Just starting out on the keto diet and was wondering what some good sources of fat would be as I’ve heard that I need to increase my fat intake and not just protein. Lately I’ve been eating a lot of sausage, bacon, eggs, chicken, veggies, and the occasional fruit. Is this enough to put me into ketosis alone?
Thanks
Fruit is carbs, eat at your own risk. Its been 19 months since I ate any fruit. Looking for fat? I eat a really fatty breakfast. I cook two pieces of bacon and one sausage patty in a pan. I leave the grease in the pan and add butter. I then stir in two eggs scrambled with heavy whipping cream added. I get a good fat fix on that. Then it is fatty meats the rest of the day.
Fat is easy. A lot of folks find cutting the carbs to sub-20 grams per day more challenging. You don’t need fruit and veggies.
So if I cook 4 eggs and 4 pieces of bacon and cook it all in extra virgin olive oil, is there anything wrong with that?
@stets656
Fry your eggs in butter. It tastes better!
I also eat an avocado for fats. Mayonnaise is another good one- easy to even make yourself.
I have heard that if you go to a restaurant, ask the waiter for the butter but not the bread and eat it before you order. Pure butter. ( Make sure it isn’t margerine.)
Gotcha. I’ve seen some people say you don’t want too much protein. Is 4 eggs and a decent amount of bacon overdoing it?
No, it’s definitely not. That’s around 35-40 grams of protein, a very good start.
I’m also just starting out and actually finding it harder to eat enough protein as I don’t like to eat solid food in the morning. Have you had a look at a Macro calculator? Mine have been advising me at least 80 g of protein daily. That’s tough to eat since my usual sized portion from my old diet is less than 30 grams.
yes- cronometer.com to count your macros - I use it daily ( although now I am getting better at winging it because it becomes routine .)
4 eggs, I guess it depends how hungry you are and how many meals a day you are eating. You are wanting to start listening to your satiety signals. If you are cooking bacon why would you need olive oil? If I am cooking that much bacon I will need to off load some grease but not all. You don’t have to fear saturated fats anymore.
I pretty much just go carnivore during the day and cluster my carbs at dinner. I have a list of low carb veggies and have some of those with dinner. I don’t count, I don’t weigh, I don’t look at charts. It works for me, I am at 80 pounds weight loss for now, no high sugar, no high blood pressure.
Some days I am just not hungry in the mornings, so I don’t eat til lunch. Sometimes I am hungry in the morning, and if I eat bacon, and eggs fried in butter, with all the fat poured back over them, I end up skipping lunch.
I find that once you are fat adapted, and your body uses fat for energy exclusively, fat is extremely satisfying, and you don’t get the urge to overeat like you do with satisfying carbs.
Everyone does low carb differently, and we all have different bodies and different ways of life. Some of us like the feeling of keeping track of things, some of us don’t. I don’t, and success in both camps speaks for itself. It all works, it’s just a matter of finding what suits you.
I used to think this, too. But I’m coming around to something different and unexpected. I have been keto for 3+ years, have been in ketosis for 99% of that time and am about as fat adapted as anyone’s going to get. I expected that my glucose would be very low and that gluconeogenesis synthesizes some minimal and negligible amount. Yet, my blood glucose is consistently within the low-mid ‘normal’ range except at night during the early morning hours when it drops below ‘normal’. That glucose is not simply disappearing by magic and it’s not getting stored as fat. Therefore, it must get burned. I presume by whatever cells can not burn ketones and/or fatty acids, and they are burning way more glucose than I ever expected! I’ve been tracking glucose here.
Tracking my glucose has also answered a question, at least somewhat, as to why my Lumen apparently detects that I’m burning ‘carbs’. Because, in fact, I am burning detectable glucose and the Lumen is measuring that. Possibly. To be determined by further testing.
The key to a well-formulated ketogenic diet is lowering carbohydrate intake, so as to minimise chronic exposure to insulin. The question then becomes where to find enough calories to live on. Most people more or less automatically get enough protein, so you don’t need to worry about that, but protein is generally not an energy source for the body, except in cases of dire need (protein is best used for organ repairs, building muscle and bone, etc.). To get enough energy to fuel our body, we must therefore replace our missing carb calories with fat calories, which is easy to do, because fat contains over twice as much energy per unit of weight as carbohydrate does.
Then the question becomes what the healthiest fats are to eat. And the answer, surprisingly, is saturated and monounsaturated fats, such as are found in butter/ghee, bacon grease, lard, tallow, and the like. Avoid most vegetable oils on the market, because they contain too much in the way of polyunsaturated fats. We need a small amount of two types of polyunsaturates, the ω-3 and ω-6 fatty acids, but too much of the latter causes inflammation. When eating a standard Western diet, the challenge is not getting enough ω-6 fatty acids, but avoiding getting too much. Therefore, seed oils are to be avoided. If you wish to use a vegetable oil at all, use a fruit oil instead, such as avocado, coconut, or olive oil.
When judging how much food to eat, the simplest method is to use hunger as a guide. Don’t eat until you are hungry, stop eating once you stop being hungry, and don’t eat again until hungry again. During the first two or three weeks of ketogenic eating, you may find yourself consuming a lot of food, but most people find that their appetite quickly drops by a significant amount. Fairly soon, you are likely to find yourself forgetting to eat breakfast, because you simply aren’t hungry.
There is more science to all of this, but this is probably enough for you to be getting on with. Keep us posted with your progress, and welcome to the forums!
I have seen some people/studies that are concerned about the amount of fat intake in relation to cancer/heart disease. Is this an issue on Keto?
When you say things like this, please cite something we can check out to investigate. Some this or that I’ve heard is pretty hard to discuss intelligently.
No, it’s old science and has long been debunked. Your body can run on fat or on glucose. Carbs make glucose, and we don’t want to use much of that. We want it to run on fat, which is a lot healthier, lowers your glucose levels, your blood pressure and many other things. There are a ton of things online you can read that explain in detail how it works and what the science behind it is. Also, meat is as nutritious ad vegetables, contains all the nutrients. You can google nutrients in meat also and find out.
Of course another reason we want it to run on fat is weight loss if needed - you body will use the fat deposits it has stored away as fuel.
You probably need to figure out what works for you.
Not everyone should raise their fat intake, I had to lower it (not like I could first but I didn’t lose fat either). It depends on how much did you consumed until know and how much do you need for your goals - and I can do similarly ideal days with very different fat intake as I am fine with less or more protein (just adequate or high). 4 eggs with bacon sounds good but it’s individual. It would be awfully little for me unless I eat again very soon but I don’t even get hungry until mid-afternoon. There is no such thing as an ideal sized meal for everyone! Our energy need, goals, protein need, number of meals are different. It’s clear we often eat very differently from each other (and even we don’t eat the same every day or for every meal).
For fat, I eat my fatty protein (mostly eggs and fatty meat) and minimize added fat and things like heavy/sour cream. But many others need or prefer to add lots of extra fat to get proper macros (it doesn’t matter if they track it, they still have them. not fixed ones as mine aren’t that either, at all). Extra fat are useless and not satiating for me, that’s why I barely eat them even when I eat very fatty (close to 80% fat). But if someone needs more energy or like leaner protein, that’s a very different case. There are many options. Some of us can snack on pure fat. Or at least heavy/sour cream. There are always fattier cuts (until we reach white bacon). Sometimes I have a way bigger egg yolks/whites ratio (not wasting the whites either, I don’t live alone and sometimes fancy more whites anyway). Some people eat fat bombs though it’s not my advice, I just mention it. Extra butter on steak is popular too… Or some very fatty coffee. I sometimes ate lots of fat with my fried vegetables.
Vegetables and fruits are carby, be careful with amounts. But it’s individual what you can and should afford. It’s better to eat some (mostly harmless for the one in question) fruit than falling off the wagon or suffering, IMO. Decide or figure out what is worth for you and what isn’t. There are no One True Way to do keto. Not even two or a dozen 