NK - July 2013 Version

Weight today 149.0

Weight this morning = 135   Meat and egg fast works. I'm going to do the M/E fast today and tomorrow and see where that gets me.

I ate a few more carbs than normal on Sunday, which took me out of ketosis, but I am back in this morning.

Hooray! Well done you!!!

Wow!! So awesome Cheryl!!! Woohoo!!!

Almost forgot about this. To me, they taste like a cross between a peanut and a soynut. Wish I could eat the chocolate ones

WOW--Sweet 

WOW!!! Congratulations Darin !

Calories

Determining starting calorie levels can be a challenge. I think it is best to start high and work down which is the opposite of what you hear practically everywhere else around the internet, LC sites included.

Your goal weight calorie expenditure should be about 2100 daily --- (135/2.2)*35 = 2147. Your current weight calorie expenditure is 2500 to 3000 per the formula --- (188/2.2)*30&35 = 2563-2990. So a good starting range is your goal weight expenditure to the low end of your current weight expenditure --- 2100 to 2500.

However, an acrimonious troll on another forum pointed out, rightly so, that Dr. Phinney did not qualify his assertion about caloric expenditure. To wit, what about women, men, age and health conditions. I agree with the troll (which might make a few regulars faint heh) but as I said then, these are just starting points and I firmly believe that the best strategy is to start high and work down.

You could set 2150 as your start point ceiling. That is your expenditure at goal weight and it would be a deficit at your current weight and it is probably a reasonable deficit too.

I don't think the 45 minutes of walking is a player in the calculations other than the fact that you are not sedentary like a grossly obese person might be because of their weight.

Do you have any health conditions or take any meds, OTC or Rx? That can greatly impact things. Cheryl has a thyroid condition and she eats about 1400 calories to lose weight. Her goal weight is 130 and according to the formula she should be able to lose weight at about 1800 to 2000 calories.

On the other hand, I am able to lose weight eating 2500 to 3000 calories which is in line with the numbers the formula produces. (175/2.2)*35 = 2784 and (175/2.2)*30 = 2386 using 175 as my ideal weight and being active/sedentary because I weigh more than 175 and I am therefore eating at a deficit.

I think that when you are first starting out having a very small or no deficit gets your body ready to burn fat. A deficit of any kind is a stress to the body and if you are overweight your body is already stressed. So starting at parity while becoming keto-adapted (for NK) or adjusted to LC (for vanilla LC) gives your body a chance to acclimate and minimizes the stress impact when you implement a reasonable caloric deficit.

Protein

Protein is a bit easier to figure. (135/2.2)*1.5&2.0 = 92 to 122 grams a day. Just in case you are unfamiliar with what this means, and a whole lot of people are, it is protein grams not grams of meat. Meat has generally 7g of protein per ounce. But different meat has different levels and the range is something like 6 to 9 grams per ounce. So if you are logging what you eat you can use the actual protein content of the protein source. If you are ballparking it you can use the 7g rule of thumb and be reasonably accurate. A few items that are mainstays on your menu are worth looking up so you know exactly what they are, like eggs which are right at 6 grams.

What Phinney and Volek outline in the A&S books is 1.5g to 2.0g per kg of reference weight. However, according to Jimmy Moore when he was a guest on another person's podcast, Dr. Phinney apparently told him off mic that he favors 1.0g to 1.5g per kg of reference weight. I emailed Jimmy Moore about that and he was very polite but non-committal lol. He get roasted mercilessly by adversaries of LC and he doesn't know me from Adam so there ya are. But what he said in the podcast was very clear and if I figured his protein intake he is in the 1.0 to 1.5 grams range rather than the 1.5 to 2.0 grams dictate. He tests his blood ketones (BK) and he reduced his protein intake per his BK readings.

For you that means your floor would be about 62g or protein a day for a range of 62 to 122 grams. Again, I think it is best to start high and work down so I'd start at the 92g and work down if needed. Unless you are testing BK in which case you could adjust your protein grams rapidly. But the strips are expensive and with a little patience you can probably figure it out through experimentation. I've never tested my BK.

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Coconut oil in coffee is an acquired thing for sure. It has a strange mouth feel when you first start doing it because CO is oil. It will tend to go straight to the top of the cup of coffee. You can stir before sipping to incorporate it while drinking or just drink as is.

I use about 2 to 3 ounces of CO in about 20oz of coffee. I use about 2 to 3 ounces of HWC too. But that makes my morning concoction about 600 to 900 calories. If I want to shoot for a bit lower calories for the day, and I remember to do it, I tweak the CO down and sometimes the HWC down. For example, this morning I tweaked CO down to 48 grams and the calories are about 650 because I know I am going to be eating fatty pork ribs today and I want to keep my calories under 3000 for the day.

We don't have a recipe thread for it but I'll create one because there is a lot of variety in how it is done and there is actually an official recipe called Bullet Proof Coffee.

 Wahoo Darin!!~! :jumpjoy:Fantastic!
Those ribs must have been the BOMB!

She's right about that, don't hesitate to ask questions because getting NK right is a very individual thing and other people can see things about what you are doing that you might miss

Here's how I have done it yesterday and today. 

Breakfast: 1 Bulletproof coffee (coffee, 1T butter, 1T CO) with 1 egg added (using a blender, it all comes out frothy and creamy--no issues with oil or cooked egg bits)

Snack 1: 2 hard-boiled eggs, black coffee

Lunch: Yesterday was 1 hard-boiled egg + 2 turkey burger patties; today was 1 hard-boiled egg + leftover roast chicken (about 1 cup--I probably should measure grams for precision but I don't)

Snack 2: 1 serving pork rinds, black coffee

Dinner: Yesterday was roast chicken (approximately 1-1.5 cups) + 1T CO; today will be seasoned beef strips (again, approximately 1-1.5 cups) + 1T CO


So I'm eating 4 eggs/day and 2-2.5 cups of meat (approximately). I probably won't get too precise with measurements unless I have problems losing weight or body fat. I'm doing this fast for 2-3 days to kick-start the weight loss after knee surgery, working back into my normal exercise routines, and the water retention associated with both. I'd like to lose 10-15 more lbs and 9% body fat ultimately.

When ever any of us do a meat and egg fast it is usually just for a few days, maybe a week. Some people use it to kick start weight loss or help them get into ketosis.
Some people can really drop weight fast with M/E fast. I tried a few but I felt bad and like to eat veggies.

My current normal percentages (outside of this current 2-3 day M/E fast) are 60% fat, 30% protein, and 10% carb. I love fruit but typically limit fruit to berries and the occasional cantaloupe. I don't know what my typical monthly loss is on NK but last month was a net gain of 1 lb for me, mainly related to having knee surgery in mid May. But May (right before surgery) also saw me at my lowest adult weight ever, too. So there are ups and downs, but overall losses.

Actually, Atkins is not supposed to be meat-centric. I've been told emphatically that at least the last couple of books specifically address over eating protein.

The problem is that the low calorie way of thinking is so enmeshed in our society that it warps well formulated LC plans, like Atkins, into hideously deformed plans that are low calorie and fat phobic. If you believe the only way to lose weight is to keep reducing calories then the default reduction comes from fat. Since carbs are already limited that means that meat consumption becomes the primary macro and source of calories. You can eat a lot of baked chicken breast and keep your calories low at the expense of fat calories.

NK is a huge leap forward for LC because it defines a range of protein grams based on reference weight and is therefore an individualized goal. And the range is not set in stone so tweaking is always available to further refine the broad outlines provided by Phinney/Volek. And there is a defined BK range for further adjustment if needed or wanted. So while NK is a subset of LC it is far superior because of the limit on protein and ability to physically monitor blood ketone levels for fast very accurate feedback.

How sustainable is it? What about those 6 pounds?

As I posted in the What Is NK thread, NK operates at a level that allows the kidneys to dispense with the extra fluid they have to retain for higher total carb plans (including Atkins in most cases because of the Net Carbs).

So what happens when you exceed the threshold (~50g total carbs)? Your kidneys start retaining fluid again. Consider the 6 increase on the scale. 6 pounds is supposed to be about 21,000 calories. So, do you believe that she ate an excess of 5,000 calories over four day's time? An excess, mind you, so whatever maintenance should be plus 5,000 calories a day. To gain 6 pounds in 4 days she'd have to have been eating about 6,500 calories a day.

It is possible that she did indeed actually gain some body fat over that weekend even if her calories were a reasonable 1,500 a day while eating sugary fruit to abandon. Insulin spikes from carby foods promote fat accretion but it doesn't stop caloric expenditure so she had to be burning some level of calories. If any fat was actually gained, I think, it had to be measured in ounces not pounds.

But NK has an adaptation period where the body transitions to fat as the preferred fuel for energy. So how quickly will the 6 pounds come back off? It depends on the person and their physiology. I know one lady on another forum that could binge like that and take the pounds off in a couple of days once she was back on NK. I also know several ladies that binged and then struggled to get the new pounds off the scale. Probably their bodies were having a much harder time making the transition back than the first lady. Casey binges and is usually able to take the extra pounds off quickly for an example on our forum. My personal experience, when I had unsuccessfully quit smoking and gained 30 pounds - it took me a long time to readapt. Very annoying and frustrating but I stuck with it and got through it. So if you go off plan the best thing to do is get back on plan and be patient.

Most fruits are sugar bombs so it is best to avoid them. Once you get to maintenance you can experiment with them. Fruits that are LC friendly, like most of the berry family, are okay to experiment with just like with vanilla LC. Same with nut butters like peanut butter, almond butter, etc. Maybe you can enjoy them and maybe you need to wait till you are closer to goal. The only way to know is to experiment with things to see how they work for you.

2 pounds a month.

You know, I really did not answer incogneeto very well when he asked about how much everyone was losing and whether NK actually works for people.

The right answer is... NK works as well as any LC plan.

Sadly, it will not work for everyone just like LC does not work for everyone. Usually LC fails because the person fails to become informed about what they are doing and their plan becomes a faux-LC plan with tons of junk LC friendly carbs and binge eating from thinking that low calorie is a winning weight loss strategy. But even leaving that group to one side, some people just have a metabolism that just does not respond to LC but that is a very, very small set of people I think. Are they eating enough calories? Even if your LC menu is extraordinarily well formulated you are going to fail by starving yourself because the body's reaction to low calorie (too much of a caloric deficit) eating is virtually independent of what is being eaten. At some level it doesn't matter if your calories are coming from donuts or coconut oil if the gap between energy in and energy out is too big. The physiology behind LC will fail because the environment it is attempting to operate in is so stressed from lack of energy input.

Mostly it is about how well you work the plan and your expectations.

Read this post I made about expectations: nkevolution.freeforums.net/thread/56/thoughts-weight-loss

Do you expect to lose a lot quickly because you have a lot to lose? Really? Think about your logic there for a minute and you can see that one has nothing to do with the other. This is the logic that results in a very low calorie eating plan that will fail for 99% of everyone that tries it.

I've seen people who seem to be knowledgeable about LC in general actually say that very low calorie is smart because your body has tons of fat calories at its disposal. Let's take a closer look at this seemingly reasonable statement. First off, exactly how nourishing is fat tissue? The answer is, not very. It is calorie dense but as far as being nutritious it just isn't very nutritious. Relying on fat tissue to nourish your body cannot be a good plan. Yes, burn fat tissue. No, eat so little that you think you are going to force your body to burn fat tissue.

And very low calorie plans burn Lean Body Mass (LBM). Muscle tissue is destroyed with very low calorie plans. You start losing muscle tissue the first 24 hours of a fast. I mentioned that on another forum and gave proof of it from the first A&S book and a person told me I shouldn't post that because it might scare people away from fasting. *That* is the sort of thing that should scare people away from a diet forum. I'd prefer to know the risks of what I am doing than have someone decide for me what is an acceptable risk. I digress.

Wow, heh, I really did digress.

Dunno if 2 pounds a month is low for any given person. Whatever the amount is that you actually lose you still win because LC is such a healthy lifestyle.