Working

(ian steele) #1

Im finding it difficult to maintain my carb/protein input during the time at work ,I work in heavy industry and am on the road or sat at a desk quite a lot ,meals for the day are
Breakfast Greek Yogurt with Satsuma pieces or strawberries
Day Snack I tend to have a small tuperwear box with mixed nuts Brasil /Hazel/Walnut
Lunch Low carb bread ham butter and mayonaise
Evening meal Bacon mushroom omelette etc etc.
Is this enough or to much?

(Polly) #2

Welcome to the forum @ian9178.

Some people need to get their daily carbs below 20 grams in order to be in ketosis. Others manage to do it at below 50g or even 100g.

If you are working hard physically you may be in a position to burn off carbs before reverting to fat burning. It is probably a good idea to establish yourself in fat adaptation before tweaking the diet.

There is a great post of advice to new starters which I cannot find at the moment. I will come back and post it if I can track it down.

#3

As there are no amounts and don’t know your energy need either, it’s impossible to say if you eat little, enough or too much. No idea about carbs either. But it doesn’t matter, it’s individual anyway and tend to change in time too. Try to figure out what works best for you. You feel if you are satisfied or feel unwell… If you think you eat too much carbs, get out some carbier items. If you can, it doesn’t work right away for everyone, after all.
I actually don’t know what your problem is, what is it mean it’s difficult to maintain your carb/protein input during work? Are you hungry at work but you can’t eat proper, satiating, very low-carb and protein rich meals there? Just eating little protein at work isn’t necessarily a problem as you can eat your protein at home but you might need it for satiation at lunch. But you eat ham then so what’s the problem? If it’s not enough, eat more ham.

(Polly) #4

Here it is:

(mole person) #5

Your diet looks pretty carb heavy for a ketogenic diet. Maybe it works for you, but a lot of people wouldn’t lose much weight with so many carbs. I strongly recommend you measure and count carbohydrates for a few days to see where you are. You don’t want to be getting more than 20 net grams of carbohydrates.

Just to give you an example of what your diet is probably around:

1 cup greek yogurt: 12 grams carbohydrates
2 ounces Satsuma pieces: 5 net grams
1/2 cup nuts ~ 5 net grams

At this point your already probably over your 20 net grams.

But then:

Low carb bread is not a good choice in general. When fibre is ground for bread, and in other processed foods, it becomes much more insulinogenic. In general, the rule many people follow is that, for any processed foods, we count total rather than net carbs. So while your bread might look low in net carbs per slice it could well be interfering with your diet all by itself. I can tell from your post that you are not from North America, so for any processed food (like low carb bread) you want to be adding the fibre line back to the carbohydrates line to get the total carbohydrates.

Your dinner looks fine. But when you start counting carbs don’t forget that even cheese, mushrooms, and eggs have carbohydrates and they should be added to your daily total.

You really want to prioritize eating fatty cuts of meat and above ground vegetables. And stay away from fruits except the occasional berries. Watch out for overdoing nuts, the carbs and calories add up very quickly. Definitely, track your amounts at first to see what your getting.

Finally, if you can, do not snack. This diet is aiming at lowering you daily insulin and every time you eat it goes up. It’s far better to have fewer, larger meals.

As for what to eat at work you have many options. You can create a cold plate of fatty deli meats, some cheese, eggs, olives, avocado, a few nuts, dressed in oil. You can microwave any meal you prepare at home, assuming you have a microwave at work. You can make it easy by just taking some fatty pepperoni sticks and a couple of hard boiled eggs, or you can do what many of us do and just not eat the middle meal at all. Have a large breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausages or similar and a big dinner. One of the brilliant things about the ketogenic diet is its amazing appetite regulation. Most people on this forum, after they have become fat adapted, only eat 1 or 2 meals a day. Some eat even less often.

(Marianne) #6

I don’t think you are eating enough.

  • Breakfast: three eggs cooked in butter, 3-4 pieces of bacon.
  • Lunch ideas: 8 oz. hamburger patty with cheese and bacon; egg/tuna/chicken salad; heavy salad with toppings - eggs, cheese, tuna, chicken, bacon, blue cheese dressing; steamed broccoli or brussels spouts mixed with bacon grease and salt; zoodles or zucchini dressed with homemade alfredo or cheese sauce; italian sausages; etc. You get the idea. You can mix and match these - doesn’t have to be just one choice.
  • Dinner: Sizeable piece of meat, chicken, hamburger, sausage, pork, etc., with heavy salad, and/or steamed veggie in bacon grease or cheese sauce.
  • No snacks. Just drink plain water. Keep carbs as low under 20 as you can.
(ian steele) #7

This was my thought “im under eating” which is something i never thought id hear myself say.
I’ll change my diet to the one you suggested and see what happens
Thanks for the advice

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #8

Even on a low-carb diet, the body will still hang on to our fat reserves if we cut calories, so as to get us through the “famine.” The key is to eat to satiety: in other words, wait till you’re hungry to eat, stop eating once you stop being hungry, and don’t eat again until you are hungry again. Once you’ve been ketogenic for a few weeks, you will find your appetite becoming a reliable guide to how much to eat. Some days, you will want very little food, other days, you might be ravenous, but it will even out over the week and will ensure that you get enough food but not too much.