have increased my calorie intake from today and lowered my physical activities. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary?date=2018-03-26

What is the best way to verify if I am fat adapted? I started feeling improved homeostasis in a week on a keto diet but I misunderstood that with fat adaptation.

Cheese, butter, and ghee have been my primary sources of fat, so getting off diary looks difficult on a vegetarian diet. Other sources of fat include oils and avocado.

I have followed a vegan lifestyle for 8 months last year, but Keto along with vegan looked really hard to me. But I will give it a try sometime.

(Rob) #16

When you are fat adapted, your appetite will come down, keto stix should show very little ketones, you should feel generally better (mentally, physically).

Keep the dairy until you know it’s not the other issues.

Vegan keto is very hard and likely less effective so stick to vegetarian if you can.

#17

Dr. Volek suggests that a person starting the ketogenic diet coming from no exercising should probably not start a vigorous exercise program for perhaps three weeks, however I have not seen any suggestion that a person who is already exercising needs to stop during the transition. It will indeed be an additional burden, and performance is expected to fall. For people just starting, perhaps Lyle McDonald is actually the most rational in this area, when he notes that it really, really depends on the person and their condition. Getting a morbidly obese person to even walk for a few minutes may be an accomplishment.

As far as a caloric deficit of 700 calories from a 2000 level of unverified accuracy, to a 2700 Fitbit TDEE of generally recognized overstated calories, I would suggest that this too requires more analysis. I do not believe that any level of starvation response will occur at this caloric intake, especially since we know nothing of OP’s BF level.

What do you think of these responses:

(Rob) #18

All good points… everything is n=1. Lots of people who try to continue their exercise struggle with power and endurance until they adapt, suggesting it might be good to give it a break. Some will do fine.

The calorie stuff is also guess work (obvs) BUT when failure to advance from a likely restricted start point, it makes some sense to suggest eating more since empirically it works for many. Feel free to suggest more restriction or something else. A quick scan of the reddit stuff smacks of CICO restriction and goes the other way. Sounds like the OP has a large choice of experiments.

I am no qualified expert at all and certainly not in a vegetarian approach (nor will I ever be in that) but just offering suggestions and rationales to “shake it up” that have been proven to work in many.

(Ethan) #19

My take is that you are way under on your protein. Your main source of protein as a vegetarian is eggs. Well, you only had 4 of those. Your second source of protein was cheese, but you didn’t have much of that either. I would increase protein, though it is incredibly hard to eat enough complete protein as a vegetarian. Perhaps more eggs and more cheese? Maybe some other sources and supplementation would be best. How far are you from your weight goal?

(Jo) #20

I don’t see a lot of veggies, but maybe I’m not looking in the right place. IMHO it is important to eat green leafy vegetables to get enough nutrition.

(Brian) #21

The average egg has 6g of protein. It’s really good protein. But it’s only 6g. It also comes with nearly that in good fat, too. So it’s an eggcelent thing to eat. :wink:

1 oz of cheese is about 7g of protein and about 9g of fat to go with, at least that’s what Google just said.

Sounds like the two are a good combo but like Ethan said, it’s gonna take quite a lot of consumption to get all or most of your protein needs filled by eggs and cheese.

Just throwing that out for perspective.

Good luck!

(linda cc) #22

A vegan keto here to say I support you! Wish I were more of an expert but am just learning it all as I go. Happy to say that I have kept it up for 2 months now even though only just starting to see results (for me the point is girth loss) last week. Also happy to say that I have found many creative ways to eat a reasonably varied diet. It’s definitely a challenge to eat out, though. My carb cravings are lower now but not yet gone. I’ve had some very tough days trying to exercise in a “normal” way but tanking energy-wise, heart rate soaring, almost feeling like I might faint. ONly sometimes. I know about electrolytes. Didn’t know I was not supposed to expect to be as physically active. The brain fog is finally starting to lift. I have never seen any ketones show up on the pee sticks and I don’t know if that is good or bad.
Anyway just wanted to express solidarity if you are trying to be vegan keto.
Cheers!