Question about too much of a caloric deficit

(Tyler Hobbie) #1

Hi, I know that it is recommended to slowly reduce calories over weeks and weeks so your body doesn’t get used to a big calorie drop and then adjusts to that so you wouldn’t lose weight as fast, but on keto doesn’t your body use its own fat for fuel/energy so why does it matter. On keto can’t you basically just eat very minimal calories and it won’t affect your basic metabolism rate because you are using ur body’s fat as fuel???

#2

Nope, Keto doesn’t work any different than non-keto. Even when you were carb powered you lost body fat by burning off body fat!.. which is why you were less fat! Our metabolism doesn’t care how it’s getting it’s energy, just a different fuel source, same set of rules. Don’t run more than a 20% deficit, or if you go more drastic than that don’t do it for long. I severely screwed up mine with that mindset and I’m still fixing it now! That finding was over a year ago.

You’re going to notice a large amount of opposition to the word calorie on this forum, much more so than basically any other keto forum/group I know of. Be ready for it.

(bulkbiker) #3

Recommended by whom exactly?

Most of us here eat to satiety and don’t manage our food using “calories” at all. We eat when we are hungry and stop when full using our body’s own hormones as triggers.

#4

I don’t know how much attention you pay to this but the percentage of those tracking and paying attention to calories here has been shifting for a while now. Not really accurate to say “most of us” anymore. “Most of us” definitely started that way… and MANY of us were let down by that way of doing things.

(bulkbiker) #5

There have been multiple threads on “calories” … I have participated in a few and they usually end badly.
Calories are a measure of the energy contained within foods when burned in a bomb calorimeter. If you think you live in a bomb calorimeter then they may be an effective measure.
Personally I eat food which I find satiating and which has for me led to significant weight loss without needing to calculate my meals.
I’m sorry you feel that you were not able to lose following this method. Many people here have however.

#6

The two things aren’t mutually exclusive. I usually track but I don’t (can’t, actually) control my calories except in the way that I avoid plants… If I overeat, I change my woe.

I don’t think I often or ever heard about gradually lowering our calorie intake… It’s usually a fixed advised amount. And it totally fails in the case of some of us. If I am hungry, I will eat even if I am at double calories…

The ideal case is when you just eat whenever, whatever you want, you get perfectly satiated and that’s it. I think I can do this now, I needed a lot of work, effort and many years to reach this but some people automatically have this on normal keto. I control my calorie intake with choosing my food items, that’s it. I don’t have a calorie goal or limit, well, vaguely I have but I am flexible. But I stop this, we all have our own method.

Keto isn’t magic, mostly similar things happen. Undereating is still a problem and obviously people can burn fat on any diet, the energy must come from somewhere and bodyfat is for that purpose.
It’s not like we can’t lose bodyfat on HCHF or that keto would inevitably slim us down, they are myths.
But keto can help a lot.

How low you can go and use bodyfat for the rest… It’s more like how big reserves you are. It can’t be calculated but if you have ltitle to lose, you just can’t get so much energy out of your own body than someone with very much to lose.
And if you are extremely active and barely eat, your body can’t get enough energy from your fat either, it’s actually a good way to lose lots of muscles in mere days. I probably would break down first…

So somewhere we have a limit. Where, I don’t know, there are formulas - and individual factors defying it.

And we need to get my nutrients too, bodyfat provides energy but it’s not enough… It probably can be done in minimal calories if one is very good at it though. But it’s good to keep in mind. I saw so many people barely eating and not thinking it’s a problem…

(Tyler Hobbie) #7

Some of you people are being unnecessarily burr hurt over my phrasing of calories. For me, I’m coming here for help. I am asking for advise, I’m not asking to be ridiculed over the simple phrasing of saying most of us or calories. For a lot of people who do compete, they have to worry about every three weeks lowering their calorie when they plateau. I am trying to understand this concept for keto as I am trying to better my life and lose more weight faster. I am extremely motivated and I was looking for some help, just ridiculous to be criticizing people over phrases or misunderstandings when it comes to them trying to live a better lifestyle

#8

It’s not just tracking and losing weight and eating to satiation and losing weight.
I track, eat to satiation and don’t lose weight, all 3 happens almost all the time.
Tracking is some interesting tool to me, it may help sometimes but it can’t lower my calorie intake.
To lose, I need a good woe, tracking is totally powerless without that (but helped to figure it out).

#9

What I (think) is that when I stopped listing to hunger/satiety and believing that calories were nonsense and making the solution to EVERYTHING eating more fat and salt, and went and got RMR testing… and then LISTENED to the number they gave me and started tracking I conveniently started loosing weight again after almost a year of no progress following the calories don’t matter advise that’s perpetuated over and over again here.

(Bob M) #10

I personally don’t count calories and never have since I started on 1/1/14. The reasons for that are myriad, including that when I followed the Pritikin diet, I counted calories so that I could keep my fat intake less than 10% of my total calorie intake. That left a bad taste in my mouth.

Also, counting calories is really difficult and really fraught with errors. Take ribeye steaks, for instance. Unless you cut all the fat off them and weigh the fat separately from the meat, you’re not getting an accurate calorie count. And then there are things like almonds, where according to studies what’s written on the label for calories is completely wrong. And don’t get me started about different databases and different calorie counts there. Or trying to gauge how many calories are in the chicken cacciatore you just ate. Even if you make this yourself, how much skin off the dark meat chicken did you eat? How much meat? How much sauce? And then add in a “normal” life with significant others who make your meals, too, and it becomes a freaking nightmare to count calories.

On the other hand, if you think calorie counting is helpful and it seems to benefit you, I have no problem with you doing this. Anything that helps you meet your goals – or whatever it is you’re trying to do – is a good thing.

(bulkbiker) #11

Not "butt hurt’ at all but counting calories whilst eating a ketogenic diet has for me proved unnecessary.
Your context for following keto is important and you didn’t give any clues as to why you want to follow this way of eating.
Maybe give us some more info about you and your aims and we can give you some better input.

(Polly) #12

Perhaps you should consider whether losing weight fast or losing weight and keeping it off is the priority for you. In my n=1 experience, losing weight fast is normally followed by gaining weight again. Losing weight slowly and it tends to stay off.

Rather than drop your calories every few weeks, which is likely to affect your basal metabolic rate, I would recommend: just eating real food until you are satisfied; avoiding anything industrially processed; keeping your carbs as low as you can go but never exceed 20g per day; introducing some intermittent fasting once you are fat adapted; don’t count anything else; don’t weigh more than once each week.

Good to hear you are motivated, I hope things go well for you.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #13

@Tyler_Hobbie To return to your original question, the problem is that there is a limit to how much body fat can be utilized each day. If your your overall energy intake from the sum of table and endogenous fat drops below your TDEE (Total Daily Estimated Energy requirement) your metabolism has only two ways to compensate. First, make you tired and listless to slow down your activity level, and/or second, lower your BMR to force it down. Generally, things start with the first before advancing to the second. There are numbers floating around about just how much body fat you can utilize daily but they’re mostly guesitmates. You might google a bit to see what you can find and let us know. Good rule of thumb is: you can lose about 1-2 pounds ave per week long term with a modest calorie reduction, but if you go for more than that you run the risk of depressing your BMR. There’s a lot of individual variation, of course, which is why you get different answers from different people. So in the end it becomes a matter of trial and error. If you have a lot of fat to lose, you will generally lose it faster at first, then more slowly. Also, an initial loss is mostly water from depleted glycogen.

PS: This is a public forum and there’s history. Lots of folks have been engaged in lots of other discussions with each other over periods of time. Often times, these previous discussions and disagreements will pop up in other marginally related and/or unrelated topics (like this one) when someone happens to mention some ‘trigger’ point. Don’t get too upset about it when your topic gets sidetracked. It’s likely not about you. When we start a topic, of course, we have a specific question or goal in mind, but things often develop otherwise. Although this can be frustrating and aggravating because we don’t get the info we’re looking for. The best thing to do when that happens is just try to nudge the discussion back onto your original track.

#14

Yeah, my tracking is way less reliable since I added meat… It was exact enough on vegetarian keto, exact compared to the other part I can’t calculate or measure… I can have only some vague idea about my CO and it changes all the time! Calorie intake is still easier. But I am a bit lost with my fatty meat. Once I had mutton, ribs. It lost, like, 300g fat in the oven :smiley: Good luck to figure out the fat in the remaining part…
If I eat 12 eggs, it’s easier. As I know what “normal” size and average yolk:white ratio is… it will be never exact but good enough. But fatty meat… I can trust my tracking due to not eating much fatty meat and not caring about little differences like 1-200 kcal… I make my own food, I measure everything I need when I cook for both of us but I ignore tiny things that matters very little, WAY less than the “problems” with my fatty meat… But I wholeheartedly agree with anyone that it’s a pain in the ass and doesn’t necessarily worth it. But it can help sometimes. I even got some interesting numbers due to not trying to enforce macros, I don’t even have a target or limit for fat, it doesn’t matter to me.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #15

Not entirely. For one thing, there is a limit to how much fat can be metabolised in one day. For another, the body reacts to a caloric deficit by slowing the metabolism to match. Short rations seems to be a signal to the body that we are in a famine, and it hunkers down so as to get us safely through. That means, among other things, that it holds on to its store of energy (i.e., fat in the fat cells) as a hedge against starving to death. Eating an abundance of calories allows the body to speed up the metabolism and even waste energy, if appropriate.

Fasting, interestingly, doesn’t have the same effect as reduced calories; as Dr. Fung puts it, the body just switches fuel tanks and carries on. If you think about it, this makes sense: when we ran out of mastodon meat, the hunters had to go out and bring down another one, and they would likely do that on no food. So the body has to be prepared for three situations: abundance, time to get more, and famine. A ketogenic diet is metabolically similar to fasting, in that ketosis is primary—but without the hunger, of course.

The key to how a ketogenic diet works is that it works with the body’s hormonal response to food instead of against it. In the context of how the body reacts to different types of foods, the amount of calories consumed—as long as we get enough—is less important than what the body does with that food. Glucose (which is what all carbohydrates are) is intended to be stored (think preparing for hibernation over the winter), whereas fat is intended to be used for fuel. In the normal course of a ketogenic day, insulin rises while we eat, so that we store some of the energy for later use, and then it falls between meals, in order to let energy out of storage to fuel the body between meals, especially during the overnight fast. When we eat an excessive amount of carbohydrate, the glucose level in our blood rises, stimulating insulin to try to drive it out of the blood and into our muscles and fat tissue. When insulin is chronically elevated, fatty acids are permanently trapped in our fat tissue and can’t escape until insulin drops again. That’s why carbohydrate is not our friend. Fat has almost no effect on our insulin level (other than the bare minimum for survival, since we must have a minimum level of insulin in our blood), so it becomes the calorie source of choice on a ketogenic diet. (Protein is not used for energy under normal circumstances; the amino acids it is composed of are used to make new proteins and to build muscle and other tissues.)

(Cristian Lopez) #16

Calories are only a model to build your daily eating patterns around. I track, so what! 10% more than my TDE and I put on lean muscle. It helps, that’s what is important. Calories are only a reference, not a true measure that shows exactly how your body absorbs energy in food, like mentioned before “your not a bomb calorimeter.” I mean if I’m gonna be honest, I am an athlete, and if ate to satiety with out having tracked before in my life, then I might as well be a line men in football. Tracking calories isn’t bad as long as you don’t stress over an extra 1, 10, or even 100 calories. Many of us can start off this way and learn about whether or not a stick of butter or a salad with steak is more filling or more caloric. I’m gonna get hate here, but in terms of calories, keto doesn’t make a difference. The only external factors underlying calories is that they are not created equally. Fat is 9, ketones, MCT’s and alcohol is 7, carbs are 4, protein is less than 4 since it takes the most amount of energy to digest, and fiber is 2.

Also I tried the “eating to satiety” on keto… I got into the worst shape I have ever been in my life, But I sure as hell had energy :joy:
Everyone is different, but eating to satiety instead of following a caloric reference doesn’t sound productive to say the least.

#17

I don’t stress over an extra 1000 either (it’s good as it’s so little extra food, it happens even on keto sometimes) but 100? I can’t track my intake so precisely that I only miss the real amount with 100 kcal or less every day… And this is the intake, not exactly the real CI, the actually gained energy… (But I hope it’s almost the same in my case. Or if not, similarly different every day. If not, I can’t do much about it anyway.)

But it sounds realistic and comfortable… I can’t track every day, no matter how much I desire that as I have days not eating my own food (I usually do and tracking almost every day should be good enough). And when I track, it’s not always very reliable (but good enough) . Tracking is a chore anyway, a slightly uncomfortable one if you ask me, even now that my days are way simpler and I don’t need to weigh dozens of stuff and write down almost every bite.
It’s the best if one finds a woe where they just eat whatever whenever they want (with some simple rules we actually love) and everything goes well. It happens with people. And even if it almost never happened with me in the last years (I had my moments though), if I want to lose, I need to find such a great woe as tracking alone never will cause fat-loss. I just count, I don’t keep myself from eating when hungry or something. So a good woe is essential even for fat-loss let alone more important things like health or in my case, joy from food…

I combined things. I ate to satiate or whatever I wanted at the moment - and looked at the numbers afterwards. If I saw I ate little enough, I tried to stick to that exact woe. If I saw some item just add calories, I started to avoid or minimize that. So tracking helped me with my decisions for the future but never had a noticeable effect on my actual day when my food choices were already set.
Except when I look at the numbers to see if I am still hungry… My body usually just needs its usual amount of energy from food and if I ate enough, hunger is a non-reliable nuance, not a good indicator of my needs. The other hand, if I feel satiation but the numbers I low, I probably should eat a bit more in the near future to avoid a big meal (therefore, overeating) later. Many people realize hunger and satiation signals aren’t always reliable and numbers are better. I don’t find it ideal, it’s not so natural but whatever we need to do to ensure proper food intake… Probably many people do their food and eat it and that’s it. I always see that. Not what I can do, I tried but my momentary desires aren’t so disciplined and I am at home a lot. But it’s better this way, we should accept what we are and know what we can and should change.

I got carried away again. sigh

(Peter) #18

Who ridiculed you? Feel free to quote them in your reply.

Compete in what?

FWIW, “calories” is a very imprecise way to think of energy balance, given you’ve got no real way of knowing how many calories are going in, going out, whatever, so trying to 'count" them is pointless.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #19

@Tyler_Hobbie There’s a calculator here:

#20

You are right except it’s not pointless at all for many. It never can be precise, it’s true and sometimes it’s totally unrealiable. But tracking our calorie intake can be precise enough if we have the right circumstances (and willing to track) and many of us have a petty good idea about our energy need as well but this latter isn’t even necessary, I know my vague minimum energy need and my maximum is usually close and it has little impact on my energy intake. I want to lose fat, not predicting the pace, if my calorie deficit becomes unusually big on some days or if it’s a bit smaller or bigger than I presume, it’s fine (I never ever will eat little enough to harm my metabolism). It still doesn’t mean tracking is advisable, of course, there are often multiple more comfortable ways to ensure we eat less if it’s our goal but it does help people sometimes. And the opposite happens too, unfortunately. Tracking can be quite horrible, harmful and even dangerous. Surely not ideal but sometimes has its uses. When I didn’t track on paleo in the very beginning, I ate a ton. It felt very little food but it wasn’t so I stayed fat. Some temporarily tracking made me notice this and the fact that low-carb makes even my macros better, not just how I feel. I didn’t need tracking to lose fat but then it stopped and I use tracking since, to figure out what to do (and to get some fun looking at my very varying numbers).
Tracking showed me that keto didn’t change my calorie intake at all but I needed to track my carbs anyway. And so on. Tracking provides information about our food intake, I tend to analyze it. It’s especially useful it our body has its fixed habits and needs. I even got a pretty well working formula for reaching satiation, my macros and satiation are extremely strongly correlated (though I need to split my fat macros into two parts) and I rarely can change a macro without inevitable changes of some other macros.
But I never would track if I could lose fat easily, just using a few simple rules chosen by me. It’s great if that works for people.