What should I expect after the first month on keto

(Alisa J) #1

I started Feb 14 have lost 8 lbs so far and feel better, have at least 50 lbs to lose and am impressed with the high weight losses I see on here, I do 1 hour of cardio per day should I eat my exercise calories back which are monitored on my Fitbit and recorded into my Fitness Pal app. My daily carb allowance is 20 and I allow myself 1600 cal per day

(Alec) #2

Alisa
My advice, don’t count calories: eat when you are hungry. Don’t eat when you are not hungry. 1600 calories sounds too low, but much depends on your body size.

My test of true hunger: do I want a boiled egg? If I “don’t fancy it”, then I am not really hungry.
Cheers
Alec

(Robin) #3

Sounds like you are doing everything right. Your body should tell you if you need more calories. If you feel good and have energy, stay the course. You can always tweak. But keto is actually pretty simple. You got this.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #4

Sixteen hundred calories is generally regarded as starvation-level. You are likely to encounter metabolic slowdown, which will make it hard to continue to lose fat, as the body hangs on to all the resources it can during a famine. Better to eat enough to satisfy your hunger (as long as you keep your carbohydrate low); your metabolism will ramp up, and your fatty-acid metabolism in particular will increase. If your appetite drops because you are getting enough food, that’s one thing, but to deliberately restrict intake is courting the body’s famine response.

As Amber O’Hearn puts it: “We need a caloric deficit in order to shed excess fat, but we don’t need to restrict calories in order to achieve such a deficit.” Better to eat in a way that allows the body to get out of fat-storage mode, and let natural processes take care of themselves.

(Allie) #5

Do not restrict calories, especially not if you’re exercising. Your body needs fuel to operate, the more you push, the more it needs, and it won’t perform the way you want it to without the nourishment it needs.

Just keep carbs below 20g (or as close as you can get to that), prioritise protein, and as much fat as you want / need to hold off hunger.

(Alisa J) #6

Love reading your replies, sir you are a godsend…thank you

(Alisa J) #7

Love your avatar, thanks for replying

(Alisa J) #8

Thanks for replying,love not having to count calories…I’m on a mission

(Alisa J) #9

Paul, I work in Nola at a popular restaurant in midtown, we are very busy and generally after work we will have a few cocktails, I generally have a few dirty martinis, should I just stop this practice, I’m wondering if this practice will slow my process down, It’s mostly something I do to bring my adrenaline down after a hard day serving hard all day.

(Robin) #10

I’m glad you asked @PaulL that question. He is much more diplomatic.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #11

As long as you are drinking low-carb liquor (the hard stuff; wine is usually high in carbohydrate, and beer definitely is), you are probably okay, but be aware that many people find that alcohol hits a lot harder as they go along on a ketogenic diet. You might do a forum search, to see people’s experiences.

As you probably know, alcohol in excess causes fatty liver disease and its sequelae. The reason is that the pathway that handles ethanol is easily overwhelmed, and when overwhelmed leads to a process called de novo lipogenesis. The fat this process generates gets stuck in the liver and causes problems.

This same pathway also handles branched-chain amino acids and fructose (found in sucrose—table sugar—and high-fructose corn syrup), so the combination of all three has to be borne in mind when estimating the potential for damage.

#12

You should eat back the exercise calories (not like you possibly have much idea how much that is) when your body tells you so.
1600 kcal would be great for me. I surely can’t go lower, I experienced that already but I tend to eat more on workout days… Only if my body tells me but my mind actually strongly encourages it as I want to gain muscles :smiley:
But if I am hungry after 3000 kcal, I eat more… Of course it doesn’t happen day to day, just occasionally. We have our unusual days, I consider it normal. If it happens too often, maybe we don’t eat right or the timing is off. But if you feel hungry below 1600, it’s easily can be just too little for you, who knows? Maybe not, my body is very much into getting its 2000 kcal (it accepts 3-4000 just fine sometimes) even though I don’t use more. But it probably feels different to truly undereat.
So… Eat more if you feel you need more. If not, I have no idea if 1600 kcal is too little or right for you.

Nope, it’s actually too much for some women. It’s all about the personal need (and how much extra fat helps with the energy balance).
It’s great for me if my goal is fat-loss, I basically have no other option but eat 1600-1800 kcal as I can’t go lower and it’s only a small deficit for me. I have exactly no chance at quick fat-loss, only a super slow one (theoretically. it didn’t happen yet as I eat more). And my metabolism is pretty good for my stats, calculators usually tell me lower numbers than the reality, thanks heaven.

Alcohol: I don’t think we should very frequently consume toxins we could just be without.
It may or may not hinder fat-loss, it’s very individual. I never care about even the carbs in my drinks as I drink so little and rarely :smiley: I am far from being against booze, I just know it is a burden to the body so it should be limited.

(Marianne) #13

When I started, the notion of not counting calories was very foreign and somewhat worrisome to me. Although I was on the forum all of the time and reading all I could, I felt like I didn’t exactly know “the right way to do this” (keto), unlike with other diets I had been on. I used macros as my compass and guideline and tracked them loosely, not with an iron grip. I got as close to my fat and protein macros as possible - some days that meant I was under, some days I was a little over - and I always kept the total carbs under 20/day. Eating to my macros seemed to provide me sufficient energy and satiety, so I used that as my compass. I never tracked calories. Everything I heard or read indicated that we didn’t need to do that, and I was very relieved not to know and obsess about that value. After 4-6 weeks of eating clean keto, I felt I had a handle on how and what to eat that worked, and I gave up tracking completely.

It’s not for everyone, but another thing that helped me so much was to stop weighing entirely, except when I went to the doctors (every 3-4 months). I could tell by my appearance and clothes that I was losing weight and reproportioning, and the number became inconsequential, especially given that I could experience the latter without the scale registering “weight loss.”

It sounds like you are off to a great start. Hope to see you on the forum!

(J) #14

I have a question of my own: I have not been hungry generally until around supper time (22-24hr natural fast). I am not sure if I’ve ramped up beyond 2000 calories. I just make sure I get protein, fat, and veggies. Do I need to increase calories somehow, even though my appetite is fully satiated? I have not fasted on purpose, I’ve just gone the route of “eat when you’re hungry.”

(Robin) #15

I rarely eat till late afternoon. Or dinner. Nothing to worry about unless you have problems eating enough. Rock on

#16

If you starve this way (even if just slightly), you need.
But do you know how many calories do you need at all for maintenance? It can’t be calculated, I figured out mine from my fat-loss and lack of it but some time passes or I get more active and it’s unknown again. And can you track well? I eat fatty meat with an unknown amount of fat and sometimes just a part of something so I just can’t. (Even so, I can stay in some range on a typical day… I just can’t tell if it was 1600 kcal or 1900.)

(Alisa J) #17

I gotcha, I do believe I’ll find a different way to relax after work.

(Robin) #18

Listen, if you can handle it, and not fall down the rabbit hole… more power to you. As a recovered alcoholic, I worry more about the daily practice than the carbs. But, also… not my business.

I also believe in tackling one hard thing at a time. :vulcan_salute:t2:

(Alisa J) #19

There’s more rabbit holes in this city than the Kansas prairie, I’ll just eat a edible and chill out with my dog Tugboat, life’s to short to screw it up with one thing, plus I’m going to school need to get off the merry go round and focus on my life and health.

(Robin) #20

Sounds like a wise decision. Good for you.