Keto Beginner Questions Answered: The Scale, Fat Adaptation, Sweeteners, Alcohol and Ketone Strips
In this video
A 41-minute live from July 2017, reading beginner questions off a keto forum and answering them one by one. The posters aren't named here.
- [0:00] Opening: "I'm nobody" (from the video). Not a medical professional or a dietitian.
- [0:30] Breakfast: for keto, when you eat your carbs doesn't matter. The dawn effect varies by person.
- [2:00] The scale stalled after a quick drop: don't weigh for 30 days. Early loss is glycogen water.
- [3:30] Fat adapted: liver enzymes build up over weeks three to four, and nearly everyone gets there by six or seven on under 50 g of carbs.
- [4:30] A diet is what an organism eats over a period of time. Judge it over a week, not a meal.
- [7:30] Diet soda: probably fine for ketosis, not ideal. I named aspartame and sucralose as the likely insulin-response sweeteners. Clean eating can tip into an eating disorder.
- [9:30] Fat bombs are mostly empty calories. Eat fatty meat instead.
- [13:00] Confused? Just eat fewer carbs. I said studies found low-carb diets under 150 g still worked.
- [15:00] Eat under 50 g of carbs "and nothing else matters" (from the video). Survive the first month.
- [19:30] Fasting to drop ten pounds fast: no. Problems that took years to build take years to fix.
- [21:00] Alcohol: light beers and spirits are low-carb, heavy beers aren't, and alcohol gets burned before fat.
- [22:30] Ketone strips: any colour, even trace, most of the time is enough. They can stop showing after months. Blood tests cost about $4 each against about 6 cents for a strip.
- [25:00] A few chips at a party are fine. An ounce of food can't carry more than 28 g of carbs.
- [32:00] Keto calculators run on ratios, and my protein-ceiling arithmetic (below).
- [33:00] You don't have to hit your fat number. If you have an eating-disorder history, involve your therapist and your doctor.
- [34:30] As a data analyst: month-one weight and calories aren't key performance indicators.
- [38:00] My doctor said I could safely lose up to 100 lb, and I'd already lost 40 before keto.
- [40:00] No products, no backers, no exogenous ketones. I read PubMed and NIH papers and offered citations on request.
The claim worth unpacking: the protein ceiling
The arithmetic at [32:00] repeats in three videos from July 2017 (videos 9Hk0jRb_9Es and cTGYIFOTPl8 are the other two). As I gave it: for my 1,700 kcal deficit target, around 220 g of protein would be "toxic" for me. At 4 kcal per gram, that caps protein at 880 kcal. Twenty grams of carbs adds 80 kcal. That leaves about 740 kcal to come from somewhere, so the rest has to be fat (video xyEZL0HuejI).
The energy logic works: cut the carbs, and most people can't comfortably make up the difference with protein. That's the honest answer to "why is keto high fat?"
The word "toxic" is where my explanation and the literature part company. I was 225 lb at the time, about 102 kg. 220 g of protein is about 2.2 g per kg. Here's what the evidence page has at and around that level:
- In 28 studies with 1,358 people, higher protein intakes (at least 1.5 g/kg a day, or at least 100 g a day) did not change kidney filtration differently in adults without kidney disease (Devries et al., 2018).
- Young men in a deep deficit with hard training ate 2.4 g/kg a day for four weeks. They gained lean mass and lost more fat than men on 1.2 g/kg (Longland et al., 2016).
So 220 g isn't a toxicity line in those papers. It's a lot of protein, expensive and filling, which is reason enough not to aim for it. The exception is pre-existing kidney disease, which reviews flag separately (Pesta & Samuel, 2014). If that's you, your protein number comes from your doctor, not a calculator.
My range of 90–130 g for adult men holds up better. For my weight, the RDA of 0.80 g/kg (IOM, 2005) is about 82 g. The 1.2–1.6 g/kg that one review linked to better appetite control and weight management (Leidy et al., 2015) works out to roughly 122–163 g. See too much protein? and protein and kidneys.
Then vs now
The carb number. "Under 50 and nothing else matters, ideally 20" is what I said here (video xyEZL0HuejI). In another video posted the same day, the advice was to work down to 20 (video DoSUgIr2rNo). By 2018, 50 was the answer, and I called it unpopular (video UygKGoP_BtA). This live already leans toward 50. "Nothing else matters" is a beginner's rule, not the whole story, but it's a good rule for month one. See how many carbs.
Ketone strips. Here they were good feedback, and any colour most of the time was enough (video xyEZL0HuejI). By 2019 I was saying you don't need a monitor at all (video 1JbK1_ClDmY). I'd go with the 2019 version for most people. See do you need to test?.
Watching this in 2026
The best moment is the KPI section at [34:30]. A key performance indicator is a number that should change a decision. Month-one weight shouldn't decide whether you keep going, because the processes haven't kicked in yet.
What I'd change is the tone. I refused to celebrate an early six-pound loss so that someone at zero wouldn't feel like a failure. The reasoning is right; the delivery was harsher than it needed to be.
Who should check with a doctor first
- Diabetes medication: I said my blood sugar went from near-diabetic to near-normal in a month (video xyEZL0HuejI). Cutting total carbohydrate has the most evidence for improving blood sugar (American Diabetes Association, Evert et al., 2019). If you take medication for it, your doctor needs to know before your carbs drop, and before you mix alcohol with it.
- Eating-disorder history: "you don't have to eat your fat number" is not "eat nothing." Bring in your therapist and doctor, as I said in the video.
Key points
- Don't judge month one by the scale. Early losses are mostly water, and adaptation takes weeks three to seven.
- Under 50 g of carbs is the one rule for beginners. Foods aren't "keto" or "not keto," doses are.
- The protein ceiling explains why keto ends up high fat. But around 2.2 g/kg isn't "toxic" in the studies, unless you have kidney disease (Devries 2018).
- Ketone strips are optional, and I stopped recommending them for most people by 2019.
- Diabetes medication, kidney disease or an eating-disorder history: doctor first.
Related
- Guide: month one · fat adaptation · urine strips · eating disorders · medications
- Blog: what happens if you cheat? · alcohol on keto · sweeteners and ketosis · strips not changing colour · clean eating and orthorexia · fat bombs · body weight vs lean mass
- Videos: three ways to test for ketosis · the Men's Health rebuttal · keto basics for beginners · simple keto and MyFitnessPal · beginner tips by a random guy