Do you have lots of fat to lose? Asking because if so you don't have to be super concerned about consuming massive amounts of fat a day to get into ketosis. You need to be first concerned about consistantly eating a low enough amount of carbohydrate a day to know you will get into ketosis. Did you buy a blood ketone monitor? This is the only real true 100% way to know if you get your body to convert it's metabolism to a ketogenic fat burning one. If you are an athlete and you want to do keto for other reasons other than fat loss then that's a whole different ball game with reference to those macro's..
If it's calories you are worried about break up your meals more often to try to get in the calories. BUT if you truly want to be in full time ketosis and you DO HAVE a lot of fat to lose you don't need to be fixated on the caloric intake because the whole premis of ketosis is to convert your body to burn/use up as energy, the fat stores on your body. Thus that is where your caloric energy supply will be coming from. This forum and it's app for nutrition intake, burn etc is mostly set up for CICO, not a ketogenic set up system. If you want to combine CICO and keto then I suggest you do a lot more reading on this stuff cause in the main forum threads you will not find much real help with all those things considered with that in mind.

Why are you saying "low protein foods" why do you want to eat low protein foods? Often a food with lot's of protein will also have good amounts of fat. And you don't want to consume so little of protein where you take the risk of your body going after muscle to burn instead of fat. (catabolize muscle) Try to consume at least .7 gram of protein per lb of body weight daily in order to sustain the lean mass (muscle) you have on your body. It takes much higher amounts of protein to screw up ketosis. I know this first hand. I can stay in full ketosis and eat up to 1.5 grams protein per lb of body weight and lot's of other I know do the same but the higher amounts are consumed while trying to gain lean mass. Maintenance of lean mass requires less protein to be consumed daily. Low enough carbs is key to get into and stay into full ketosis and amount of fat taken in is less important if you have lot's of body fat to lose.
These things all change a bit as your body fat % reduces over time but that's a whole different can of worms...

Buy a blood ketone monitor then see where you are really at after eating very low carbs for a few days in a row to see if that is sufficient carb intake level for YOUR metabolism. Some folks can get into full ketosis eating under 35 grams carbs a day, others may need much lower levels of 10 to 15 grms carbs per day. You have to find out what your metabolism requires.

The version of keto I ate was for reason other than weight loss/management and was low in both protein and carbs. I ate a lot of mascarpone cheese and/or cream cheese during that year to keep protein and carbs low but keep fat intake high and hit maintenance calories.

WholeFoods4Lyfe wrote: »

Are you utilizing fats and oils in your cooking? I like to cook my veggies in good fats like EVOO/Bacon drippings/Coconut Oil to keep my fats up. Make sure if you do dairy that they are "full fat" and not reduced in any way. Take half and half in your coffee? Switch to heavy cream. Instead of chicken/turkey breast, eat the legs and thighs for much more flavor and additional fat. If you can stomach it, don't trim your steaks, plus leaving the fat makes for a juicier/tastier steak. Upping the amount of fat you are eating will default increase your calories. Remember, Protein and Carbs are each only 4 calories per gram, but fat is 9 calories per gram. You can increase your daily calorie intake by 100 with only an extra 11g of fat, but you'd have to eat 25g of protein/carbs to get the same amount of calories, and if you are already struggling to meet your calorie needs, it makes sense to try to increase it with less volume, if that makes sense.

I'm not really a fan of all of the fancy monitoring devices. IMO as long as you are limiting your carbs "TO LESS THAN 25G", you will get in to Ketosis. You would really have to be eating excessive amounts of protein to be kicked out of Ketosis.

I'm past the window of editing, but since someone pointed it out, I'll edit the above to say "to less than 25g" which I didn't say originally because it was implied in a group of Keto folks. Sure, if you want to spend that kind of money on a fancy monitor, be my guest, and if you want to encourage other people to do the same, then by all means, but I have every right to come in here and give my personal opinion. I've been successful with Keto with never purchasing anything more than some pee sticks for $10. I have just as much right to express my opinions about what has worked for me as you do. Sometimes, it really is about KISS.

Monitors are free at a lot of pharmacies here in Canada when you buy a box of blood keto strips. Actually ends up being cheaper here than the pee strips which are proven to not be accurate for knowing true ketone numbers. Not sure if it's the same everywhere for prices of blood ketone monitors but even if you had to buy one I think the price of the most important tool in the tool box is well worth someones time and energy they focus on trying to get their bodies healthy while "knowing for a fact" they are truly in ketosis. But hey all i can do is point that out. Everyone should see for themselves and not just do what people write on the internet.

And yes of course everyone has every right to post their opinion on these threads. Don't believe I said otherwise.

midwesterner85 wrote: »

PaulChasinDreams wrote: »

Giving advice like "IMO as long as you are limiting your carbs, you will get in to Ketosis." Is really counterproductive to people who want and need to know that they are in ketosis. A guessing game is no certain way to ensure you are doing what you set out to do. And sorry but it just isn't true that eating "limiting your carbs will get you into ketosis" Every metabolism is different and things written online about it like eat under 50 grams or 20 grams a day is just a very very basic guideline. No one will truly know they are in ketosis without testing for it. Why do it if you don't know you are truly converting your metabolism to burn off it's fat stores??

And your comment "I'm not really a fan of all of the fancy monitoring devices." Well if what you are doing without one is working then good for you but a scientific device created to give people accurate factual readings about their ketone levels is the most necessary item anyone trying to get into ketosis should have. Or you could just be spinning your wheels "hoping" you are in ketosis and guessing when and if you are in it.

Our brains (and CNS) need about 120g-130g of glucose daily. Unlike skeletal muscles, our brains cannot directly oxidize fat. However, our brains can use ketones in place of some carbs. After glycogen stores have been sufficiently depleted, glucose comes from only food and gluconeogenesis. Our livers will make ketones to feed our brains when insufficient glucose is available. So to say that 20g of net carbs will put someone (any human with a functioning brain) into ketosis is a fair statement. Is it possible that an outlier exists... someone who has such a high level of gluconeogeneis that they are not in a state of ketosis? Sure, it's scientifically possible. It's quite unlikely, though.

"quite unlikely" Nope not at all. My wife is one, and so are several people in our doctor supervised control group of 20. And if you do some research there are lot's and lot's and lot's of folks all over the world that struggle to get into ketosis simply by "trying" to eat under 50 or 20 grams of carbs a day. Just because there is science and "theories" as to how our metabolisms deal with glucogenisis does not mean we are all built the same. Organ function, genetics, insulin resistance, life styles, etc etc all play roles in this. Physicians, surgeons, scientists, nutritionists, dieticians, are all still doing experiments, control studies, tests, etc to try to get a handle of it all. And they are learning new things every day about it all. We are far far away from truly understanding it all. But while doing so there is always one 100% truth in it all and that is that we are not all the same and nobody can predict what ones metabolism will do with the energy they consume to 100% accuracy.

Watch Dr. Ken Berry on youtube. He explains it all.

alo1216 wrote: »

Hello! I'm doing Keto and IF. I track all my macros through myfitnesspal. I'm having a hard time hitting the calorie and fat daily. Any ideas on food that I can eat at the end of the day to hit this? Or things I can be doing throughout the day to avoid this? Thanks!

PaulChasinDreams wrote: »

@midwesterner85 says "Could you post her statistics? How many grams of net carbs per day, what level of blood ketones and when in correlation to meals? "

My wife doesn't chart her stuff near as much as I do but her blood ketones are very typical of an 8 hr intermittent fasting keto feed schedule. Lower in the morning from around .5 to .8 ish then climbs after having her first coffee with heavy cream in the morning and continues to rise up to between 1.2 to 2 by her first meal of the day after around 6 hrs or so then after her second meal it will fall down lower towards bed time gradually. She doesn't exercise like I do regularly. She needs to be consistently eating very very low net carbs a day in the 10 gr net a day range to stay in ketosis full time. If she lets them go up she pops out of ketosis very quickly. Faster than anyone in our group and she has the lowest net carb levels needed to stay in ketosis. This is all very consistent with everyone we know living this life style where the constant is that no two metabolisms are exactly the same. We all have different genetics, health markers, organ functions, eating habits, feed schedules, etc, some are insulin resistant etc.. In a group of 20 people there isn't a single one of us that can STAY in ketosis full time every single day eating more than 35 grams net per day every day. So when I hear people saying they are eating between 75-100 grams net per day every day and saying they are in ketosis every day (by blood testing) I find that very, very hard to believe but anything is possible as I've seen such a variance in just a handful of people. Myself I'm fortunate that I can have a couple days a week of upping my carbs to 40-50 grams and still stay in ketosis while eating 20 gr net and less all other days of the week but as soon as I push that to more than a couple days a week I will bump myself out. Even if I do a couple days in a row of upping them I will bump out. So I stagger my days. Been experimenting for over a year now with it all and found what works very well for both my wife and I. My wife also has a much much harder time getting back into ketosis when she bumps out than other people we know who can get back into it much faster like my metabolism does.

She has been doing this for how long?

Like I mentioned above, our brain/CNS needs 120g-130g daily for carbs. Other sources of carbs could be glycogen or gluconeogenesis. I have seen some evidence that muscle glycogen stores return to normal levels during extended time on VLCKD. I wonder if she is filling muscle glycogen with gluconeogenesis and pulling from muscle glycogen to supply glucose to her CNS.

tcunbeliever wrote: »

Your brain can run on ketones, that's what gives a ketogenic diet it's neuroprotective benefits.

You do not NEED glucose, not even for your brain and central nervous system.

Exactly true!

We are talking about someone who supposedly has neither glucose nor ketones available, and I find that very hard to believe. She would need one or the other.

PaulChasinDreams wrote: »

"Exactly true!

We are talking about someone who supposedly has neither glucose nor ketones available, and I find that very hard to believe. She would need one or the other.

Huh? She is in ketosis every day. Burning fat. I posted her ketone levels every day. Where did you get the idea that she has neither glucose nor ketones available? The fact is she just needs to eat very low amount of carbs for her metabolism to convert to ketogenisis. And we see this occurring in lot's of individuals where the amount of carbs needed for peoples metabolisms to change over are all over the place. Think you are missing the points here.

0.5 mmol/l blood ketone levels would only replace about 6g of glucose (of 120g-130g needed). If she is eating as little glucose as you say, then most of her glucose deficit is made up by making her own glucose and extremely little from ketones. This is the part that confounds me, as it seems to be atypical based on my own experience and based on all studies I've read to date.