NOT TRACKING PROTEIN

By far the biggest problem with a ketogenic diet is not tracking how
much protein you are eating. The far majority of people are simply
eating too much lean protein, which ends up kicking them out of ketosis.

Protein can turn into carbs by a metabolic process

called gluconeogenesis, meaning “making new carbs”.

The easiest way to avoid this mistake is by tracking your ketone levels to
see how you respond to different amounts and different types of meat.

If you have more fat with protein, it will slow this effect. So think fattier
cuts of meat, and less muscle meat.

Track your protein Check ketone levels Eat higher

and make sure to before and after fat proteins
keep at 15% or fewer protein meals (fatty beef instead of
total calories to make sure it’s not lean chicken breast)
kicking you out of
ketosis
NOT TRACKING CARBS
The first rule of ketosis is that you should be limiting the amount of
carbohydrates that you eat. The amount of carbohydrates you can have
that will allow you to stay into ketosis will vary per individual.

Many factors are at play here. Your metabolic history, lifestyle, types of
carbs and more will all affect how you will be able to process and utilize
carbs.

Just like with the protein, the easiest way to check this out is to test
ketone levels. As an easier option here, you can check glucose levels as
well to see how much your blood sugar increases after a meal. This
should not be more than 15-20 points.

A general rule of thumb to those who are new to ketosis is to start at

about 5% of carbohydrates for total calories. Once you are in a state of
ketosis you can start to ramp these up if you’d like to keep it low.

Use an app like Track with blood Adjust as needed

MyFitnessPal and glucose meter and
track for at least a ketone meter
few weeks, keeping
% of carbohydrates
under 5% of total
calories
NOT EATING ENOUGH FAT
When you reduce carbs and protein, it is sometimes hard mentally to eat
enough fat. We’ve been told all of our lives that eating fat will lead us to
heart disease and many other health problems, which is simply not true.

If you’re decrease two main sources of food (carbs and protein) you
need to drastically increase another source (fat).

The easiest way to make sure you’re getting enough is using an app like
MyFitnessPal, setting calories to where you need, and making sure you
are getting 80-85% of those calories from fat.

This will probably be difficult in the beginning! But if you track early and
get a hang of it, then you’ll be able to eyeball easily as you go along.

Use an app like Aim for 80-85% of

MyFitnessPal to track total calories from
how much fat you fat initially and adjust
should be eating in a later
day
NOT EATING HIGH ENOUGH QUALITY FATS
Just because you are in ketosis doesn’t mean you should be sacrificing
quality. A huge mistake of ketogenic diets is the lack of high quality fats.
Yes, you can get into ketosis by eating a very low carb diet that’s very high
in poor quality foods.

Fats are the backbone for making new cells and brain tissue,
neurotransmitters, hormones and most bodily functions. This means we
should be focused on getting as high of quality fats as possible.

And because the diet you are eating is 80-85% fat, the quality of fats you
eat matter even more.

Think of whole, non-processed food choices. This means grass-fed meats,

wild fish, cold pressed oils, avocado, nuts, etc. Not things that come in
super bright packages like low quality processed cheese and other dairy
products, bacon and other low quality frankenfoods.

The quality of fat Make sure your fat is

matters even more coming from a
when you are on a variety of whole food
ketosis diet sources with as
much omega 3 fats as
possible
NOT EATING ENOUGH CALORIES
One of the things that happen when people start eating more fat and less carbs and
protein and not used to it is spontaneously reduce calories. While this can be
effective in the long term if one wants to reduce body fat, this can be detrimental to
hormonal processes in the short term.

When you eat fat you are more full, which makes it easy to eat less calories, but that
doesn’t mean you should.

When your body has much less calories as an input, it goes into starvation and
hoarding mode. It thinks the trend will continue and so it hoards precious resources
(stored body fat, substrates to make hormones and neurotransmitters) and doesn’t
want to thrive.

Most of the metabolic and thyroid problems people claim are caused by a ketogenic
diet are actually just a low calorie problem.

At least at first, start the ketogenic diet trying to get a maintenance level of calories
and adjusting your metabolic processes before you start lowering overall calorie
intake. When you do, do so to normal hunger levels and don’t go too low.

Don’t try to lower Track to make sure Eat to hunger levels

calorie levels at first your levels of food
intake are high
enough and
consistent
NOT EATING FERMENTED FOODS
An easy way to boost your gut and immune system is by getting a
heaping serving of fermented foods. Many people skip on this class of
superfoods because they are so focused on fat, but fermented foods play
a very large part in digestion and overall health.

Try to include at least 2-3 servings of fermented foods a day from

different sources. This can be a few tablespoons of sauerkraut or kimchi, a
little bit of kefir or full fat yogurt, or raw pickles.

Try to include a bite

of fermented foods
with 2-3 meals a day
NOT GETTING ENOUGH MICRONUTRIENTS
When you start eating way more fat and less carbs, you end up getting
less plant diversity, which leads to less micronutrients.

Because fat is so filling and some vegetables contain carbs that can kick
you out of ketosis, it can be difficult to stay in this balancing act.

A trick to get more variety or to get a lot of nutrition in at once is steam

up a big pot of veggies or greens then add fat. The fat keeps you in
ketosis and helps with nutrient absorption, and cooking or steaming the
greens greatly reduces the bulk of food.

Another great way to get micronutrients is to eat more than muscle

meats of an animal, especially organ meats. Organ meats like liver and
heart are some of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet and go a
long way in shoring up nutritional deficiencies from not eating enough
plant diversity

Get a variety of Steam greens and Eat organ meats for a

plants add fat to get more nutritional
nutrition powerhouse
NOT TESTING BLOOD LEVELS
There are three primary ways to test ketone levels: through your urine, breath, or
blood.

Urine tests are good to detect initial boosts in ketone levels, but once your body
starts becoming efficient at using ketones, you don’t excrete as many through the
urine, so it looks like your levels are decreasing when they are actually increasing.

Breath tests are unreliable, slow and can be as good as guessing when it comes
to ketone levels.

Blood tests are the gold standard to tell exactly levels of ketones in your blood
that your body is using and the only way you can really see if something modifies
your ketone levels. Because you get a specific reading (in mmol) you can gauge
before and after meals, workouts or anything else you want to test. The only
downside is that the strips to test are a little expensive.

Testing a couple times a day is usually good enough to see trends if what you’re
doing is working appropriately.

You can use urine Test at least in the

meter at the AM and PM to see
beginning, but switch overall trend lines
to a blood meter
NOT EATING ENOUGH FIBER
Gut health is another important, and often neglected, facet of health that
gets ignored when people switch to a ketogenic diet.

If you think about probiotics as introducing new good bacteria for your gut,
think about fiber as the food for all of the existing (good) bacteria in your gut.
You actually have more bacterial cells in and on your body than you do
human cells, so you better treat them right!

A way to get more fiber in that is the same as getting a lot steamed greens at
once. This will vastly reduce the bulk of many vegetables. You can also make
“creamed” version of vegetables by simply blending up a bag of steamed
cabbage, kale, or spinach with half a can of coconut oil or some butter and
cream.

Another way is to make a huge fat smoothie but add a ton of vegetables. If
you add coconut milk, cream, nuts, eggs, and avocado to a smoothie with a
ton of spinach, kale, and cabbage, you’ll actually stay in ketosis pretty easily.
And it will taste like a milkshake. Bonus!

Steam veggies to Make “creamed” Make fat smoothies

reduce bulk and veggies as sides with tons of added
increase fiber veggies
amount
NOT TRACKING GLUCOSE WITH KETONES
High ketones are not enough. You should also be looking at your blood
sugar to see if you’re still insulin resistant and if your body is still trying
to use blood sugar as a source of energy.

Since you’re already poking your finger and getting blood, you might as
well get a glucose meter as well, which is a really good marker of your
overall metabolic state.

This will also help you see how much meals are affecting your blood
sugar and give you a good sense of what you should be eating and what
you should be avoiding.

The most therapeutic range of ketosis comes when blood sugar is at

the lowest and blood ketones are at the highest. Simply put, you don’t
get all of the benefits of ketosis when both your blood sugar and blood
ketones are elevated at the same time. You must test!

Buy a blood glucose Test in the AM and Try to get blood

meter PM and before and sugar down and
after meals ketones up