So about a week ago, I couldn’t get carbs below 10% on a good day… now I a regularly hitting 7-9% with the occasional day at 5%.
The frustrating part is that I am often also falling in the 30+% range of protein on my macros and 60s on fat… but I keep hearing fat needs to be higher.
Any words of advice and encouragement?
Congrats on starting and persevering.
A key thing to note is that while there is a macro obsession in many keto corners, the easier way to view things is using the actual weights. Your body doesn’t calculate percents, it senses grams and reacts to them. So you aim for your carb grams e.g 20 or 30 or 50 or 100 depending on your metabolic flexibility. If you are very obese or long-time insulin resistant or T2D, you pick 20/30g. If you are healthy and using it for prevention/longevity you would try higher amounts.
Also, for most, they use NET carbs (total carbs - fiber). Not sure what the labelling laws are in Oz but in the US you have to manually subtract fiber, in Europe, the labels are already net carbs. The net effect of this is to allow far more leafy greens or berries than you think since many are from 33% to 66% fiber.
I too started out with too much protein as I adapted and it wasn’t a disaster… once I adapted, I realized I was happy with one chicken thigh, half the steak, a few less slices of cheese, one handful of nuts, etc. I wouldn’t sweat the protein early on.
My sample meals now would be something like
Brunch - 5 strips of bacon, 2 slices of frying cheese, some cream cheese (for the bacon), 2 fried eggs, buttery hot sauce and a bunch of pickles - 78% fat, 20% protein, 2% carbs
Dinner - piece of fatty meat, 2 cups/250g of Brussels sprouts, fatty sauce, sugar free jello, whipped cream, 8 raspberries, 88% chocolate shavings - 71% fat, 20% protein, 9% carbs - but only 5.5% NET carbs
Add some snack nuts and olives and a piece of chocolate or 2 and you are at about a 74/20/6 macro split but most importantly 126g/78g/18g(net) for a 1500 calorie day. You can flex the protein/fat amounts to get more or less calories at these macros.
If you aren’t, use an App (with a local food database if poss) like LoseIt, MyFitnessPal or Cronometer. This will give you’ll your data.
This has worked fine for me for 7 months. Some days the fat is higher, which works. I would look at it over time, which you should be able to do with your macro calculator, and I’d aim to incorporate dollops of additional pleasing fats i.e. coconut oil, butter, cream cheese, cocoa.
Keto on!
What’s your objective?
ie. lose weight, improve cognition, decrease cancer risk…
What tool are you using to measure your progress?
ie. scale, how you feel, glucometer…
Also don’t forget that your fat can come from your stores (if you’re overweight like me). I target <20 g of net carbs, and 80 to 100 grams of protein. So I am at <480 calories from those two macros. I don’t track fat, but typically eat 1200-1500 calories a day so about which calculates to around 100 grams a day. My needs are > 2500 calories a day, so the rest of my energy comes from fat stores. Good luck!
I didn’t cut Cal’s till I was fat adapted, but I like looking at grams of the macros vs percent. You can always add some bulletproof coffee to add 220 Cal’s of fat. I use kerrygold butter and coconut oil (with good coffee i use MCT oil so taste isn’t altered).
Happiness is a McDonald’s waygu burger with bacon but using two thick slices of corned beef as the bun.
Well both yesterday and today landed at 7% and mid 20 grams of carbs…
KCKO
Thanks for this question and all the reply’s. I’m too at the beginning of getting my head around fine tuning the macros. I have been put off by the low numbers that come back for protein and admit to being a little nervous of feeling hungry and loosing control. I’ve just brought the Cronometer app and hopefully I’ll learn a lot more. I didn’t realise that the carbs in UK are already net carbs. This is good to know.