I'm lovin' me that 10 ounces of heavy cream!!! I could chug down a whole carton of that stuff. Also lovin' on that butter! I eat only Kerry Gold, but not quite in the quantities you eat.

Thanks. That gives me an idea of how to up the fat. I can't eat nuts, at least not every day, and not in quantity. Nuts and raw veggies throw me into diverticulitis. I also don't like the taste of bulletproof coffee, especially with coconut oil Can't stand that stuff, even the supposed kind that isn't supposed to taste like coconut.

I get very fatty meats, I get all my fat that way. everyone is different on what macro's work for them but 80% fat level is for healing and weight loss for most. not eating enough can be a problem that stalls weight loss too.

I buy my meat in bulk at Sam's club and don't allow the butcher to trim my fat. I then trim anything over what I need for the steak and individually wrap them for my lower fat meats.

I have food sensitivities a lot of them and have issues with dairy, which many people do, that can definitely stall you along with cheese's and other items.

I am in maintenance now with some fat to lose, but I am refusing to diet any longer my weight is within a pound or two of my high school weight. so it will have to come off as I rebuild my muscles.

all you can do is test different fat levels to see what works.

Thanks for the tips! I decided yesterday to ban all dairy for a while. I did an elimination diet a couple years ago and lost a steady 1 - 2 pounds per week, 15 pounds in 3 months. I should do THAT instead of keto, but my doc wants me on keto until December 17 when I see him again.

Yesterday I had more than 2200 calories with 73% fat (184 grams). Felt awful eating that much. Also "supplemented" with some salty lemonade. This morning I was up 2 pounds, but know it's just fluid retention. I'll go back to my 1300 calories or so, around 65% fat, no veggies and no dairy.

I would keep the fat higher and not restrict the calories so much. balance is the key. I don't know what your RDI is, but I do well 100 to 200 over the basic no activity RDI estimates for myself on the higher fat diet.

I was up almost a pound today, for no discernible reason. Baskington, how do YOU measure your RDI? I've used online calculators and they're all different.

I like the way I see metabolic rate "measured" on bodybuilding formulas. It doesn't matter what calculator you use. Or you could start with an arbitrary number.

How I approach things, I think I stole it from them;

Say I start at 2000 calories. I tend to eat the same thing every day, I think that might help. So, I'll eat 2000 calories for a couple of weeks, same food. If I stay at the same weight, I'll figure that's my maintenance. If I lose, I'm below maintenance, if I gain, I'm above. From there I can adjust up or down, try to maintain.

Of course this sounds like CICO, but isn't quite. CICO as often expressed assumes that carbohydrate and fat (and maybe protein, at least once protein requirement has been met) are interchangeable. But by eating the same thing every day, I've clamped for differences in hormonal response there would have been from variations in macros from day to day, and also variations in water retention there might have been due to differences in salt intake and possibly differences in response to different foods (intolerances)?

Of course by being male, I've clamped for other variations in hormones etc. In one mouse model, simply restricting female mice to 95 percent of what they would have eaten if they'd been given the choice caused weight gain--and I've always wanted to see that experiment repeated with "restriction" to 100 percent of calories. I sort of suspect that having exactly enough food versus extra they don't bother eating is probably stressful. Even in the wild, there is more food out there than any individual animal actually needs, much of the year, there being just exactly enough food available being perceived as scarcity and signalling coming deprivation sort of makes sense.

This is the one I used most recently: http://impulsiveketo.com/wp/macros/

My results:

Calories: 1290
Fat: 82 grams minimum (57%)
Carbs: 20 grams (6%)
Protein: 89 grams (27%)

They actually give a range for fat of 82 - 117 grams. If I got up to 117 grams of fat (81%) and had the 20 grams of carbs (80 calories), that leaves only 157 calories for protein (all of 39 grams). I suppose since I'm not eating carbs I could add those 80 calories to the protein count and get to 59 grams of protein in the day, but the calculator says my minimum protein should be 89 grams, and to "gently exceed this every day."

How do those numbers look to you? No more than 1290 calories? Only 57% fat?

That calculator is why I don't go by calculators for anything but a starting point, and then see what I have to eat to get to something more like maintenance. It gives me 1280 calories as a target, supposedly for a 20 percent deficit. That would make my maintenance calories 1600--that's my wither away, go crazy and eat my neighbour's brains calorie intake, even at 1600. I don't think I've ever failed to lose weight at 1600 calories, no matter how lean I was--but I've certainly failed to consistently eat so low, which sort of makes the point moot.

The athlete calculator gives me more realistic numbers. But the choices for activity--from slothful to overtraining--aren't really exact, and they pretty much can't be.

I just want someone/anyone to tell me exactly what I need to eat, how much, guarantee it will work for me, and then actually have it work for me.

Is that too much to ask?

i m doing zero carb looong time maybe 2-3 years.
i lost all my excessive weight in 6 months i think 55kg
never count calories but sometimes i did never eat anything like fasting especially when i see my body start changing. Than i stop count calories still lost ton of weight. last year i was in thailand to experiment i eat rice and thai food full of carbs gain 7-8kg in 1.5 month i didnt like how i feel , i was still skinny but something felt wrong mentally i felt depressed. i was very happy with zero carb so i retun zero carb. yes zero carb is more delicious than carbs.
i think i never want to eat carbs again.

Bawdy it all depends on what plan you are doing. zero carb or keto. either way you must have higher fat, range from 70% to 80%, each person is different there to what works. I like very strict zero carb as you take all risk of eating any inflammatory food. that is the number one thing that causes people not to lose. Second thing, if you have been dieting by restricting calories long term it can take a while to rebuild you full calorie amount.

This is a keto calculator I like, https://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/. I eat my RDI here with litely active for my calculation and then add my exercise and it works perfectly.


This carnivore calculator with the same litely active is pretty much my actual calories I have found I can eat to maintain. http://blog.themeatlife.com/p/6-wee...calculator.html

But it has taken time for me to rebuild to this level. and I can not have my inflamatory foods. which is why going strict carnivore for 30 days is helpful, when you add one food at a time to test for a few days (after the 30 days)you can find what is not agreeing with your body.

I am guessing you already have figured out some of the foods that stall or kill your weight loss. some people just don't want to give them up or not for long. just the way we are.

Hey Bawdy,

I believe the basis of a well formed keto or low carb diet is to have adequate protein. The minimum protein being somewhere around a gram per pound of lean body mass.

I am 6'3" and have figure my lean body mass around 160 pounds so I try to never go below that 160 grams of protein intake. Fat intake can be 118 to 276 grams depending on what I want to accomplish and carbs are under 40 grams.

If you are wanting to lose fat you need to lower fat intake because there is no better fat to burn than your own.

If you are a Facebooker you might want to check out Optimal Ketogenic Living run by Raymund Edwards.

THIS is where I get confused. Some people say you need to be up around 70 - 80% fat for it to work, and others say if the fat is too high your body will burn the fat you eat rather than the fat stored on your body.

I've tried this every which way, and there don't seem to be any patterns. I know from the Dr-ordered elimination diet (based on IgG testing) that I'm sensitive to dairy, eggs, lettuce, tomato, and few other odd things. I'm only moderately sensitive; no foods registered highly inflammatory for me. When I did the elimination diet, I ate roasted white or sweet potatoes usually twice a day, and had 1 or 2 bananas twice a day. I lost 15 pounds in 3 months without really trying.

I think I'll take my experiments back to my journal so as not to interrupt the discussion here.

Thanks to everyone for their ideas and support!

good to see you around here Uberfat! I have experimented with Carb intake too, over carbing and my body weight shoots up 20 lbs in 3 days then stablilizes - feel crummy but not sick or craving. return to very low carb or straight fasting and return to normal pertty quickly. Eating carbs is "fun" but not worth it - I think they are over rated

I've yet to try zero carb - may give that a shot after some experimenting with strict alternate day fasting - maybe I can do that with zero carb...

PS, I still can't find a good source of lamb fat here in USA haha! Later UBER.

High fat combined with carbs generally would not work. If your carb addition helps, then do what works for you and don't mess with it Bawdy.

the idea is most of your fuel is fat. Once you convert to fat usuage your body uses that and any extra going to making extra ketones.

If your protein is too high you will experience a insulin response and the body will switch from fat usuage to using the protein. So everyones protein level can be very different.

I started testing my blood and found my higher protein maintenance test was higher glucose all the time with low to super low keytones. I gained weight on lower calories.

This week I have been testing higher fat and while it is difficult to be exact with meat only diet as it ranges, I know by the thermal reaction inside hard to explain, my fat level is higher than I am tracking. My intestines are telling me too!

I am currently getting lower glucose readings and higher keytone readings. I am eating 300 calorie average over my RDI. I have gained 2/10's of a pound this past 8 or 9 days of eating higher fat and more calories.

I am more reactive to higher protein than others. Even on higher fat like I am doing, my protein is in the 90's to 100. now if I am off on my calculations I may actually be in the 80's to 90's. Very interesting experiment for me. Good timing too as my appetite has finally come back and I need to handle those extra calories