Hi. I've been lurking for about a month now and just decided to start a CKD in an attempt to lose some bodyfat.. I started with the ketogenic phase as recommended and I'm almost done with day 2 now. Everything's going fine but I want to make sure I'm eating the right amount. (this is a bit complicated)

I'm 5'11", about 175 pounds and 19 years old. fitday and other formulas tell me my BMR is around 1900-1950. I'm at college so I walk around a lot every day, up and down stairs, so I picked 'seated work, some movement' which gives me 1200 more calories.. so anyhow fitday tells me that maintenance if I don't work out beyond daily activity is 3186 calories.

so how many calories should I eat during the ketogenic days? body weightx12 is 2100 and that means that if fitday is correct I'll run up a deficit of more than 1000 per day on low-carb days.. is that healthy? eating more than 2100 per day would be nice but could I really lose weight at that level?

some background info that may be relevant:

I lost 35 pounds over the summer by exercising almost every day(cardio only) for a minimum of 700 calories' worth of activity, often more like 1000. I didn't restrict my diet beyond avoiding obvious junk foor (doritos and candy).

I didn't do any research beforehand (I was mostly exercising for fun anyhow) and I wasn't getting enough protein/calories or doing any resistance training so I lost a noticeable amount of upper body muscle mass as well. this was a bad cycle and, predictably, I stopped losing weight toward the end of the summer...

since about a month ago, I do weights every other day, I'd say moderate intensity(25-35 minutes). I've already put back on what I lost and I'm building from there. I do cardio in the form of aggressive inline rollerblading (rollerblading plus bursts of jumping, basically..) and I'm going to do it or some other exercise in the morning 5 days a week.

one more thing I noticed is that my body temperature is quite low. it was 96.7 or 96.8 on waking and hasn't gone above 97.8 all day. Did I temporarily kill my thyroid with the bad nutrition I had over the summer?

any recommendations, especially on the calorie issue, would be appreciated.

Sorry for the novel

Have you tried using the CKD Parameters Calculator?CKD Parameters Calculator

Lisa

hey thanks for replying..

yeah I did use the CKD paramters calculator.. my question is about this quote from the site

" For MOST individuals, 15-16 cal/lb./day is around maintenance calories and 12-13 cal/lb./day is a nice caloric deficit to provide for healthy fat loss while maintaining lean body mass. Remember that a daily caloric deficit of more than 1000 calories is not recommended,"


so I see 2 options:

1) fitday is right, I really DO need 3100 a day for maintenance so I should eat at 13x-15x cal/lb/day (about 2450 daily)so I don't have more than 1000 calories deficit.
or else,

2) fitday's estimates are wrong, 3100 calories is too much for maintenance, so I should just eat the recommended 12-13x (2100-2275) daily and it will be fine.


I'm just wondering which one of those sounds more reasonable to all the experienced people on the board

Check this thread

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...&threadid=41244


read Luxsit's reply approx half way down the page, it is a long reply and has another method of determining caloric intake.

thanks for the link. looks like fitday was being a little optimistic about energy expenditure. 2700-2900 seems like a better estimate for daily output and that makes 2000-2100 a good number for me.

also started taking guggul + phosphates in response to the low body temperature.

now I just gotta wait and see how things go

Tagio: I was first thinking that you meant is fitday's "calories burned" stats are correct.... is that what you want to know? If so, I've found that the numbers tend to be real conservative compared to other sources.

If you're talking the reports on fitday as far as the graphs showing calories in/out, then I believe them to be fairly accurate----taking into consideration that the info is compiled using those same conservative numbers from the calories out. Am I making any sense?

As far as calories---in my experience thus far, that is a totally individual thing, darlin'. When I was taking in 12cal/lb/day I was MISERABLE, losing strength, stamina....getting weaker every day. I did a refeed to fix things (reset leptin levels) and am trying to maintain around the 13cal/lb/day mark, and I don't panic if I go over because I want to GAIN strength, stamina, etc. You'll just have to feel your way along the numbers and pay close attention to your body as you go.

Good luck... it's a journey.

I meant the graph of calories eaten versus calories spent. Thanks for the information

about a 'refeed,' could you explain what you did? I'm thinking that might be a good idea for me after so many months at a calorie deficit.

It's real simple: if you used the CKD calculator, simply use those values in the highest range (maintenance) or about 10% above for a week or two (depending on you).

Your protein amounts will never change because that's based on how much you need according to your body weight, and the carbs are set by you (I'm going----believe it or not----200g/day), and the rest is made up in fat calories.

As Lyle pointed out, 200g carbs sounds like a lot, but it isn't. In fact, most people take in about 800g/day, so 200g is still pretty low. I'm not sure how long I'll do this----eating basically lower-than-maintenance-calories with higher carbs, but I'm happy with the way I feel right now.

However, I did notice a problem with fitday today, one that makes me wonder if I should email them or not: aparently when you input a custom food...it can change values on you without you knowing it. I couldn't figure out HOW the heck I'd only eaten 1300 calories today when I KNOW I ate enough. So, what did I do? I trusted fitday and discovered AFTER I'd eaten more to bring my calories up that THEY were wrong!!! I went over on everything but fat. Protein---over. Carbs---over. Calories---over. Man, I wonder how many other foods fitday's done this to. I guess it's a problem in their program, but it's pretty serious to find an almost 1000 calorie discrepancy!!!!!

I'm really kind of bummed/aggevated/ticked/disappointed right now over this.

Guess it's better to do it all by hand.

Anyone out there know if there's a site LIKE fitday, but without the problems??????

Anyway, Tagio, you should be okay using those parameters from the CKD calculator. Only thing is, you have to specify the number of carbs you want to take in per day. My initial refeed was only 100g/day, and now I'm lower fat and higher carbs. Up to you. The whole idea is to take in enough calories. Definitely use the calculator.

feitser uses a program that seems to be similar to fitday, you could check with her (?) about it

Excellent! Thanks, Big Dog!!!