COMMON KETO MISTAKES

TRANSCRIPT

Keto has become extremely popular in the last few years, and there is good reason for that! It is incredibly effective at helping with weight loss, improving metabolic health, balancing blood sugar, as well as improving digestion, brain health, mental health, and lowering inflammation. But here’s the problem, when something becomes as popular as keto has become, people start finding ways of doing it that are not necessarily healthy, and food companies come up with products that “technically” fit in the keto macros but are not actually good for you.

So in today’s video, I’m going to talk about the most common mistakes I see people making on the keto diet.

Hi, thanks for checking out my channel. My name is Ginger and I’m a holistic nutrition coach. I post videos on improving blood sugar regulation and metabolic health using a whole food, nutrient-dense, high-fat way of eating. Be sure and hit subscribe, like, and feel free to share!

As I mentioned a moment ago, keto is now very popular with all sorts of people giving it a try. When done correctly, it can be extremely effective for a wide variety of health issues. Plus, it’s just a good way to eat to get or stay healthy.

The foods are amazing, you don’t have to count your calories, and you never need to be hungry. Those are just a few of the reasons keto is a great lifestyle choice if you’re sick and tired of dieting!

So let’s get into it, here is my list of the biggest mistakes I see people making on keto.

Letting the carb count creep up. In the beginning, we tend to be super vigilant about tracking our macros, which is great to really get this new way of eating down pat, get into ketosis, and get fat-adapted where your go-to fuel source is ketones. As time goes on though, we get comfortable and stop tracking, which is fine, but this is often when weight loss stalls happen. The first thing I encourage anyone to do that is encountering a stall is to track their macros for a couple of weeks.

It is really easy to let the carb count begin to sneak up. To begin snacking on things that may be higher in carbs than you realize. Or just assuming you know how many carbs are in something without looking it up. So the first thing to do is check those macros and make sure you’re not going over your carb tolerance.

Another mistake I see is people eating simply to hit their macros, and not actually because they’re hungry. One of the goals of switching to a keto diet is to become an intuitive eater. Most of us, eating a Standard American diet, eat because it’s mealtime, because we have cravings, because we’re bored, or to soothe ourselves.

Eating this way gets our satiety hormones all mixed up and not signaling as they should. Ghrelin, our hunger hormone is in overdrive telling us we’re hungry all the time, and leptin, our hormone that lets us know we’re full, stops giving the signal so we never feel satisfied.

When we switch our body’s fuel source to fat, and we focus on eating healthy whole foods, our hormones balance back out and start signaling as they should. So continuing to eat according to the clock no longer makes sense, and eating to hit our macros really doesn’t make sense!

We should be eating when we’re hungry, period. My recommendation is to always keep the carbs at or below your carb goal, hit your protein goal as close as you can, and then eat fat until you’re full. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.

If weight loss is one of the reasons you’re eating a keto diet, and you hit a stall, first try the previous 2 suggestions. If you’ve got those dialed in. Next, take note if you’re noticing your clothes fitting better. Measure and see if you’re losing inches. Often times we get really hung up on the number on the scale, and it is not always an accurate representation of what’s happening. You could be gaining muscle as you lose fat, and muscle weighs more than fat.

Or sometimes, for some reason, that scale just gets stuck for a time, but it does always catch up eventually. If you truly are at a stall though, and you’re not noticing your body composition changing, check what it is you’re eating. Are you eating dairy? Dairy tends to be inflammatory which slows down or stops weight loss. Consider cutting it out for at least a month and see if that breaks the stall.

The other biggie I see in terms of weight stalls is consuming nuts. On keto, it is easy to overdo it, especially if you’re baking. I don’t know about you, but if I don’t think ahead, count out how many nuts I want to eat, and putting the rest away, I can sit and eat a huge container without even being aware of it. So get super aware of how many nuts you’re consuming, and that includes nut flours and nut butter. And like dairy, consider taking them out of the diet for a month to see if that breaks that stubborn stall.

Ok, next is consuming too much fat. Yes, it is possible to consume too much fat on the keto diet. Calories don’t matter in the way that we’ve always been taught they matter, but they do still matter. Remember, your body always has to burn what you eat before it can tap into body fat for fuel. So if you’re overconsuming fat you’ll have a really hard time losing weight, and you can even gain weight. You’re going to hear me say this a lot, but listen to your body and only eat until you’re full and satisfied.

Ok, this one overlaps slightly with the previous, and might even sound like it contradicts, but I promise, it’s doesn’t, there are nuances. Another common pitfall is controlling portion size and counting calories. For about 100 years now we’ve been told to restrict our portion size and to count our calories. I’m going to link up above a video where I talk all about why calorie counting does not work.

But for today I want you to keep in mind that when eating the Standard American Diet, full of too many carbs, sugar, and processed foods, counting calories, and restricting portion size, all they do is keep us frustrated, demoralized, obsessed with every bite we take, and hungry all the time. It also lowers our basal metabolic rate which actually makes it more likely we’ll gain weight, plus we just feel awful all the time. When we eat a ketogenic diet though, once we get down our macros, and what our plate should look like, there is absolutely no reason to count calories or restrict portion size. Keep the carbs low, moderate the protein, and eat fat to satiety and you’re golden!

This is one I learned the hard way! Don’t drink your calories!! Adding fat to your beverages is delicious, and on occasion it is fine, If you’re fasting though, don’t kid yourself in thinking that a Bulletproof coffee full of butter or MCT oil, qualifies as “fasting”. I see people having these fatty coffees that equate to as many as 500 calories and think they’re Intermittent fasting. That is a meal and will break your fast! Your body will not be fooled because it’s liquid!

Another problem with fatty drinks is it’s easy to overdo it. When we drink our calories we bypass our hunger hormones and we never really feel full. This is when calories start to matter! Remember, you’ve got to burn through what you ingest before you tap into body fat. And too much for your body to get through will likely mean weight gain.

The next mistake I see is people continuing to snack. The food industry has convinced us that we need to snack or eat 5-6 meals a day. As humans, we were never meant to eat this often! Eating every few hours, or grazing all day keeps our blood sugar high which means we will have elevated insulin. This is a recipe for insulin resistance, chronic health issues, and weight gain!

If you’re not familiar with insulin resistance, I’ll link to a video I did all about it.

Another issue with eating too often is it’s very taxing on our digestive system. Digestion is a labor-intensive process for our body so giving it long breaks between meals is beneficial. We’ll feel better, sleep better, and our body will seriously thank us!

Ok, here’s a big one! Putting faith in food manufacturers. As I mentioned at the start of this video, the food industry is seeing this trend towards eating a keto diet so of course, they want to jump on the bandwagon and cash in on it. They find very sneaky and deceptive ways to make a product appear keto-friendly that is in no way actually keto-friendly or healthy!

They hide sugar using names that you wouldn’t recognize, besides sugar, they use other ingredients that are in no way actually healthy and truly appropriate on a keto diet. They love to use the term “net carbs” and they are very very liberal in what they subtract from the total carbs to get to the “net carbs”.

Here’s a good rule of thumb, if the product you’re looking at has more than 5 ingredients, it is likely not healthy and you should put it back on the shelf. And keep in mind, you are eating a keto diet to get healthy and the best way to do that is to eat whole foods in their natural form as much as possible. And that means staying away from foods with an ingredient list.

Another common mistake is the “cheat meal or day”. I really hate this concept, and I’ll tell you right now, if your cheat meal consists of junk food, you are setting yourself back and making everything much harder on yourself. You’re not only going to get your system kicked out of ketosis, but you’re going to spark the cravings again that you’ve worked so hard to get rid of.

My recommendation is to not have any cheat days of any kind until you are fully fat-adapted, that’s usually 1-2 months for most people, and then if you want to have a healthier version of a “cheat day”, the way I’d recommend to do this is to have a day where you enjoy more fat than you normally would. Have some tasty fat bombs, have that fatty coffee, bake some yummy keto cookies or pastries.

If you want to have a cheat meal, I recommend replacing the fat in a meal with more carbs. I do recommend that you make them whole food carbs rather than junk food, but this can really scratch that itch for something carby. Something like some sweet potato fries is a yummy healthier option.

Now, make note that I said to replace the fat with carbs. That means you eat less fat that meal or the entire day if you’re having an entire cheat day. You never want to eat high fat and high carb. That is a recipe for weight gain!

Adding in the extra carbs will likely temporarily take you out of ketosis, but as long as you’ve lowered your fat that is just fine. However, if you eat high fat on the day you up your carbs, you’re going to really spike your blood sugar, giving you a rush of insulin, and this is going to cause your body to store all that excess fat as body fat. So just don’t do that!!!

Here’s one that I see with just about every woman that I work with on implementing a keto diet and that is comparing your results with other people’s. We all have a unique story and we got to our current situation in a unique way. And that means that we will respond to dietary and lifestyle changes in different ways. I see this most often with women because in general, it is harder for women to lose weight.

Our hormones are significantly more complicated than the guys, and this often means we have more healing we have to do before we drop the weight. So what I would encourage you to do is to stop comparing what is happening for you to anyone else you know or anyone you see bragging on social media.

Take note of how you are feeling. Are you more energetic? Sleeping better? Less brain fog? Less bloating and gas? A better mood? Feeling satisfied with your meals? Are your cravings disappearing? If you’re experiencing any of these or other positive effects from what you’re doing, it’s working!

Don’t give up. Stick with it! In time you are going to get to your health goals.

One more thing to keep in mind, and this is true for men and women, if you have underlying health conditions, like thyroid issues, or you’ve got a lot of stress in your life, or you’re on medications, these can all slow down weight loss efforts as well. But my solution is still the same, stick with it if you’re feeling better and seeing less unpleasant symptoms. Trust the process and know you’re healing and just give it time!

Ok, so those are probably the biggest, but I’ve got a few others that I don’t think require as much explanation, so I’m going to move through them quickly. If you want me to dig deeper into any of these, let me know in the comments.

Drinking too much caffeine, this keeps blood sugar high because of the increased cortisol.

Limiting protein too much. If you want strong muscles and great energy, you’ve got to eat your protein.

Counting net carbs instead of total carbs. With vegetables this strategy can work, I’ll do a separate video about this one, but if you’re eating packaged foods NEVER count net carbs!

Never testing. Once you’re fat-adapted you don’t need to test as often, but you can’t feel ketosis. So check in with yourself and test every now and then. Blood is the gold standard. I’ll link in the notes below my favorite glucose and ketone tester.

Not exercising. There is a thing called lazy keto and just the name makes me cringe. Years of study continuously show us that exercise matters. Find something you enjoy and do it every day. It will increase your insulin sensitivity and all the benefits of your keto lifestyle.

Not prioritizing sleep. The perfect diet will not get you to your health goals if you aren’t getting enough sleep. Work on your sleep hygiene and shoot for 7-8 hours per night.

Not controlling your stress. If you’ve got too much stress, you are going to have a really hard time making the progress you so desire. So put a big focus on this one, meditate, spend time in nature, get a massage, change jobs, consider your relationships. No pun intended but I can’t stress this one enough!

Getting dehydrated. When we lower our carbs, in the early days we flush out all the water our body has been storing, so that dehydrates us. But the other issue is insulin signals the kidneys to retain water. When we eat keto and lower insulin, there is less communication. So focus on that water!!!

Not getting enough electrolytes. Make sure you’re getting lots of sodium, magnesium, and potassium. I’ll link below my favorite electrolyte supplement.

Ok, that was a lot! Thank you for sticking with me through all that! I hope you find these tips helpful.

In the comments, let me know if you’re eating a keto diet and if so, have you fallen into any of these traps?

Alright, that is what I have for you today, thank you again for watching! Don’t forget to subscribe, like, and share! I’ll see you next time.

PRODUCTS MENTIONED IN VIDEO:

Keto-Mojo: this is my favorite ketone and gluose monitor. If you use the link HERE, you’ll receive 15% discount at checkout.

My two favorite electrolytes drinks are LMNT and Perfect Keto Daily Electrolytes