Trying KETO for the first time, and while I have the basics down there are a few things I'm confused on.

I put everything into a basic calorie calculator. Age, height, weight, etc. and my basic BMR (without any exercise) is 1806. That's just me sitting still in a chair all day, breathing. So assuming that since I work out 6 days a week, it would be safe to add 500 calories daily to this bringing me to 2300.

Is this enough calories? I'm always concerned with that fine line of eating too much/not eating enough as I've been guilty of both. What should I am for calorie wise while keeping my macros 65/30/5 for KETO? Really worried I'd do this and not see any progress because my body is cannibalizing itself nor do I want to actually gain weight from eating too much.

38 years old, 6 foot, 185. I do HIIT cardio on M/W/F and weights on T/Th/Sat as well as run drills in the desert with gear/weight on Sundays and Mondays for 5+ hours.

What should I be eating?

If you want to add muscle you need to gain weight. Do you think muscle weighs nothing?

No, I get that. My question is how much is enough, yet not too much? I personally don't care about weight; if I add muscle and lose fat and gain 15lbs, I don't care. I'm trying to avoid eating too little and my body practically sandbagging any progress, or eating too much and being counterproductive.

Put gain 2 lbs a week in your app. And eat that for a few weeks. See if you are gaining muscle or fat. Then reevaluate.

Meh stay under your grams carb limit, hit your grams protein goal and eat as much or as little fat as you want.

Was a guy who did 4k calories a day for 30 days on keto and still lost fat. If you aren't eating enough you'll be hungry and or won't have enough energy to complete your workout.

That's kind of the beauty of keto is you really shouldn't have to count calories once you figure out what foods to eat. Once you get rid of the carb cravings and hormone rollercoaster your body will tell you what it needs.

It all depends how strong you want to get and where you are as a lifter.   I'm still always hungry on keto.  Just less hungry.

And if you want to make big strength gains you got to eat.

So eat more.

I barely lift and i can pretty much eat all day. If it's all keto i am still just barely at my 3k goal.

I only seem to gain any fat when i slack off on the exercise and cheat the diet.

I'm trying to lose weight.


But if you want to get stronger as an advanced lifter you have to eat past when you are full in keto. Bulking in keto sucks for sure.

Here's the 4k/day keto guy. Went from 5.2% bf to 5%.https://youtu.be/MRop_ltYUlk

I guess i was off on the days and this particular video isn't good for much beyond the motivation and the be a lion approach but he did document the journey if you want to delve deeper.

It's damn hard to gain any fat if you are strict keto. Most people overdue the protein. You can get your protein up to 180-210 grams a day but you have to do 6-7 servings of 30 grams or so spread throughout the day. That maximizes muscle synthesis. If you eat 2 lbs of chicken wings for lunch and a 24 oz steak for dinner most of that protein simply gets converted to glucose via gluconeogenesis. You may still turn a keto strip purple but if you tested your blood glucose and ketones it would tell the true story.

Of course i just love the nutritional scientific aspect of the ketogenic diet. In reality this weekend i drank about a 12 pack of beer a bottle of wine, ate pizza, burger with bun and sweet bbq sauce, pasta carbonara and tiramisu. I also skipped weights friday and today.

I did find a great keto pancake recipe though. Cream cheese, coconut flour, eggs, stevia and cinnamon cooked in butter.

I was pretty on point for about 3 weeks but certainly went overboard on the "carb night" this weekend. That kind of sgit will slow down fat loss way more than 5k keto calories a day.

At 29 I needed 3500 cals a day for noticeable weight gain.... so probably not. 2300 cals a day would have me losing weight pretty fast. Easy way would be to eat the 2300 cals a day and go from there. If you're losing weight obviously eat more.

I need to lose weight though. Not just fat. I'm too heavy for bodyweight stuff.

My first stall at 5'10" was around 170 lbs.

I was eating 3000 a day, give or take about 50. I was weighing everything. I ended up stuck for 3 weeks without gaining any weight.

Just track your weight for a few weeks, and if you need more calories, then add them. Slow bulking is a thing, but it's really slow, I'm doing about a 1-1.5 lbs a month right now....it's tedious, but nice because I'm not getting much fat.

I don't think I could do it.

Milk, rice and homemade pizza are major parts of my diet.

At your BMI, working out 6 days a week, and goals, why are you on keto?

You need carbs.