Started keto diet yesterday - anyone done it?

[purbeast0]

I've done one of the high fat/protein low carb diets in the past, but it's been like 3-4 years since I have done it. With my shoulder getting better this past fall I was able to put some strength/size/weight back on over the past 4 months or so. With that I've put on some fat as well.

With a trip coming up to Aruba and just feeling a bit fatter than I'm used to, I figure now is a good time to try and lean up a little bit. So yesterday I've decided to start a keto diet for like 5-6 weeks.

I am planning on aiming for below 40 carbs a day. My lunch during the day consists of 2 chicken salad "wraps" (that are more like folded over tortillas like a big fat chicken salad taco) and I have some cheese in it. I heat it up for about 90 seconds and it tastes really good. These are about 5-6g carbs a piece as the tortilla is 5g and cheese and maybe what i cooked the chicken in adds another g or two.

Then I'm taking 3 protein shakes a day which are 6g a piece. I may up it to 4, depending on if I lose more size than I want to.

Dinner yesterday was pork chops and some broccoli and cheese. I plan to have some sort of protein and probably broccoli with dinner. Then I snacked a bit on some string cheese and almonds.

I also might add in a pre workout like NOXplode to give me some more energy at the gym but I'm going to see how this week goes first.

That has 7g of carbs. So I think with all of this I can keep it below 40-50 pretty easily. I am not sure how I am going to handle the weekend yet though. I plan to be strict about this M-F. In the past I cheated the whole weekend and ate kind of whatever I wanted on the weekends, and had decent results. But I might try to just cheat one day instead of both, I'll have to see how my mental toughness holds up.

I am around 210lbs, or so I thought, but yesterday I forgot to weigh myself in the morning and in the evening I was around 214lbs. I plan on trying to do this until I'm around 200lbs, unless I start to look or feel smaller than I want to feel.

I will probably post some weekly update pics as well to track progress. I can take a starting pic tonight. My goal is to try to get lean enough so that I can see veins in my lower abs like I did last time I did this diet, although last time I wasn't as big as I am now I don't think (not necessarily as fat, but as big overall). My goal though is to lose as little strength/size as possible while losing fat, which has always been the tough part for me. I believe I'm eating enough protein though. I just hope it doesn't hinder my performance in the gym too much with little carb intake.

Anyone else done this and had any luck with it? I'd be curious to hear other experiences with it, and I'd be curious to hear about how you handled the cheat meals/days.

EDIT:

Here are some start pictures, well taken 3 days into it but probably nothing has changed yet really.

http://imgur.com/wX3mrS9
http://imgur.com/XalLdLP

 

[cbrunny]

no beer!

 

[crashtech]

I have lost 45 lbs on LCHF, but that is because I am prone to type2 and my body is really, really good at storing carbs as fat.I don't think I have a lot to add to your post, but I am wondering what tortilla is 4g carbs?

 

[purbeast0]

I have lost 45 lbs on LCHF, but that is because I am prone to type2 and my body is really, really good at storing carbs as fat.I don't think I have a lot to add to your post, but I am wondering what tortilla is 4g carbs?

Sorry I lied, it's 5g of carbs (thought it was 4, still doesn't really change much).

http://olemex.com/index.php/2013-07-26-20-44-53/healthy/item/164-low-carb-flour-tortillas-8

And they taste really good too, taste just like normal tortillas.

 

[crashtech]

Okay, it's the "net carb" thing. If they work for you, that's great, but I think they should really count as 11g each. dietdoctor.com has some good recipes but it's subscription based. I have found it helpful.

 

[purbeast0]

Okay, it's the "net carb" thing. If they work for you, that's great, but I think they should really count as 11g each. dietdoctor.com has some good recipes but it's subscription based. I have found it helpful.

Well yeah from everything I've read, all you care about is the total net carbs when carb counting for keto.

Total carbs even with those is under 50 though.

I was thinking of getting some ketostix though so I can see if I'm actually in the state when I think I am.

 

[crashtech]

Well, I was always told that, too. I would hope that if you are open to new information that you might revisit your research. I've become convinced that net carbs are often not what they say they are. There are no laws regulating the way the figure is calculated, so food makers can put whatever they want on the label.

 

[cbrunny]

What is net carbs?

 

[tnt118]

I've been on Keto since mid-2015 with rather good results. A couple of miscellaneous thoughts:

• Check out the /r/ketogains sub on Reddit. They are more in line with what you are trying to do as opposed to a strict weight loss regimen. /r/keto has more general information.
• Some find 50g carbs too high for them, but that's more a "listen to your body" situation. 50g may well be fine, but just pay attention in case it isn't.
• It is net carbs that matter. IIRC, there are some very specific types of carbs that are still in question, but with a quick search I couldn't find any details. Generally that is of no consequence.
• I'm not too familiar with a good protein target for you, but it does take a lot to have issues with gluconeogenesis.
• I'd strongly advise against having any cheat days, it's not like a traditional diet where you can make up the difference on other days -- you are directly sabotaging your body's ability to stay in ketosis. It takes something like two weeks to become moderately adapted to ketosis and longer to be fully adapted. (There is a carb cycling technique that some folks will use when trying to gain, but I'm not sure if that's appropriate for you. Check out "CKD" for more info.)

Edit: I've read that ketostix are only effective the first time you go to into ketosis, and are not reliable after that. They aren't given much credence from anything that I've seen.

Edit 2: It's sugar alcohols that are sometimes considered "questionable"

 

[mike8675309]

I would never try it myself in generally because keeping your body in ketosis is not really all that easy, and eating high fats often results in some foods that are not really good for you for other reasons beside the high fat. If you have the ability to restrict yourself from carbs, it seems like you should easily be able to just cut back your daily dietary calories by 300-500 to just lose weight in general.

 

[purbeast0]

I would never try it myself in generally because keeping your body in ketosis is not really all that easy, and eating high fats often results in some foods that are not really good for you for other reasons beside the high fat. If you have the ability to restrict yourself from carbs, it seems like you should easily be able to just cut back your daily dietary calories by 300-500 to just loose weight in general.

I dunno I don't feel I've been eating foods that aren't good for me the past 3 days.

Chicken Salad
Pork Chops
Broccoli
Cheese
Almonds
Almond Milk
Whey Protein.
Little bit of butter

That is pretty much all I've taken in the past 3 days. Nothing on there that I would say is bad for me, and nothing that has a lot of bad fats in it. The chicken salad is 4lbs of chicken breasts slow cooked in salsa for 5 hours, then I shred it and mix it with about 2-3 spoonfuls of mayo.

I actually have felt fine too and haven't felt tired or lethargic like I have before when doing a low carb diet. My workouts have been really good. Now granted, it's only my 3rd day lol and I did kind of load up on carbs on Sunday.

 

[purbeast0]

I've been on Keto since mid-2015 with rather good results. A couple of miscellaneous thoughts:

• Check out the /r/ketogains sub on Reddit. They are more in line with what you are trying to do as opposed to a strict weight loss regimen. /r/keto has more general information.
• Some find 50g carbs too high for them, but that's more a "listen to your body" situation. 50g may well be fine, but just pay attention in case it isn't.
• It is net carbs that matter. IIRC, there are some very specific types of carbs that are still in question, but with a quick search I couldn't find any details. Generally that is of no consequence.
• I'm not too familiar with a good protein target for you, but it does take a lot to have issues with gluconeogenesis.
• I'd strongly advise against having any cheat days, it's not like a traditional diet where you can make up the difference on other days -- you are directly sabotaging your body's ability to stay in ketosis. It takes something like two weeks to become moderately adapted to ketosis and longer to be fully adapted. (There is a carb cycling technique that some folks will use when trying to gain, but I'm not sure if that's appropriate for you. Check out "CKD" for more info.)

Edit: I've read that ketostix are only effective the first time you go to into ketosis, and are not reliable after that. They aren't given much credence from anything that I've seen.

Edit 2: It's sugar alcohols that are sometimes considered "questionable"

So in the 1.5 years you've done this, you have been in keto the whole time? I don't plan on doing this permanently. I'm going to try and keep it up until I go to Aruba in early March, unless I get below 200lbs then I'm going to stop as that will mean I'm losing a lot of my size probably too.

As long as you've been doing it you don't have any cheat days? Do you have any cheat meals at least? I haven't had any cravings yet in 3 days lol, but the weekend when my schedule isn't quite as structured I'm sure I will get some. Plus we eat out a lot on the weekends so I am not sure how that's going to play out yet as I'll have to prepare more food in house.

I plan on weighing myself weekly to see the progress so I'll know if I have to lower carb intake or not. When I did a low carb diet before I was only doing it M-F then whatever I wanted on the weekends, and typically by Wednesday, I could "feel" the diet working. Just like my core felt tighter overall, it's hard to explain. It could be because my skin was getting slightly tighter though, and I did lose a good amount of fat when I did it before.

 

[blackdogdeek]

I did a Whole30. I'm pretty sure it qualifies as less than 40g of carbs a day.

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...g-updated-with-before-and-after-pics.2261360/

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I did some random version of the low carb/starch thing a while back with some co-workers. Zero things with a carb or a starch passed my lips for like six weeks, with zero exercize I dropped 25 lbs in a month, another 5 in the two weeks after that, and like 2-3 belt loops... this was from ~210-220lbs (wasn't exact with measuring stuff).

Lots of chicken, fish, steak, bacon, green stuff (lots++), and dairy.

 

[deadlyapp]

As others have mentioned, nothing you are describing sounds like a Keto diet, and rather just a low carb diet, which on it's own can probably do what you want (although leave you feeling very low on energy). If you actually want to do Keto, you need to be extremely strict and prevent any sort of cheat day that might drive your carb intake higher.

Arguably, Keto is the hardest diet to do and maintain simply due to the fact that getting out of ketosis is so easy (vs a calorie restricted diet where one bad day / bad meal probably doesn't directly destroy progress).

 

[purbeast0]

As others have mentioned, nothing you are describing sounds like a Keto diet, and rather just a low carb diet, which on it's own can probably do what you want (although leave you feeling very low on energy). If you actually want to do Keto, you need to be extremely strict and prevent any sort of cheat day that might drive your carb intake higher.

Arguably, Keto is the hardest diet to do and maintain simply due to the fact that getting out of ketosis is so easy (vs a calorie restricted diet where one bad day / bad meal probably doesn't directly destroy progress).

I'm not sure how you can say it sounds nothing like keto. It IS keto based on the research I've done. I can get what you are saying about cheating though since that can take your body out of ketosis. But other than that, what I'm doing is exactly what I've read keto is, which is just keeping your net carbs below a certain threshold, which can vary from 20-50 grams of carbs depending on the person.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I'm not sure how you can say it sounds nothing like keto. It IS keto based on the research I've done. I can get what you are saying about cheating though since that can take your body out of ketosis. But other than that, what I'm doing is exactly what I've read keto is, which is just keeping your net carbs below a certain threshold, which can vary from 20-50 grams of carbs depending on the person.

Out of curiosity, why not just make it zero carbs? Or as close to zero as possible?

Caveat: I'm not really a 'fitness/diet' person, so I don't know what negative effects come to the body by no-kidding not eating carbs, aside from being tired if you try to do strenuous work.

 

[purbeast0]

Out of curiosity, why not just make it zero carbs? Or as close to zero as possible?

Caveat: I'm not really a 'fitness/diet' person, so I don't know what negative effects come to the body by no-kidding not eating carbs, aside from being tired if you try to do strenuous work.

Because that isn't that realistic unless I want to become a toothpick. 18g of the carbs I take a day are through protein powder, and that is about 150g of protein.

Then the 2 wraps I'm making, which have 5 net carbs each to 10 total. I could just eat 2 big ass scoops of chicken salad instead of wrapping them in a tortilla, but this is just easier to do while I'm at work and I can heat it up eat with my hands.

Then snacking on almonds or string cheese I'll probably have 5-6 more grams of carbs, which also gives me some protein/fat.

Dinner I've been eating a protein with 0 carbs and broccoli, which has 1g net carbs per serving and I've probably been eating 2 or 3 servings.

So that is about 35-40g of net carbs a day, give or take. I don't really see what I can cut out other than tortillas to drop more carbs, but I'd rather eat them because that also just satisfies me more than if I don't have it in a wrap. And from what I read, under 50g is enough for some people to get into ketosis. This is my first week so I can't really comment on if it's working or not at this point. It's day 3.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Because that isn't that realistic unless I want to become a toothpick. 18g of the carbs I take a day are through protein powder, and that is about 150g of protein.

Then the 2 wraps I'm making, which have 5 net carbs each to 10 total. I could just eat 2 big ass scoops of chicken salad instead of wrapping them in a tortilla, but this is just easier to do while I'm at work and I can heat it up eat with my hands.

Then snacking on almonds or string cheese I'll probably have 5-6 more grams of carbs, which also gives me some protein/fat.

Dinner I've been eating a protein with 0 carbs and broccoli, which has 1g net carbs per serving and I've probably been eating 2 or 3 servings.

So that is about 35-40g of net carbs a day, give or take. I don't really see what I can cut out other than tortillas to drop more carbs, but I'd rather eat them because that also just satisfies me more than if I don't have it in a wrap. And from what I read, under 50g is enough for some people to get into ketosis. This is my first week so I can't really comment on if it's working or not at this point. It's day 3.

I feel like if you're trying to stay balanced (maintain muscle/possibly build while dropping fat) you should probably not be looking at keytosis. I could be wrong about that, though. I know what worked specifically for me for purposes of just dropping fat weight, and zilch carbs worked like a champ.

Why would you become a toothpick? You shouldn't drop muscle mass if your protein intake is up, right? Just fat? And you can stop that when you're at the weight/belt loop level you'd like.

 

[crashtech]

I feel that there are some entrenched misconceptions about keto, but one thing I would like to mention for the record is that once a person is keto adapted, they will not experience tiredness during prolonged exercise because the body is no longer utilizing glycogen as fuel. As long as there are even tiny amounts of body fat reserves, our bodies can mobilize it and create ketones as quickly as required. Many endurance athletes have discovered that keto is a cure for "bonking," the point where muscle glycogen becomes critically depleted in a non-adapted person.

 

[msi1337]

I actually have tried low carb and had mixed results..years ago I did a version of the "South Beach Diet" and lost a little weight. More recently I was doing a weight loss TV show (local channel) and I did 2 months of vegetarian and lost 42 lbs. for the last month I switched to Keto and only lost an additional 2 lbs. It was hard to go from no meat to meat all the time. I think the ideal human diet is somewhere closer to the veggies than the meat and really limited on simple carbs. Good carbs are fine (sweet potato, chickpeas, and fruits) in moderation.

 

[purbeast0]

No chance I would want to lose 42 pounds in 2 months. That is unhealthy weight loss for me. I'm trying to get to around 200, trying to maximize as much of it as fat loss as possible, from like 213lbs, in about 5-6 weeks.. So that is about 1.5 - 2lbs a week, so we'll see how it goes doing it this route.

As someone who wants to keep muscle and size, low carb is actually a good way to do it as long as you get enough protein because it targets fat loss versus overall body weight loss.

@crashtech yeah that is what I have heard as well, that once you are over the hump your energy levels are not affected. As mentioned I'm only 3 days in, and I've lifted all 3 of these days, and my energy level has been completely normal thus far. I was thinking of adding in a pre-workout supplement to give me more energy, but at this point it's not even necessary.

Also, any carbs are good "in moderation". Basically everything is fine for you as long as it's in moderation. It also just depends what your goals are. I can pretty easily maintain my weight. That's what I am typically doing and have done the past 2 or so years when my shoulder was messed up, I was maintaining right around 205-210. I bulked up a bit once it was fine but now want to try and lean up a bit again.

Again, I've done low carb before and it worked for me. I dropped 10lbs while eating taco bell every Saturday for about 6-8 weeks. I definitely lost muscle size though. That was when I was strict during the week but cheated all weekend. This time I'm going to not cheat all weekend and I'm also taking in more protein than before so we'll see what the results are.

 

[crashtech]

This is probably not relevant to your thread, but there is some emerging thought about carbs not being okay in moderation for type 2 diabetics, or even pre-diabetics.

Dr. Jason Fung's intensivedietarymanagement.com is an interesting resource, even if you are not obese or diabetic. Some of the things being discovered about the way insulin and related hormones work in the body is pretty fascinating, and some of it runs counter to "conventional wisdom."

 

[Kaido]

Anyone else done this and had any luck with it? I'd be curious to hear other experiences with it, and I'd be curious to hear about how you handled the cheat meals/days.

Sure, it works. tnt118 covered a lot of good ground.

For me, personally, I need carbs for energy. Even when cutting, I still need like 80 or 90 grams of carbs per day. Maintenance is like 300-400 carbs per day. I tried a bunch of stuff (paleo, keto, clean eating, whole30, vegetarian/vegan/raw vegan/fruitarian, etc.) before settling on IIFYM, which is what I follow currently. Eat whatever you want, as long as it fits your macros for the day. Works great because every meal is a cheat meal & every day is a cheat day. Only hassle is you have to count. Upshot is you feel pretty good & get the best results ever because you're giving your body exactly the calories & macros it needs for the day.

 

[Kaido]

I would never try it myself in generally because keeping your body in ketosis is not really all that easy, and eating high fats often results in some foods that are not really good for you for other reasons beside the high fat. If you have the ability to restrict yourself from carbs, it seems like you should easily be able to just cut back your daily dietary calories by 300-500 to just loose weight in general.

It took me a long, long time to accept that it really does boil down to calories in, calories out. I was very against the idea that our bodies were simply machines that processed fuel like anything else. Sugar was bad, clean eating was the way to go, yada yada yada. All BS. The results don't lie. Throw in macro tracking & now you can actually get fit (visibly) even easier. I just tell people to do a google image search for "iifym before after". Results speak for themselves!