Keto Diet
- Thread starter THT
- Start date
Caporegime
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- 18 Oct 2002
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I'm a veggie so its a "fairly" hard way to do it, or not hard just limited. I eat an egg based meal, normally a scrambled egg with bunch of low carb veg in and some quorn maybe or whatever.
THen I do whey shakes a couple times a day with some, egg mayo, nuts, flaxseed oil, cheese as fat to go with it.
Egg's are basically perfect for keto and good for meat eaters too. THen as far as I know lots of meals are based around, chicken with a bunch of green veg, egg meals, steak with a bunch of spinach or whatever meat along with leafy veg. Theres a bazillion websites around from a google search that will give you idea's on what to eat and when.
THeres certainly some downsides and upsides to it. At first I would sometimes get very dizzy, first couple times felt a bit like puking and very tired. This is your body adjusting, I was on a very carb heavy diet before though and changed in one go which probably gave me about as hard a time switching as anyone would likely have. THe main reason is the brain, can 100% use fat as energy(lots of people tell you it can't) but its pretty damn slow to transition over. I spent maybe 2 weeks going into keto for a day, then eating some carbs to stop headaches(low blood sugar) and dizzyness while my brain was not used to using fat. After 2 weeks I could transition from keto/carbs as main source of energy easily with no adverse effects at all.
So keep that in mind before you decide to start, you might not get any side effects, but if you do be prepared, have some carbs and essentially cycle between keto/carbs untill your body is fine with them. I read about it, I knew it was coming and I got hit pretty hard but persevered and was fine. Lots of people list these symptoms as reasons not to do it and why its not natural or normal. Funnily enough, after 2/3 months on keto, I had a couple carb days due to having a bad stomach and wanting higher fibre for a couple days, and suddenly i got the exact same symptoms when I dropped out of keto, my body wasn't used to carbs at all and i got the same dizzyness/tiredness switching back to carbs. So its not a keto only thing in other words.
Another thing to keep in mind is, lots of people find themselves horribly tired on a keto diet but its normally because they aren't in keto yet, just on the way. INbetween high carbs, and stopping carbs depending on your activity level you'll have anything from 1-5 days still burning carbs stored in liver/muscles and you won't hit keto till most of those have gone so in those days you will be very low energy, again its a peserverance thing. If you do a bit of cardio/weights lifting it will normally reduce the time getting into keto as you will be actively burning up those carbs you have stored. For instance now I can eat carbs for 2-3 meals drop out of keto but as I still have no long term carb stores I can drop back into keto in under a day.
A lot of people do this in a Targeted keto diet, eat a bunch of carbs just before exercise, burn off most of the carbs in exercise and not drop out of a ketogenic state which gives you a bit more instance energy for weightlifting workouts.
Also all the fat/protein you eat both curb your hunger, significantly, and without a constantly changing blood sugar level you might find your appetite is almost completely gone, which is where small meals comes in helpful, very hard to eat a full massive meal with no appetite, but its very important to keep eating even when not hungry as if you aren't eating fat you'll not do very well. Some days its a real struggle to eat because I just don't feel hungry.
remember to drink lots of water, its pretty simple, if you are peeing really often and its really clear, drink a little less, if you're not peeing much and its bright yellow, drink more
THen I do whey shakes a couple times a day with some, egg mayo, nuts, flaxseed oil, cheese as fat to go with it.
Egg's are basically perfect for keto and good for meat eaters too. THen as far as I know lots of meals are based around, chicken with a bunch of green veg, egg meals, steak with a bunch of spinach or whatever meat along with leafy veg. Theres a bazillion websites around from a google search that will give you idea's on what to eat and when.
THeres certainly some downsides and upsides to it. At first I would sometimes get very dizzy, first couple times felt a bit like puking and very tired. This is your body adjusting, I was on a very carb heavy diet before though and changed in one go which probably gave me about as hard a time switching as anyone would likely have. THe main reason is the brain, can 100% use fat as energy(lots of people tell you it can't) but its pretty damn slow to transition over. I spent maybe 2 weeks going into keto for a day, then eating some carbs to stop headaches(low blood sugar) and dizzyness while my brain was not used to using fat. After 2 weeks I could transition from keto/carbs as main source of energy easily with no adverse effects at all.
So keep that in mind before you decide to start, you might not get any side effects, but if you do be prepared, have some carbs and essentially cycle between keto/carbs untill your body is fine with them. I read about it, I knew it was coming and I got hit pretty hard but persevered and was fine. Lots of people list these symptoms as reasons not to do it and why its not natural or normal. Funnily enough, after 2/3 months on keto, I had a couple carb days due to having a bad stomach and wanting higher fibre for a couple days, and suddenly i got the exact same symptoms when I dropped out of keto, my body wasn't used to carbs at all and i got the same dizzyness/tiredness switching back to carbs. So its not a keto only thing in other words.
Another thing to keep in mind is, lots of people find themselves horribly tired on a keto diet but its normally because they aren't in keto yet, just on the way. INbetween high carbs, and stopping carbs depending on your activity level you'll have anything from 1-5 days still burning carbs stored in liver/muscles and you won't hit keto till most of those have gone so in those days you will be very low energy, again its a peserverance thing. If you do a bit of cardio/weights lifting it will normally reduce the time getting into keto as you will be actively burning up those carbs you have stored. For instance now I can eat carbs for 2-3 meals drop out of keto but as I still have no long term carb stores I can drop back into keto in under a day.
A lot of people do this in a Targeted keto diet, eat a bunch of carbs just before exercise, burn off most of the carbs in exercise and not drop out of a ketogenic state which gives you a bit more instance energy for weightlifting workouts.
Also all the fat/protein you eat both curb your hunger, significantly, and without a constantly changing blood sugar level you might find your appetite is almost completely gone, which is where small meals comes in helpful, very hard to eat a full massive meal with no appetite, but its very important to keep eating even when not hungry as if you aren't eating fat you'll not do very well. Some days its a real struggle to eat because I just don't feel hungry.
remember to drink lots of water, its pretty simple, if you are peeing really often and its really clear, drink a little less, if you're not peeing much and its bright yellow, drink more
Targets Per Day
Calories 1810
Protein 147 grams
Fat 216-257 grams
Carbs < 50mg
Todays Food:
Breakfast
Scrambled Eggs with Celery
11am
226g Turkey w Green Veg
2.30pm
100g Walnuts
5.30pm
200g Beef w Green Veg
9pm
2 Boiled Eggs
Calories: 1837 (+27)
Fat: 120g (-100 oh dear!)
Carbs: 29g
Protein: 155g (+8)
Any ideas to get more fat?
Calories 1810
Protein 147 grams
Fat 216-257 grams
Carbs < 50mg
Todays Food:
Breakfast
Scrambled Eggs with Celery
11am
226g Turkey w Green Veg
2.30pm
100g Walnuts
5.30pm
200g Beef w Green Veg
9pm
2 Boiled Eggs
Calories: 1837 (+27)
Fat: 120g (-100 oh dear!)
Carbs: 29g
Protein: 155g (+8)
Any ideas to get more fat?
![[TR]SweetSpotOz](/styles/overclockers/avatars/6.png){kind=avatar}
Soldato
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Last edited:
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
err, you might have got that a touch wrong, you're on the right track with fat amount, another 100grams fat would be another 900 calories remember, your calorie target for both is about right but your maths, i would assume has fat in the Targets as 4calories per gram, its 9 calories per gram You want to be aiming to get the highest amount of calories from fat, in reality, just more than anything else, so if you ate 800calories of protein you want to aim for 900 calories of fat, but thats 200grams of protein and only 100grams of fat
Honestly that looks like not a bad diet as is, no need to add anything really unless you need more. I'd also maybe drop a few of those walnut grams as thats likely a very large amount of fat concentrated in a single meal, and either say have 50grams of walnuts and add a few to all the other meals, or add in some omega 3 tabs to each meal as Omega 3 also reduces the impact of carbs and lowers their GI rating (which translates as, omega 3 is just always good for you
).
Cheese, hard cheeses, and a few soft cheeses/cream cheeses are good in terms of low carb and I add some cheese into a scrabled eggs meal now and then for a bit more variety. But really thats looking pretty good.
As for me helping, its always nice to show off
Seriously though, its good to know the downsides before you start so you can expect, and prepare for the worst and know how to deal with it. I really do recommend eating some carbs if you get dizzy/lightheaded and don't feel good, as i think cycling your mode (carb/fat burning) is a pretty gentle way to ease onto a good keto diet.
If you jump on a keto diet and no one tells you that you might feel like crap and its normal, you're likely to scare the crap out of yourself if it happens and never try again.
The exact carbs level you want to be hitting is, questionable. Atkins suggests under 20grams, most other keto "experts" say under 30grams, I actually feel a little better around the 30-40gram mark and have stayed in ketosis up to around the 80gram mark in a day with lower carb days before it. Its going to be different for everyone I guess, the bigger your liver(judging by how I used to drink mine must be a biggun) and more muscle, and fitter you are the more glycogen storage you have available so you can probably get away with more high days without your body switching to burn the excess you can't store. But play around with it, you might find due to exercise levels daily and how active you are you can eat 80grams carbs a day with ease, which can actually help make you a little hungrier which you might find you need. You might get unlucky and find more than 20grams screws you up, in which case long term you might find it pretty hard. Spinach is one of the best green's there is for low carb, being able to eat loads, tasting pretty good and not bad vitamin/nutrient wise either. peppers are pretty high carb so I limit how many i have but so easy to cook and taste so nice grilled with a little oil.
Don't be scared of a few grams of supposedly bad fats either. Couple slices of bacon(qourn bacon in my case) in scrabled eggs is great.
IF you like coconut , coconut oil is one of the best things to fry with, saturated fat doesn't oxidise when heated so its the most stable to fry/cook with. Monosaturates are next best, your virgin olive oils, and poly's are very very very bad to cook with as they oxidise very badly and you're just eating bad stuff. I ruddy hate coconut oil so stick with olive oil, sunflower oil is just the worst thing around.
ok, i'm out of advice for now, check back later
You want to be aiming to get the highest amount of calories from fat, in reality, just more than anything else, so if you ate 800calories of protein you want to aim for 900 calories of fat, but thats 200grams of protein and only 100grams of fat Honestly that looks like not a bad diet as is, no need to add anything really unless you need more. I'd also maybe drop a few of those walnut grams as thats likely a very large amount of fat concentrated in a single meal, and either say have 50grams of walnuts and add a few to all the other meals, or add in some omega 3 tabs to each meal as Omega 3 also reduces the impact of carbs and lowers their GI rating (which translates as, omega 3 is just always good for you
).Cheese, hard cheeses, and a few soft cheeses/cream cheeses are good in terms of low carb and I add some cheese into a scrabled eggs meal now and then for a bit more variety. But really thats looking pretty good.
As for me helping, its always nice to show off
Seriously though, its good to know the downsides before you start so you can expect, and prepare for the worst and know how to deal with it. I really do recommend eating some carbs if you get dizzy/lightheaded and don't feel good, as i think cycling your mode (carb/fat burning) is a pretty gentle way to ease onto a good keto diet.
If you jump on a keto diet and no one tells you that you might feel like crap and its normal, you're likely to scare the crap out of yourself if it happens and never try again.
The exact carbs level you want to be hitting is, questionable. Atkins suggests under 20grams, most other keto "experts" say under 30grams, I actually feel a little better around the 30-40gram mark and have stayed in ketosis up to around the 80gram mark in a day with lower carb days before it. Its going to be different for everyone I guess, the bigger your liver(judging by how I used to drink mine must be a biggun) and more muscle, and fitter you are the more glycogen storage you have available so you can probably get away with more high days without your body switching to burn the excess you can't store. But play around with it, you might find due to exercise levels daily and how active you are you can eat 80grams carbs a day with ease, which can actually help make you a little hungrier which you might find you need. You might get unlucky and find more than 20grams screws you up, in which case long term you might find it pretty hard. Spinach is one of the best green's there is for low carb, being able to eat loads, tasting pretty good and not bad vitamin/nutrient wise either. peppers are pretty high carb so I limit how many i have but so easy to cook and taste so nice grilled with a little oil.
Don't be scared of a few grams of supposedly bad fats either. Couple slices of bacon(qourn bacon in my case) in scrabled eggs is great.
IF you like coconut , coconut oil is one of the best things to fry with, saturated fat doesn't oxidise when heated so its the most stable to fry/cook with. Monosaturates are next best, your virgin olive oils, and poly's are very very very bad to cook with as they oxidise very badly and you're just eating bad stuff. I ruddy hate coconut oil so stick with olive oil, sunflower oil is just the worst thing around.
ok, i'm out of advice for now, check back later
I really dont like coconuts and have been using olive oil so far.
I got my calculations from:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/sclark91.htm
Are you saying I shouldnt do it quite as this article suggests?
Again, the post is really helpful for a keto n00b like me - Really good to know someone has done it and theyre helpful!
I got my calculations from:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/sclark91.htm
Are you saying I shouldnt do it quite as this article suggests?
Again, the post is really helpful for a keto n00b like me - Really good to know someone has done it and theyre helpful!
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
That calulator, at least in Firefox, is crap, tried with kg/s and pounds and using both options for both and nothing comes up as sensible at all.
Personally i think its numbers are poop, utter poop, its coming up with a ludicrously high amount of fat per day and fat calories. It depends on your weight, but if you're going for a 1800 or so cal diet, then exact numbers aren't too important, once you're in ketosis you will use body fat so eating a little less some days won't kill you, but to a certain point eating lots of protein will help, along with ketosis being muscle sparing, should help you retain all current muscle(or most of it) meaning less of a drop to metabolic rate.
120grams fat, 1080calories, 150grams protein, 600 calories, 30grams carbs, 120calories would be not a bad way to go. Exact doesn't matter, and eating more protein and a little less fat won't be a bad thing. In general I am finding it hard getting to high on calories with ketosis as protein/fat are so filling and eating more than 150grams protein a day is fairly hard for me without eating meat.
The main issue is that
Targets Per Day
Calories 1810
Protein 147 grams
Fat 216-257 grams
Carbs < 50mg
just doesn't really add up, 216grams fat is 1944calories on its own , so really everything there is right except the fat amount. from my example the 120grams fat fits in pretty well there, its just a very dodgey calculator that probably just has the fat calories down as 4 instead of 9 which is should be per gram.
but
Calories: 1837 (+27)
Fat: 120g (-100 oh dear!)
Carbs: 29g
Protein: 155g (+8)
that is almost spot on so your diet if staying like that, is fairly fine.
Personally i think its numbers are poop, utter poop, its coming up with a ludicrously high amount of fat per day and fat calories. It depends on your weight, but if you're going for a 1800 or so cal diet, then exact numbers aren't too important, once you're in ketosis you will use body fat so eating a little less some days won't kill you, but to a certain point eating lots of protein will help, along with ketosis being muscle sparing, should help you retain all current muscle(or most of it) meaning less of a drop to metabolic rate.
120grams fat, 1080calories, 150grams protein, 600 calories, 30grams carbs, 120calories would be not a bad way to go. Exact doesn't matter, and eating more protein and a little less fat won't be a bad thing. In general I am finding it hard getting to high on calories with ketosis as protein/fat are so filling and eating more than 150grams protein a day is fairly hard for me without eating meat.
The main issue is that
Targets Per Day
Calories 1810
Protein 147 grams
Fat 216-257 grams
Carbs < 50mg
just doesn't really add up, 216grams fat is 1944calories on its own
, so really everything there is right except the fat amount. from my example the 120grams fat fits in pretty well there, its just a very dodgey calculator that probably just has the fat calories down as 4 instead of 9 which is should be per gram.but
Calories: 1837 (+27)
Fat: 120g (-100 oh dear!)
Carbs: 29g
Protein: 155g (+8)
that is almost spot on so your diet if staying like that, is fairly fine.
ah brillaint - so if i stay roughly with what i did today i should be ok
I weigh 181lbs at last weigh - so calculated calories reqd by weight in lbs x10
Ill keep this post updated - think ive got a plan of food tomoz
Thanks for the bacon tip, im going for it tomoz - but proper bacon!
I weigh 181lbs at last weigh - so calculated calories reqd by weight in lbs x10
Ill keep this post updated - think ive got a plan of food tomoz
Thanks for the bacon tip, im going for it tomoz - but proper bacon!
Targets Per Day
Calories 1810
Protein 150 grams
Fat 120 grams
Carbs < 50mg
Todays Food:
Breakfast
2 Scrambled Eggs with Celery & Bacon
11am
50g Cheese
2.30pm
2 Chicken Breast with green veg
5.30pm
219 g Pork w Green Veg
9pm
Boiled Egg
50 G cheese
Calories: 1773 (-37)
Fat: 115g (-5)
Protein: 170g (+20)
Carbs: 18g
Calories 1810
Protein 150 grams
Fat 120 grams
Carbs < 50mg
Todays Food:
Breakfast
2 Scrambled Eggs with Celery & Bacon
11am
50g Cheese
2.30pm
2 Chicken Breast with green veg
5.30pm
219 g Pork w Green Veg
9pm
Boiled Egg
50 G cheese
Calories: 1773 (-37)
Fat: 115g (-5)
Protein: 170g (+20)
Carbs: 18g
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
yup that looks good. You might benefit from a quicker transition if you do a little cardio or weights to burn off some carbs.
I had a very weird day yesterday, after having a carb/bran up day for a couple days(finding it very difficult to eat a "normal" amount of fibre with shakes/egg/spinach diet) and certainly being out of ketosis and feeling dizzy and very tired from blood sugar changes(its likely after 3 months of barely eating carbs my insulin resistance is way way way down making simple carbs much worse for me now as they'll have a crazy insulin response). I went back into ketosis as of yesterday morning and man, the energy i had yesterday I was positively buzzing all day, jittery just from having pure energy, didn't even take caffeine yesterday as I was so jittery already.
The difference between a carb/fat diet for me seems so immense. The only thing is, I can see it being quite difficult to get back to eating carbs when I hit my target weight, I just feel healtier on a fat/protein diet. Though I can't imagine a maintainance ketosis diet purely down to the fat you'd have to eat, it would be closer to the wrong numbers you had, 200grams+ of fat a day is just damn hard to eat. I feel completely full and essentially no hunger at all on probably 1500-1600cals a day, another 100grams of fat seems almost impossible.
I had a very weird day yesterday, after having a carb/bran up day for a couple days(finding it very difficult to eat a "normal" amount of fibre with shakes/egg/spinach diet) and certainly being out of ketosis and feeling dizzy and very tired from blood sugar changes(its likely after 3 months of barely eating carbs my insulin resistance is way way way down making simple carbs much worse for me now as they'll have a crazy insulin response). I went back into ketosis as of yesterday morning and man, the energy i had yesterday I was positively buzzing all day, jittery just from having pure energy, didn't even take caffeine yesterday as I was so jittery already.
The difference between a carb/fat diet for me seems so immense. The only thing is, I can see it being quite difficult to get back to eating carbs when I hit my target weight, I just feel healtier on a fat/protein diet. Though I can't imagine a maintainance ketosis diet purely down to the fat you'd have to eat, it would be closer to the wrong numbers you had, 200grams+ of fat a day is just damn hard to eat. I feel completely full and essentially no hunger at all on probably 1500-1600cals a day, another 100grams of fat seems almost impossible.
Been doing some cardio and weights last night.
Will do more tomoz - ordered some keto urine strips too, so ill have a little go on them
You raise a point id been thinking about too... what happpens at the end!
There is another guy on a another forum, who has apparently been on this for over a year and intends to stick on it forever?!
Will do more tomoz - ordered some keto urine strips too, so ill have a little go on them
You raise a point id been thinking about too... what happpens at the end!
There is another guy on a another forum, who has apparently been on this for over a year and intends to stick on it forever?!
Soldato
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Last edited:
Caporegime
- Joined
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Thats not accurate. Frankly theres nothing fundamentally wrong with staying on a keto diet, its very healthy, it gives you everything you need, full stop, you just do not need carbs, its that simple. Its not a high fat diet, its the fat you need diet. The only problem with it, is I simply can't see eating a 3000calorie diet without more carbs in, I really just don't know how I'd do it, maybe drink a few tablespoons of flaxseed spread throughout the day but even then it would be very hard. But if you wanted gains were a big dude and were incredibly active, I simply don't think it would be possible to eat say a 4500 calorie diet without significant carbs. At that stage I think the hunger carbs tend to cause would be pretty much needed to let you eat 3000+ cals a day.
The only thing I really worry about is, on my carb up days, I feel more phelgmy, more tired, more up and down in my energy levels and I just don't feel anywhere near as good as I feel on keto, which is why I'm thinking a targeted carbs diet, not necessarily in ketosis, but really limiting high carb intake to preworkouts would maybe be a good way to increase calories without feeling the carb effect all day.
Guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Might have to just load up on pizza every weekend, put on a few pounds and lose it on keto through the week
torture that would be, all that pizza