I’ve talked a little bit in Part 1 of this blog about the fact that I’ve gained back about 10 pounds that I had originally lost on keto. This has happened in the last 6 months or so. It’s not a big deal. But that’s easy to say, and more difficult to accept in real life. I decided to do two weeks of tracking calories while I’m on keto to see if that would make a difference. Just track what I was taking in, to feel more confident that I wouldn’t gain back all 65 pounds I had lost.
The Start of Tracking Calories
To start, I bought a small notebook at the Dollarstore. I divided each page into just three categories: Food, Calories, and Carbs. One page was for each day. I knew from the calorie calculator I used that I should be taking in about 1,800-2,000 calories a day to maintain my weight. The point was not to cut calories, but to see what I was actually eating.
I weighed myself before I started tracking and I weighed in at 179 pounds. This was about what I expected. I haven’t weighed myself in some time because I was starting to become a little obsessive about it. It wasn’t a good thing to be stressed out every Saturday morning about what the scale would say. But, the good news is, I haven’t gained any more than the last time I weighed myself.
The Actual Count From the Week
The actual counts of calories and carbs were as follows.
- Sunday – 1,507 calories, 17 carbs
- Monday – 1,595 calories, 24 carbs
- Tuesday – 1,330 calories, 16 carbs
- Wednesday – 1,678 calories, 17 carbs
- Thursday – 1,638 calories, 17 carbs
- Friday – 1,461 calories, 22 carbs
- Saturday – 1,386 calories, 20 carbs
What Tracking Calories Showed Me
You can see that I did not reach 1,800 calories even once during this week. In fact, I didn’t even get 1,500 calories for three of the days. This may be too low. Is this causing my body to store more fat? Is it panicking and going into starvation mode? I never felt hungry, but I may not be taking in enough energy to keep my metabolism at a healthy level.
The carbs are around the right amount. When I started keto, I tried to stay under 20 grams of net carbs a day. Now, I’m fat adapted and I can do an extra gram or two without falling out of ketosis. My highest day was 24 carbs. That was a day I was feeling stressed and we bought a keto pizza for supper. I ate 4 out of the 6 slices of my pizza. Probably should have shown some restraint.
Learning Lessons from This Exercise
So, my best day was Wednesday. I had the most amount of calories and an average amount of carbs from the food. On that day, I ate a French toast muffin and bacon for breakfast. I had leftovers from dinner the night before with raw vegetables for lunch. Supper was an asparagus and chicken curry casserole. We had a couple of homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert. And, of course, I had a couple of coffees.
The key to my healthiest day was that I was eating food made at home. I had a good variety of vegetables for carbs and the dessert was one that I made myself so there weren’t tons of sugar alcohols in them. Sugar alcohols aren’t necessarily bad, but they can cause me to eat more than I should. Bill did a blog on this last week.
Next Week of Tracking Calories
Now that I know what I am taking in, I can try to tweak things a little. I’m going to try to get in a few more calories and eat more foods that we make ourselves. At the end of the week, I will weigh myself again and see where I stand. It will be interesting to see if taking in more calories leads to a smaller number on the scales. I’ll keep you posted!
Wendy
