Please critique my food-a typical day

(Kathleen Rose) #1

I am 5’6", 185 lbs. 66 years old. Haven’t lost a pound since July. Here’s what I Ate yesterday:

2mugs of coffee, each with 3 tbsp HWC
Breakfast-
1 whole avocado
3 eggs scrambled with 1 tbsp butter
6 slices bacon
Mid afternoon:
Mug of green tea with stevia and 1 ounce of fresh lemon juice
Dinner:
8 ounces of 88/22% ground beef patty topped with 1 ounce of melted cheddar cheese
4 cups dark leafy greens topped with 3 tbsp homemade dressing made with
EVOO, red wine vinegar, act, stevia, pink salt and herbs.
Mid evening:
Mug of organic chicken broth with pink salt.
During the day about 64 ounces of water
Here’s the Carb Manager analysis:
12 g carbs (2.3%)
100.8 G protein (19.6%)
178.9g fat (78.1%)
2112 calories

Don’t go easy on me please! I still need to lose another 45 lbs. I feel ok but get tired to the point of falling asleep sitting up in the late afternoon. I really appreciate your experienced input. I should add that I have been low carb since last Feb but added fat 3 weeks ago to see if I could lose the rest. I really dread getting on the scale at the doctor’s office in March.

(mole person) #2

How did you work out your macros? Both the protein and fat seem quite high for a woman of your size and age that wants to lose weight. There are a couple of other tweaks I can see, but to me this seems by far the bigger issue.

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #3

How often are you mixing it up? For instance, I eat about three avocados a week and sometimes I can’t stand the sight of them. I try not to eat the exact same thing every day or week. Switching things up can often help.

(Banting & Yudkin & Atkins & Eadeses & Cordain & Taubes & Volek & Naiman & Bikman ) #4

That’s a lot of HWC for someone your height and age. And the full avocado.

Why are you having the organic broth with pink salt? Is this because you are new to keto and fending off carb flu? If not, you don’t really need this.

I’m not gonna bag on 4 cups of dark leafy greens, but old school keto limited you to three cups a day.

#5

Looks like a lot of fat and calories. Maybe try reducing them a bit.
Do away with the avocado, reduce your HWC to 1 tbsp. per cup. That should help without you noticing too much.

I would try and get your calorie count down to sub 1500 for a couple of weeks to get you going.
Also, try removing breakfast altogether (you can make up the food when you have dinner and lunch if you want). This might help you to move towards IF 16/8, then 20/4.

Let us know what you try, and how it works out.

#6

How much fat were you having before you started to add some?

(Chris) #7

A little high on the fat, I’d suggest dropping 2/3 of the HWC from your coffee, perhaps the avocado.

No idea why people keep recommending women eat so little protein. I realize you don’t want to look like Arnold but you’re not going to balloon up like him from eating 100g of protein and doing one curl.

I also don’t think dropping 612 calories for a whole week is going to do all that much good. Probably start with half of that, and don’t forget to bump the calories back up so that your metabolism keeps wanting to burn them.

#8

Agree with @Dread1840 - 100gm of protein doesn’t seem over the top to me. You could probably get by with a bit less if you wanted to but if you find it filling I’d stick with it & maybe drop the fat a bit.

(Brian) #9

As unpopular as the idea may be, I would think about cutting down on the fat some. If you’re eating all the fat your body requires, there’s no need for it to really go looking for fat among the storage areas. (Maybe a little simplistic, but a concept that I appreciate from previous discussions.) The avocado and the HWC are pretty easy targets there. Maybe do only half an avocado or maybe skip that some days. (?)

I can relate on the HWC. I was a terrible over-consumer of that in my coffee until recently. Found out, though, that I rather like just a bit, I mean seriously small compared to the HWC) of butter whipped up in the coffee with an immersion blender. Helped me to reduce fat intake I wasn’t really needing.

I’m kinda with the others that aren’t terribly concerned about the protein.

Just an opinion.

Good luck!

:slight_smile:

(Kathleen Rose) #10

Using DietDoctor.com I used a reference weight of 140 lbs. (64kg) to calculate 1.5 grams of protein per lb of body weight giving me around 96 grams of protein a day. I average 10-12 g of carbs a day so I subtracted the carb and protein percentages and then filled in the fat. I have also used the calculator recommended here and you are right- my protein and fat are high most days. But without them I get so hungry!

(Kathleen Rose) #11

Honestly I don’t remember

(Kathleen Rose) #12

This is so helpful! Thank you all so much.

(Kathleen Rose) #13

I’m using the bone broth and pink salt to try and alleviate some of the fatigue. I sleep 9 hours a night, so I shouldn’t be falling asleep in the middle of the day.

#14

I think it is a bit weird that you still get hungry. If something like this happened to me I would start simplifying my diet. So that would mean butter, eggs, bacon, meat or fish with butter or olive oil, lettuce with olive oil. No sweetener and see if anything changes.
I get hungry from sweeners and from most teas and any diet drink. I know that. I avoid them

(Megan Johnson) #15

You could try cutting the sweetener or the dairy, both could keep you stalled. Also, have you tried lowering protein or fat at all?

Stalls can also come from non-diatary factors, for example, are you sleeping well, moving often, manage you stress or enjoy the out doors. Sometimes it’s not the food.

(mags) #16

Megan ramos recommends to change things up. I keep altering my food routine and my diet. Skip breakfasts some days. Try skipping lunch. Reduce your eating window. Every time you eat you raise your insulin so the less you do that the easier it should be to lose weight. Make sure you eat sufficient so that you can last to the next meal without snacking. Just my thoughts for the day.
And I absolutely have not just had my finger in the peanut butter jar :slightly_frowning_face:

(mole person) #17

The maximum recommended here by the Dudes is 1.5 grams of protein per KILOGRAM of lean body mass. If you calculate grams per pound you get a number that is doubled.

(Banting & Yudkin & Atkins & Eadeses & Cordain & Taubes & Volek & Naiman & Bikman ) #18

How’s that working out for you?

And what’s your quality of sleep like? Do you have a Fitbit or other sleep tracker? Not all 9 hours are built the same.

(Laurie) #19

Wow, we’re twins! I’m 66, 5’ 6", started in July. Down to 179 lb now.

I actually eat very similar foods/amounts to what you’re eating. Except I eat almost no vegetables; I treat them more as a garnish or condiment. In my experience, eating too much food makes me hungry. I’d recommend cutting back on the salad and avocado.

Also, I now limit my eating to a 4-hour window (between 6 pm and 10 pm). Of course some will recommend eating early in the day, but that doesn’t work for me.

I know you’re getting a lot of different advice here. Try whatever is possible for you (e.g., if you need to plan around other activities), and stick with what works. Good luck!

(Carl Keller) #20

I agree, that seems like a lot of fat and that your body doesn’t feel like it’s necessary to burn body fat when it’s got plenty of fat in the stomach. I am 5’10", 176 pound male and I probably eat anywhere from 80-140 grams of fat per day (been losing about 2 pounds a week) but most days I am under 120. Keep in mind this isn’t a number I obsess about but I am conscious of it because of cronometer.com

I would also suggest you try to cut back on the HWC and maybe the evoo since both of those are a combined 72.5grams of fat. I would try to lower your hwc every day until you can’t imagine decreasing it any more. I used to do a tablespoon but now i got it down to just a splash (it helps if you brew good coffee). As for salad dressing, 2 tablespoons of ranch dressing has 1/3 the fat that your dressing does. EVOO is a great oil to include in your diet but a lot of it really jacks up your fat intake. I would reserve this for cooking or to just a splash on a salad.

You say you are still hungry after eating all of this but I wonder if it’s real hunger or maybe it’s your internal clock that says hey, it’s time to eat. We get so used to eating at certain times that we mentally feel like we need to eat but our bodies may not necessarily need the fuel. I suggest you try an experiment at breakfast to see if it is real hunger that you are having or if it’s just a clock thing. Eat a boiled egg… or a 5-10 almonds at breakfast and stop. Reevaluate your hunger 5 minutes later. If you are still famished then it’s not a clock thing. If you find you are not hungry, then it is. I am not necessarily telling you to skip breakfast if after you eat an egg, you are not hungry… just trying to point out that hunger is not always what we think it is. There’s at least 10 types of hunger and only 1 of them indicates we are starved.

I am honestly not sure why you are tired to the point of needing a nap with all this fat in your diet and hope that someone like @atomicspacebunny might be able to offer an explanation.

Best wishes to your Kathleen.