To ask your experience of a keto diet?

[Atticusblame]

Just started this today. It's basically a very low carb diet. I have low carbed before, but not quite to the keto extreme.

Has anyone found it works well for them? And how long is it until results show? And what alcohol can I drink on it?

I use fatty cuts Atticus but my SIL who does LC prefers chicken and doesn’t like the taste of fatty meat so I tell her to add fat to it as this is a high FAT diet as opposed to the popular high protein diets

(Quite often I’ve had people misinterpret it as a high protein diet)

Day 4 is early, keep going. If you’ve not got a lot to lose it does take time. I think I lost around 5lb the first month. Obviously that really slows down in time. I started at 10.11 in Jan. currently anywhere between 9.3 and 9.7 which is spot on for me.

Yes, of course, thank you!

Started on Wednesday. So:

Wednesday:
No breakfast (never eat it)

Lunch: smoked salmon, 2 scrambled eggs with a little bit of grated cheese, on a bed of kale, watercress & spinach.

Dinner: Smoked ham & halloumi fingers (I know this isn’t the healthiest, but I went straight out after a meeting so had a pub menu to work with). I didn’t dip it into the sweet chilli or pickle.

I also had 4 coffees (before I realised milk wasn’t low carb), two dry white wines and one gin & slimline, & one vodka & diet coke

Thursday:
No breakfast

Lunch: Same as Wednesday

Dinner: Two chicken thighs, broccoli, sprouts, red pepper, mushrooms, smoked garlic, mayonnaise.

I had a matchbox measure of cheddar cubed too & two coffees.

Friday:
No breakfast

Lunch: three eggs omelette with cheese

Dinner: one chicken thigh, one slice of belly pork, broccoli, sprouts, asparagus, mayonnaise.

I had one boiled egg and one coffee too (changed the rest to peppermint tea).

Have you been drinking that amount every day? Your food looks fine to me, but the booze, even if it's that one night will throw it off. You need to avoid it for the first two weeks.

Day 4 is early, keep going. If you’ve not got a lot to lose it does take time. I think I lost around 5lb the first month. Obviously that really slows down in time. I started at 10.11 in Jan. currently anywhere between 9.3 and 9.7 which is spot on for me.

This is almost exactly where I’m starting from and exactly where I’d like to be. I’m usually around the 10stone mark but have put on 12lb (which was a shock) over summer.

Have you been drinking that amount every day? Your food looks fine to me, but the booze, even if it's that one night will throw it off. You need to avoid it for the first two weeks.

The alcohol? No, I only had that on Wednesday. Didn’t have any on Thursday or Friday. I am going to the theatre tonight though - is there no alcohol at all I can have without throwing it off?

Generally not for the first couple of weeks. It will prevent you going into keto, which normally happens on the third or fourth day. Your body will burn the booze first.

The normal rule is no booze for the first couple of weeks till you're established.

Ah, I didn’t know that, Bluntness I thought spirits would be okay because they don’t contain any carbs? Is that not true?

The alcohol will have stopped you going into ketosis, I didn’t touch it for three months. You could do with upping your fat as well, a couple of decaf coffees with cream would help with that.

I did keto years ago my experience

• my breath honked something foul
• I was constipated and bloated
• my food bill was high
• I lost some weight
• I gained more back
• I was very tired
• keto flu was hellish

I've since lost 120 lbs eating.....food. No diet plan just sensible eating, exercising, and looking after myself a bit better.

It's not about the alcohol having no carbs, it's the fact that all the time you're drinking it, your body is using it for fuel instead of fat. (And then of course if you're drinking wine you're also drinking carbs!)

I think you're being a bit impatient to expect to see weight loss so soon - you don't have a huge amount to lose I don't think, from what you've posted, and if you've had a day where you were drinking, this will also have had an impact.

You could do with upping your fat as well, a couple of decaf coffees with cream would help with that. Really? I've added butter to the scrambled egg and omelette too. I feel like I'm eating loads of fat.

Hopefully I am just being impatient, BIWitch. I going to stick with it. If nothing else, I'm not finding it difficult, and for the first time in years I was in bed on Thursday & Friday for the first time in years before 11, and actually fell asleep. Usually I can't sleep a wink until 4 or 5 in the morning unless I've had a drink. It's been lovely.

You feel like you’re eating loads of fat because we’re brainwashed by years of the fat is evil mantra. It’s difficult to get your head round fat being the good guy!

Do you guys count net carbs or total carbs when you stick to 20g per day?

It's only in the US that you deal in net carbs - their labelling system is different and includes fibre. So it's total carbs for UK products

It’s early days to be losing weight but also in the equation is where you are in your cycle, if you are pre-menstrual weight loss stops. Always 🙄

I measure total carbs because my fitness pal doesn't measure net carbs. I still get plenty of veg, though.

Myself and DH tried it... we lasted just over a week!
However it made me realise that bread and cereals were the cause of my IBS.
I'm slim but had a belly that would look about 6 months pregnant, this has now gone just by eating less bread and pasta. My appetite has changed in that I don't feel as hungry and psychologically feel like I can say no to food like cake when I don't fancy it.... previously there was no such thing as no cake!!
I eat some carbs occasionally - currently eating pizza and chips - but there's no more breakfast cereal, followed by sandwich and crisps at lunch, followed by chips at dinner and toast before bed. I can actually skip breakfast all together now and have eggs or something for lunch and keep going on that till dinner and then no evening snacks!

I'm just curious... I read
"On a regular keto diet, you focus on fats (75% of your daily calories), some protein (20%), and a very small amount of carbs (less than 5%). "

So my 2500 kcal/day would become...
1875 kcal in fats (208 grams/day, wow)
500 kcal in proteins (125 grams/day, wow)
25 grams of carbs (125 kcal).

Assuming most people maintain on less than I do, they've got to get down to like 15-20g/day of carbs.

125 g protein/day would be like...1.5 kg of tofu.
Unfortunately that's also 28g of carbs, so already a huge problem to conform with the rules.
The protein: carb ratio in tofu is 4:1, but that's seeming too low.
Skim Milk protein carb ratio is 2:3.
Eggs protein carb ratio is 13:1.
Does seem like quite a lifestyle change.
I don't understand people that don't call this restrictive.

I don't understand people that don't call this restrictive.

Unlimited meat, fish, cheese, eggs, green vegetables, what’s restrictive about that? I’ve never eaten tofu in my life and don’t want to.

I don't mind being the one weirdo in the world who likes tofu. I would hate to be forced to eat so much meat to meet the min. protein levels.

This is interesting, about the highest fat eaters in the world. The Dutch are among the skinnies of Europe. But the Saudis are among the very fattest in the world.

More meat consumption seems to have a higher link to more obesity on first map. Actually, it's just plain wealth that links to obesity, looking at the 2nd map.

You don't have to be forced to eat meat! There are lots of other sources of protein!

And you're basing those amounts on 2500 calories per day, which sounds like a pretty random (as well as a large) amount of calories.

I'm not really sure what the point is that you're trying to make with those maps - although admittedly I'm skim reading this while making dinner - but just because someone eats a lot of meat, or a lot of fat, doesn't make them obese - you don't know what else they're eating! If you eat a lot of fat as well as a high carb diet, that's a recipe for disaster

I look at net carbs when I'm being obsessive (I don't both on boot camp) which is just carbs minus fibre, very easy to work out on MyFitnessPal. And just add fat to everything! I'd struggle to eat 2500 calories on boot camp so that seems unlikely. I just go on a lump of protein, shitloads of fat, a pile of lower carb vegetables. You can be as obsessive as you'd like!

OP; not enough fat, too much alcohol, too much milk.

Oh and artificial sweeteners, hard no to them.

you're basing those amounts on 2500 calories per day, which sounds like a pretty random (as well as a large) amount of calories.

2500 is actually what I eat, is what Fitbit says I should eat. I'm just making the keto ideas relatable for myself. The maps: I was thinking about whether there's evidence that people on high fat or high protein diets are skinnier populations.

I think I eat about 80grams meat/day, which I gather might be very low for a 'meat' eater but probably the most I want. To get 125g of protein/day I'd need to eat something like...

200 grams chicken (60g protein, 0 g carbs, 480 kcal)
5 eggs (63g protein 5.5 g carbs, 400 kcal)

If I had 150 grams of kale (14 grams carb, almost 0 kcal), 100 g of cream (3.7 carbs, 200 kcal).. & 10 tbsp (1400 kcal) of olive oil? Only way to get up to the total kcal I need daily. Seems complicated.

The ratio of kcal to carbs needs to be about 10:1 on that version of keto...For every 100 kcal I ate, could not consume more than 1 gram of carbohydrate.

I read elsewhere that the protein can be as high as 30% & the carbs down to 10% of the total calories (in keto). A bit more manageable on carbs anyway.

It’s only complicated if you conflate carbs and calories. Low carb ignores calories, they don’t matter.