Is this about right?
4% carbs (12g)
77% fat (123g)
19%protein (67g)
1341 calories
At 70kgs and 148.7 cm
I know I shouldn’t but I do get frustrated at nothing moving, weight or measurements. It makes me think I am doing it all wrong.
I’d appreciate your views. Thanks
Something to try is to eat more. Fourteen hundred calories is not much food. It is possible that your metabolism is slowing down to compensate for the lack of intake.
Ignore (a) the number of calories and (b) the percentages of calories. The key to a ketogenic diet is to keep glucose intake (i.e., carbohydrate) low enough to let insulin drop below 25 μU/mL. Above that threshold, we are in fat-storage mode, below it we are in fat-burning mode. If you keep your carbohydrate intake sufficiently low, you will be able to eat without having to count calories. Your insulin will be low enough to allow both the fat you eat and the fat from your adipose tissue to be metabolised. Appetite hormones will regulate your appetite to achieve this. These forums have a number of members who reported that their fat loss didn’t begin until they started eating more, not less.
Our recommendation of a limit of 20 g/day of carbohydrate is set to provide a successful experience for all but the most insulin-resistant people. Those people, however, may well need to reduce their carb intake even below that level in order to get into ketosis. So those are two things to try, eat more total food, but eat less carbohydrate.
Protein should be a reasonable amount, usually 1.0-1.5 g/kg of lean body mass/day, more if you are trying to build muscle. Protein is not used for energy, except when we are starving. Normally it is used to build new tissues. And when we decrease the amount of energy we take in as glucose/carbohydrate, we have to replace it with fatty acids, which have a negligible effect on insulin levels.
Honestly just focus on keeping the carbs low as possible and eat protein / fat as much as you need. Plenty of time to tweak things when you’ve got a handle on how this all works.
Don’t go by %'s, they don’t work. Whether those are right for you or not depends on a lot. Height/Weight/M/F/Activity.
Don’t expect movement every day, doesn’t work that way. It’s the overall trends you’re watching.
Percentages are rarely important… The numbers may be good for a single day for you, I can’t possibly now. It seems a bit low-cal and quite possibly not enough protein to me but it’s not low enough for me to say you SURELY will mess something up. Probably metabolism long term, though. How do you eat normally? I hope you don’t try to force yourself into fixed numbers, we aren’t robots and it’s impossible to track accurately anyway…
How do you feel? In the ideal case you can just eat whatever and as much as you feel like and all will be well. One should start to do that and if it doesn’t work, some tweaking may be needed. I never force macros on myself, not even the “right” ones so I typically change my food items to naturally eat better. Sometimes timing should be subtly changed… And don’t forget, we are humans, not robots, our needs change and it’s fine to eat way more (or less) occasionally if that feels best. We may have phases where we focus more on fat or more on protein… My fat/protein ratio (in grams) tends to be around 1.0 but I had 0.5 and 2.0 days too and there was no problem with them, occasionally at least.
Maybe I wrote obvious things, sorry, I don’t know anything about you so I wrote a bunch of stuff ;).
Sorry to hijack here Jacaranda1, but quick question for Paul. Is eating to satiety enough to know you are getting enough calories? Because when I do track my calories, I’m often below 1300 and I worry I’m not getting enough and I don’t want to be slowing my metabolism inadvertently. I mean, there’s a chance my tracking app just isn’t the best, or I’m not putting in the right measurements. I don’t usually weigh or measure out what I eat exactly. But, I see a lot of mixed messages from the group around “don’t track your calories”, but also “eat more calories!!”.
If you eat to the caloric target set by some app, it is highly likely that you are not eating enough. Eat too little food, and your metabolism will eventually slow down to compensate. This is why people never lose as much weight as they are supposed to by cutting calories. Eat more food, and the metabolism speeds up.
Naturally, there are limits. If we really eat too little, we die of starvation. Too much, and eventually we will start storing energy in the form of fat. But within quite a broad range, the body can adjust.
So if you are satisfied with only 1300 calories, the question becomes whether or not you have slowed your metabolic rate (the Biggest Loser contestants appear to have permanently reduced their metabolic rates, which hampers their efforts to lose the weight they regained after leaving the show). In that case, you can try something called “reverse dieting” to see if you can slowly raise your metabolic rate, but that takes time. If you are eating 1300 calories for no other reason than because the app told you to, then try eating enough at mealtime to satisfy your hunger. That may be a large quantity of food at first, but you will likely experience a sudden drop in appetite, which is when your hormones finally start working properly.
There are a number of people on these forums who will tell you that their hormones are “broken” and there is no limit to the amount of food they eat if they don’t stop themselves; they never stop being hungry. All I can say is that over time it will become clear to you whether or not you are part of that group, and at that point you can deal with it. In the meantime, however, keep eating enough food to satisfy your hunger, and see where it leads. Many other forum members have reported that their fat loss didn’t begin until they started eating more, not less.
This has definitely been a concern of mine too. I don’t aim for any number and just eat to satiety. My numbers are all over the place, but quite frequently below 1500.
I don’t think I’ve stalled, though it’s a little hard to say without weighing, which I don’t do. I’m certainly never starving though!
I typically eat first, then enter what I ate into the app, rather than the reverse of the app telling me. It’s usually to satisfy my curiosity about what number of calories got me to satiety. My main use for the app is for net carbs, which I started at 30, but so many suggestions here were to be at 20 and below, so that’s what I’m doing most days.
I don’t think I’m in the broken hormones category because I have all but eliminated hunger pains, and I don’t feel the need to keep eating after I finish my meal. I’m probably overthinking this a bit as I am continuing to lose weight, though the scale does jump around a bit in a given week or two. I should probably stop weighing myself as many people recommend 
.
Excellent!
Also excellent. The actual carb limit for your body may or may not be higher, but the lower you can keep it, the more likely you are to see success.
This is also good news. Just keep listening to your body and see how things go. I eat a lot more some days and a lot less others, but my weight stays within the same narrow range, and my clothes still fit the same, so I don’t worry about the number of calories. More important to avoid carbs as much as I can.
I like that graph! Most days I do TMAD, but I do OMAD (23:1) occasionally, usually 2 days during the week. It’s really hard for me to get my calories up on the OMAD days, I almost have to force food down. And I’m not a slow eater, so it’s hard to space the food out over the hour or so period because I’ve usually eaten everything I’ve prepared in like the first 10 minutes, haha.
Haha, yep! I’m definitely a bit like that on my OMAD days too xD
There’s no single thing that determines whether I’ll go OMAD or TMAD. It varies depending on whether it’s a work day or not, what else I want to squeeze in, and just how I’m feeling hunger-wise. I like it being flexible that way. I do panic about the days I have so little appetite though; definitely do not want to be making my metabolism go at a snail’s pace : (
Hi Pat, welcome. How long have you been doing keto, how long have you been eating to the numbers you posted, and how long has nothing moved? It would be great if you could give us a bit more info so our answers can be as on point as possible. I understand it sure can be frustrating and I’m sorry. Seeing numbers move can be so encouraging. Have you noticed any non number improvements? Energy, health conditions, mood etc?
All the best!!
Another thing to try: eat less fat and more protein. Not sure what you’re eating, but if you’re adding sour cream and butter to everything, cut back or eliminate it. Or eat leaner meats (eg, ham instead of pepperoni).
Some people do very well on high fat, but I find higher protein, lower fat to be better.
Having said that, I still have Taco Tuesday with sour cream. I just don’t eat nearly the fast I used to, and I tend to have a lean lunch and a lean dinner, or maybe a lean lunch and a fatty dinner.
Less may be better for you even if you stay in ketosis with more. I experienced that. (It surely wasn’t only about my carbs, it’s a big difference that I went from zero to much meat too but my net carb intake seems to be extremely important.)
And no, it’s not always true that if you eat when hungry until you get satiated then all will be well. Some people never get hungry, some people get too easy satiation with few carbs so they starve on keto even underweight… These are extreme cases but there are more cases where it’s a bad idea just to follow your body and feeling and urges, it just isn’t always a good guide.
If you eat 1300 kcal and it feels quite right, maybe you could add some higher-cal day here and there? I have this automatically in my super rare low-cal times. Or you may play with your food choices. Most of us have very satiating items and ones able to balloon our calories… If it would be needed, I would simply add another meal without any hint of hunger too but probably not everyone can do that. But almost everyone can try 
Sometimes you don’t feel hunger but it changes after a bite…
Of course calories matter too, some people manage to overeat on keto and that’s not the way to success and health. Some people undereat and that’s bad too. But the lucky ones don’t need to worry too much about it.
Why do you do OMAD then? It’s not for everyone and even if OMAD days are great for me, for example, it doesn’t mean I can pull it off often. Sometimes we have smaller meals and need more of them.
And who told you OMAD can’t be in 10 minutes, only an hour is right…? Wow, you have some great skills, I totally can fill the 60 minutes but even if I don’t have many courses, at least 30. I like to eat so it’s good for me, actually… I wouldn’t be very satisfied with a quick OMAD meal!
Yes, that’s a good idea, and I’ve been trying to do that here and there. And usually I add protein during those times rather than fat, though there’s a lot of conflicting information about whether you can overdo it on protein. I need to stop overthinking everything and have a more zen like attitude, which you seem to have 
.
It’s really a bit of an experimentation, and in some ways I’m trying to be a bit unpredictable so my body doesn’t become too adjusted to the same thing every day. I’ve done an OMAD “week” twice now, and it does appear to help with weight loss. And I know OMAD could be whatever I want, eat in 10 minutes or stretch a bit, but I think in general wolfing down food quickly isn’t the best way of eating. It’s just what I’ve always done, and I’m getting too old to really worry about it. As long as it doesn’t cause me problems digestively or otherwise, I’ll just chug along.
For most of us, protein is no concern. I mean, we can’t overdo it to the point to get protein toxicity… Some of us still may have a reason to keep it in some range or percentage, I tend to overeat fat if I overdo protein so I try to avoid that. But it doesn’t take much effort. Not being unwell due to too much protein, that’s no effort at all. I automatically stop at some point and my average is always in the safe zone, no matter if I eat 1000 or 4000 kcal.
Other people work differently, they don’t have so wide macro ranges and fat often satiate them but I very rarely hear about people really overeating protein so it seems most people have something to keep their protein intake okay. At least, not too high, I see smallish numbers often (see this very thread), often along with lowish calories as many people responds to keto that way, at least temporarily. Of course it’s not easy to say how much protein one needs, smallish numbers may work for some people.
And I think a bit higher than adequate (not like that can be calculated…) protein does cause problems in some cases, people are so very different. But it’s not the norm I think.
Thank you Paul for your reply. Good information.
You know sometimes I feel as if I’m overdoing the fat. Some on this site say don’t overdo the fat, some say eat more fat.
I’m going to stop doing the macros for a while and just make sure I don’t go over the 20 carbs sometimes I don’t even have 20. I can overdo the protein a bit as I love meat but I’m sure I don’t overdo it too much.
Last year my husband was diagnosed with type 2 and so we’ve been low carbing together, me more so than him as he still likes his egg and chips. My husband has gone down from 116kgs to 104 kgs in a year and he still drinks alcohol.
Thanks again for your advice
Well, don’t choke down fat simply for the sake of eating fat. Eat enough to satisfy your hunger (you may need a bit less fat and a bit more protein, or you may need a bit less protein and a bit more fat; you’ll have to experiment). As I mentioned, fat has over twice the calories per gram as carbohydrate, so it takes less than half the amount to yield the same number of calories.
133 g fat × 9 cal/g = 1197 cal
300 g carbohydrate × 4 cal/g = 1200 cal
Shinita
I try to eat below 20g carbs every day. I have eggs for breakfast sometimes with bacon, I have coffee with pure cream. If I don’t have breakfast too late and I’m hungry I have lunch which is always low carb and dinner is meat or fish and veggies with butter, not always but most times… I think that’s normal eating.
I’m 71 and female. I retired in 2019 and at that time I was 64 kgs. My husband retired at the same time and to keep us active we decided to do cleaning for a domestic agency. This year in May we decided to retire fully due to health reasons. So now I am not as active as I was when working and that’s when the weight gain happened. Sometimes when I get fed up of not being able to lose weight I go off keto and have more carbs. Three weeks ago I decided I would do Keto again and adhere. So we’ll see how I go.
