Confused and overwhelmed
erin3011
Posts: 59 Member
I'm on day three of Keto. I'm trying to figure out my eating plan and I'm getting frustrated. I was trying to figure out what to eat but even the leafy green veggies have carbs. With my carbs to be around 20-30, that doesn't leave much room. To keep the carbs down, I'm ending my day with only about 800 calories.
I'm 35, F, 5'4", 135lbs, size 7/8, insulin resistant and have Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease. If you look at me, I look thin. It's deceptive. Apparently I have lots of visceral fat. I'm skinny fat. Doc said I need to shed the visceral fat, especially in my liver (unless I want to end up with cirrhosis or cancer). So here I am... trying to figure out what the heck I can eat. I signed up for "diet doctor's two week challenge" that sends exactly what to eat for two weeks... problem is, most is not lactose intolerant friendly. I'm finding that if I keep my carbs low, my fat and cals are low too. I felt generally afraid to eat today. Unless I'm straight munching on a stick of butter, how am i suppose to get my fat and calories in? How can I eat veggies if even green beans have 6 carbs. (That's almost a third of my daily minimal carb intake and a fifth of my max intake).
I'm so confused. Please help!
I'm 35, F, 5'4", 135lbs, size 7/8, insulin resistant and have Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease. If you look at me, I look thin. It's deceptive. Apparently I have lots of visceral fat. I'm skinny fat. Doc said I need to shed the visceral fat, especially in my liver (unless I want to end up with cirrhosis or cancer). So here I am... trying to figure out what the heck I can eat. I signed up for "diet doctor's two week challenge" that sends exactly what to eat for two weeks... problem is, most is not lactose intolerant friendly. I'm finding that if I keep my carbs low, my fat and cals are low too. I felt generally afraid to eat today. Unless I'm straight munching on a stick of butter, how am i suppose to get my fat and calories in? How can I eat veggies if even green beans have 6 carbs. (That's almost a third of my daily minimal carb intake and a fifth of my max intake).
I'm so confused. Please help!
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Replies
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You need to eat more protein and fat to get the calories up.
Try one of these macro calculators.
http://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/
Or
http://www.ruled.me/keto-calculator/
Also, I wouldn't even count the carbs from green leafy veggies. Eat away! You can subtract the fiber from them at least. But seriously, green leafy veggies didn't give you fatty liver right? They aren't going to prevent its reversal either.
Also, you'll find that you don't need to eat as often once you get better adapted to using fat for fuel so it won't be so hard to keep 2 meals down to 15g each or 3 meals down to 10. But you can also make 3 meals and have breakfast be zero carb and leave yourself 15g for lunch and dinner. And you can subtract the fiber so it would be closer to 20-25 per meal total carbs.1 -
My macros are the recommended 5carb/20protien/75fat.0
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I've never been a breakfast eater. I normally don't eat till around 11-12, then I have Brunch. Around 2-3 I eat a snack, and then dinner around 6.
I'm seriously considering just having a cup of Keto coffee at noon everyday and then a lean protein dinner with tons of non-starchy veggies and just forgetting about the numbers and tracking.
My problem is figuring out what to eat that will fit into the macros the calculator gave me.1 -
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Also be very careful about the carb count on foods listed here on MFP. Some have way too high carbs, some don't list carbs and some are net carbs. Even some internet search carb listings are off if you are not real specific about type or brand. Try finding pickled egg carb count. It ranges from 1 to 10 per egg depending on the recipe.
Some carb readings are also very misleading. For the longest time I thought 1 oz of regular whipped cream from the can was 1 or 2 carbs. Normally water weight for 2 tablespoons equals 1 oz. Turns out the tablespoon measure they use weighs only 5 grams where an oz of water is about 29.5 grams. So I was eating 6 times more carbs than I thought. No wonder I wasn't losing weight.1 -
cedarsidefarm wrote: »Also be very careful about the carb count on foods listed here on MFP. Some have way too high carbs, some don't list carbs and some are net carbs. Even some internet search carb listings are off if you are not real specific about type or brand. Try finding pickled egg carb count. It ranges from 1 to 10 per egg depending on the recipe.
Some carb readings are also very misleading. For the longest time I thought 1 oz of regular whipped cream from the can was 1 or 2 carbs. Normally water weight for 2 tablespoons equals 1 oz. Turns out the tablespoon measure they use weighs only 5 grams where an oz of water is about 29.5 grams. So I was eating 6 times more carbs than I thought. No wonder I wasn't losing weight.
Wow that's scary to me! How did you finally figure it all out?0 -
I've never been a breakfast eater. I normally don't eat till around 11-12, then I have Brunch. Around 2-3 I eat a snack, and then dinner around 6.
I'm seriously considering just having a cup of Keto coffee at noon everyday and then a lean protein dinner with tons of non-starchy veggies and just forgetting about the numbers and tracking.
My problem is figuring out what to eat that will fit into the macros the calculator gave me.
Skip the lean protein. You need your body to learn to run on fat. You'll have a hard time fitting keto macros with lean protein.
Especially in the beginning. Until your body can use fat for fuel, it will be using some protein to provide the glucose it's seeking. You DO need to provide dietary protein to spare your lean body mass the first few weeks until your using fat more efficiently to prevent muscle loss. Once this happens, your daily glucose needs greatly reduce and there's not as much risk of protein being used to fulfill glucose needs. You do not want to be low on protein.
I'd recommend making sure you get your minimum protein every day. Eat a plate full of green veggies with it if you want. Make sure you cook meats and veggies with some kind of natural fat. You don't have to drown everything but you want to avoid eating low fat. Your energy will suffer if you don't supply an energy source.
I am not a breakfast person either and I've always chosen to have coffee with MCT oil myself. You can use coconut oil or butter or ghee if you prefer. I only add 1Tbs though. You don't have to make these 800 calorie drinks that you see everywhere. But you can easily add calories this way if needed.
Then I sometimes eat around 3 if I'm hungry and then dinner around 6:30-7.
Also, make sure to read the info about electrolytes in the launchpad. Don't wait until you get symptoms before you learn about your increased sodium needs.3 -
Sunny_Bunny_ wrote: »I've never been a breakfast eater. I normally don't eat till around 11-12, then I have Brunch. Around 2-3 I eat a snack, and then dinner around 6.
I'm seriously considering just having a cup of Keto coffee at noon everyday and then a lean protein dinner with tons of non-starchy veggies and just forgetting about the numbers and tracking.
My problem is figuring out what to eat that will fit into the macros the calculator gave me.
Skip the lean protein. You need your body to learn to run on fat. You'll have a hard time fitting keto macros with lean protein.
Especially in the beginning. Until your body can use fat for fuel, it will be using some protein to provide the glucose it's seeking. You DO need to provide dietary protein to spare your lean body mass the first few weeks until your using fat more efficiently to prevent muscle loss. Once this happens, your daily glucose needs greatly reduce and there's not as much risk of protein being used to fulfill glucose needs. You do not want to be low on protein.
I'd recommend making sure you get your minimum protein every day. Eat a plate full of green veggies with it if you want. Make sure you cook meats and veggies with some kind of natural fat. You don't have to drown everything but you want to avoid eating low fat. Your energy will suffer if you don't supply an energy source.
I am not a breakfast person either and I've always chosen to have coffee with MCT oil myself. You can use coconut oil or butter or ghee if you prefer. I only add 1Tbs though. You don't have to make these 800 calorie drinks that you see everywhere. But you can easily add calories this way if needed.
Then I sometimes eat around 3 if I'm hungry and then dinner around 6:30-7.
Also, make sure to read the info about electrolytes in the launchpad. Don't wait until you get symptoms before you learn about your increased sodium needs.
All great advice. Lean, lite, and fat-free are all dirty words if you aiming for ketosis. Use regular cuts of meat and full fat dairy, if you can tolerate cheese, butter and such.
My macros were the same as yours but my calories were set about a 100 kcal higher. Food for me might be bacon and eggs, coffee with a TBS of coconut cream, a can of tuna with mayo and celery for lunch (or a bowl of nuts, or pepperoni and cheese), and meat and veggies for dinner... with a bit of butter on both.
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Here's a keto friendly food list that may help give you ideas:
http://www.ruled.me/ketogenic-diet-food-list/
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@erin3011 - There is good advice above. I can certainly understand your frustration in terms of trying to find food, especially having lived your whole life being told to eat the lean meat and avoid the fat. Step 1 is eating the good fatty protein. This could be the ribeye over the sirloin as an example or the chicken thigh over the chicken breast (and definitely eat the skin).
I will second what @Sunny_Bunny_ said about not needing to avoid green veggies. Veggies that grow above ground and are not grains (btw, corn is a grain), are generally going to be fine in limited quantities. If they are leafy like spinach, you should be fine eating pretty much as much as you want. The key is how you eat them. Adding high carb salad dressing is the foil to the typical dieter. You can't blame them because the high carb dressings typically have in bold print "FAT FREE" on the label and we have all been conditioned that fat free = healthy.
My dinner last night was spinach and jalapeños sauteed in a combination of coconut oil and olive oil then added to eggs for an omelette. It sounds like you are lactose intolerant, so the cheese I added wouldn't work, but a little bacon or sausage would.
I have found sauteed veggies are great, especially with bacon/bacon grease and/or olive oil and garlic.
For salads, use oil and vinegar dressings without added sugar. In fact, you can just use olive oil or avocado oil alone.
A great snack, which many think sounds gross including me until I tried them, is sardines in olive oil. They get you the good monounsaturated fats in the olive oil and the good omega 3's from the sardines while providing some decent protein.
You can absolutely do this. Hang in there. Look through the information on the main tab of this forum as well as some of the older threads and you will find lots of very good useful info.
For some meal ideas, I would recommend one of my favorite threads:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10274397/what-does-your-low-carb-meals-look-like#latest5 -
Another thought...
There is a temptation when using the Keto calculators to aim for a larger guesstimated calorie deficit than you might be comfortable with.
In the grand scheme of things, losing an average of 1.5 lb/week instead of 2 (or 1 vs. 1.5, etc) probably isn't that significant, but it could make your initial keto experience more pleasant.
It might help demystify things to take a few moments and skim the LCD group's collection of resources at: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10103966/start-here-the-lcd-launch-pad
Westman, Phinney, & Volek's New Atkins For A New You is a good hands-on intro to ketogenic diets. There are lots of simple explanations of basic concepts, as well as sample meal plans and other practical tips.
Good luck!
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Thank you everyone for your input! I appreciate the help! This new woe is confusing but I'm figuring it out!!! I think day three was just really hard on me! Today has been much better!2
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Regarding the lactose intolerance issue: One of my kids is allergic to cows milk, so I have a few tips for you. Whole Foods/ Trader Joe's/ Fresh Market carry a lot of dairy free products. I buy goat milk butter and goat cheese of many different varieties. They even have mild goat cheese slices so you can have an actual grilled sandwich (with your favorite bread substitute, of course).
Staying at around 20g of carbs a day is going to be hard. Try planning your meals with your intended carb count in mind; that might make it easier for you.1 -
In terms of avoiding lactose, almond milk, cashew milk and coconut milk are all better than cow's milk.1
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healthfulpursuit.com has a lot of dairy-free low carb friendly recipes, too, if you want to search for more ideas.2
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