My calculations say I need to take on 220g of protein a day.
I am going by Thomas DeLauer’s maths here. 1650cals a day.
55% protein
10% carbs
35% fat
Which is 220g protein, 30g carbs 70g fat.
This is based on my phase 1 first 4 weeks.
How much can I supplement with protein powder?
If I ate the cheapest lean meat to make that up it would be totally unafordable. Like 1kg of chicken a day. Which is very expensive.
Will protein powder be cheaper? If you need to get that much protein, then a powder is a fine way to do it (although for me personally, powders never fill me up).
Where do you live?
Where I am, beef roasts are often on sale, and those are lean. Beef liver (or chicken liver) is reasonable (relatively speaking), though it’s hard to eat a lot of liver. If ground/minced beef is not that expensive, you can get higher fat beef (cheaper) and drain it, which is what I do anyway. (It’s going to be harder to figure out your macros, but that’s what happens.)
I’m in the UK. I always pick up cheap cuts but I can only go to a supermarket at weekends. But I usually do online delivery so I know what I am spending and don’t have that embarrassing moment at the checkout where the card fails.
I’m just working out now if powder is cheaper.
I doubt anyone can calculate our protein need… Of course some educated guess can be made, I am all for the 1-2g/kg for LBM thing (I feel better with 1.5-2, as a general thing I mean as no way I can stay at 2g, that’s too little for me).
I feel so lucky meat is about the cheapest food I can use… My staple is pork, beef is insanely expensive and chicken has multiple problems. But it depends on the country and other things I suppose. I use sales too. I used to buy food once a month, it still would be enough but the village shops got better 
I personally eat lots of eggs too but pork is cheaper. It’s still worth it…
As far as I know, protein powder isn’t cheaper than the cheapest but still okay meat, especially on sale (but I don’t know the prices, I never used protein powder as I tend to quite seriously overeat protein without it, thank you very much), well here, maybe not where you live. There is no problem with some quality protein powder, you may use it partially, sure if that floats your boat.
The recommendation of the founders of this site, one of whom has retired from programming and is now getting his Ph.D. in nutrition, is a maximum of 20 g/day of carbohydrate, protein in the range of 1.0-1.5 g/kg of lean body mass/day, and fat to satiety. That’s a good starting point, from which you can adjust, if it seems necessary. The upshot is that you may very well be fine on far less protein that Mr. Delaurer recommends.
There is currently a debate about precisely how much protein we need. The recommendation on this site follows research to the effect that excessive protein intake can interfere with staying in ketosis, whereas other researchers are concerned with how our ability to assimilate amino acids drops as we age, so they feel that more protein is better.
There was even a doctor, a few years ago, who advocated the absolute minimum of protein, on the grounds that it activated mTOR, and mTOR inhibits our longevity. This last view seems to have been dismissed, as we’ve learned more about how mTOR operates, however. I remember thinking at the time that this doctor’s recommendation was too extreme to be correct, and I feel the same way these days about people who say “there’s no such thing as too much protein.” I suspect we will discover that the truth lies somewhere in the middle, as we learn more.
Carbohydrate, being nothing more than combinations of glucose molecules, stimulates a strong insulin response, given that hyperglycaemia is quite dangerous to the body. Elevated carb intake over the long term results, in very many people, in insulin-resistance and chronic hyperinsulinaemia, which is also damaging. So the point of a ketogenic diet is to restrict carbohydrate intake to the point where insulin can drop below the threshold (about 25 μU/mL) and allow fatty-acid metabolism in place of glycolysis. Your exact carb limit is too variable to predict; it may well be above 20 g/day, but our recommended limit is a good place to start, since it is guaranteed to get you into ketosis, unless you are exceptionally insulin-resistant. Note that this recommendation is an absolute value by weight, not a percentage of calories.
Recent data have shown that protein has an insulin response, but the effect on the body varies with what is in the rest of the diet. On a high-carb diet, the insulin response to protein, while about half the response to carbohydrate, is enough to drive up the insulin/glucagon ratio significantly, keeping the metabolism in glucose-burning mode. By contrast, the same amount of protein in the context of a sufficiently low-carb diet causes a glucagon response commensurate with the insulin response, thus leaving the insulin/glucagon ratio low enough to permit the metabolism to remain in fat-burning mode.
Fat has a minimal effect on insulin, under all circumstances. This is why we recommend replacing the calories lost from cutting carb intake with calories from fat. The added advantage is that it takes far less fat to yield the same number of calories. So, for example, if we cut our carb intake by 300 g/day, we can get the same number of calories from 133 g of fat.
The upshot of all this is that if we restrict our carb intake sufficiently, then we can afford to eat whatever amount of protein and fat works best for us. Without insulin interfering with our appetite hormones, most of us find that we can eat enough food to satisfy our hunger without having to worry about our caloric intake. How the body partitions the food we eat seems to trump the absolute caloric value of that food. We also tend to find that deliberately restricting caloric intake risks putting the body into “famine mode,” where it tends to hang on to all its resources until food intake picks up again. So if we are eating a keto diet in order to lose weight, this can be counter-productive.
Online delivery? I can see why you are paying an arm and a leg. Surely there must be butchers around where you live? Also you dont need that much protein imo.
My online delivery costs £1. But, it means I get to use the cheapest supermarket which would cost me £13 in fuel to drive there. Plus, it means I have as much time as I want to meal plan and make use of the offers. So it saves us a lot of money.
Not sure where you live, but here in the UK, meat from a butcher is 3 times the price it is from a supermarket. I get bones for bone broth, but that’s it.
Hi Rusty,
I watched a Thomas DeLauer video where he talked about the macros he suggests for people during the 1st 4 weeks of keto, and his thinking made sense to me. Who knows if it’s a good plan or a bad one, but it’s only for the 1st 4 weeks. He has a crazy body and works out a ton, which may partly explain why he is such a fan of protein. I see further down you have revised your protein amount. All the best, I hope it’s a good number for your body. You are brand new to keto (I’m only 8 weeks in myself) and, at risk of sounding like a hypocrite, b/c I’m currently angsting about protein amounts myself, the most important thing initially is making sure you’re below 20 grams of carb a day. I wouldn’t use protein powder myself. I heard (quality?) protein in the presence of (quality?) fat has less of an affect on insulin than protein alone. Hopefully one of the lovely keto geeks on this site can clarify that. Btw, before I went keto, and spent enough to qualify for the cheapest delivery, I bought my groceries online too. Delivery isn’t as cheap here in New Zealand, but it’s still cheaper than me driving to the supermarket and less tended to end up in my trolley. The service is a real Godsend imo. Now I do most of my grocery shopping at a local butcher b/c I mostly eat meat, but check out the supermarket meat specials as well.
Here’s hoping, Paul!
As much as you want, but if you’re going to be powder heavy for a huge portion of your protein, get a decently clean one. Redcon1’s MRE Lite is a whole foods based protein from Chicken, Beef, Egg and Fish, and actually has awesome flavors. You’d never know your drinking meat powder.
Whey and Casein are fine too, but if you’re using a lot, that’s a lot of dairy going in. I like DeLauer, but 1650 cals? That’s pretty low, you cutting? Can you post a link to where he was coming up with those numbers, or is it a bodyweight % thing?
That aside, those percentages (although I don’t like percentages) look pretty good., Assuming if you’re watching DeLauer that you’re lifting and going for a good physique?
Hi Rusty,
I live in the UK and I have been looking at prices. Yikes who knew steak was so expensive? It’s not something I usually buy so this has been an eye-opener. I also had no idea buying from the supermarket was cheaper.
I have been looking at organic and having gone through over 20 organic farm websites. I have found a solution and it’s to buy a whole lamb. I can get this grass feed for £160. That should do me for a month.
For the record, I am yet to start keto/.zero-carb. I still have a good deal of food I bought to finish before I start my zero-carb journey
I’ve started ordering all my meat and fish from these guys:
https://www.fieldandflower.co.uk/
I don’t go for the ready made boxes though. Just pick and choose. It’s naturally (haha) more expensive than the supermarket, but I don’t feel the extra is unwarranted or unmanageable. I buy for a month, freeze everything bar the stuff with the long dates that I can use in the first week. So far, I’m impressed.
How much are you spending on steak each month? My only hope on getting a good deal is buying a whole lamb. Of course I have to buy a mini cheat freezer too
I have done some of my own butchering when I used to be a chef. Before you click the button on this lamb there are a few things you might want to consider.
when you buy a whole animal it will (i assume) be drained, gutted and skinned. so your 100kg lamb now weighs 50kg.
Then your bones and inedible tissue are 1/3 of the weight, so you now have 35kg. If you pay £160 for the lamb, you are already at £4.50 a kg. which is about what you will pay for chicken cuts in a supermarket.
you will have to pay a butcher to cut this lamb up into cuts for you. which will cost around £30so that’s £5.42 per kg.
Or you butcher it yourself, you’ll need to get this whole lamb cut wrapped and labelled and into the freezer within 2 hours before rot start to set in. In the winter you may be able to do this outside if its below 5’C and give yourself a bit more time. But without training its a nightmare.
Then, you also have the fact that you have the whole lamb. which means that you have 20% easy friable meat. 50% you can roast easily and the other 30% is very tough and will need to be slowcooked. and again, if you are not trained you may not know exactly which bits need a 2 hour roast and which bits need an overnight slow cook.
With electricity prices doubling in October you may not want to expense of cooking overnight.
I have bought whole deer quite a few times. I have all the right knives, saws, equipment and an outside butchery table. and even I do not bother anymore because so much gets wasted.
If your £160 for a whole lamb includes it being butchered then I would go for it. but I would ask for an estimated weight of the carcass first, then remember to half that because of the bones. if the carcass turns out to only be 22kg, there is only 12kg of edible meat so you’ll have paid over £13 per kg. which is about what a steak would cost you.
Thanks, Rusty,
You are spot on about the actual weight minus the carcass. The site selling the whole lamb has everything cut. I did notice there was no offal
This is the whole lamb box as described:
Since fat is going to be my main source (aiming for at least 70%) then I am okay with the quantity. Now I just need to find a butcher who will see my bone marrow then I am sorted. I found a place that sell BULK to retailers (talking about pallets here) It will be nice to have some sort of group buy type thing. I am positive one can get this 70% cheaper than retail prices.
That said I am going to do some research and compare supermarket prices with these
Tesco minced beef, 20% fat, £1.69 for 500g, sardines for 40p a can, chicken thighs £4.30 for 2kg - that’s my protein, plus eggs from my chooks of course.
@Rusty where are you getting delivery for £1? I have to pay £2 just for click and collect.
Beef meaning it was a cow at some point? Why the hells your beef so cheap!? I stopped doing the uppity stuff and lately going with store brand, and I’m paying almost triple that. My wife does shop at a douche supermarket… but still. I gotta start shopping at Lidl or something.
It’s just regular store brand 20% fat ground beef, cheapest I’ve found. The lower fat ones cost lots more but I don’t bother with those.
I get five of these a week and make four decent sized burger patties out of each pack. That’s my protein sorted for the each work day, but I’ll add sardines / chicken if I’m hungry enough.
Our current flyer for the local store has 15% ground round for $4/pound, so that’s about 7.27 pounds per kg, if I’ve done my math and conversions correctly.
