Keto Nutrition – 10 Common Mistakes People Make & How to Fix Them

keto nutrition

Keto nutrition;  “How difficult can it be? Just cut carbs and up your fats!”   If only it were that easy. Once you get into the swing of things, following a ketogenic diet is relatively straightforward. However, for keto novices, it’s a complex world of carb counting, measuring ketones, and determining what food is deemed “keto friendly” and what food isn’t.

A low carb high fat diet can be effective for anyone. However, there are a number of common keto mistakes people continue to make. Avoiding these mistakes will not only help you burn ketones properly without plateauing or feeling fatigued but also make your ketogenic journey a more enjoyable one.

Here are 10 common mistakes people starting a keto diet make and how you can fix them.

1. Eating Too Much Protein

Protein is an essential macronutrient, there’s no doubt about it. However, the majority of people don’t consume enough. Protein is beneficial in many ways as it helps you;

  • Feel full
  • Reduces cravings
  • Repairs muscles after working out
  • Help promote weight loss (if you get the balance right)

One of the biggest mistakes made by people following a very low-carb diet is that they actually end up consuming too much. And when this happens, some of the amino acids from the protein are converted into glucose (i.e. sugar) through a metabolic process known as gluconeogenesis. When this happens it can prevent you from getting into a state of ketosis.

A good rule of thumb is to consume 0.5-2.0 grams of protein for every kilo of body weight. If you work out, you’ll need a little more.

electrolytes

2. Not Getting The Right Amount Of Electrolytes

Keto flu is common, especially when first beginning a keto diet. Other side effects you might experience include;

These could be a sign that your body is adjusting or it could also mean you’re not getting enough electrolytes. Generally, when you first start a keto nutrition diet, you urinate more because you’re releasing stored water from the glycogen you’re burning.  Thus can cause dehydration and a loss of minerals.

So, include more electrolytes in your diet. For beginners, who already have too much to think about, taking an electrolyte supplement usually solves the problem. Adding more keto friendly nutrient-dense foods into your diet will also help.  Examples of good keto nutrition include;

3. Not Meal Planning

Initially, there are many things you need to remember when starting a keto diet. This combined with a busy lifestyle often means there’s limited time to think of, prepare, and cook a healthy keto-friendly meal. Meal prepping for a keto diet helps enormously! Especially in the early days when your body craves food and sugar. Without planning meals, it’s very easy to fall off the wagon.

So, write grocery lists.  Plan your shopping trips. Prep meals for the rest of the week, and store them in airtight containers. Having a healthy keto-friendly meal on hand will stop you from reaching for the phone and calling for a takeout.

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4. Not Sleeping Enough

Not getting enough quality sleep can increase stress hormones, which results in cravings and unwanted fat gain. When you have bad sleeping habits, it’ll inevitably affect other areas of your life as well. A lack of sleep causes irritability and drowsiness, which will affect both your personal and professional life.

When this happens, your stress levels will increase, which could lead to making impulsive decisions, wrong food choices, and cheating. All off which can kick you out of ketosis. In short, sleep is paramount. To maintain your energy and lose weight effectively, adequate sleep is a must.

Sleep Tips

To help ensure you get your 8 hours of healthy uninterrupted sleep each night try to;

5. Overeating High Inflammatory Foods

A keto diet usually has anti-inflammatory benefits, however, there are some low carb high-fat foods that can trigger inflammation. One big keto mistake is relying on processed meats, such as sausage, salami and vegetable oils just because the macro ratios are in line with the keto diet.

These highly-processed foods cause inflammation in the body and also leave you feeling fatigued.

Instead of eating processed foods, replace them with grass-fed meats and organic low-carb veggies. Avoid consuming lower quality oils like canola, peanut, and soybean oil. Instead use butter, coconut oil, MCT oil, ghee, and extra virgin olive oil.

sugar on keto

6. Relying On Artificial Sweeteners

Staying within your macros limit is essential, but this doesn’t give you license to eat and drink whatever you like. Artificial sweeteners may seem like the answer when it comes to getting your “sweet fix”, but sweeteners, such as saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame can lead to gut irritations and inflammation. This can leave you bloated, constipated, and lethargic. What’s more, getting your “fix” can send messages to your brain, reminding you of your taste for sugar, which can often lead to caving in and eating sugary foods.

Ideally, you want to train your body not to want sugar from the very beginning. Avoid sugary sodas. Rather, drink fizzy water with a bit of lemon squeezed in it. Alternatively, try taking some exogenous ketones. But if you really want something sweet, try adding natural sweeteners, such as monk fruit and stevia.

Click here to read, “Stroke And Heart Attack Linked To Drinking This!”

7. Not Eating Enough Fats

The idea of eating all the bacon you like is pretty appealing, but the truth is many people don’t eat enough fat when following a ketogenic diet. This is partly because we have previously been taught that fats make us fat.

Click here to read, “Best Diet For Weight Loss”.

When cutting back on carbs drastically, it’s essential you replace these calories with some calories from healthy fats. Not consuming enough fat can negatively affect your hormone function and metabolism in the future. When following a keto diet, these healthy fats are your main source of energy, and are what essentially help you enter ketosis.

Approximately 70% of your macros should be made up of healthy fats. Add healthy fats where possible. In order to help you hit your fat intake levels, take small actions such as;

  • Sprinkling cheese on meals
  • Cooking with coconut oil or other keto-friendly oils
  • Drinking bulletproof coffee with MCT oil
  • Eating more healthy fat-friendly foods such as avocados
hidden carbs

8. Not Paying Attention To Hidden Carbs

One of the biggest reasons why beginner ketoers fail when starting the keto diet is that they consume carbs without even realizing it. There are hidden carbs everywhere! Namely in the form of sugar that comes under different guises. “Healthy” juices are the some of the worst – they’re packed with sugar! But you’ll even find these hidden carbs in “healthy” protein bars, condiments like ketchup and most fruits.

Click here to read, “Are you eating junk food without realizing it?”

The best way to avoid these hidden carbs is to;

  • Avoid all starchy vegetables
  • Make your meals from scratch
  • Learn how to read nutritional information on labels correctly

Click here to read, “How To Read Labels Like a Pro and Cut Grocery Shopping Time In Half”.

When you start the keto diet, it’s advisable to find 3-4 simple keto-friendly meals that you like and can’t go wrong with such as bacon and eggs.  Continue rotating these meals until you enter ketosis. Once you enter ketosis, you can slowly start adding other meals to your repertoire.

9. Not Knowing Your Ketone Levels

When you follow the keto diet properly, your body’s ketone levels will increase.  This is a sign you’re becoming fat adapted and therefore in ketosis. This is when you effectively know that you’re doing things right and you’re on your way to hitting your target. However, one mistake keto beginners make is that they have no idea whether they’re in ketosis or not. Meaning they won’t truly know whether their efforts are in vain or not.

There are a few keto symptoms that you can look out for when you finally become fat adapted. It is likely you’ll experience temporary bad breath as more ketones mean there are higher acetone levels in the mouth. Sudden weight loss can also indicate that you’re in ketosis due to water loss.

Another hallmark of a keto diet is reduced blood sugar levels and an increase in ketones.  This is why it’s always a good idea to measure your ketone levels, especially when starting the ketogenic diet. This can be done by using a specialized breathalyzer, which calculates how much beta-hydroxybutyrate you have in your blood. It effectively measures your ketone levels at the same time. When your blood ketones range from 0.5-3.0 mmol/L, it is a sign you’re in nutritional ketosis.

low carb vegetables

10. Not Eating Vegetables

Many people think that all vegetables have carbs and therefore avoid them completely. However, when doing that they miss out on a range of essential vitamins, minerals and fiber. Fiber is especially important.

According to the American Heart Association Eating Plan, the recommended daily dietary guidelines for fiber intake from food (not supplements) is 25-30 grams. However, the average American adult only consumes approximately 15 grams a day. Fiber helps combat cravings, makes you feel fuller and can also help you become more regular. Thus also helps to reduce bloating.

There are actually a lot of low-carb vegetables that are considered to be keto-friendly. Avoid eating high-carb vegetables such as;

  • Potatoes
  • Corn
  • Beans
  • Peas
  • Squash

Instead, fill up on vegetables such as;

  • Spinach
  • Cauliflower
  • Broccoli
  • Asparagus
  • Avocado
  • Cabbage
  • Kale
  • Zucchini

Final Thoughts

A keto diet is a great diet if you want to lose weight, improve your mental clarity and more. This diet takes time to get used to and it’s more than just cutting carbs and eating more bacon and steak. If you discover you’re not getting the results you want, try some of the above tips and learn how to avoid those rookie keto errors.

For further reading, click here for “Keto For Dummies – Beginners Guide For Keto”.

Keto For Dummies – Beginners Guide For Keto

Yes, Keto is exciting but could be confusing for some people which is why I thought a Keto for Dummies Guide would be something useful.  Maybe it sparked your interest because you’ve seen celebrities shedding fat and hailing the ketogenic diet as their secret weapon (not sure how it can be a secret when they post it to their followers on Instagram …)

But have you heard of the stay at home mom who:

  • Now has energy for her kids
  • Feels like her brain is on fire (in a good way)
  • Less cranky
  • Sleeps better
  • Better cholesterol
  • Joints don’t ache anymore when she wakes up or during the day

Probably not.

Attention Seeker

Mainstream media needs to grab your attention.  So, you’re less likely to hear about that dad in Beverley Hills.  The one who doesn’t sleep his afternoon away on his favourite chair.  Waking up with fruit-loops on his body as a form of art canvas for the kids while he sleeps.  Now having time to be a dad and a husband again!

Regardless of where you heard it, you’re probably asking yourself, “what is a ketone and the ketogenic diet?” and why should I care about yet another “fad” diet?

First let me ask you this.  If something has been around for 500+ years, does it still qualify as a fad?

Let’s start with a simple question: “What is a ketogenic diet”? (aka a very low-carb1 eating lifestyle)  If you’ve seen my other articles, I have explained that our bodies can run on two types of energy.  The most common is from carbs.  Many of which are broken down into (or start off as) simple sugars.

Our bodies cannot use these simple sugars for energy unless they are combined with insulin that a healthy pancreas makes on demand.  Once the insulin grabs the sugar it is given to our cells and we have energy.

The second way our bodies can be fueled is by the breakdown of fat (from our food or from our body) into ketones.  Ketones fuel our cells without needing an escort (insulin).
Our body can only do one of the above at a time.

So, if you have a certain threshold of sugar in your system (and thus insulin), your body will not run on ketones.

By eating a low-enough-carb diet, your body will switch to fat burning and create ketones.  This is not as easy as it sounds!  If it were, I think the fast food industry would be very different.  In addition, all that junk food on grocery store shelves full of sugar would sit there and rot.  Just kidding. That stuff can’t rot, it’s not real food!

Click here to read Are You Eating Junk Food Without Realizing It?

Still Wondering Why You Should Care About a Keto For Dummies Guide?

The properties of ketones have been studied for over 100 years by scientists and doctors.  They and are well known for the treatment of epilepsy.

But the more scientist and doctors understand about the power of ketones, the more intrigued they become at how:

  • A ketogenic diet
  • A low-carb diet
  • A whole food diet or exogenous ketones

Affect all aspects of health.

Click here for, Keto Brownies recipe .

All diseases have one thing in common.  Inflammation.  Simple sugars are recognized as inflammatory.  It’s breakdown into energy creates waste products that the body needs to get rid of.  Too much simple sugar equals too much waste products for the body to get rid of.  This leads to inflammation.

On the flipside, ketones reduce inflammation.  So, this alone should compel you to want to know more.

Further, excess sugar leads to insulin resistance or prediabetes and of course type 2 diabetes.  Also, now scientists and doctors have coined the term type 3 diabetes to refer to the damage that sugar is causing in the brain.  Potentially causing diseases like:

  • Alzheimer’s
  • Dementia
  • Mental illness

Click here to read, ” Diabetes – The Hidden Cause Of Alzheimer’s?”

Intermittent Fasting On Keto

Keto Fast

As part of my Keto For Dummies guide am I telling you to ditch the carbs & go dive into the keto diet head first?  If you think you can handle it, sure! (but please don’t do dirty keto).  But seriously as you’ve read from me before, there are ways to get ketones into your body without becoming a keto diet warrior.

Click here to read, This One Thing Has Been Linked To Almost All Diseases .

Every major religion has a fasting regime.  It would appear that every religion’s god 3 (or the one single god that allowed all the different religions) knew that our bodies needed some time away from digestion.  Time to internally ‘clean up’ and perhaps even shed some of those religious holiday pounds.

During times of fasting, our blood sugar drops.  Our bodies naturally switch to burning fat and creating ketones (length of fast determines the extent to which our bodies use ketones of course).

If every major religion knew before science did that ketones were good for you, then perhaps you shouldn’t dismiss the idea of reducing your carbs and trying to skip breakfast once in a while (aka intermittent fasting).  Who knows?  Maybe you will be writing the next ketone article (instead of me) because you have seen the light!

Final Thoughts

I know this is just a quick intro to the world of keto and low-carb.  I had so much more I could have put in, but it would have gotten a bit scientific and long.  EVEN MORE BORING to some of you!

So as always, if you want more info – check out the other articles or contact me.

References For This Keto For Dummies Guide:

1. WHAT IS LOW-CARB
https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb

2. THERAPEUTIC USES OF A VERY-LOW-CARBOHYDRATE DIET
https://www.nature.com/articles/ejcn2013116

3. FASTING
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST

Diabetes and dementia – is there a connection?
Alzheimer’s Disease Is Type 3 Diabetes–Evidence Reviewed