I am strongly considering starting keto. Right now I am 254lbs at 6ft. I am plenty strong, but my body fat needs to get in check. I am pretty knowledge about the science behind it. I am looking for beginners tips and tricks you wished you had starting out. I have 3 young kids (who we still need to cook "normal" meals for) and work in an office, so I need to take that into account for meal prep. Ideally I would make meals for the week on Sunday night. Anyone successful with this? Hang ups? Snake oil?

ETA:  I added the poll just to see how many people are doing keto.

Thank you. I just ordered his book. http://amzn.to/1TTA2YY  ($12.00 Amazon)

thank all of you. I have about 50lbs to loose, and have a mild seizure  condition, been meaning to try this for a long time.

Very manageable
I'll check in here with more thoughts later but

Dooo eeeeeet!

Glad your plan worked but OP needs dietary changes

Exercise is a component but no more than 10 percent of weight loss with few exceptions

Fad diet

For 150 THOUSAND FUCKING YEARS

Dude no need for ignorance in this thread

Not that you are ignorant

Just spouting it

 
I experienced all the same.  Once the carb cravings go away is when you realize how much "eating" has been programmed into us through sweets, artificial flavors, and advertising.  Since the body is breaking down fat for energy there is no "rush to eat" and the whole "I'm starving" feeling disappears.  Meals and meal times become irrelevant as a handful of almonds is enough.  Then you see family freaking out and rushing to grab some food because they are so hungry and don't want to take the time to cook.  It is very odd to see them controlled by food.  It really changes the perspective on things.


Yet the geniuses here claim it is a just a fad diet, doesn't really work, and will actually harm a person.  No diet used as a fad diet will work long term.  Keto is more of a life style change that you have to want and stick with.  

Most keto eaters don't eat real high protein.   Lots of nephrologists are using for certain issues.

This is what I meant when I said good is less important to me.

I did it before a few years back to lose some weight and I've been doing it again for a few months now, but this time consuming less protein.  I think too much protein definitely affects the blood sugar and causes hunger pains because now I can go a long time without eating and I'm overall more stable hunger wise this time around.  

After you go for a few weeks without eating bread you will feel more nimble which I think is from your guts not being bloated inside.  Chow down on some bread and you will feel like garbage for a little bit until that is out of your system.

OP, checkout some books:

KETO Clarity

Ketogenic Catastrophe (mistakes to avoid)

Start with plenty of fat and salt when beginning the diet
I made chicken broth to ease the transition
You'll like the weight loss but you'll LOVE the other effects like clarity of thought

I started on Sunday and made a few dietary mistakes (ate a cup of chobani yogurt a day) the first few days, but I'm in ketosis now and struggling to eat enough calories. I'm sure I'll get the hang of meal preparation soon enough though.
I'll agree that hunger and food cravings go away, once you get settled in. I'm 5'11", 203 now, was 215 on Sunday. I hope to get down to 170-175 eventually.

Is there a good guide/starting point for beginning a ketogenic diet (for the complete beginner, with essentially no previous knowledge of the diet)?

^^^^^^^


Google- ar15.com keto..  You'll hit a lot of threads with good info..  If you buy a membership here, Eracer has a fantastic thread in the team section.  He's been really good about updating his metrics / health since he started.

"Ruled me" is a good site...

Supplement your electrolytes.  I woke up this morning with my hamstring trying to pull my heal to the crack of my butt.

12 pounds in 6 days ?   from 215 ?   wat wat ?  wow

Keto causes a lot of immediate water loss. I'ts not uncommon to see people drop 15 lbs the first week. 5 to 10 is more normal.

Eat healthy and smash weights, you bickering little betas.

Definitely water loss. I'm feeling the keto flu right now. Drinking a ton of water, but having trouble keeping up the electrolytes.

Broth, I generally eat chunks of bullion cubes instead. And I'm not scared to throw a small bit of Himalayan pink salt in my mouth.

I've been drinking beef bouillon occasionally. Maybe I need to step it up.

So, what's the Keto Flu?

cause, remedy?

Electrolyte imbalance and/or carb withdrawal.  

The standard American Diet is full of sodium, and real food isnt. So you have to ramp up intake to make up for what you've cut.

I started Keto 5 days ago

I have the strips. I am currently running 5-15 mg/dl

what number is optimal? I would have thought it would be higher

There really isn't an optimal number.  Just being in it is fine.

How do you know you all up in thurr?

You can't fine tune with urine strips, in is in.  To fine  tune yoy need to blood test,  but it's mostly an unnecessary expense.  And you may later stop showing anything on the urine strips.  Some people nail it so perfectly that they're in ketosis, but don't spill excess ketones

There is,  but it's a different test and a different ketone.

I'm at 195 now, down from 215 Sunday before last. I had just got back from vacation, So maybe I was carrying a bunch of extra water weight. I don't see how it's possible to have lost so much otherwise. Either way, I'm visibly thinner and feel great.

If you don't have a gallbladder, can you still do Keto?

Yes, if it was a recent removal,  ease into it.

Forget doing it cheap, IMHO.  You will burn out doing that.

There's a reason restaurants favor high carb menu content. Carbs are cheap to get on the plate...both from an acquisition cost and a shelf life/waste cost analysis.  So they can add bulk to the dishes for pennies rather than killing their margins with fresh proteins and vegetables.

If you try to go too cheap, you will inevitably run into the issue of your menu getting stale.  As an example, you can only fix eggs so many ways before you get tired of them.  If you have a lot of variety in the rest of the dish, you handle the monotony of the same or similar proteins from day to day. But when the protein IS the bulk of the dish, and you aren't hiding it amongst a bunch of carb loaded sides, that monotony really becomes noticeable. At some point, you won't care whether it's an omelet or sunny side up, you'll just be tired of eggs.

I fight this battle with my wife all the time.  You can't go low carb without opening up the pocket book.  Eating fresh and trying to maintain variety in the menu costs money.  A lb. of spaghetti costs $0.99. While ground beef (70/30) costs over $2.00 a lb. and the spaghetti can sit in the pantry unrefrigerated for months at a time. Even if you pounce on sales and try to freeze it, the meat still has to be defrosted first.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for it. But there are real logistical and financial elements of the lifestyle change that matter.

So bigger is not better then?

I've only had 8 grams of net carbs today and I am never hungry when I shouldn't be.  Been doing keto for over 3 months and losing an average of 2 lbs of body fat each week.  6' tall and down from 237 lbs to 209 right now.  My blood pressure went from around 140/90 to the 122/73 range.  I expect to be less than 200 lbs when I go for my next doctor appointment and am actually looking forward to it and my cholesterol check.  Also been taking fish oil for high triglycerides...

With urine,  no.  Is just the excess acetoacetate that the body didn't convert to fuel/beta hydroxybutyrate.

So I should try to keep the urine low otherwise I am eating too much fat?

I need to get a book on this. I don't know what I am doing.

The lack of carbs puts you into ketosis, not the amount of fat.

First, I'm not AGAINST taking multi-vitamins.

But have you ever looked into why we think we need supplemental vitamin dosing?

There's a lot of unsupported conjecture regarding vitamins that creeps its way into even the mainstream of medical/nutritional thought.

I think you could probably argue that the need for multi-vitamins is no more scientifically supported than is the "fad diet" you are arguing against.

Second, these guys aren't advocating a temporary diet.  They absolutely ARE advocating a lifestyle change.  Quote me one post in this thread that advocates temporarily going low-carb and then returning to high-carb when they reach a weight goal.

"Returning to old eating habits will make you put back on weight!"  Well, no shit genius.  What do you think happens when someone temporarily adopts the traditionally accepted low-fat diet, loses weight, and then goes back to old eating habits?  The same freakin' thing!  Yet none of the proponents of the low-fat diets acknowledge that as a weakness of the low-fat diet.  So why the double standard?  Why does that criticism only get tossed out when someone mentions going low-carb?  Because the low-fat advocates need something...anything...to say about low-carb dieting to try and distract from the success of low-carb dieting.  They're just throwing crap up against the wall to see what sticks.  That's no more valid a concern with low-carb dieting than it is with low-fat dieting.

When someone starts throwing around the ole "temporary diet" argument, it tells me from the get go that they have a closed mind on the issue and aren't even bothering to act like they are listening to the other side's argument. They've already made up their mind and they're just spewing rhetoric trying to win an argument with noise rather than with actual proof.  

The sad thing is that many of the naysayers are in the medical and nutritional fields, but they can't be bothered to go back and actually question what they were taught. Some book told them that taking vitamin supplements was good for you and they never bothered to ask if there was solid scientific research to support that.  And the freakin' food pyramid?!?!  Where did that come from?

Nah, it's in or out with urine,  followed by a false negative later for some.    I'd suggest "keto clarity"

I've been doing keto for over 6 months.  For the last 5 months, I have been doing stronglifts 5x5 workout.  At first I was maybe eating 2000 calories a day, but when the weight I was lifting started to get heavy, I basically quit counting calories and ate as much keto food as I wanted.  I have been eating about 2500 to 3500 calories a day for the last 2 months.  I started to feel a little stronger and I still managed to lose weight at about 1 pound a week.

I do intermittent fasting where I don't eat until about 2pm because I'm not hungry and it's easier than eating breakfast.

At work, I drink a Ketochow shake.  I mix up 3 shakes at a time and drink one a day for my 2pm meal at work.  Some people drink these shakes for 100% of their food, but I like to cook some sort of meat for dinner every night.

If I go out to eat for something, then I will get a salad and not eat anything with carbs.  No tomato, crutons, or dressings that I don't know the carb counts of.

If my schedule gets disrupted where I can't eat my normal stuff, then there are always pork skins at every gas station.  I can also just extend my fast longer.

It's best to never cheat on the keto diet.  I've done low carb before and trying to have a cheat meal cause me to fail.  If I find myself craving something, then I will just eat something low carb and put it out of my mind.

Whenever I need to lose a little weight, I stop eating as much. Crazy shit, but it works.

Not just sodium.  Potassium and magnesium as well.

 

You're right,  crazy as shit. And not very smart, since it can slow you're metabolism, and doesn't really do anything for you.

Yeah,  I supplement mag. Not potassium though.  I leave that to diet

Lazy keto for four months now. Down 40 pounds from 290 to 250 @ 6'4". Wife is down great as well.

Easy cheap, tasty.

Wife thinks I am to thin now, may have to up my carbs

The pee strips?  If you're getting a reading, you're doing fine.

They will soon stop showing results, because as you adapt you stop peeing out your ketones and you start using them; you will need to switch to a glucometer and glucose AND ketone strips.  Expensive but a great investment.

Once you learn your feedback and associate it with readings, you can lay off the expensive keto strips, but if you can afford it, it's still quite handy to see what you react to.

On the glucometer, you want your ketone readings above 0.5; sweet spot is 1.5-2.something.

Magnesium Glycinate and water works for me

Yes it's mostly water, but it's a step you have to go through in order to start shedding fat.  Once you're solidly into ketosis, you can roll back your total intake and transition into burning body fat.  I'd say you're in already.  When you plateau, which might be soon in your case, you'll need to bring all your macros down while maintaining the ratio of about 80 percent fat, 15 protein, 5 carbs.

If you ramp your carb intake back up, you will also regain water weight.  The whole "re-feeding" thing really isn't necessary; of course, a slip is a slip.

The more disciplined you can be, the better it will go for you.

Sounds dumb. I worked hard for my muscles I don't want them to go away.

So the real question is; do you even lift, bro?

Respectfully disagree. . . . . . . . chicken legs/thighs, good quality pork and beef, good quality butter-- but add into the PLUS column savings on all the chips, etc.  On average you'll consume 400 calories less on keto per day than standard American Diet.

Also what WAS your beer budget?  You may spend a bit more on food, but you're saving elsewhere.  Then calculate the long term liability of health problems associated with 20-30 extra pounds of body fat---- and seriously no way this is a losing proposition.

How do you reach the fat macros?

Eating some kind of oil by itself....?

Pee strips are going to be meaningless for you, once you're past the "I'm IN!!!!!" signal.  You're already there.  You'll start getting false negatives very soon.

Glucometer is 29 bucks; get glucose strips and ketone strips on amazon