FAQ

A ketogenic diet is a way of eating that promotes a state of ketosis in the body. Ketosis is a metabolic state in which your body's energy comes from ketone bodies in your blood, instead of coming from blood glucose (sugar).

A standard ketogenic diet will have the following macronutrients. Eating in accordance with these macronutrient ratios will deplete your body of glucose and force it to start producing ketones. Your body will then use ketones for energy. 

• High Fat – 60%-80% of total calories come from fat.
• Moderate Protein – 15%-35% of total calories come from protein.
• Low Carbohydrate – 5% or less of total calories come from carbohydrates.

Once in a state of ketosis, your body will begin breaking down fat in the liver and converting it into ketones, which it will then use for energy. For a complete break down of the keto diet and its benefits, visit our Keto for Beginners Guide. 

Use our Macro Calculator to find out how much protein, fat, and carbs you should be eating to reach your goals. 

• Carbs: Staying under 20g of net carbs per day will ensure that your body is in a state of ketosis. From there, you can experiment with increasing/decreasing carbs and monitoring how you feel.
• Proteins: Strive to reach this number. It's important to hit your protein goal regularly because your body needs it to build and repair tissues.
• Fats: You don't have to get ALL the fats suggested with the macro calculator, but you should strive to. If you're full and haven't reached this macro, it's okay. If you find that you are hungry, you should absolutely eat more fats as it will satiate you. Don't forget, the whole goal is to train your body to use the fats as fuel, so you want to give your body that fuel. Are you having trouble consuming more fats? Try fat bombs! They not only satiate you while getting you closer to your fat macro, but they double as dessert, too! Check out our Fat Bomb Bible.

All macro calculators are going to give you different numbers based on the algorithms they use. That being said, you're best to just pick one and start there. The calculators are more of a guideline and good place to start before you tweak the numbers to fit your style of eating best. ​

The only way to know for sure that your macros are appropriate for you is through trial and error. Macro calculators do not factor in many lifestyle and health factors that can throw off the equation. It simply gives you a rough estimate of what is appropriate for MOST people of your heigh/weight/body fat percentage.

Yes. The reason some people don't need to count calories to lose weight on a keto diet is because the high-fat, low-carb ratio is incredibly satiating. Once keto-adapted, you may experience less cravings, less hunger, and generally a suppressed appetite. This will lead to naturally eating in a calorie deficit, which is essential for weight loss.

There is plenty of new research surrounding cholesterol and a high fat diet. We recommend you visit CholesterolCode.com for more information and resources. 

• https://www.drberg.com/blog/the-truth-about-cholesterol
• https://www.drberg.com/blog/the-cholesterol-myth
• https://www.drberg.com/blog/how-to-read-and-understand-cholesterol-numbers

Additional links that you might find interesting:

• https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/fears#cholesterol
• http://cholesterolcode.com/a-simple-guide-to-cholesterol-on-low-carb-part-i/

To find your net carbs, you will want to subtract the dietary fibers from the total carbohydrates.

You can also subtract the sugar alcohols if you are using a sugar alcohol that does NOT impact your blood sugar. Sugar alcohols that do NOT impact your blood sugar include Erythritol (which is our favorite).

You should NOT subtract the sugar alcohols from total carbohydrates if they DO impact your blood sugar.

In our article "Best Sugar Substitute", we test our blood glucose and ketones after consuming different low carb sweeteners. 

There are four apps that we’ve found to be very helpful. Cronometer, MyFitnessPal, Lifesum, and MyMacros+. Our favorite is the free version of Cronometer. Tracking is a little extra work, but worth it in the long run!

Usually, the nutrition information will be on the back of the product. However, a lot of foods that you will be consuming are whole foods like meats and vegetables which don't always have nutrition labels. Google is a wonderful ally for anything that doesn't have a nutrition label. Go to Google and type in "[Food Name] nutritional information". Google will automatically display the nutritional information/macros for you.

When switching your body's fuel source from glucose to ketones, there may be an adjustment period where you feel tired, achey, and moody. The keto flu can vary person to person. Don't let the phrase "keto flu" frighten you as it is simply a term to describe the effects you experience when going through carb/sugar withdrawals. A lot of these symptoms can be mitigated by staying on top of your electrolytes and hydrating.

• Swap the butter for coconut oil or avocado oil. 
• Use canned coconut cream to replace cream cheese. 
• Replace heavy whipping cream with canned coconut cream. 
• Use flax milk, almond, milk, coconut milk, or any other low-carb dairy-free milk to replace liquid dairy products. 
• Add nutritional yeast to add a cheesy flavor to dishes where you've omitted the cheeses. 

Keto is the metabolic state of one's body which requires a restriction in carbohydrates, so technically, no food is off limits. If you can fit it into your daily carb count and remain in ketosis, then it is okay for your keto diet. To find out if a food will easily fit into your keto diet, a quick online search for its nutrition info will tell you right away. 

Yes! To find out how you can still enjoy a drink at the bar with your friends, we have a couple of videos to help guide you through the world of alcohol on a ketogenic diet.

• Keto and Alcohol
• Keto Beer Review

The two flours cannot be substituted at a one-for-one ratio. Coconut flour is much more absorbent than almond flour, so if you want to experiment with the substitution, you will need to use more almond flour than coconut flour. 

A 3:1 ratio of almond flour to coconut flour is a good place to start. Depending on the brands of ingredients you use, it could be a 4:1 ratio. 

To replace eggs as an ingredient in a recipe, you could try making an egg replacement out of flax meal and water. Use 1 tablespoons flax meal and 2.5 tablespoon water. This will work in some situations but not all.

One of the most important things to remember with keto is that weight loss is not linear. As long as your weight is trending downward, you are succeeding! Your body can fluctuate daily for any numerous reasons ranging from hormones, menstrual cycle, or food mass sitting within your body. Don't let the daily numbers stress you out.

A 4 to 6-week stall is normal for our bodies as they are adjusting to the drastic change in diet and caloric intake. Just keep staying the course and try to focus more on how you feel day to day as opposed to what the scale reads. Sometimes your body could be changing even if you don’t see the change on the scale, which is why progress pictures and taking measurements are always beneficial on a weight loss journey! 

If you aren’t strictly tracking, now would be a good time to track a couple days to check in and see where your macros are. We can easily over-consume foods such as nuts and cheese and they add up quickly! Maybe even try cutting out some of those foods and see how your body responds.

The scale shouldn’t be the only determining factor on your journey to bettering your health. Sometimes our bodies need to internally heal before they can show signs of progress, such as weight.

Were you doing lazy keto or keto where you track your macros? If you haven't been tracking your macros, now would be a good time to kick your ketosis into gear and come out of your stall by doing that! To fully maximize your weight loss through keto, you can start tracking your macros by first calculating your macros with our macro calculator. If you can not see the calculator (which should be located just under the video), turn off your ad blocker and it will show up at that time. Additionally, if you have trouble with figuring out your body fat percentage, you can figure this out visually here. An estimate is good enough. It is advised that you recalculate your macros once a week as your body adapts and changes. As you lose weight, your macro numbers will change.

Also, it never hurts to go back and review the basics!

Everyone loses at a different rate and you’re best not to compare yourself to others. It may just take longer for you body to adapt and adjust or you may not have as much weight to lose so what you’ve lost is completely normal. If you have any medical conditions or a lot of metabolic damage the process could also be slower. Also, are you tracking your calories? If not, that could be a good thing to do for a couple days to see where you’re at and maybe adjust those a bit. You aren’t doing anything wrong, however, just stay the course and focus more so on how you feel as opposed to the scale!

Intermittent fasting is not about what you eat, but WHEN you eat. Naturally, everyone fasts for about 6-8 hours every night while they are sleeping then they wake up and eat breakfast (break-fast). The most popular intermittent fasting method is to have an eight-hour eating window and a 16-hour fasting period. Do some online research to find out if fasting is something that may benefit your lifestyle. We have experimented with intermittent fasting in the past and have concluded that we prefer to just listen to our bodies and to eat when we're hungry. Some days, we have breakfast at 10am, some days we have it at 1pm. Watch our Intermittent Fasting video and our Prolonged Fasting video. 

We usually say that if it has calories (fat, carbs or protein) that it will break your fast. However, there are different fasting protocols so the type of fast you are following will determine whether a food breaks your fast or not.

Check out Our Video about different intermittent fasting protocols. 

Yes. To gain muscle on a keto diet, you must eat in a calorie surplus and do some form of weight training. 

Absolutely! Calories largely impact whether you lose or gain weight. You can eat keto and stay the same weight, if that is your goal. If you eat the amount of calories your body needs you will likely not lose weight and therefor maintain the weight that you are currently. 

Use our Macro Calculator to calculate what your maintenance calorie level is. 

We don’t generally recommend exogenous ketones as most people attempt to use them for weight loss. They aren’t for weight loss, but more so for endurance and even focus enhancement. We’ll take them occasionally to boost performance in the gym or when we have a long day of work ahead. They are also filled with electrolytes so they are good in that regard. That being said, if you do want to try them there are some good companies we would personally purchase from, such as Perfect Keto and Ketologic. We do have a coupon code for Perfect Keto for 20% off – KETOCONNECT – but again, they aren’t for weight loss. We would say they are more of a nice to have item, if you have the disposable income because they can be pricey.

We don't recommend using the urine strips because they are so inaccurate. We think the best way to measure your ketones is through a blood ketone meter and we like the ones by at Keto-Mojo. The best rule of thumb for buying this sort of thing is not to get the cheapest monitor, but to find the monitor with the cheapest strips. So this deal is a good one!

All humans need electrolytes to survive. Many automatic processes in the body rely on a small electric current to function, and electrolytes provide this charge. On a ketogenic diet, it is common to experience a deficiency in electrolytes. If you find yourself exhausted, this is probably the culprit. 

Potassium, Magnesium, and Sodium are the electrolytes that you should make sure you are getting. 

Bulletproof coffee is a combination of butter, coconut oil OR MCT oil and coffee. In recent years, it has devolved into basically being any kind of coffee with lots of fat blended in. Not only are you benefiting from the caffeine in the coffee but you’re also getting an energy burst from the MCT oil. MCT oil is the fastest absorbed oil you can get your hands on, which makes it the perfect addition to coffee. Reason number two is that you’ll feel full for a long time! You will be energized and satiated. 

In our article "Best Sugar Substitute", we cover the pros and cons of a wide variety of sugar substitutes. 

The carbs in erythritol do not effect blood sugar levels and will not knock you out of ketosis. We subtract erythritol carbs when calculating net carbs. 

When making a significant change to your diet, hair loss is often a temporary side effect. You can read more about it here.

We have to stress that we are not doctors nor nutritionists. However, maintaining a ketogenic diet without a gallbladder is possible. We recommend the following articles for more information.

• https://www.ruled.me/how-to-follow-keto-without-a-gallbladder/
• https://www.perfectketo.com/keto-without-gallbladder/

"Keto Rash" is a normal side effect experienced by many (but not all) new keto-ers. It can definitely be annoying and somewhat embarrassing, but it’s not dangerous. Applying hydrocortisone cream can help with soreness/itching. Antihistamines can help, too. Check with a doctor if the condition doesn't subside. Tapering down the carbs slowly may also prevent this. For more information, we recommend the following articles:

• https://www.dietdoctor.com/keto-rash-people-itch-low-carb
• https://www.perfectketo.com/keto-rash/
• http://www.livestrong.com/article/482095-atkins-and-rashes

This can temporarily happen when you initial switch to a keto diet in large part to the decrease in dietary fiber. Here are a few things you can do for relief while your body becomes better adapted to a keto diet.

• Drink more water
  
• Add salt to your water.
• Eat more high fiber keto-friendly vegetables.
• Supplement with Magnesium Citrate.
• Try exercising

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