Gaining Control: How Tracking Macronutrients Can Help You Start and Maintain a Health Program

Gaining Control: How Tracking Macronutrients Can Help You Start and Maintain a Health Program

Embarking on a health program and sticking to it can be a daunting task, especially without the proper tools and support. As someone who has been steadily working on my health program for 17 years, I understand the challenges firsthand. One of the easiest and most effective ways to gain control over your diet and overall health is by learning more about the food you consume. It’s easy to be tricked by seemingly “organic” options in the grocery store that are often high in sugar and carbohydrates. This is where tracking macronutrients can make a significant difference. Let’s dive into the world of macronutrients and discover how they can help you take charge of your health.

What are Macronutrients?

Macronutrients refer to the three essential components of our diet: protein, fat, and carbohydrates. These macronutrients play vital roles in our overall well-being, and understanding their impact can help you make informed choices about your diet. Macronutrients are commonly measured in grams, and tracking them can be a powerful tool in achieving your health goals.

Using a Macronutrient Tracker

When it comes to tracking macronutrients, one helpful tool is the Cronometer app or website. Cronometer provides a daily food journal where you can enter your meals and track the macronutrients consumed. Initially, you may find it challenging to track macronutrients, but with the assistance of the Cronometer app, you can take your first steps toward gaining control over your diet. By the end of the day, you’ll have a visual representation of the total grams of fat, protein, and net carbohydrates consumed. Additionally, you’ll gain insights into the macronutrient breakdown of each individual food you eat.

Serving Sizes and Learning

Using a macronutrient tracker may require you to learn about serving sizes for various foods. This process can involve conducting Google searches or referring to resources within Cronometer to determine accurate serving sizes. At times, you may need to make educated guesses and continue learning as you go. As you become more comfortable with tracking macronutrients, you’ll develop the ability to assess whether your meals contain the right balance of protein to keep you energized and satisfied. Moreover, you’ll gain insights into which foods may cause energy crashes, brain fog, or night sweats. This knowledge allows for more flexibility in your diet as you can plan your meals based on your macronutrient needs. By learning the macronutrient content of your food, you’ll increase your understanding, gain more freedom, and experience less frustration in maintaining a healthy, whole-food-based diet.

The Benefits of Tracking Macronutrients

Maintaining healthy eating habits is just one of the many benefits of tracking macronutrients. You’ll also notice improvements in how you feel and make better progress on your health program. If tracking macronutrients feels overwhelming initially, it’s best to start by committing to record your food for a few days each week. By following these three key reminders, you’ll find the process more manageable and rewarding:

  1. Getting Started: The first step is crucial. Set a date to download the app and familiarize yourself with how to enter at least one meal. Celebrate this small success as you begin your journey.
  2. Consistency Matters: Don’t be discouraged if you don’t track your macronutrients every day. It takes an average of 21 days of repeating a behavior for it to become a habit. At first, commit to entering a single meal each day or aim for three days a week to overcome the initial learning curve.
  3. Honesty is Key: Be completely honest with yourself as you track your food. This journey is about self-discovery, so log all the foods you eat, even on days you might consider “good” or “bad.” Embrace this amazing opportunity to learn more about your dietary habits and make adjustments accordingly.

Simplifying the Process: Focus on Carbohydrates

If tracking macronutrients feels overwhelming, you can simplify the process by focusing primarily on carbohydrates. Everyone has different carbohydrate goals, but as a general guideline, most adults benefit from consuming fewer than 70 grams of carbs per day. Some individuals find even greater success by reducing their intake to less than 50 grams or even 30 grams. Increasing protein intake to feel satiated is a common occurrence, and that’s perfectly normal. By reducing carbohydrates, you stabilize your metabolism and experience reduced hunger and increased energy levels. Carbohydrates have a more rapid effect on our insulin and blood glucose levels compared to proteins and fats. When you consume carbohydrates, they are quickly converted into glucose in your bloodstream, triggering the release of insulin to utilize the glucose as energy. Consuming excessive carbohydrates and indulging in snacking can lead to high insulin levels, which often contribute to metabolic dysfunction. If you experience symptoms such as fatigue, weight gain, elevated triglyceride cholesterol, moodiness, digestive issues, or inflammation, you may benefit from a reduced carbohydrate diet.

Understanding Net Carbohydratesmacros-calculate-macros

Cronometer is an excellent macronutrient tracking tool because it helps you count “net carbohydrates.” Net carbohydrates represent the total carb count minus the grams of fiber in a particular food. For example, a medium-sized banana has a total carbohydrate count of 27 grams, with 3 grams of fiber. Therefore, the net carbs would be calculated as 27 – 3 = 24 grams. On the other hand, half a cup of cooked broccoli contains 5 total carbs and 2 grams of fiber, resulting in just 3 grams of net carbs. By keeping your carbohydrate intake under 70 grams per day, you can see how understanding net carbohydrates can be helpful in managing your diet effectively.

The Role of Fat and Protein

Contrary to popular misconceptions, fat and protein are not “bad” fuels for the body. In fact, they are essential for sustaining energy and overall well-being. Research indicates that low-fat diets are ineffective for weight loss, while moderate-fat or low-carb, high-fat diets can lead to successful weight management. In some cases, individuals may struggle with digesting fat and protein due to a liver and gallbladder that are sluggish from excessive carbohydrate and refined sugar consumption. It’s important to note that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to diet and health. Counting macronutrients provides a solid foundation to understand your dietary needs and make informed choices.

Seek Professional Guidance

If youIf you require assistance with tracking macronutrients or need guidance on starting and maintaining a health program, consider scheduling a visit with a healthcare professional. They can provide personalized recommendations tailored to your specific needs and goals. Understanding macronutrients and incorporating them into your routine is a powerful step towards gaining control of your health and diet. Remember, progress takes time and consistency, so be patient with yourself as you embark on this journey. By tracking macronutrients, you can make more informed choices, experience positive changes in your overall well-being, and develop a sustainable plan for long-term success. Share this article with others who may benefit from this information and encourage them to take charge of their health as well. Together, we can create a healthier, happier future.

 

The NHCAA

Becoming Fat Adapted

Becoming Fat Adapted

No matter what your current diet consists of, there is usually room for improvement.

I am still working to improve my diet. At the very beginning of my nutrition program, I became more aware of what I was eating. I had young kids. I would eat things off their plates without even really being aware that I was doing it. I’d finish their cheez-its and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I wasn’t even hungry. And, some of the foods I ate I didn’t even like. Bad habits were uncovered by simply food logging and paying attention.

A good way to improve your diet is step by step. An excellent first step is food journaling (especially in an app or computer-based program like Cronometer. Once you know your macronutrient intake (carbohydrates, protein, fat) averages, you can start targeting better choices and numbers to help you achieve your goals. 

Step two: As you make better choices (usually more protein, adequate healthy fat, lower carbohydrate) you eat less often. Less snacking lets your body burn fat and not sugar/carbohydrates as fuel. This step can take some time as your body adapts to this change. An individual can’t go from a standard American diet high in carbohydrates to being fat-adapted overnight. Sometimes during this phase, you may need to increase your protein and fat to help you feel more full and allow you to decrease carbohydrates.

Being fat adapted means that when your body needs energy it can go into a fat-burning state to function. As you get more fat-adapted you can adjust your protein and fat intake to meet your needs. If you are trying to build muscle or are very active you may need to increase protein and fat. If you are trying to lose weight you may need to decrease fat to allow your body to burn your fat as fuel.

Intermittent fasting is longer periods without food. Increasing the amount of time you go without food encourages cells to renew and repair. This can help with weight loss, inflammation, and healing.

My most current diet experiment was with carnivore eating.

The carnivore diet is eating just animal meat for all your nutritional needs. There are no fruits or vegetables or any processed carbohydrate foods.  Carnivore diet,

My husband and I did this starting in May. I did this elimination type diet so I could see what foods were not good for my body. I did it very strictly for three weeks and then started experimenting with what I could add in and still feel well. Within five days I was shocked by how good I felt and was in deep nutritional ketosis. While eating carnivore I lost approximately 8 pounds (my husband has lost 28 pounds). I noticed that my muscles were stronger and more defined without even adding exercise. We are still eating primarily (85%) carnivore in our house and my husband is having excellent results during marathon training compared to previous years.

My opinion: being fat-adapted and cycling in and out of ketosis periodically is the ideal state of health and healing. Ask your Practitioner if you need help with your diet. We look forward to helping you on your health path.

Yours in health,
Kerry Cradit, B.S. Nutrition and Food Science

Good Fat Foods for You to Consume for Low-Carb or Ketosis Diet

Good Fat Foods for You to Consume for Low-Carb or Ketosis Diet

This is an article about high-quality, good fat foods for ketosis and low-carb diets.

Before I get into what those are though, I want to talk about the Atkins era. In the ’80s and ’90s, Dr. Atkins and his diet were pretty popular, but there were two things that was missing in his information related to eating fats.

Number 1: it’s most accurate and valuable to test ketones in the blood. Ketones are the fat that the body loves to burn more than any other fat: when you’re burning ketones, it’s called ketosis. To test for ketones in the body, Dr. Atkins was using “keto sticks,” which are little sticks that you urinate on, and they’ll tell you if there’s a certain quantity of ketones in the urine. Unfortunately, having raised ketone levels in the urine doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in ketosis. You see, if the level of sugar in your blood is greater than the level of ketones, it means you’re burning sugar. In order to be in ketosis, you have to have more ketones in the blood than sugar. With the way Atkins was testing, you might witness an increase in ketones from eating healthy fat foods, causing some of those ketones to spill over into the urine and make it seem, based on the keto stick reading, like you’re in ketosis, but if there’s still more sugar in the blood—something that can’t be measured using the keto sticks—then in fact you’re still burning sugar and are not in ketosis. Dr. Atkins missed this simply because there didn’t exist the correct technology at the time. But now it exits! You can buy something [link/product name] online to measure ketones in the blood, and compare that with glucose

Number 2: Atkins was missing the concept of eating healthy food that’s not filled with chemicals. He recommended artificial sweetener, other preservatives, and processed food. As a matter of fact, they still make Atkins bars, and they’re filled with chemicals. You want to avoid that. Of course, it was more okay in the ’70s when most of the food was pretty good, but now our food is a disaster, so you want to eat as cleanly as possible

Those are the things Atkins was missing. One more note before I get into the list of fats: ketosis is not the same as ketoacidosis. Ketosis is simply burning fat, whereas ketoacidosis denotes a Type 1 diabetic that’s dying because his or her glucose and ketones are out of control. The ketones might be 25, not 2.0 and the blood glucose is 350, not 100. Ketoacidosis is very dangerous. Saying ketosis and ketoacidosis are the same thing is like saying cat and car are the same thing: the words are similar, but obviously a cat and car are very different things.

Good-Fat-Foods-lunch

Here’s the list of fats, broken into a couple of different categories.

The first category is fats that are really good for when you’re fasting. Let’s say you’re skipping breakfast and doing what’s called intermittent fasting: you eat dinner at 6:00 p.m., and your next meal’s at noon the next day. You just went 18 hours with no food. That’s intermittent fasting. These fats can be consumed while you’re fasting around 8:00 a.m. or 9:00 a.m. to help yogurt through it.

  • MCT oil – which stands for medium-chain triglyceride oil (in fact, all of the fats in this category are medium-chain triglycerides, meaning they pass into the brain easily to feed it, as opposed to long-chain triglycerides, like what’s in bacon or steak).
  • Coconut oil
  • EVOO
  • Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  • Avocado oil
  • Fish oils- Butter
  • Bone broth

All of these you could just drink, or for the coconut oil, eat it with a spoon

The next category is healthy fats that have some carbohydrates or protein in them. You’d consume these during your eating hours since otherwise, they would break your fast

Good-Fat-Foods-meal

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Olives
  • Avocados
  • Organic pasture-raised eggs
  • Fish eggs
  • Nuts, seeds
  • Nut butter
  • 100% chocolate – If you find a chocolate bar that’s 90%, that means it’s 90% chocolate, 10% sugar. If your chocolate bar is 75% chocolate, then it’s 25% sugar. This is 100% chocolate. It’s bitter, but it’s full of fat.

The next category is dairy. Dairy’s very valuable for its fat. If your body can’t handle dairy, if you’re lactose intolerant or it causes a runny nose, then this category isn’t for you.

  • Full-fat cheese, including cottage cheese. Raw and/or organic is best.
  • Yogurt, full-fat with no added sugar
  • Grass-fed butter or ghee (clarified butter)
  • Kefir, which is a thick, fermented dairy, full-fat of course. It’s a bit bitter. You can buy kefir that’s full of sugar and is low fat—don’t bother.
  • Whole milk, raw and from grass-fed animals. Some people are drinking goat’s milk. In any case, you want it to be as clean as possible, and not skim milk and not 2%. Skim milk is like drinking Gatorade with the amount of sugar that’s in it. You have to go with full-fat.

The final category is meat and fish.

  • Red meat: steak, pot roast, beef
  • Fatty chili
  • Brats, sausage. You can go to a store and find all-lean brats and lean sausage. It’s dry, and it’s not very satisfying. You want to go with a higher fat brats and sausage. It has to make you happy.
  • Bacon. There’s turkey bacon, which has basically no fat, and then there’s regular bacon. If you’re going to eat bacon, you have to go with the full-fat bacon. This is to get your body into fat-burning mode; we’re trying to reduce the protein and the sugar.
  • Fats and organ meats from organic, grass-fed animals
  • Whole fish that’s fatty, like salmon. These fish swim deep in the ocean where it’s cold. Preferably the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific

At the very least, you want to get into ketosis a few days a year. If you’re in ketosis four days a year, you’ve turned off bad DNA, cancer DNA, heart disease, diabetes. If you’re an endurance athlete, you should be in ketosis 15 hours every day. It’s a gradient, depending on what you want to do.

Start incorporating a healthy fat diet into your life!

Yours in Health,
Dr. Darren Schmidt

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Best Diet for Fatty Liver & Diabetes

Best Diet for Fatty Liver & Diabetes

There are two subjects that people have been talking about on YouTube: fatty liver and insulin resistance related to eating fat and ketosis. Two doctors that I watch, Dr. Greger and Dr. Berg, have talked about this, but I need to put in my two cents because there are some missing data. Let’s dive into the two topics and discover the best diet for fatty liver and diabetes.

1. Keto and Fatty liver

Dr. Greger says that chronic disease is fat deposited in the abdomen and in the organs of the abdomen, and I agree with that; that’s a true statement. His next statement, however, is that in order to prevent that, you have to go vegan, and that isn’t true. In fact, ketosis is better at cleaning up all that fat.

Dr. Berg has read his Guyton physiology textbook in his videos, and, reading from the textbook, he says that ketosis is a low insulin state, which results in fat deposition in the liver. There’s new research that disproves that—check out the link below—and then think about it logically: when you go into ketosis and your body’s burning fat, all the cells are burning fat. Fat is pulled from everywhere. Ketosis won’t pull fat from everywhere except your liver or put fat in your liver while it’s cleaning everything else up… that doesn’t make any sense. Ketosis is going to clean up everywhere, including your liver.

I talked to a guy yesterday on the phone, and he bicycles for exercise, and some days he’ll do 100 miles or 200 miles in one day. And he told me that the last time he biked, at mile 120, he got this energy suddenly, and then he started passing everybody. That’s because, at that moment, his body went into ketosis. During that time bicycling in that great state of health, in the middle of a 200-mile bike ride, was his body creating chronic disease by depositing fat in the liver? No, it was cleaning up the liver.

Likewise, if you go into ketosis after four days of fasting, and now you’re on day six or seven or eight, your body isn’t creating disease by depositing fat in your liver! There are many benefits of ketosis because it’s cleaning the liver and cleaning all your organs. Fatty liver disease is actually solved by ketosis.

In the link below, there’s a study showing that there’s a noticeable improvement in the fatty liver problem in just three days of ketosis. That’s ridiculously fast. A nutrient that helps with cleaning up fatty liver, by the way, is choline, which is in dietary fat, and can be found in supplement form too.

2. Insulin Resistance

Dr. Greger says in one of his videos that insulin resistance is when the cells are filled with fat, and that prevents insulin from working on the cells, therefore,  dietary fat is the cause of diabetes. That’s what he says, and it isn’t true.

So then, what is the cause of diabetes? It’s sugar consumption. Keep in mind, however, if you add dietary fat into the equation, and you’re eating sugar plus fat, now that’s the worst thing you can do.

Dr. Berg had a rebuttal to Dr. Greger, and Dr. Berg had his physiology textbook out, and it says, basically, that there are different causes of insulin resistance. His rebuttal is that nowhere in the textbook does it say that fat in the cell is a cause of diabetes. You can argue back and forth about who’s right, is it Berg or is it Greger—Greger has newer information, new research—but the point is, the solution to insulin resistance is always the same: ketosis.

If it is
the fat in the cells that causes diabetes, how do you get the fat out? You go into ketosis and it cleans it out. Ketosis cleans the cells of fat, it cleans the liver of fat, it cleans your organs of fat, it cleans your body of unwanted fat.

A study on ketosis:

I was at a seminar in January of 2017 called Low Carb USA in Florida. There’s this particular study I want to reference. In summary, there were three categories of mice, one was on the  Western Diet (WD), the second group was on a ketogenic diet (KD), and the third was the control group (standard Rat Chow). At the conclusion of the experiment, they sacrificed the mice, weighed the organs, and looked at the health of the organs, and tested the blood. They had opened up their abdomen, and you can see that the high carbohydrate mice had fat embedded in their abdomen and the organs looked sick—they looked brown when they should have been pink. The ketogenic mice were lean throughout and their organs were pink and healthy. The bottom line is, if you want to solve either of these problems like fatty liver or insulin resistance, do ketosis! It can be a wonderful fatty liver and diabetes diet.

https://www.ketogenic-diet-resource.com/fatty-liver-disease.html

Dr. Darren Schmidt

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Fasting Mimicking Diet Food Options Other Than Avocados

Fasting Mimicking Diet Food Options Other Than Avocados

The Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD) is the easiest and fastest way to get into ketosis. The benefits are that you usually don’t have any keto flu symptoms, brain fog, and/or tiredness.

Eventually, your body slips into ketosis, sometimes by the end of the first or second day! If you do it for five days in a row, you’ll get deeper and deeper in ketosis. At my practice, we’ve had dozens of patients do the FMD diet. I’ve had a number of people on my YouTube channel do this and are experiencing the benefits of weight loss as well. I’ve heard from many people say they don’t like avocados, which is one of the primary foods used in the fasting mimicking diet (FMD) method I outline in one of my videos, so in this article I want to provide other food options to substitute.

The fasting mimicking diet I’m referring to involves the daily consumption of only two avocados and two green drinks for five days. The green drink is powder you buy at a health food store and we also sell it at my practice. It’s called Greens First Pro. I’m not talking about juicing kale and celery and romaine lettuce, because with that the carb total is too high, especially with kale. The goal is to get the most nutrition with the least number of carbohydrates.

Around 1910 to 1915 the federal government closed the fasting clinics that were all around the United States at that time. Fasting cured a lot of diseases back then, and it still does, but it was especially known to end childhood epilepsy. Because of the closures, in the 1920s the Mayo Clinic had to reproduce the results of fasting with a diet which they called “the diet that mimics fasting”. Later it became known as the ketogenic diet. More recently, Dr. Valter Longo has made “the fasting mimicking diet” popular with a specific program called “Prolon”. The point is that ketosis and the FMD have been around a long time and many people have benefited from it. Basically, when you are fasting or mimicking fasting, you’re burning more fat than protein or carbs. To achieve that, protein and carbs need to be lower in ratio to fat.

To explain further, I would like to share an equation that is super important! It is a stable piece of information that you need to always know and apply while doing the FMD. The equation of: quantity + quality = vitality. For this article, I want to focus on quantity, not quality. I watch other people on YouTube and read blogs, and a lot of doctors aren’t getting the quantities correct. They’re talking about the quality of various types of food, which of course is important, but if you neglect the correct quantities, you prevent yourself from getting better results, faster.

The point is we’re going to get it right the first time. So, I’m going to outline two categories of food. In the first category are the best FMD foods for ketogenesis, and in the second category are the foods that you might think are ketogenic or we hope they are, but in fact, they’re not.

We’re going to talk about fat versus protein plus carbs, and then the calories. For example, one avocado is approximately 227 calories, and when you do that twice a day for the fasting mimicking diet, you’re at about 500 – 600 calories. Thus, an avocado only diet isn’t a great idea.

The green drink is going to have calories, so you might be up to 800 calories a day. So, it’s a low-calorie diet, but it’s fine because your body slips into ketosis and starts burning the fat that you’ve been storing for many, many, years.

The ratio of fat versus protein plus carbs with the avocados and green drink is 4:1, which is very ketogenic and we want to shoot for at least 2:1 ratio. If it’s 1:1 it can be ketogenic for some people but not for everybody. So, first off, you’ll want to use an app that gives you the fat, protein and carb count (macros) so you get it right the first time. Cronometer is the app I use to find these numbers, and you can use Cronometer, too. Please do so for your own knowledge and information. It’s free. I am using it for the examples below.

Table showing fasting mimicking diet food options and their nutritional value.

Let’s talk about other FMD foods besides avocado. These are the FMD foods that fit in the first category, the foods that are excellent for getting into ketosis. The first one is four tablespoons of macadamia nuts. That’s 240 calories and we’re trying to stay around this mid to low 200 calorie mark. Basically, you would have this quantity twice a day in your fasting mimicking diet. The ratio here is 25 grams of fat to 4 grams of protein plus carbs. So it’s about a 7:1 ratio with the macadamia nuts and that’s better than the avocados.

Better yet would be five tablespoons of heavy whipping cream. That’s 225 calories and is basically a 7:1 ratio. That’s 27 grams of fat to 4 grams of protein plus carbs. Two tablespoons of butter are 200 calories, but here we have 22 grams of fat compared to 0 grams of protein plus carbs. Butter is very, very, ketogenic. It beats all of these, as does coconut oil, avocado oil, and macadamia nut oil. These oils are all very ketogenic. So, keep that in mind because you can add these oils to any food to try to raise up the fat content.

Guacamole is the next substitution for avocado. One serving of guacamole is 287 calories, and it’s 24g fat versus 12g protein plus carbs. So, it is ketogenic because it’s a 2:1 ratio. Guacamole is not the same as avocados unless you make your own and you do it right.

How about ice cream? We all want ice cream to be ketogenic. But from Cronometer it says that there are 15 grams of fat versus 36 grams of protein plus carbs. It’s got too much sugar. By a lot. You can get a no sugar ice cream and see what those numbers are. Just look it up yourself on Cronometer. In one cup it’s 282 calories.

Next, we have different types of nut butters. Three tablespoons of hazelnut butter are a 2.6:1 ratio, which is pretty good. That’s 270 calories. Two tablespoons of almond butter is a 1.5:1 ratio. That’s not bad.  Two tablespoons of peanut butter are 1.3:1, that’s not as good, but it’s still better than the 1:1 ratio. It just depends on how your body reacts—I’m just giving you the numbers.

Lastly, I will give one example of cheese. In two ounces of cheddar cheese, there are 19 grams of fat to 15 grams of protein plus carbs… so, it’s okay. It’s better than a 1:1 ratio. But if you eat cheese all day you may not get into ketosis unless your body has already been fat adapted and the mitochondria in your cells transfer easily from sugar burning to fat burning. But if you’re new at this, and you’re trying to get into ketosis, cheese is not the food for you to start off with. You want to go with avocados (if you like them), macadamia nuts, heavy whipping cream, butter, and oils.

This is workable and if you need to, do it on a gradient. Do it at what rate works best for you. I do have a video on getting into ketosis on a gradient called Benefits of Ketosis by Degree.

I hope these fasting mimicking foods help you to do the FMD diet and getting into ketosis fast! The benefits of these fasting mimicking diet foods are numerous! You may think that it might be weird that there are people that don’t like avocados… well, I don’t like them either. 🙂

If you want a device to measure your ketones I have one to recommend that works really well: it’s called Keto-mojo. It’s a blood test that you do at home. I have a video about that too called Keto-mojo over Precision Xtra for testing blood ketones.

Darren Schmidt, D.C.

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Unlocking the Power of Macros: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Ketosis

Unlocking the Power of Macros: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Ketosis

When it comes to embarking on a ketogenic diet, many individuals feel overwhelmed and unsure of whether they are doing it correctly. Questions like “How do I calculate my macros for ketosis?” or “What am I doing wrong?” often arise. If you’re in need of assistance with changing your diet, calculating your macros, and identifying what you need to do for success, follow the three steps outlined below to set yourself on the right path.

Step 1: Learn Your Macronutrients

Understanding the composition of your food is key to achieving ketosis. Start by using an app or a macronutrient book to track your daily intake. We recommend using the Cronometer app as it conveniently goes wherever you go. However, other apps like My Fitness Pal are also useful for counting macros. Regardless of the tool you choose, the goal remains the same: record the total net carbohydrates, protein, and fat grams you consume each day. This step is about learning what you eat on a regular basis, identifying patterns, and gaining a deeper understanding of your macros.

Step 2: Alter the Quantities of Foods You Eat

After a few weeks of tracking your macros, it’s time to make sense of the data. Create a grid pattern and write down the totals for each macronutrient category on a daily basis. Take a close look at the numbers and observe any patterns or trends. Did you consume too little fat, resulting in excessive hunger? Did you go overboard with protein, leading to weight gain or bloating? By examining your own macros, you can identify areas that need adjustment. If you find it challenging, don’t hesitate to seek guidance from your practitioner. Many successful patients bring their macros grid to every visit, enabling their practitioner to provide valuable insights and recommendations. Remember, counting macros is all about learning and taking control of your dietary choices to optimize your health.

Step 3: Measure Your Body’s Response

Now that you have a handle on your macros, it’s time to measure how your body responds to your dietary changes. This is where a ketone and glucose meter comes into play. We recommend using the Keto Mojo meter, and you can conveniently purchase it at NHCAA. Every night, two hours after your last meal (including water and supplements), measure your blood ketone and blood glucose levels. Record these measurements alongside your macros. To further analyze the data, learn how to calculate the Glucose Ketone Index (GKI) using the following formula: Glucose divided by 18.016 divided by Ketones = GKI.

Aim for a GKI between 0.7 and 8.0 as your initial goal. A GKI of 0.7-1.0 indicates true ketosis, which is beneficial for health concerns like seizures. In the range of 1.0-8.0, many patients experience positive results for mood stability, hormonal balance, and skin issues. If your GKI exceeds 8.0, you are no longer in ketosis, indicating the need to adjust your carb, protein, and fat intake. Other factors such as sleep, hormones, and overall health can also affect your ability to reach a state of ketosis. If you’re struggling to achieve a GKI of 0.7-1.0, bring a month’s worth of data to your practitioner to seek guidance. They may recommend incorporating intermittent fasting, high-carb days, the 5-day fasting-mimicking diet, a carnivore diet, nutritional supplements, or other variations to optimize your success.

By consistently implementing these three steps, you can make the most of your health program. Collect and present your data to your practitioner during your visits to receive personalized guidance and support. With effort and a willingness to learn, gather information, and make changes, you’ll establish sustainable and repeatable results on your ketogenic journey. Remember, knowledge is power, and taking control of your macros is the key to unlocking the full potential of your health.

The NHCAA

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