How many carbs before a person enters ketosis?

R

Ruhl

New Member
How many carbs before a person enters ketosis? How does bodyweight or LBM affect the amount of carbs needed to enter ketosis?
 
This will vary widely depending on the individual. Of course metabolic diseases will influence the rate at which one enters ketosis. The amount of activity a person does will influence that greatly as well. I guess I am saying it hard to gauge on a general basis. For me, it takes less than 50 grams a day and about 3 days before I start spilling ketones.
 
Yep, varies quite a bit. For me I need to keep it below 25 grams and also takes about 3 days.
My missus gets there in a day and a bit, but when she does a keto diet she's pretty strict and tries to keep it at 15 grams max.
Hope that helps.

Edit: Not sure where I read it, but the general recommendation as I recall it is to aim for 20 grams or less, excluding carbs that may target around workouts.
 
If you get less than 100 grams of carbs per day, you will eventually enter ketosis (see The Ketogenic Diet by Lyle McDonald.) You can also enter ketosis during strenuous exercise or during illness even though you're getting more carbs than that. You can use this fact by using a good workout to push you into ketosis.

But the best way to enter ketosis is to get less than 30 grams of carbs for about a week or so.
 
Don't forget that the amount of carbs that you burn in a day will make a difference. You can eat more carbs and still be in ketosis if you brun more carbs through exercise.
 
So tell me this, why does simply lowering your calories below mantainence not put you into ketosis? Isn't burning off more than you take in cause fat to be used for energy? I mean if I lose fat from that did that not happen through ketosis of some kind?
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Mindwraith @ April 01 2004,12:58)]So tell me this, why does simply lowering your calories below mantainence not put you into ketosis? Isn't burning off more than you take in cause fat to be used for energy? I mean if I lose fat from that did that not happen through ketosis of some kind?
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You're right, it does. Its all a matter of degrees.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Bryan Haycock @ April 01 2004,11:02)]Don't forget that the amount of carbs that you burn in a day will make a difference. You can eat more carbs and still be in ketosis if you brun more carbs through exercise.
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But... if you're in ketosis, you shouldn't be burning carbs through exercise unless you use up all the ketones/free fatty acids in your bloodstream first, right? If you're in ketosis, glucose should be going just to fuel your brain until you make the shift over to using ketones for your brain. That's why the 100 gram thing wasn't dependent on body size, iirc.

And then there's that whole protein getting converted to glucose via neoglucogenesis that skews things.
 
How can you only get 20g of carb per day and still be at or over calorie maintenance level and continu to gain mass?

how effective is keto? how much weight (fat) do you lose and how fast ?
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]how effective is keto? how much weight (fat) do you lose and how fast ?
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In my opinion it's no more effective than eating less than you burn in a day.

For me, keto or atkins is just far too miserable of a diet for me to try for more than an hour or so. Its full of horrible suffering and by the end of the 2nd day I'm throwing up at the thought of eating anything w/o carbs. I love bacon and all kinds of meat, I'm a BIGTIME meat lover, but when I tried to keep my carbs around 25g for 2 days I began to hate meat more than anything else in the world, I was disgusted at the very thought of it. I've been told thats withdrawl symptoms from my body's dependancy on carbs but I just dont believe in that kind of suffering and limitation on what I can and can't eat. I've had plenty of good success w/simply counting my calories and keeping them low.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]How can you only get 20g of carb per day and still be at or over calorie maintenance level and continu to gain mass?
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Generally, protein and fat are increased on ketogenic diets making up the loss of kcals from carbs. It is hard to gain a lot of mass when on a keto diet, because muscles tend to hold less water and are glycogen depleted nearly all the time.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Mindwraith @ April 02 2004,11:07)]In my opinion it's no more effective than eating less than you burn in a day.
For me, keto or atkins is just far too miserable of a diet for me to try for more than an hour or so.
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For me, the biggest plus for the keto diet was that it killed all hunger. I simply was not hungry while I was in ketosis. There was one day where I had breakfast early in the morning (around 5ish) and then because of a bunch of clusterfscks, I couldn't eat until almost 2am that night. I wasn't hungry that entire day.

Also, in ketosis, you don't get mood swings when your blood sugar gets low. Which is cool.

And after the initial keto fog, my mind felt tons sharper in ketosis.

So, although it's still a matter of eating less calories than you expend, it's easier for me to do that in ketosis.
 
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