Have you ever been doing your low carb, high fat living and you were losing weight then you stalled or plateaued? I was watching a great video today by Dr. Adam Nally (DocMuscles) he goes over how counting your macros can kill your ketosis. Macros are based around a calorie count. In ketosis you don’t need to count calories and it can actually hinder you.

When in ketosis you don’t count calories. We have heard we need to stick with eating something like 80% fat, 15% protein and 5% carbs and we all know we need to stay in ketosis and lose fat we need to eat under 20 g of carbs. If you eat 2000 calories in a day, if you calculate 5% of that you get 25 g of carbs (2000 x 5% = 100 cal / 4Kcal = 25 g ) and would kick you out of ketosis. Also, if you look at the protein with the same 2000 calories per day. If you calculate 15% of that you get 75g of protein you are eating. For me, a 5’4″ female, I should only eat 54.7 g of protein per day. If I eat that 75g it will kick me right out of ketosis.

I took a closer look at my macros setup in MyFitnessPal and you can see that I do have 2001 calories setup (you have to pick a calorie number) and with the percentages it has my carbs at 25 g per day. That will kick me out of ketosis and if you look at the protein it is much worse. Per the calculation above I should only be eating 54.7 g of protein per day. That is over twice as much. Ouch!

My MyFitnessPal Macros

Basically, the key is:

1. Stay below 20 grams of carbs. If you are not losing weight then find
2. If that is not working alone, you need to calculate your ideal body weight to measure your amount of daily protein for your height.

Also, keep in mind you are probably losing fat and gaining muscle which will cause the scale to not move since muscle weighs more than fat.

How do you figure out your amount of daily protein, you ask? Here is the formula given by Dr. Nally.

Ideal Body Weight (IBW) is based on your height:

Males: Protein in g/day of IBW = 50 g (for the first 5 feet of height) + 2.3 g for each inch over 5 feet. (This lets you calculate the average male needs that are approximately 1.2 g per kg of ideal body weight per day.)

Females: Protein in kg/day of IBW = 45.5 g (for the first 5 feet of height) + 2.3 g for each inch over 5 feet. (This lets you calculate the average female needs 1.0 g per kg of ideal body weight per day.)

Watch the video by DocMuscles