To experience the metabolic benefits of a ketogenic diet, you have to do a little bit more than just refrain from eating carbs.
Yes, carbohydrate restriction drives ketosis, but you also have to do what's necessary to get yourself into the optimal zone for blood ketones.
Reaching Nutritional Ketosis is super important because it sets you up for ketone-adaption, the state where the body prefers to burn ketones and fatty acids over glucose.
This isn't an easy state to reach, especially if you're making one of the top 7 ketogenic mistakes that most dieters make. In fact, even those who have been low carbing for awhile might not realize that they are doing Keto wrong.
Here's the problem:
Keto is a low-carb diet, but not all low-carb diets are Keto.
Keto is a specific way of designing and implementing your low-carb diet.
Keto is not Atkins, so it's not based on your upper carbohydrate tolerance level. It's based on finding your optimal levels for carbs, protein, and fats.
Since my background is Atkins and Protein Sparing Modified Fasts (PSMF diets), I don't always talk about what it takes to be successful on Keto, so in this post, I'm going to switch things up and describe the top 7 Keto mistakes that you might be making right now.
And then, I'll explain how to fix them.
1) Not Eating Enough Protein
This is the most dangerous mistake that people on Keto make.
Honestly, it is.
Along with eating too few carbs, I see lots of people running around eating 50 grams of protein, or even less. And not only are people eating skimpy portions of meat, eggs, and cheese, but they have made it their life's mission to convince others that they need to be doing the same thing.
No, you don't!
That's a recipe for muscle wasting!
Protein deficiency also comes with a host of other problems!
What is the number one reason why Dr. Phinney doesn't support regular and/or extensive fasting?
Because you can't stay in the optimal range for Nutritional Ketosis if you don't eat the right amount of protein that your body needs every day.
There are 8 essential amino acids that the body cannot make from other things. You need to eat those 8 essential amino acids on a regular basis, or your body will suffer.
Dr. Phinney's range of 15 to 25 percent of your maintenance calories in protein comes to about 0.8 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass that you have.
And often, a little bit more.
This is somewhere in the range of 72 to 120 grams of protein for the average ketogenic dieter, depending on your gender, height, and bone structure. This is no where near the 40 to 50 grams of protein that I hear quoted all the time.
When I tried Keto, I listened to the rumor that 50 grams of protein was all I needed to eat, and lowered my protein to 60 grams per day (more than a bit timid about doing so).
I stuck with that high-fat Keto diet for 3 months and during that length of time, I lost a ton of muscle strength.
Today, I still have not been able to get my strength back.
Protein does not turn into glucose unless the body has no other options!
And even when it does do that, it's gluconeogenesis.
Gluconeogenesis is demand driven and devoted to keeping your brain and heart alive and well.
When carbs are restricted, the glucose produced from amino acids is used to keep your blood glucose level from dropping too low. It isn't used for energy. Fatty acids are used for energy on Keto.
So if you aren't eating the optimal amount of protein to maintain your muscle mass, according to Dr. Phinney, then you need to fix that right away.
Ketosis is driven by carbohydrate restriction, not protein deprivation. Otherwise, you'll go into ketone starvation.
2) Not Eating Enough Carbs
The most popular definition of a low-carb diet is anything that's below 150 carbohydrates per day.
At that level, you definitely won't be in Nutritional Ketosis.
In Dr. Phinney's experience, you'll be lucky if you can eat 70 carbs a day and still manage to stay in the optimal zone.
However, this doesn't mean that zero carb is the way to go.
Not all overweight people are insulin resistant, so not eating enough carbs can be just as stressful on the body as eating too many.
The average low carber should be eating about 30 to 40 carbs per day, or more, once you've made it through the first month or two.
There are a few exceptions to this, of course, because those who over-secrete insulin during meals will have to stay at very low-carb levels, to make a carb-restricted diet work well for them, but this isn't true for the average dieter.
Look at Dr. Phinney's examples.
He never starts you out at 20 carbs.
In his videos and books, it's 35 because that is the amount of glucose your brain needs to function optimally on Keto. That's also the level you need to eat at to get into the optimal zone for ketosis.
Optimal is the key word here.
With Dr. Phinney, optimal is where it's at.
If you're not feeling good, or not feeling better than you felt before going Keto, if you don't have lots of energy, then there is something wrong with the way your Keto diet is designed.
Try moving to 35-net carbs and see if you feel better.
3) Eating Too Much Fat
Once you've set your protein intake to be adequate enough for your physical needs and found your optimal level of carbs, what's left in your calorie budget is your fat intake.
Most Keto dieters do this backward and set their fat intake first.
This is a huge mistake.
If you don't eat less fat than your body needs on a daily basis, your liver won't have any need to use the extra fat from your hips, waist, and belly.
It will just use what you're giving it.
If your protein is 20 percent of your calories, and your carbs are at 5 percent, then 75 percent is what you have left over. Eat that 75 percent in healthy fats, and you'll stay right where you are right now because there's no calorie deficit.
Dietary fat is how you control your calorie deficit. Fat is also how you control your rate of fat loss. You need to eat less fat than what you need to maintain your weight.
Dr. Phinney makes this extremely clear in all of his videos and books but few people are actually listening to what Dr. Phinney says.
In fact, the example he gives of a newbie just starting out on Keto, and excited to be on Keto, is only 25 percent fat for Phase 1!
As you relax your dieting mindset and move into Phase 2, your fat intake goes up slightly, but only if you've been under-eating fat before.
During my own weight loss phase, I ate only 60 grams of fat per day because that was my personal sweet spot for losing. That's based on having celiac disease, Graves' disease, and no gall bladder.
But don't just take other people's word for how much fat you should be eating per day. Even Dr. Phinney. Play around with the amount of fat you're eating and see if your weight loss picks up speed.
4) Using Too Much MCT Oil or Coconut Oil
This is extremely misleading.
People are putting this stuff in their bullet-proof coffee, protein shakes, and salad dressing because they have been told that MCTs or coconut oil increases weight loss.
No, they don't!
Coconut oil and MCT fats cannot be stored in the body, which is why they are so popular among Keto dieters.
The belief is that MCT fats can't make you fat.
This much is true.
If MCTs cannot be stored, then they have to be burned right away.
What you're not told, however, is that if the body is using MCTs and coconut oil for energy, then it is not pulling triglycerides out of your fat cells. It's using the MCTs and coconut oil instead.
Pulling out your excess fat is what you want to happen on a diet. You don't want to eat extra fat. You want to get rid of the fat you already have.
A calorie deficit is super important, especially on Keto.
If you're consuming MCT oil or coconut oil, try cutting back or eliminating it altogether and see what happens.
5) Believing the Keto Flu is a Sugar or Carb Detox
The Keto Flu can be as mild as a couple of leg or toe cramps to downright feeling awful, running a fever, and throwing up, depending on how badly your electrolytes are out of balance.
Desperate to see the numbers going down on the scale, many dieters believe that salt causes water retention and deliberately avoid it, making the situation of cramps or flu-like symptoms on Keto even worse.
Leg cramps and feeling awful are symptoms of a mineral imbalance in the body. The kidneys get extra proficient at dumping sodium when you go into ketosis, especially if you're only eating 20 carbs a day.
You are not detoxing from sugar or other carby foods.
There is no such thing.
You must replace the sodium that the body is getting rid of, as well as potassium, calcium, and magnesium, or you're going to get quite sick and quit Keto.
While many Keto dieters eat plenty of salty foods, such as bacon, cheese, pickles, and olives, you most likely will need to regularly use some salty chicken or beef broth, as well.
Don't limit your salt intake. Be generous with the salt shaker. And don't skip those vegetables. It will just make you feel even worse.
Fat loss is what you're after. Not water losses.
6) Expecting to Lose Weight Every Day
The huge weight losses that you see during the first couple of weeks on Keto are a reduction in glycogen, the storage form of carbohydrates, and some water.
That drop in weight is not body fat!
Once you have emptied out the glycogen and stored water needed to process it, your weight loss will slow down and be more comparable to other weight-loss diets.
The body can only mobilize and utilize a small bit of fat per day, what the liver needs to use to help keep your blood glucose level from falling too low. Or the ketones your muscles need to use during extensive exercise.
This will not always show up on the scale, even though it's happening every day.
This means you need to focus more on raising your activity and making healthier food choices instead of allowing the number on the scale to control how you feel about yourself for the day or week.
The aim of going Keto is to make the correction of body composition more gentle and easier to accomplish, due to the drop in hunger and cravings that comes from moving into Nutritional Ketosis and becoming ketone-adapted.
Weight is not just body fat. It consists of:
- skin
- hair
- nails
- body organs
- muscle tissues
- water
- blood cells
- undigested food
- body fat
Most people find high-fat diets to be extremely slow in taking off the weight, but it happens without being hungry all the time. That's the benefit of using Keto over calorie restriction.
You can't expect to lose weight every single day. That expectation will just make you feel miserable when Keto doesn't live up to its reputation.
7) Giving Up Too Soon
If you allow the number on the scale to frustrate you, you'll be more likely to want to quit Keto before you have a chance to see its benefits.
The body prefers using glucose over fatty acids or even ketones, so it takes a while to adapt to the switch in metabolic pathways.
Giving your body an ultimatum because you don't like what the scale is saying isn't going to work very well. It will just upset you because your body is in the business of equilibrium and that's what it's doing every day.
It is trying to stop what you're doing to it.
It's trying to re-balance the unbalance that you put into motion when you restricted carbs and calories.
Losing weight isn't easy.
Weight and body composition are directly related to what you do every day. Quitting and running back to the Standard American Diet (SAD) that got you fat in the first place isn't going to work any better.
While a low-carb diet isn't right for everyone, and I'll be the first to admit that, you do need to give the diet 2 or 3 months to work before quitting and throwing in the towel.
Sometimes, the body will be quite stubborn when it comes to switching metabolic pathways, especially if you've got a history of weight-loss diets behind you.
So don't give up too soon. Be patient, and give your body the opportunity to become fat-adapted before walking away.
The Keto Diet is Not the Best Choice for Everyone
I'm not sure why people tend to believe that Keto, or even Atkins, is the best choice for everyone who is overweight.
Keto is designed for those who have the ability to become ketone- and fat-adapted, where the body gets very proficient at burning fatty acids and ketones for energy instead of glucose.
Some people are never able to make that switch in metabolic pathways proficiently.
They just aren't.
These people tend to be insulin sensitive instead of insulin resistant, so don't think that Keto is the only option that is available to you.
It's not.
It's just that you need to do Keto right in order to see if it's benefits are useful for you, or not.
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