Still frustrated with the lack of changes after a month of trying to stick to the diet. Don’t seem to be in ketosis (pee stix always negative) and have not gone through a “flu”. Don’t think I see much change in anything. Since my last post last week, my scale weight has not changed. Really, getting disappointed and trying to stay positive. Sounds like a lot of people add fasting, but I feel like i should get the basics of keto down before moving onto anything. I’ve cut way back on cardio. Been doing HIIT instead of my long running sessions and took some days off entirely. Should I try butter coffee daily? Take ketones (sounds like the do very little anyway)? Eat more fat? Can’t say I’m hungry, but not that I’m “full” and overeating. I feel like I eat less volume due to the fat having more calories. I count calories so I know my macros. Below is from my keto app. I’m 6’1, 48, currently around 209.
!One Month In, what should I change
Ketosis is started by restricting carbs. If you reduce the carbs sufficiently, you will go into ketosis. According to your report and included chart my guess is you’re eating too many carbs.
Your ‘average’: 5% of 1935 cals is 96.75 cals = 24.2 grams of carbs.
Your ‘goal’: 5% of 2474 cals is 123.7 cals = 30.9 grams of carbs.
It may not seem like much, but you very well might be one of those folks for whom a little is just a little too much. Starting out - and for the first several months - you need to get your carb intake consistently below 20 grams per day. The lower the better.
Don’t use percentages to calculate your carb intake. Use the actual gram weight and keep it sub-20 grams per day or less. And in your case you may find that sub-15 grams per day is better and sub-10 grams per day even better yet. Maybe necessary.
Some other people may tell you 24-30 grams of carbs per day is not an issue. And it may not be an issue for them. Phinney even says ‘about 50 grams or less per day’. But that doesn’t work for everyone and some folks need to get it as low as possible - you may be one of them.
Give it a try and you may move the needle. Nothing to lose if it doesn’t work. Best wishes.
They’re designed for type 1 diabetics to check for an excess of one kind of ketone body being excreted as waste. Not to check for nutritional ketosis.
Your goals should be in grams not as percentages. Your protein needs should be based on your lean body mass, not on your caloric intake. And the rule of thumb for keto is no more than 20 net grams of carbs, although many can tolerate more.
The proteins macro is a lower limit, while the carbs and fats macros are upper limits. If you’re trying to lose weight, you want part of your daily fats needs to be satisfied by stored body fat, not what you’re eating. Neither percentages or grams can account for that.
Doesn’t matter, pee sticks are useless and not going though a keto flu could just me you managed your electrolytes well.
BPCs (although delicious) Exogenous Ketones (which I’m a fan of) and eating more fat (which tastes great) aren’t going to make you loose more.
Can you make that app show everything in grams? %'s don’t work. You’re probably eating too much for your current metabolic rate. What’s your average caloric, protein and fat intake? Have you taken measurements to try to have an educated guess on muscle mass? That’s going to be the biggest driver in metabolic rate.
And thinking yes, perhaps try and reduce carbs more. Right now the only carbs I eat are coming from vegetables or in cheese. I’m not eating any starchy carbs including sugar. I’m not eating carrots or peppers to avoid sugars there. Yesterday carbs were from green beans, lettuce, spinach (creamed), cauliflower, and cheese. That’s pretty typical. I did eat frozen frittatas that were a total of 8 grams of carbs. My daily total is from the app, at net carbs 31g daily limit. I have gone over a bit as it’s easy to do. However sometimes I am including things that may not be entirely accurate. For instance if I make creamed spinach, I can’t measure g of carbs there. But I can look for something preprogrammed to try and estimate it.
I am gathering that I should invest in a ketone breath meter.
Carbs are carbs, the specific sources don’t matter.The only difference is how long it takes to break down into glucose and/or fructose. You may, however, have sensitivities to certain foods. So you might want to consider that possibility. You might also consider simplifying things for a while. Prepare as much as you can from individual components. It’s a lot easier to determine grams consumed that way of each of the macros. Apps can be handy, but sometimes don’t do what you need, so you have figure out an alternative. I use a spreadsheet to track my food for each meal because I could not find an available app that did what I want or gave me the info I want to see.
As far as managing electrolytes, I haven’t done much of anything specific. I’ve always avoided salting my food. Heart disease in my family so eating salt not a great idea in the long run. That’s also why I’m trying to lose weight (fat). Goal is to get down to around 190 (even 180). My lean mass is supposedly 140.
My app tells me to eat 2500 cal, which I don’t think is right for me. I can eat a full day at 2000 cal and not feel hungry, even before trying keto. I was trying to eat 1800 cal and losing weight before keto, while eating more veg and few carbs, with a lot of cardio. That was based on an InBody scan that told me I needed 1960 cal daily. Since being on Keto I was running a lot and not seeing any changes and now am not. Doing HIIT for exercise. Still getting used to that.
App set my goals of 29g net carbs, 89 g protein and 208 g fat. That’s based on 2400 calories. Like I said, that calorie goal seems high. The bulk of my calories not eaten is always on fat. I have been less concerned with too much protein the last week, generally eating 120-130g.
Thinking I need to get a ketosis breath meter. Nobody seems to think strips are worth bothering with. I can’t figure out why using ketone supplements are a thing. What purpose do they serve if they don’t help you get into ketosis?
This may or may not be applicable or helpful, but it’s what I did. I’ve been on keto for 3 1/2 years, and have a consistent overall weight of 145 pounds with approx 15% BF. I’m 75 in 2 weeks.
One, got the carbs down to sub-20 grams per day. Most days I’m sub-15 grams and many days sub-10. It’s not that difficult to do.
Two, set total protein based on Bikman’s recommendation of approx 1.5 grams per kilogram of total body weight. There’s a range here, anything from 1.4 to 1.8. If you’re very active and/or exercising, for instance, you’ll want more protein. As we age, we also need more protein. Bikman uses body weight rather than ‘lean mass’ because it’s much easier to measure. Currently, I’m at 1.8 gr/kg which translates to 120 grams protein per day.
Three, set total fat to maintain weight. Currently, that’s 240 grams per day. My total daily caloric intake is 2700 kcal. I determined this by trial and error over the course of about a year, based on activity level which changed significantly when I got a full time job at Walmart in July, 2018. My weight is stable at 145 for the last 3 years. In your case, since you want to lose fat, set your fat intake slightly lower. Again, using trial and error. We’re talking about a couple hundred calories here, nothing massive!
Hope this helps.
They are all chains of more or less glucose and fructose molecules. All end up as glucose in the blood or fructose in the liver. The only difference is how long it takes to get there. The more a specific carb resembles simple glucose the faster it gets to the blood. The more it resembles cellulose the longer it takes to get there.
I am absolutely with amwassill. I’m pretty sure your carbs are too high. Is the creamed spinach pre-prepared? If so then it is probably loaded with carbs. Alone to get that creamy consistency they add corn flour. If you want creamed spinach then you should be making your own, and also cream has quite a few carbs in it too. I oftentimes stall myself with cream. There are so many many hidden carbs in processed foods that one should avoid them altogether. I eat red bell peppers regularly- but do count the carbs in them. What I avoid are carrots and I do miss them. I also keep fresh tomatoes low on my list. For that I eat the high carb ( well- high means 5g) onions in my diet because I need some spice in my cooked meals. Love Garlic too. But I make everything from scratch. “Pure” foods is my motto and nothing that was kept on a shelf at the supermarket. To preserve those foods the industry adds carbs to them. If I eat anything above 20g carbs per day I don`t lose any weight or I gain. And this is all about the BEGINNING or early phase of keto within the first few months.
LATER- and please let me emphasise LATER- we find that our appetite wains. I ate fried eggs and bacon for breakfast every day for maybe 2 and a half months. Then suddenly I wasnt hungry in the mornings anymore. I kind of drifted into IF naturally. Now I do 18/6, and with this I find that I can lose weight with a few more carbs than usual. I personally can now also eat artificial sweeteners without having a problem with that insulin reflex that the sweet taste illicits - talking about insulin secretion. Maybe if I cut them out totally I would lose the weight even faster though. But like I said- that’s LATER along on the keto journey and for me it involves some form of fasting, which I would have been totally unable to do before being fat adapted. But thats just me. I could not wait for food in the morning on SAD. I woke up hungry on SAD!
As an aside- I have to add here that my blood cholesterol was only slightly elevated as my doctor told me yesterday! Hooray! It was always majorly elevated before!!! ( I also had the corona antibody test which sadly wa snegative- meaning i haven thad it yet, and have no charged immune system to combat it should I come into contact. )
And as for the ketones- I did rely on the Keto Stix to see if I was in ketosis in the beginning and they are good for that. But like Amwissil said- ketosis happens naturally when we dont have the insulin and the carbs and we start to burn fats instead. After a while when we settle in, the keto stix can begin to stop showing ketones oftentimes, because we burned them for energy! Keto Stix basically only show the EXCESS of ketones in the urine. We can be in ketosis and burn them all and have them not show in the urine because they have been used for energy- as a simplified way of explainng it. So then the keto stix wiill not show the ketones. It happened to me for a while. Funny but just today I got one out to check again after maybe 8 weeks of not doing so, and it was a lovely dark purple. You can say what you want but it always soothes me and makes me happy to see this. So I am not going to invest in anything more costly to measure them. cronometer.com shows me how low my carbs are and thats enough, and with time it becomes instinctive. I kind of know now what I can and cannot eat.
So I think first of all you really do have to keep those carbs under 20g/day. That by being meticulous about how many carbs you eat and using pure foods. The only thing that is really strenuous about keto is all the cooking I am doing, and all the time I am spending in the kitchen. But for me personally- I would rather hang out in my kitchen creating meals, than in a fitness studio. Sports? NOT for me. 
Currently trying to reduce my carbs. Two days into it, and finding it really hard. Nearly everything I eat is home made. Including my creamed spinach. I had used a preset caluculation instead of doing the math myself. I will have to change that I guess. I’m finding it hard to stay at 20g of net carbs or less daily. Makes eating a lesson is weighing food more than anything. Perhaps I need new ideas of what to eat. Also find it hard to eat fat without carbs, and since much of my fat comes from cheese, my protein goes up too. Less worried about protein and eating about 140g a day. Wondering if I need to eat more fat, which makes me feel like I’m going to be eating spoonfuls of butter. Perhaps butter on bacon, which doesn’t sound like a bad idea…Breath meter comes in the mail today.
I agree with Micheal, keep the carbs under 20 a day. What I ate to lose weight on keto was very boring and simple but it worked. I ate bacon, eggs, cheese, small green salads with cucumbers and romaine, no dressing, grilled chicken or steak, and dinner was steak usually with steamed brocolli. I varied it some but my carbs we consistently under 20. Anything I ate that I couldn’t measure the carbs I didn’t eat. I lost 40 pounds and almost 40 inches in 6 months doing this.
I am 45 and post menopause and weight has been an issue for me for years. It wasn’t always easy but I have been able to add in tomatoes, onions, and fruit ans yogurt sometimes now that I am in maintenance. I never used pee sticks or a breathe meter. To me those are a waste of time and money. I think just being very consistent with your diet and doing moderate exercise is the key.
Lastly, I believe this is my lifestyle now. I do not like to say I am on a keto diet. I truly will eat this way the rest of my life because I feel good, I have energy, and it has changed my relationship with food. I eat for fuel and rarely from cravings anymore. I miss things sure, but overall it is just how I am choosing to live. I feel when people view this as a diet they get frustrated with slow or lack of change easily and it is self defeating. Ask yourself if it is worth living as a lifestyle versus a diet. Ditch the monitoring devices, only weigh once or twice a month, and get a measuring tape to see off the scale progress. Look at how your clothes fit and how you feel versus getting hung up on a scale number or a meter number. I hope some of this helps and I wish you well on your health journey!!!
I can relate. It was a bit hard to keep my carbs below 40g in the first months… I loved my veggies. 20g was out of question. I still can’t do it if I eat plants. On carnivore-ish? Easy peasy, I go way lower than 20g quite often. It’s not for everyone or right away but maybe if you focus on animal food and plants are just some little extra even in your thoughts, it helps?
Even now, if I add plants, 20g is is impossible without extreme control and I don’t do that. (But my animal food has lots of carbs already, there isn’t much wriggle room…)
If you don’t go high with your calories, you don’t even need to add more than minimal added fat provided your protein sources are fatty… I usually eat 1500-2000 kcal on keto and I avoid added fat as much as I can. Tiny cream and sour cream, some extra egg yolks, fatty pork, eggs, cheese and my fat intake is high enough. For 2500 kcal I would raise my cream and add more yolks, I can feed the whites to my SO and even the cats sometimes… But I am fine with high protein so I can eat them too. But added fat is very easy to consume in many forms.
I like that we have so many options on keto 
Guess I’m also struggling to figure out what I can and can’t eat. Since I’ve not seen any changes, I haven’t determined my limits. After a month it’s really frustrating. I hear a lot of “don’t count calories” but also don’t eat more than x% carbs, fat, etc, which means you have to count calories. Never been much of a cook but finding it hard to not be in order to eat the right food. So lots of changes. I was running to increase metabolism and burn fat with no results after a month, and it was suggested not to run as much and eat less carbs. Now I’m doing HIIT and trying to eliminate carbs, but keeping below 20g is proving tough.
If you want to change it up, you probably need to start by reducing your carbs.
This is what I did. I cut out most of the dairy I used to eat. I still occasionally have a little, but not often.
Now I eat mostly fatty meat and mostly green veggies.
I keep it simple by roasting, grilling, cooking meat (salmon, beef, pork, chicken legs, thighs, wings) in a crock pot or Instant Pot or oven. Most of my veggies are things like asparagus, broccoli, celery, zucchini, roasted radishes, spinach, green onions, garlic and similar.
While I do occasionally make Saag or other Indian, Pakestani curries, and Mexican foods, I don’t do it every day. I weigh veggies before I steam or roast them and I weigh all ingredients before making blended foods. Once you have your recipe worked out it becomes much easier and not such a pain.
Really, I suggest you get your carbs down to 20 grams total, at least for a while, before seeing if you can make progress with a little more.
It is SO worth it!
I guess I’m confused on the net carbs vs total carbs here. I use a keto app (KetoDiet) to keep track of what I eat. I had been showing only net carbs as that’s what I thought was better. Yesterday I found it hard to stick to 20g or less net carbs. All my carbs came from raw (cooked) vegetables except 2g from sausage. When I switch to total carbs, I ate 35g yesterday, which is 6g over the quota set by the app for 5% carbs. I ate 136g protein, which is close to my lean mass of 140. I’m trying too eat 1800-2000 total calories. The dairy I eat is heavy cream in my morning coffee and cheese the rest of the day. Butter (or cheese) on vegetables. Perhaps I just need to stay at this level longer?? It’s only been a couple days at this lower level. If I try to reduce my carbs I’m afraid I’d be dropping calories even farther and I don’t want to affect metabolism.
Salt leading to heart disease and high blood pressure is essentially is a myth, there ARE some people that are sensitive to it (3% of the population I believe, someone correct me if I’m wrong) but it’s your main electrolyte and if it’s off… stuff just doesn’t work right.
Everybody’s different, but me personally would eat 1g/lb of body weight. You WILL loose more muscle loosing a lot of weight, no way around it but you want to minimize it at all costs. Less muscle, less metabolism. That would be a lot of fat for me.
FAR better things to blow money on! Screw measuring ketones, your ketone level doesn’t equal weight/fat loss speed.
Ditch you Ketodiet tracker and go to cronometer.com. There you can see the grams of carbs of each food you enter. Concentrate only on carbs for now. I also think that you dont have enough ideas on what to cook.
I use cauliflower rice if I am missing the rice or potatoes or bread that goes with meats. The trick is you have to fry it. If you boil it in water it turns to mush. Cauliflower rice tastes so good I dont miss real rice anymore. I love to fry it in coconut oil with onions and salt and pepper. It goes great with a thai curry. Buy some unsweetened coconut milk and add a bit of red curry paste. Fry onions and any kind of meat ( I use chicken or lamb) and add the coconut milk/curry paste mixture to it. Simmer and voila- you have a curry meal you can eat with the cauliflower rice.
I make Mac and Cheese with cauliflower too. Check out “headbangers keto kitchen” on youtube and he will show you how to make a lot of keto things. I like it MORE than potato gratin.
I make the BEST Ceasar salad sauce. Ask if you want the recipe. I eat iceberg lettuce or endive with hard boiled eggs, avocados, tuna fish or chicken- whatever - AND red bell peppers and a small tomato.
Last but not least- if you look at netririton.com, there are a lot of products there which are keto. You can buy sugar free tomatoe sauce. Youtube will show you how to make a keto pizza. I love cheddar pork rinds. We should not snack but sometimes i ate a whole bag instead of a meal.
And last but not least- look into chaffles!
This way of eating has to be fun otherwise it is not sustainable in the long run. Of course every transition is difficult. I do miss carrots. But when I missed some foods I simply made their keto surrogate. I thought I could never live without french fries! Don`t miss them at all anymore. Its like giving up smoking. At first you suffer but with time you dont even think of smoking anymore. Same goes for the carbs.
You can read so many things, it doesn’t mean you should use the advice. I basically ignored them all…
You need little enough carbs, enough nutrients but no fixed percentages at all. Our needs are in grams anyway, not in percentages… You don’t need less protein if you eat less and can’t afford much carbs just because eat a ton.
Many of us don’t track (I do but only after I ate, sometimes a day later). I am curious but I don’t actually need tracking on my normal days. I do carnivore-ish with little lactose so my carbs are low enough and I couldn’t care less if I eat 60% or 80% fat, it doesn’t matter a thing to me (but all of my typical food is about 65% fat so I am usually there). Some people need much more fixed macros (probably in grams though, not in percentages) but it’s individual, not a general rule.
I definitely wouldn’t decrease my activity, in the contrary (it’s not much to begin with), I need it to lose fat and I hardly could do it without exercise, I simply can’t eat so little food - but many people seemingly get hungrier if they exercise or have some other reasons not to do it so much…
I never cared about total carbs, it seems net matters to me and many others - but some people need to use total. 20g net is the typical amount, use that first if you can.
Even <20g net isn’t a must for everyone but it’s a good advice in many cases, it’s usually a safe amount.
Do you worry about eating enough calories while having little carbs? Eat some food without vegetables and other serious carb sources then, it should be easy (some fatty animal protein? with a little low-carb vegetable if you need it). Or add some extra fat if that floats your boat. More calories doesn’t require more carbs. Carby food like vegetable dishes need to be consumed in moderation (or not at all for some of us).