Protein -- 1g per pound of lean body weight. ie - if you're 200lb and have 20% body fat, then you have 40lb of fat and 160lb of lean body mass, so you'd have a goal of 160g of protein

Carbs -- This depends on what your specific goals are. A good starting place is 50g-100g as a maximum number, though if you're specifically looking for ketosis, then you'll probably go for something under 50g.

Fat -- Fills in the rest. This will generally end up somewhere north of 50% of total calories and possibly over 100g. It looks scary if you're used to the low-fat lifestyle, but it really is okay. Get your fats from good saturated, monounsaturated, and Omega-3 sources and you'll be golden.

What the percentage will be will vary by person, but for me at 2000 calories, 75g of carbs, 120g of protein, and 120g of fat (ish), it works out to something like 10c/25p/65f.

My endocrinologist had me modify my numbers. He told me a flat 25% carbs. (We didn't talk about net carbs or anything, but I think I will next visit). Then he said between 30-50% protein (more protein for more aggressive weight loss). Balance in fat. So, I think right now, I'm at 25% carbs, 40% Protein, and 35% fat. I think. He verified that the number MFP has on here for sedentary calories is good for me, and since I'm using my FitBit and trying to get in my 10,000 steps at least five days a week, that my numbers were good. So if I walk more, I can eat more. I'm doing okay with this mostly, but I'm only on week 2. The hardest thing for me is that the more carbs I eat, the more I want and I mean WANT! Plus if I have done pretty well all day, and I have a little something sweet later, I've gotten sugar rushes.... I never remember sugar rushes before!! Crazy. Good luck, though. I wouldn't modify too drastically without medical supervision. There are so many potential consequences from too much or too little of anything!

I'm cautious about nutrition advice from anyone in the medical industry other than a registered dietitian or someone who actually specializes and has a vested interest in keeping up with nutrition science. Medical schools only teach something like 25 hours' worth of nutrition, and it's regurgitating the same old, outdated, disproven "conventional wisdom" things, like the lipid/diet-heart hypothesis, and most doctors barely keep up with the things that directly pertain to their practice, let alone with things that are only tangential to it.

Increasing protein beyond what's needed for muscle and tissue maintenance and repair nearly always raises a red flag for me, because protein should not be relied on for fuel. Carbs and fat are, and should be, fuel. Generally, when people start recommending high protein diets, it's because they're conflating low carb ideas with the diet-heart hypothesis. That can get dangerous long before a correctly-done ketogenic diet, but because conventional wisdom has doctors so paranoid that fat is the Heart Attack Express, you'll be hard-pressed to find one that recommends doing anything other than minimizing them, which is a large part in how we got to where we are (especially anyone with an acquired insulin disorder, since the low fat craze is burning us out).

That's why I always recommend the 1g/lb LBM formula for protein, regardless of what one's goals are. If you're working out and trying to lose weight, that's about how much you need in order to maintain your lean mass (some people do only need less, while others may need more, but 1g/lb is easy to remember and you don't generally have to sweat it if you come up a little short or go a little over).

Protein is like carbs in that the body at first attempts to store it, but instead of glycogen, the body stores the amino acids. Like glycogen, though, the amino acid storage is finite, and in times of shortage (including calorie-restricted dieting), when the usual fuel is used up, the body goes after protein. The liver breaks protein down to sugar and sends the waste byproducts to the kidneys to be filtered out. This is a common occurrence for any protein intake above and beyond what the body needs, and it can handle it on a part time basis. However, the more you increase your protein intake beyond what you need for building blocks, the more you're eating into your actual fuel supply (carbs and fats), and the more the body has to work to make usable fuel. This puts more and more pressure on your liver and kidneys, and why so-called "low carb" diets (which are generally really low carb, low fat, high protein diets) have a perceived reputation of causing/exacerbating kidney issues.

Additionally, there is no actual need to specifically seek out carbohydrates, and a low carb, high fat diet will not, in fact, cause any harm, as long as you're obtaining proper nutrients. The Inuit are the prime example of this -- their traditional diet is almost entirely animals (with a few berries or what little vegetation they happen to find in the short Arctic summers). They've thrived off this diet for generations upon generations. Any carbohydrates they got were either mostly fiber (from the vegetation) or incidental carbs from the meat and organs of the animals they ate. We're talking 50% (conservative) to 90% of their calories obtained from fat, and most of the remainder from protein. Most ketogenic diets allow for upwards of 50g of carbohydrates more because most of us don't eat much in the way of livers, brains, hearts, and bones/marrow, and therefore need to get certain vitamins from plants, which are carby by nature.

It's a common misconception that our body's preferred fuel is glucose. That's not really true. The body uses glucose because it's a fast fuel. It's a street racer's NOS system. It's also toxic if the body doesn't do something with it when we consume it in excess, so it always does something with it first and foremost. It's kind of like the responders to an accident -- the responders tend to the people in the cars first (the sugar), before anything else, so they can get medical treatment, taken to the hospital, etc. Only after the people are taken care of, do the responders do things like find out what happened, move the vehicles off the road and onto a tow truck, file paperwork, etc (the fat and protein).

At first, the sugar goes to the glycogen stores. When those are full, it turns it into triglycerides and stores them as fat. Eventually, the body starts becoming insulin resistant, because it doesn't really want to store more as fat (after fat levels have gotten beyond "healthy"), but the liver tells the pancreas to keep producing more insulin and force the sugar to be stored, until finally, the pancreas gives out altogether (Diabetes). Rather, the vast majority of the body runs on fat. The things that can't run on fat directly can run on ketones (a byproduct of burning fat), and for the one thing that can't run entirely on ketones -- the brain -- the ketogenic body saves any ingested glucose and makes the remainder. That's right, the body can make nearly all the sugar it needs.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/45485034
http://eatingacademy.com/
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/85/1/238.full

My endocrinologist had me modify my numbers. He told me a flat 25% carbs. (We didn't talk about net carbs or anything, but I think I will next visit). Then he said between 30-50% protein (more protein for more aggressive weight loss). Balance in fat. So, I think right now, I'm at 25% carbs, 40% Protein, and 35% fat. I think. He verified that the number MFP has on here for sedentary calories is good for me, and since I'm using my FitBit and trying to get in my 10,000 steps at least five days a week, that my numbers were good. So if I walk more, I can eat more. I'm doing okay with this mostly, but I'm only on week 2. The hardest thing for me is that the more carbs I eat, the more I want and I mean WANT! Plus if I have done pretty well all day, and I have a little something sweet later, I've gotten sugar rushes.... I never remember sugar rushes before!! Crazy. Good luck, though. I wouldn't modify too drastically without medical supervision. There are so many potential consequences from too much or too little of anything!

Great Read!! Thanks so much for posting!

I'm cautious about nutrition advice from anyone in the medical industry other than a registered dietitian or someone who actually specializes and has a vested interest in keeping up with nutrition science. Medical schools only teach something like 25 hours' worth of nutrition, and it's regurgitating the same old, outdated, disproven "conventional wisdom" things, like the lipid/diet-heart hypothesis, and most doctors barely keep up with the things that directly pertain to their practice, let alone with things that are only tangential to it.

Increasing protein beyond what's needed for muscle and tissue maintenance and repair nearly always raises a red flag for me, because protein should not be relied on for fuel. Carbs and fat are, and should be, fuel. Generally, when people start recommending high protein diets, it's because they're conflating low carb ideas with the diet-heart hypothesis. That can get dangerous long before a correctly-done ketogenic diet, but because conventional wisdom has doctors so paranoid that fat is the Heart Attack Express, you'll be hard-pressed to find one that recommends doing anything other than minimizing them, which is a large part in how we got to where we are (especially anyone with an acquired insulin disorder, since the low fat craze is burning us out).

That's why I always recommend the 1g/lb LBM formula for protein, regardless of what one's goals are. If you're working out and trying to lose weight, that's about how much you need in order to maintain your lean mass (some people do only need less, while others may need more, but 1g/lb is easy to remember and you don't generally have to sweat it if you come up a little short or go a little over).

Protein is like carbs in that the body at first attempts to store it, but instead of glycogen, the body stores the amino acids. Like glycogen, though, the amino acid storage is finite, and in times of shortage (including calorie-restricted dieting), when the usual fuel is used up, the body goes after protein. The liver breaks protein down to sugar and sends the waste byproducts to the kidneys to be filtered out. This is a common occurrence for any protein intake above and beyond what the body needs, and it can handle it on a part time basis. However, the more you increase your protein intake beyond what you need for building blocks, the more you're eating into your actual fuel supply (carbs and fats), and the more the body has to work to make usable fuel. This puts more and more pressure on your liver and kidneys, and why so-called "low carb" diets (which are generally really low carb, low fat, high protein diets) have a perceived reputation of causing/exacerbating kidney issues.

Additionally, there is no actual need to specifically seek out carbohydrates, and a low carb, high fat diet will not, in fact, cause any harm, as long as you're obtaining proper nutrients. The Inuit are the prime example of this -- their traditional diet is almost entirely animals (with a few berries or what little vegetation they happen to find in the short Arctic summers). They've thrived off this diet for generations upon generations. Any carbohydrates they got were either mostly fiber (from the vegetation) or incidental carbs from the meat and organs of the animals they ate. We're talking 50% (conservative) to 90% of their calories obtained from fat, and most of the remainder from protein. Most ketogenic diets allow for upwards of 50g of carbohydrates more because most of us don't eat much in the way of livers, brains, hearts, and bones/marrow, and therefore need to get certain vitamins from plants, which are carby by nature.

It's a common misconception that our body's preferred fuel is glucose. That's not really true. The body uses glucose because it's a fast fuel. It's a street racer's NOS system. It's also toxic if the body doesn't do something with it when we consume it in excess, so it always does something with it first and foremost. It's kind of like the responders to an accident -- the responders tend to the people in the cars first (the sugar), before anything else, so they can get medical treatment, taken to the hospital, etc. Only after the people are taken care of, do the responders do things like find out what happened, move the vehicles off the road and onto a tow truck, file paperwork, etc (the fat and protein).

At first, the sugar goes to the glycogen stores. When those are full, it turns it into triglycerides and stores them as fat. Eventually, the body starts becoming insulin resistant, because it doesn't really want to store more as fat (after fat levels have gotten beyond "healthy"), but the liver tells the pancreas to keep producing more insulin and force the sugar to be stored, until finally, the pancreas gives out altogether (Diabetes). Rather, the vast majority of the body runs on fat. The things that can't run on fat directly can run on ketones (a byproduct of burning fat), and for the one thing that can't run entirely on ketones -- the brain -- the ketogenic body saves any ingested glucose and makes the remainder. That's right, the body can make nearly all the sugar it needs.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/45485034
http://eatingacademy.com/
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/85/1/238.full

Hey guys, great posts!
I have a pretty noob question to do with DragonWolfs calculations.
I weigh 180lbs and my fat% is 41.2 equalling 72lb of my weight..

So that leaves me with 106lb of lbm so basically 106g of protein... Is that right? I'm aiming for 50-60g of carbs per day and my nutritionist suggested around 1800 calories per day for weight loss though I'm going to see a dietician soon for another opinion.

Does this sound correct to you guys? And do you gave some examples of good fats that I should consume to fill in that big void of calories? the only ones I can think of are nuts and avocado.. Are vegetables high in good fat? So confused

Thanks in advance

Meat/fish, eggs, butter/high fat dairy, coconut oil, nuts/nut butters, etc are all good sources of fats.

There are really only a couple of things to be concerned about with fats:

1. Avoid artificial trans fats like the plague. They've been proven over and over that they are very, very bad. This includes partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. These are the only truly "bad" fats (regardless of source).

2. Avoid heavily processed seed and vegetable oils. These oils generally undergo chemical extraction and "cleaning" processes, high-heat treatments, and deodorizing. They are often rancid before they even hit the grocery store shelves. Rancid oils have had their good properties destroyed and what's left is damaged oil that causes problems in the body. If you choose to use seed oils, ensure they're expeller or cold pressed and minimally processed.

3. Balance Omega-6 fats (the primary fat in nuts and seeds) with Omega-3 fats (the primary fat in fish and pastured eggs), ideally in a 1:1 ratio.

4. Do not heat polyunsaturated oils at all. They break down easily under heat, releasing harmful chemicals into the oil. Use saturated fats or monounsaturated fats (though I favor saturated, most monounsaturated fats are prized for their flavor, which can break down under heat, so save them for salad dressings and other cold uses, where you can enjoy their flavor) for cooking.

Don't be afraid of saturated fats. All the hype about them being "bad" stems pretty much solely from Ancel Keyes' "studies" in the mid-20th century and have since been pretty thoroughly debunked not only for validity (they were heavily cherry-picked), but also for accuracy (numerous studies have proven that saturated fats have no correlation with health risks).

Additionally, there are two things that people often forget (or don't even know) about the so-called "saturated fat" sources:

1. Most sources are only about 50% saturated fat. The rest is nearly the same amount of monounsaturated fat (40-50%), with the remainder being polyunsaturated fat (with a pretty even split of Omega-3 to Omega-6, and sometimes favoring Omega-3).

2. Coconut oil, one of the few nearly "pure" sources of saturated fat, has been proven to be very beneficial in aiding weight loss. So even if the myths had any merit, not all saturated fats are created equal (go figure).

Here are some more sources to peruse on the matter:

http://www.cavemandoctor.com/2012/05/27/checking-your-oil-the-definitive-guide-to-cooking-with-fat/
http://inhumanexperiment.blogspot.com/2009/10/which-oils-and-fats-are-best-for.html
http://authoritynutrition.com/is-olive-oil-good-for-cooking/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19437058
https://player.vimeo.com/video/45485034

Here's an easy to use calculator to determine macros and calories: http://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/

If you're following true keto, generally macros are set at 5% carbs, 25% protein and 70% fat. Some people shift those numbers slightly, but that's the general idea.