KETO DIET

grimmc603

Hello, I've decided to start the keto diet but unsure how to. For 3 months I've weighed my food, counted calories, and worked out with no weight loss. So I'm going to try Keto. I've looked at several website calculators to see how much proteins, fat and carbs I should eat but each site gives different numbers. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

manyblyats

To be honest if you properly counted your calories there's literally no way you lost no weight in 3 month. We tend to underestimate our intake and overestimate how much we burn (workouts especially). Are you weighing your food properly? What I propose you do is weight everything by the gram when you can and when you HAVE to guesstimate always log in the biggest estimate.
As for keto I can't really help you but here's my two cent, I've been doing this for a month and a half now and already lost 14 pounds.0

Sabine_Stroehm

If you're considering a keto or otherwise low carb diet, consider joining this group. LOTS of good information for folks at all carb levels.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/394-low-carber-daily-forum-the-lcd-group

grimmc603

Thank you!

grimmc603

manyblyats wrote: »

To be honest if you properly counted your calories there's literally no way you lost no weight in 3 month. We tend to underestimate our intake and overestimate how much we burn (workouts especially). Are you weighing your food properly? What I propose you do is weight everything by the gram when you can and when you HAVE to guesstimate always log in the biggest estimate.
As for keto I can't really help you but here's my two cent, I've been doing this for a month and a half now and already lost 14 pounds.0

I weigh my food, document everything, don't eat out, and I never eat my workout calories. So yeah, I've tried this for 3 months with no success.

cerise_noir

manyblyats wrote: »

To be honest if you properly counted your calories there's literally no way you lost no weight in 3 month. We tend to underestimate our intake and overestimate how much we burn (workouts especially). Are you weighing your food properly? What I propose you do is weight everything by the gram when you can and when you HAVE to guesstimate always log in the biggest estimate.
As for keto I can't really help you but here's my two cent, I've been doing this for a month and a half now and already lost 14 pounds.0

Agreed. If one intakes less calories than they burn, they will lose weight.

If you're not losing weight with logging and weighing, then keto may not be the answer either as you still have to count calories (especially due to the high fat). Weight loss is all about calories. Anyone telling you that calorie counting is not necessary with keto is not being honest. Fat, the highest % macro in keto has 9 calories per gram, while carbs and protien both have 4 calories per gram. Counting calories is essential.

Did you:

-use a digital food scale that weighs in grams?

-recently changed batteries in both food and bathroom scale?

-weigh all meats, legumes, pastas, grains, vegetables in their raw state, in grams, and use the appropriate USDA entries?

-weigh all recipe ingredients as well as servings? It's easy to underestimate calories when eyeballing portions even if ingredients were weighed.

-double check items entered in recipe builder? MFP recipe builder can really throw in some very inaccurate and mismatched entries.

-choose correct database entries? There are many innacurate entries. Scanning can lead to innacurate entries, and green check mark entries are not necessarily accurate.

-Weigh and log mayonnaise, butter, peanut butter, fat, high calorie salad dressing?

-measure and log beverages?

-Weigh and log fruits and vegetables?

-Weigh single serve items? Foods such as eggs, bread, protien bars, etc can vary slice to slice, egg to egg.

-Weigh and log cooking oils?

-log condiments?

-weigh prepackaged foods? These can be off by around 20%.

-log all foods, snacks, bites/tastes, all the time?

Can you open your food diary?

CattOfTheGarage

Keto involves tracking carbs quite precisely. If you haven't lost weight calorie counting for that length of time, your tracking isn't as precise as it needs to be for either approach to work. I'd advise you to take this seriously and take the advice of people here, who have made pretty much every tracking mistake known to man - they'll help you find out where you're going wrong, which will help you whether you intend to do keto or continue with basic calorie counting.

Keto seems to be a helpful approach for many people, but it's not a solution to imprecise logging. Quite the opposite.

nvmomketo

Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »

If you're considering a keto or otherwise low carb diet, consider joining this group. LOTS of good information for folks at all carb levels.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/394-low-carber-daily-forum-the-lcd-group

This group really is great. The stickies/launch pad has a huge list of resources.

Keto is generally accepted to be a diet with fewer than 20-50g of carbs a day. Many seem to make the jump down to 20-30g of carbs at first, possibly to get right to it.

Depending on your caloric intake, that's usually 5-10% of total calories. I lost my weight (about 40lbs) with a setting of 5% carbs, about 20 g, on a 1500kcal diet. I'm in my 40's, a 5'8" woman who is pretty inactive.

Honestly, it is often easier to think of keto in terms of grams rather than percentages. As you lose weight your total calories will change, but you don't really want proetin or carbs to change with it - only fat.

You need to figure out your carb ceiling, usually between 20-50g. You don't want to break through that. At least not often

Next figure out your protein needs. You want to hit, or even exceed, your protein goal. I believe the minimum can be calculated with 0.36 x your rough goal weight in lbs. It's best to go above that minimum if you can. For example, my minimum protein is about 54g but I aim for about 90g. That is 20-25% of my calories depending on if I am losing (less calories so protein is a larger percentage) or at maintenance. Those who are trying to build muscle tend to eat more protein than me - over a 100g for a woman - and others will eat more because they like lean protein sources.

Fat fills in the rest. When losing you eat less fat, because you are using body fat, and when you are in maintenance you eat more fat. Protein and carbs stay about the same unless you want to change them.

Just jump in. If your macros don't work for you, you can change them.

Consider adding sodium to your macros. You'll need at least 3000-5000 mg of sodium per day to make up the electrolytes you'll lose with some water weight. There is 2300 mg of sodium in a teaspoon of table salt. 3-5g is a fair bit. You'll know you are not getting enough if you get the entirely preventable "keto flu": headaches, fatigue, moodiness, brain fog, muscle weakness & aches, stomach issues. If you let it go you'll eventually end up with muscle spasms because potassium and magnesium are now low (they try to stand in for low sodium). Let it go too long and some are hospitalized. Salting food, having a teaspoon of salt with water, drinking boullion, or taking salt tablets can really help at first.

Good luck.