I'm confused about something. If too much protein keeps you out of ketosis, and what's needed is more fat, then why are diets like Stillman and Kimkins - which are both very high protein and very low fat - so good at taking off the weight?

Please note: I'm not defending either diet, and don't want to get into a discussion of Kimkins (which seems to be a VERY hot topic online). But Dr. Stillman's diet was famous for taking off a lot of weight very fast, and it was all lean protein and nothing else.

Oh my, that is really horrible... As for the muscle twitches/cramps and not sleeping, I take LOTs of magesium. If I don't I get thrown out of bed with leg cramps at night.

All in all, it is still calories in my mind. However, my insulin would be high on a high protein/low fat diet. I could lose on a 1200 calorie high carb diet but have to take insulin, and be hungry all the time, too. I am noting that I am NOT as hungry with a smaller amount of protein. Drs Phinney and Atkins do say that ketosis dampens hunger.....

They're great, for some people. It just doesn't work for everyone.

One thing about that....I had the same problem in deep ketosis and the whole waking up in agony at night.

I was taking mag, calcium, and potassium supplements and was still getting cramps...pay attention to your salt intake. You might not be getting enough, especially if you are eating more pure and not eating salty process foods. I have made sure I get enough salt and even the "warning twinges" have completely gone away.

There are some interesting comments about the cramping problem in this post by Dr. Eades.

Link

The problem is not finding a way to take off the weight. Slash calories or slash food intake or slash a macronutrient category; there are many ways of almost-starving and I've tried a few in my time.

They all worked! But you couldn't live on it. In fact, stubborn as I was, and how much I wanted it, I couldn't starve myself to death. Some do. And they are very thin by the time that happens.

Everything else is just gimmicks. I could come up with the spring greens/coconut oil/canned sardine diet (the SGCOCS! and no fair stealing it, I came up with it first) and I'd do fine. People can only eat so much of it, it actually has lots of nutrients for good health, and people would lose weight. It would work great!

And when people stopped staying on it, and stopped losing weight, I could say, "See, if you'd only stuck to the diet..."

Yep. I added that yesterday. Seems to be helping already.

Thanks. I've added magnesium and potassium. I'll try to make sure I'm getting enough salt as well.

Some folks have mentioned better results with sea salt. I invested in a big bag of pink Himalayan salt; chockful of trace minerals and darn tasty.

Can I join? Third day in, ketones are now at NK level. Monday they were 0.2, tuesday 0.4 and today, 0.6.

The strips are very expensive here, too. I think I'll bite the bullet and shell out for a month's worth of strips, and then test every week or something for the long haul.

I should mention, yesterday I did some fasting, with coconut oil, and maybe my ketone level will go down now that I'm actually eating... Well we'll see, won't we!

Of course. Wonder if we should create a thread elsewhere?



I wish I could afford the meter. I have made a point of lowering my protein (and my carbs again - they've crept up over time.) This is day 17 for me. I wasn't having much luck although I could tell I was in ketosis. I lost like 3 pounds the first two days then nothing for a week and a half. I increased the fat, and the weight finally started dropping. I've lost nearly 3 more pounds. (And, btw, I'm having some nausea which I gather can be a problem on a ketogenic diet. I've never had that problem before in all my years of low carbing.)

This weekend I bought a new food scale. I'm trying to get into the habit of weighing everything I eat. The scale tells me how much fat, carb, and protein I'm getting and saves the totals for the day or week. My initial reaction is shock at how hard it is to keep the protein levels down. I aimed for about 60 g yesterday and ended up at almost 80.

Not sure how much protein I should try to get. I looked in my book on the ketogenic diet this weekend. It said .8 g per kg of weight. This book isn't written for weight loss, so I didn't know if I should use my current weight or my goal weight. I decided to base it on a goal weight of about 150 lb which gives me 55 g of protein per day. Does that sound wholy inadequate? I'm not used to focusing on protein, so I don't know what constitutes an extreme.

Costello,

My hunch is that you should base your protein requirements on lean body mass and activity levels. Natural Physiques has this kind of calculator. Jenny Ruhl's macronutrient calculator is another tool that uses a slightly different approach.

Thanks, AJ. I'll have a look at them.

Edited to add: Looks like I should be in the 70 to 85 gram range.

I just found Aradasky's experiment thread: http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=444626

She quotes Volek and Phinney as recommending 1.5 to 2.5 grams of protein per kilogram of reference weight. If I use 150 as my reference weight, that makes it 102 to 170. Really? That seems high to me. And it's way higher that either my ketogenic diet book or the sites AJ recommended.