From what I've seen, your diet should be ~60-70% fat, 5% or less carbs, and ~25-35% protein. Definitely not 95% fat.
> I had several instances where my dinner in a pinch was melted down cheese and half-n-half. Your diet basically becomes cheese and avocados with some, but not too much, salmon or chicken
What about vegetables? I ate a lot of salads when I did keto. I also ate a lot of fattier meats, such as cured italian meats and ground beef. No reason to eat super lean protein when fat is most of your calories; buy the cheap fatty stuff and enjoy it. Also, eggs? I was having an omelette every morning.
> I also wonder if it's possible to work out while doing keto
It's very possible: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22835211 but I doubt it would be if you're not eating any protein...
As for vegetables, I missed carrots and peas too much. Mustard greens and broccoli are apparently okay, though. I could always just make salads out of baby spinach and arugula, but I suck at making salad dressings.
The rule for veggies is to avoid starch and stick to dark leafy greens.
My go-to easy dish would be a "taco salad", where I'd cook some ground beef and serve it with cheese, salsa, sour cream over lettuce. There's also lots of dishes possible with kale and spinach.
> take advantage of cheap fatty meats
Fish included! No reason to worry about eating "too much" salmon. Cook it with butter sauce and it should fit your macro-nutrient ratios perfectly.
> I prolly fucked the diet up
As another comment said, it's no wonder you felt sick. Also, the "keto flu" is a known phenomenon while your body adapts and flushes all the water out of your system. Drink a lot of electrolytes (chicken broth is a good source) and you'll feel better.
If you're serious about your diet, you should really take 5 minutes and figure out exactly what your body need. Each person is going to be a bit different, but in general (but slightly more specific than the last 'in general') you should be eating less than 20-50g of 'net' carbs, you should eat at least 1-2g/kg of lean body mass, and you should eat as much fat as it takes you to not be hungry. There are calculators that will walk you through all this, http://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/ is one that I've used before, it's more targeted at weight loss, but it's only one that I've found that makes an effort to cite the calculations it does.
As for working out, yes it's definitely possible. I've been lifting since December and making great progress. There are also occasionally stories of endurance athletes that swear by a ketogenic diet. My understanding of why it can be beneficial is that it basically removes your dependence on glycogen, when runners 'hit the wall' it's their body running out of glycogen their body then has to transition to running on fat. Keto-adapted runners are just running on fat from the beginning so they don't hit the wall and are more used to burning fat for energy.
I'm not a runner so I don't have personal experience in any of that, but in my lifting I do find that I have to take it a bit slower than I expect others have to. When you're keto you lose a bit of the 'bursty' power that people with glycogen reserves have.
I don't claim to be an expert on any of this, but I do continue with it. I've been mostly ketogenic since May of 2013, and I've had many improvements in things like mood, hair, skin, and sleep and I definitely notice a change in those things when I decide that the social aspects of eating are more important than my diet.
If it's really more of an upper limit on carbs ~20-50g, a minimum of protein, and the rest is fat, then I guess that's fine. When I tried it, I was very strict on the carbs such that I couldn't go over 20g. In fact, that calculator says I shouldn't be eating above 25g, and also says this:
> It is important to get enough protein to maintain your muscles, but not too much or it will kick you out of ketosis.
Which confuses me. I've since moved away from keto to a mostly-protein diet with some carbs here and there via veg and bread, and it's worked alright with lifting. Does that mean that keto diets are different for weightlifters than for non-weightlifters?
Have you ever tried eating that much protein? It's very challenging. Protein fills you up super quickly and keeps you full, and, psychologically-speaking, that's one reason why the keto diet works well when other diets fail.
Because of that you'll find a bunch of different 'right' answers. You have to kinda sift through everything and figure out what seems reasonable and see what actually works for you. There's a lot of that out there and that means that what is currently true can shift back and forth a bit.
It used to be 'generally known' that too much protein was bad and would kick you out of ketosis. But there was a new study released that seems to indicate that it has more to do with it being too high of a proportion rather than too much absolute quantity.
Unfortunately I don't have access to the journal databases anymore, so I can't find the links.
> Does that mean that keto diets are different for weightlifters than for non-weightlifters?
The definition of 'ketogenic' isn't changing based on what you do outside of diet, 'ketogenic' simply means that you body is producing a ketones and your body is using them for energy, it's more that some people will use other energy sources with specific timing to enhance their athletic performance. There's something called TKD, targeted ketogenic diet, (which think is named a bit backward) which is mostly used by weightlifters and powerlifters to increase short term performance by eating small amounts of carbs just before a workout.
TBH, I don't fully understand the effects of that so I haven't started doing it myself. I assume there must be benefits to staying ketogenic during my workout so I condition my body to always be used to using fat as a fuel source, but I don't have any data to prove that is actually beneficial. It also helps that I'm more focused on weight loss, baseline of strength, and general health rather than powerlifting or and goals for the super lean and large muscle look.
Maybe I'll take on a macro setup that's closer to keto, but I'm not going to move too far out of my comfort zone.
I also recommend the `Tim Ferriss - Dom D’Agostino on Fasting, Ketosis, and the End of Cancer` podcast, and as you will see, being a bodybuilder on keto does not seems to be an issue. Not for him also.
There is another podcast with him `Dom D’Agostino — The Power of the Ketogenic Diet` but I haven't got the chance to listen to it yet.
http://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2015/Oxy...
Dominic is also a super-strong guy and deadlifts like 600+ pounds while in ketosis. It's a fascinating 2 hour podcast. I don't think you'll be able to listen to it without wanting to be in ketosis.
Personally, I'm not a huge by-the-book cooker. For my keto/very-low-carb diet, I just focus on certain foods that are in line with the target macros. That means lots of:
- 80/20 hamburger meat
- Fatty steak cuts (e.g. ribeye)
- Fatty fish (e.g. salmon)
- Fatty chicken cuts (e.g. legs/thigh/dark meat)
- Most pork (except lean cuts like loin) e.g. pulled pork, bacon, belly
- Avocados
- Macadamia nuts
- Eggs (particularly yokes)
- All coconut products (e.g. oil, milk, unsweetened flakes)
- Green, leafy veggies that are low in carbs (e.g. kale)
- Green veggies that are high in fiber relative to carbs (e.g. Brussels sprouts, broccoli)
Spices are all good, so a lot of my meals turn out like meaty stir fry-type dishes without the starch and with a focus on adding fats (e.g. coconut oil, olive oil) if needed.
However, you don't have to be fancy. I usually just eat meat and low carb veggies for dinner. For instance, baking a bone-in chicken breast and heating up frozen veggies (lots of great mixes available) or doing a stir fry with chicken or beef and low carb veggies again (don't use packaged stir fry sauce, however since they are mostly sugar).
I also wonder if it's possible to work out while doing keto. Since muscles use glycogen to work, and the keto diet is intentionally low in glycogen, does that make weight training and cardio harder? Especially the former, since you're limited in how much protein you can eat, and strength training benefits from having ~150g of protein per day.