If I am correctly understanding the videos I’ve been watching lately, there several points to consider: First, Dr. Phinney advises eating no more than 0.8 to 1.2 grams of protein per kilograms of lean body mass. More than that will be turned into glucose and stimulate insulin secretions. Second, some people need to eat as little carbohydrate as possible. There are folks who can’t even eat 20g a day without leaving ketosis and gaining weight. Third, it’s important to avoid restricting calories. As counter-intuitive as this sounds, the reason is that eating too few calories makes the body feel deprived, and it will then turn as much of your food into fat as it can. Better to eat nothing at all, it seems, than to eat not quite enough. If you are eating enough fat to leave yourself feeling satisfied at each meal, your calorie count will take care of itself, because your body will adjust your appetite to the proper calorie level. (For me, it has been highly weird to have food on my plate and simply not want to eat it.)
Dr. Phinney, in one lecture I watched, said that if things don’t seem to be working right, the first thing to do is to cut carbs. If they still don’t seem to be working right, eat more fat. And if they still don’t seem to be working right, eat even more fat. (If I could remember which video it was, I’d post a link; I do remember, however, that it was on the Low Carb Down Under YouTube channel.)
For myself, I am finding that I do best with no carbs at all, except for any milk sugars in the dairy I eat. Kale and other leafy greens seem to do okay, as long as I cook them with lots of fat, drown them in butter, and don’t eat too much. But I tried making cauliflower rice recently, got carried away, and binged on it, and the results were unpleasant. (The popcorn I had for dessert didn’t help, either.) I was lethargic and groggy the whole next day. I know I’m addicted to sugar; perhaps I just need to view all carbs as addictive substances. It’s a lot easier to drink no alcohol at all than it is to try to drink moderately; it’s starting to look as though I need to adopt the same approach to carbohydrate.