The more I dive into this, the more perplexed I become—especially when it comes to fat!

(tom moore) #1

I maintain a comprehensive spreadsheet of foods, which makes it easy for me to select items of interest and calculate my daily totals. However, my main challenge is hitting my fat goals. I struggle to consume enough bacon, butter, mayo, cream cheese, and olive oil without needing to add a significant amount of greens and tomatoes, which quickly raises my carb intake above 20 grams.

I’m not particularly fond of coffee, but I do have a cup each morning with almond milk and whey protein powder. It’s not the best taste, but it gets the job done. Adding butter or coconut oil to it would just ruin it for me.

I’ve watched several videos by Dr. Westman, who emphasizes prioritizing protein over fat, but that advice hasn’t really helped me.

Any diet needs to be enjoyable to be sustainable, regardless of how healthy the foods are or how committed you are to it.

I’ve been browsing the food section for inspiration on how to increase my fat intake with foods I actually enjoy, but I haven’t found much useful information.

I had hoped to kick off my new diet this weekend, but as I prepare to head out for groceries, I still don’t have a solid keto shopping list. Not yet, anyway.

(KM) #2

Good morning and welcome!

Calling @ctviggen, Bob, you’re needed in the lobby! :smile:

Switching out the almond milk for heavy cream in coffee is a big fat boost (and really tasty, IMO). I also make a dessert I like which is basically a frozen whipped cream patty.

Could you give us an idea of what your goals are, and what you are eating? It’s not always necessary to go crazy on the fat, depending on why you’re keto, as long as you are keeping your carbs super low. Many meats have a decent amount of fat in them, as do dairy products. So do nuts, although they do contain some carbs. Avocados. There are some recipes here for “fat bombs”, usually some combination of butter, cocoa and artificial sweetener.

(Edith) #3

You might want to look up some recipes for fat bombs. They are tasty ways to get in a little extra fat. There are sweet (dessert-like) fat bomb recipes) and savory recipes.

I used them when I first started keto, but I’ve been eating this way for over eight years, at this point I just make sure I am eating fatty meats and I am generous with the fat when I fry them up. I will pour some rendered fat over the meat, but not all of it. Just enough to be tasty. You may find over time, once your body is keto adapted you may not have to stress about fat percentages. Unless your are doing keto for a serious health problem. Then you may need to keep more therapeutic fat levels.

Macadamia nuts are quite tasty and very high in fat. They might help, but they tend to be easy to overeat. Coconut milk is another good way to get in a lot of fat. If you look up recipes for low carb Thai and Indian dishes that use canned coconut milk, they will also help increase fat in a more savory way.

(B Creighton) #4

Welcome to the forum.
I manage to achieve ketosis with up to 50 gr of carbs/day. I am not saying you should be like me, but for me it seems to work. I actually eat a lot of cruciferous vegetables and asparagus while doing keto with a good amount of grass fed butter of course… If you are purposefully looking to add more fat, I make a chocolate fat bomb, which will do that. It ends up being much like fudge. I make it by melting coconut oil and adding raw cacoa powder(I use Target’s Good and Gather which has been shown to be relatively low in heavy metals and high in polyphenols), which is a source of some carbs, and then sweeten it with erythritol monk fruit sweetener. I also add other things, but it is actually pretty tasty I think. Istead of using almond milk, you can use coconut milk as a “creamer” or just drink it plain for lots of fat. Or you can sweeten it with stevia like I do.

You mentioned a shopping list. I get wild shrimp and Salmon at Costco’s, Sam’s Club or Smith’s. I usually make garlic/butter shrimp with the shrimp, and pan fry the Salmon with lemon juice and capers until the albumin protein exudes out - indicating it’s done at 160F. I also get grass fed lamb at Costco or Sam’s, which I oven roast in olive oil at 300F for an hour. I also eat chicken thighs. The occassional beef liver or steak or grass fed hamburger. I also eat crab, which I confess is low fat, but I really enjoy crab. So, I have no problem enjoying my food, and generally eat until I am satiated. As you can see, I put some effort into obtaining quality meats and fats. I don’t really worry about counting carbs with cruciferous vegetables, as they don’t seem to stop my ketosis, although they may slow it some, but I always try to get some soluble fiber with every meal, because they tend to turn into short chain fatty acids in the gut, and seem to help my health… Happy shopping!

(Bob M) #5

@kib1 I might not be the best person for this topic. Like @VirginiaEdie, I started out eating quite high in fat, everything had butter on it, fat bombs, etc. But then I went to leaner meats, things like ham and leaner cuts of beef. I’ve eaten no dairy, some dairy, a lot of dairy, no eggs, some eggs, a lot of eggs, super high saturated fat diet, bacon, no bacon (tend to overeat it), nuts then no nuts then some nuts, etc.

Now (Jan. 1 will be my 13th year), I have yet to figure out how fat affects ketones, and really have no idea whether high ketones are better or not. Had ketones of 0.4 (or 0.3?) yesterday after 12+ hours fasting, but then had 1.1 this morning, where I ate (the night before) a chocolate mousse (mainly coconut), yogurt and some nuts, and a high fat meat which I had never bought before. Not sure what caused the higher ketones, since I also had a few carbs in the mousse, yogurt, nuts.

I tend to like beef the best, and now beef is so expensive that even chuck is expensive, and the leaner roasts I used to get aren’t cheap. I get whatever is a reasonable price from the store or Costco, and limit the steaks, which are now $15+/pound.

I still like ham, which I eat at least every 2 weeks (get a large one and it lasts a while), shrimp, mussels, things that are very low fat. Sometimes, I’ll add cheese to the ham, but most times, I don’t. I like pork, but I tend to eat leaner pork unless I can afford local pork, as the fat on mass-produced pork can get nasty at times. Chicken is down on my list, but I do eat it. Again, local is way better than mass produced.

I think the first rule is lower carbs. After that, it’s pretty wide open.

(KM) #6

O, I know. You just have a lot of experience with fat experimentation, and IIR some very tasty past recipes. We all evolve! :v:

(Hugh Walter Jennings) #7

~1151 calories, 107 grams fat (18 grams saturated fat), 11 g net carbs, 25 g fiber, 36 g of protein

Ingredients
Four tablespoons of milled flax seeds
Two tablespoons of chia seeds (soaked until gelled)
One steamer bag of riced cauliflower
Four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
One tablespoon of avocado oil
One can of King Oscar mackerel

That is my planned fat bomb OMAD meal

Only ate it once so far. Ate it around 4 hrs before bed (had been fasting for 14 hours). No discomfort and slept well. Next morning I had a good bowel movement, stepped on the scale and weighed a half pound less than the morning before.

Iirc, my fasting blood glucose that morning was 87.

(Edith) #8

I would be careful keeping your calories that low for an extended period of time. Your body will get used to that caloric level and you will plateau. Then to lose more weight, you would have to drop your calories even further. At 1100-1200 calories a day you have nowhere to go, especially if you are male as your handle suggests.

Here is something to put your calories into perspective:
1200 calories per day
107 gram of fat (963 calories)
11 grams carbs (44 calories)
36 grams protein (144 calories)
While fat does have some vitamins and minerals, most of the vitamins and minerals we consume each day comes for the carbs and proteins we eat. Based upon the information you provided, you have less than 200 calories to provide all the vitamins and minerals your body needs each day. At 36 grams of protein you are almost half the RDA for a 170 pound man and the RDA is not even optimal.

It is true when starting this way of eating, our appetites drop off precipitously. Your body takes time to figure out how to utilize fat as its energy source instead of carbs. You may find as you become fat adapted your appetite increases. That is not a bad thing necessarily. You don’t want your metabolism to slow down and you don’t want to get any vitamin deficiencies. You want this way of eating to be sustainable.

Please keep us updated with how you are doing.

(Hugh Walter Jennings) #9

@VirginiaEdie,

Agree with all you offer. It’s good advice.

I only plan to eat that recipe one day a week. And I do eat several other nutrient-dense foods. I have a few laminated charts of all the nutrients in the foods I eat and take a few supplements where I think they are needed.

(Hugh Walter Jennings) #10

@choafa

I feel you on being perplexed !

I just calculated my basic protein, net carbs, and fat needs going by my BMR per my smart scale. My focus is maintaining ketosis and becoming fat adapted.

BMR 1619 calories
Need : 74 grams protein @4 calories/gram
10 grams net carbs @4 calories/gram
142 grams fat @9
calories/gram

10 grams of net carbs is a very low amount but I’m finding that if I go much above that per day my blood ketones drop out of the optimal range. So starting today I’m going to limit my net carbs to 10 g which is only 40 calories.

142 g of fat is 1278 calories. That’s a lot of fat lol. But as long as it’s mostly omega-3s, polyunsaturated, and monounsaturated fat it’s ok for my purposes.

Anyhow, I headed for the kitchen to figure out how the heck I’m going to get that much fat per day without overdoing it on the saturated fat content.
EVOO and avacado oil to the rescue.
Four tablespoons of EVOO and four tablespoons of avocado oil supplies 108 grams of fat, 18 of which is saturated fat. (Not bad in the saturated fat amount).

That leaves 34 more grams of fat to find somewhere. One can of mackerel and three eggs covers the 34 grams. Can’t eat mackerel everyday because of mercury concerns but it will cover the three days a week I eat it.
One can of mackerel is 4 g of saturated fat of the 19 grams total and 3 eggs is 4.8 grams saturated fat of the 15 grams total. So that’s 8.8 grams saturated fat added to the 18 grams saturated fat in the two oils for a total of 26.8 grams saturated fats. Recommended max saturated fat is around 30 grams.
But, though no symptoms of atherosclerosis of the aorta (shortness of breath, angina etc, I do have it. Showed up on CT scan of my lungs. Recommended saturated fat for atherosclerosis is about 13 grams.

Now to tweak the saturated fat intake. I’ll have to look into it further but omega 3’s have no saturated fat, so with high quality fish oil at a safe limit of ~ 5 grams may cover a reduction of the oils intake and/or eggs.

I’m getting a headache :neutral_face:

But I’m fascinated about all this stuff enough to figure it out.

#11

I can imagine this fattiness is problematic for some people for one reason or another.

The protein need is a range. If 74g protein/142g fat is too much fat for you, eat more protein I say… Unless you specifically need this little or if you appreciate the smaller food cost… I would appreciate it but no way I could keep my average below 130-150g… My problem is eating lean enough, or it was for many years on low-carb.

I don’t care about saturated fat and my fatty items tend to have both saturated and unsaturated fat galore so I can’t help with that but more protein still helps to lower the fat need so maybe that’s an option… 74g protein doesn’t sound bad for the right people though and I personally like not being wasteful but many of us need more and I can imagine higher protein being more comfortable and enjoyable, maybe just for a while.

(Hugh Walter Jennings) #12

I do have to watch my saturated fat intake. My CT scan of my lungs (because of my smoking history) also indicates I have atherosclerosis in the aorta. I did quit smoking nearly 4 yrs ago and despite it being common for me to wake up and have to use my inhaler the past couple of year when my doctors listen to my lungs they hear no indication I ever smoked.

Doing ok. I may have keto flu. After my most recent fast of 32 hours I’ve been a bit fatigued despite taking two days off from exercise.

All my vitals are fine.