Saturday, June 30, 2018

Keto: Scales, A Useful Tool


My scales... 

Trust... but verify.  You are eating only 20 grams of carbs a day.  Are you really?  Let's find out.  

Weigh the foods with carbohydrates and confirm how many carbs you are eating.  It is too easy to allow your eyes to be the judge rather than a food scale.  I discovered this the hard way one day on my Keto path.  And... it is usually those almonds in my case.  

I keep my Keto levels at 1.5 to 6 mmol/Ls.  I measure using Keto urine strips.  I do know they are not the most accurate method of measure.  A Keto blood meter, more accurate I am told, but those meters are expensive and the strips even more so.  So, I use normal Keto urine strips and they work well for me.  

One day, after some 'low carb' eating I noticed only a trace amount of Ketones from my Keto strip.  I investigated.  It was frustrating to be sure, so I got out the old kitchen scale, popped some batteries in it... and set out to track every carb I ate for the next few days.  

What I discovered is, it is very easy to allow the carbs to creep up on you unless you keep an accurate carb count, using an accurate scale.  30 grams of almonds... come in at 5 carbs (using a brand I often eat).  Now, 30 grams of almonds is less than you would expect.  It is 1/4 cup by dry measure.  It is very easy to eat much more than that.  You pour yourself a couple of palm fulls, next thing you know you are at 20 carbs, then add to what veg you ate that day, and maybe a Miller Lite (3.2 carbs), and pretty soon you are pushing 30 carbs or worse.  

It was not only the almonds that caused my carb creep.  Using the scales I found several other low carb foods, that when I actually weighed the serving size, I found issues.  That 1/2 avocado came in at a whopping 12 carbs.  Even my beloved Brussels Sprouts and fresh red tomatoes, where too high in carbs in the amounts I had been eating.  Low carb foods are good, but Do Not use Super Sized Servings. 

I took action to get back to a firm Brutal 20.  The affect of measuring all carb foods by weight grams was instructive and effective.  I could have the same foods, just not in the quantity I had been eating.  After a day my Ketones were back at their normal levels.  Kitchen food scales are inexpensive and accurate. 

Use a good kitchen scale to measure your carb intake.  If you do, you will stay under the Brutal 20 carbs and have success.  The scales are inexpensive, easy to use.  You can calibrate using Standard American Measure or Metric.  I use Metric as I find it more precise and I am able to use finer units of measure.  The scale can zero out the weight of any plate, cup, etc., so only  the weight of the food is measured.  Easy to use and clever. 

Barry R McCain on Amazon  

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