1600 to maintain with high carb/low fat, trying to find maintenance with low carb

apriltrainer

I am actually trying not to lose weight. On carnivore keto I am seeing that maintaining my weight is a problem. I keep dropping and I am averaging between 1800-2200 a day. I am doing both intermittent fasting as well. I don't want to change everything. So i will change one thing. That thing is to add extra protein. If this doesn't work I will play with the other variables like fat or intermittent fasting timing. Some people might add fat first. But extra fat, while I eat more than most, just isn't as satiating to me as protein is. I won't avoid fat but I would rather eat extra protein.

Obviously, if you look at my food log, I am not afraid of fat. But it also is NOT putting weight on me. This makes me think of CICO. Cals in Cals out. I do and don't believe in it...to a point. How so? How can I both believe and not believe? I am noticing that the month of August on carnivore keto my typical cal consumption is close to 1900, sometimes in the 2000's. Instead of gaining weight, I keep dropping. In my profile pic where I am showing off my guns, I am 15%bodyfat, and may have been around 114 in that pic. I am now sitting at 111, and 13% (thanks to a Dexa Scan). My intention is not to walk around this lean. I am not a bikini or fitness model. I am just a regular girl who likes her kettlebells and oly lifting.

I have had numerous people ask me when my next show is. ANd they do NOT mean a lifting competition. While this may seem like something I should not complain about, I also want to stay strong for my sport. Where does CICO come into play? I looked at my food logs from 2012 and 2014... this same amount of cals I was having a very difficult time losing weight and when I did it was brutal and I was always hungry.. Anything over 1600 and I would start to gain weight. but this was when I ate carbs. I think cals in cals matter when eating mostly carbs. Even of the healthy variety.

For me...cals in and cals out probably does matter with carnivore keto as well, but the cals when I start to gain weight may be higher in keto. So with lowfat /high carb- The cals in/cals out I had to stay under was about 1600. With keto carnivore I have not yet reached the point where I am mantaining, much less gaining. Perhaps it is 2300 or 2400. or even 2500 or higher. FAct is, I still think it matters. But the Cals in cals out can be different depending on WHAT one eats. If I find I start gaining weight on carnivore with 2500 this does not mean I can go back to how I ate before and eat 2500 cals of candybars and doughnuts or even "healthy" rice and other grains. It just means that my body can eat many more cals via carnivory without gaining. With a carb heavy diet, calories unfortunately do matter to my body. I loved how lean Keto carnivore got me and had hoped to sit at the 15% bf mark. Did NOT expect to keep dropping in weight and bf. Hope to stabilize soon but interesting that I can eat so much more on carnivore keto and still keep losing. Makes me wonder what maintance calories will be on carnivore keto.

staticsplit

Well, I don't know anything about low carb, but I lose weight on 1800-2000 calories with my height and activity level, so odds are your maintenance calories are higher than you think they are, whatever sources you get them from.

SMTLRH

HI and congratulation on employing Keto/carnivore for a healthy lifestyle. May I make a couple of observations? Rather then just adding protein add both fat and protein and maintain a 70/30 or 80/20 ratio. Too much protein and your liver will start converting it into carbs. Have you tried carb cycling? Add a day, a few days or even a week with increased carbs (keto friendly of course) and then go back to the carnivore diet while maintaining your fat/protein balance. There is also carb loading where you intentionally eat enough carbs to kick yourself out of ketosis for a day or two and then fast yourself back into ketosis. The other thing to consider on keto/carnivore you will continue to drop body fat until your metabolism reaches bio-stasis, or the body fat % that your body will naturally balance at. Also, the more muscle, the more fat burning capability you have. As a final thought, I'd be less worried about what the scales are telling you then what your body is telling you. You look good, healthy and not at all underweight or emaciated. Hope this helps. If you don't mind updating me I would be interested to know if this works for you.

apriltrainer

SMTLRH wrote: »

HI and congratulation on employing Keto/carnivore for a healthy lifestyle. May I make a couple of observations? Rather then just adding protein add both fat and protein and maintain a 70/30 or 80/20 ratio. Too much protein and your liver will start converting it into carbs. Have you tried carb cycling? Add a day, a few days or even a week with increased carbs (keto friendly of course) and then go back to the carnivore diet while maintaining your fat/protein balance. There is also carb loading where you intentionally eat enough carbs to kick yourself out of ketosis for a day or two and then fast yourself back into ketosis. The other thing to consider on keto/carnivore you will continue to drop body fat until your metabolism reaches bio-stasis, or the body fat % that your body will naturally balance at. Also, the more muscle, the more fat burning capability you have. As a final thought, I'd be less worried about what the scales are telling you then what your body is telling you. You look good, healthy and not at all underweight or emaciated. Hope this helps. If you don't mind updating me I would be interested to know if this works for you.

Keto friendly carbs sounds like a winner. I actually am already doing targeted keto right before my training sessions, but perhaps I should add some carbs right after as well. No too keep on carb cycling, as i had a binge eating disorder in the past. Not on board with Cyclical keto at all. Around my training sessions though, i may give targeted keto a go before and also after.

cheryldumais

Just one observation. When switching from a carb heavy to low carb diet you will naturally lose some weight due to water loss. This is due to your glycogen stores being depleated. Once that is done you should level off. I wouldn't make any permanent changes just yet to your maintenance calorie level.

MikePTY

Your maintenance calories are the same regardless of whether or not you eat carbs. You will notice a gain on the scale if you reintroduce carbs, because your body will replenish it's glycogen stores and store water with it. If you were to go low carb again, your body would lose that weight again, even if you were eating at a calorie surplus. So I think the scales are playing some tricks on you and muddying the picture for you about calories.

If your maintenance calories are legitimately higher now than before, there could be several reasons for it. Both your TDEE and NEAT could also be higher now than it was back then. Maybe you are exercising more, moving more, etc. But being low carb vs high carb isn't one of them.

apriltrainer

Well I have been keto for over a year and my exercise routine is actually less than when I was eating more carbs.

SarahAnne3958

Yay, another carnivore I've also struggled to get my weight to stabilize since transitioning to this way of eating. I'm at the lower end of the healthy BMI range now and keep adding fattier meats in hopes to get things to finally calm down. I've been within a 2lb range for a couple weeks now, and then yesterday I saw a new low, sigh.... I've even added some carbs back in, in the form of nuts and seeds, but that hasn't done anything but give me digestion issues

ccrdragon

SMTLRH wrote: »

HI and congratulation on employing Keto/carnivore for a healthy lifestyle. May I make a couple of observations? Rather then just adding protein add both fat and protein and maintain a 70/30 or 80/20 ratio. Too much protein and your liver will start converting it into carbs. Have you tried carb cycling? Add a day, a few days or even a week with increased carbs (keto friendly of course) and then go back to the carnivore diet while maintaining your fat/protein balance. There is also carb loading where you intentionally eat enough carbs to kick yourself out of ketosis for a day or two and then fast yourself back into ketosis. The other thing to consider on keto/carnivore you will continue to drop body fat until your metabolism reaches bio-stasis, or the body fat % that your body will naturally balance at. Also, the more muscle, the more fat burning capability you have. As a final thought, I'd be less worried about what the scales are telling you then what your body is telling you. You look good, healthy and not at all underweight or emaciated. Hope this helps. If you don't mind updating me I would be interested to know if this works for you.

I know that a lot of people tout this as happening, but your liver will not just convert all the protein to glucose. The conversion of protein into glucose is a demand-driven process. That means the body will only convert what it really really needs to glucose to keep functioning (the brain needs some glucose as it can only derive about 65% of it's energy needs from ketones, and the red blood cells cannot use ketones for energy). Other than those needs, the body really doesn't want to convert protein into glucose.

For what it's worth, I have eaten 200+ grams of protein for several days and not been kicked out of ketosis.

As for maintenance calories, the numbers should be the same regardless of the way that you choose to eat.