Starting Keto

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karenscfld
karenscfld Posts: 38 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I have been dieting with the help of MyFitnessPal since January 1, 2020. I started by allowing myself 1200 calories per day with no special restrictions on food choices other than healthy non-processed food. the first two weeks went great, I lost weight and was feeling really good about my diet. I also joined a gym and started working out 4-5 times a week (which I love). At week three the scale did not move, week four the scale did not move, week five the scale move but on 1/2 lb! So frustrating! I decided something must change so yesterday I started Keto. I like to enter my food into MFP the night before or first thing in the morning, that helps to keep me on track. I've entered todays food, three healthy meals and one snack but it only amounts to 850 calories. I am wondering what others on Keto do? Do you just eat food based on Carb Macro and ignore the Calorie count? Today I'm right at about 30 grams of Carbs, so I right where I need to be. I'd appreciate feedback from folks who have a history with Keto. Thank you in advance.

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  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    edited February 2020
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    How much fat are you eating? A lot of times when someone switches from a more typical idea of what someone on a diet must eat (which is often overly low fat and focused on low cal options even for that) to low carb or keto, they continue making lower fat choices and just cut out the carbs, which leads to way too few cals, as well as a non sustainable diet.

    And to answer the question specifically, some people do just focus on carbs, but many count cals or look at overall macros. I think watching cals is a good idea, at least at first, both to guard against eating too much and against eating too little, especially if one doesn't already have a good sense of what and how much they should be eating to hit keto macros.

    When I did it I aimed for about 35 g net carbs (60 g total carbs -- I needed that much to get in the veg I like to eat and some nuts and seeds on a regular basis), about 95-105 g protein, and then the rest fat to hit my calorie goal. I needed to make an effort to add more fat at first since it was a shift in thinking even though I tend to eat a pretty good amount of fat normally.

    You don't so much have to hit fat numbers as you need to make sure your cals are reasonable, especially (again) if you think you might have a tendency to default choose lower fat or lower cal options.
  • TheTortoiseWins
    TheTortoiseWins Posts: 21 Member
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    I focus on calories and carbs. I tend to eat more protein than the traditional keto diet recommends, so I do not worry about the protein and fat macros. I would recommend counting calories so you do not go over. Cheese, nuts, avocado, etc are all delicious and good for keto, but can run up your calorie count quickly.
  • karenscfld
    karenscfld Posts: 38 Member
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    Ahhh, that is good point, I do stay away from "fattening food". I don't allow myself cheese, nuts or avocado because of the high calorie density. I will start to consider filling in the calorie deficit with those foods in order to bring my total daily calories above 1000. thank you for the insight.
  • serindipte
    serindipte Posts: 1,557 Member
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    karenscfld wrote: »
    Ahhh, that is good point, I do stay away from "fattening food". I don't allow myself cheese, nuts or avocado because of the high calorie density. I will start to consider filling in the calorie deficit with those foods in order to bring my total daily calories above 1000. thank you for the insight.

    Where did the 1000 cals figure come from?
  • Jossy_star
    Jossy_star Posts: 7 Member
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    Well you lose weight on keto because you are in a calorie deficit so it’s same as counting calories... you should also know that the scale is not the only way to track your results like you could be loosing fat but gaining muscle and that’s something really good....ask yourself “do i feel better? Is there a change based on the mirror?” You can do this❤️❤️
  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
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    Any low carb plan should drop your water weight initially which will give you the feeling of success. After that it works on the same principle as other plans and requires a calorie deficit. Some people are able to maintain a calorie deficit without counting calories others can not. Some people even gain weight.

    The one thing you should not do going forward though is base your decisions on small amounts of data. The bathroom scale can help guide you but really only after about 6 weeks. The reason is that your body weight will fluctuate up and down irrespective of fat weight progress. While you can gain and lose pounds of water in very short amounts of time you cannot lose or gain fat that fast. It takes time for fat weight loss to show up through the "noise."

    Here is an article to read:

    https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations/
  • BuddhaBunnyFTW
    BuddhaBunnyFTW Posts: 157 Member
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    Or you could read how not to diet by Dr Greger and find out the dangers of keto
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,391 MFP Moderator
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    BuddhaBunnyFTW wrote: »
    Or you could read how not to diet by Dr Greger and find out the dangers of keto

    Or people can follow experts in the field of ketogenic diets compared to a person who is a vegan advocate who isn't studying or conducting ketogenic diet studies.
  • karenscfld
    karenscfld Posts: 38 Member
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    I definitely can't do vegan or even vegetarian...to hard and boring Thank you very much for the advice. I try to only weigh myself once per month since I have a history with the bathroom scale, I hate it and it causes me discouragement. Right now I'm participating in a 10 week weight loss program at our local Y. We meet with a personal trainer 2x per week. Its great, I've been introduced to so much new exercise equipment that always intimidated me in the past. Also, some really great workouts like HITT and other types of interval workouts. That being said, we weigh in once a week so I'm seeing the lack of response on the scale even though I've been very faithful to my weight loss efforts. But, so far, I think I'll be sticking with low carb for a couple of weeks, then back to my normal eating (low cal of course) for a week and then back to low carb for two weeks. I think this may work for me, and I won't feel deprived, at least that is the idea. Cheers.
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,391 MFP Moderator
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    karenscfld wrote: »
    I definitely can't do vegan or even vegetarian...to hard and boring Thank you very much for the advice. I try to only weigh myself once per month since I have a history with the bathroom scale, I hate it and it causes me discouragement. Right now I'm participating in a 10 week weight loss program at our local Y. We meet with a personal trainer 2x per week. Its great, I've been introduced to so much new exercise equipment that always intimidated me in the past. Also, some really great workouts like HITT and other types of interval workouts. That being said, we weigh in once a week so I'm seeing the lack of response on the scale even though I've been very faithful to my weight loss efforts. But, so far, I think I'll be sticking with low carb for a couple of weeks, then back to my normal eating (low cal of course) for a week and then back to low carb for two weeks. I think this may work for me, and I won't feel deprived, at least that is the idea. Cheers.

    It may be worth noting that its possible the low calories are what is causing water retention. Very low calories + exercise both are big stressors. Maybe consider a moderate deficit, like 1500-1600 calories. Try that for a month to see if that changes the paradigm.

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