New to keto

Welcome to the forum!  

Good question: Let’s look at them one at a time.  

It’s important to stay at (good) or below (better) on your carbs.  Lower is better as low carbs forces your body to convert to burning fat for fuel.  The less carbs we feed our bodies, the more fat they burn - think of it as a zero sum game.  It takes ‘X’ amount of energy each day to keep us alive and healthy.  That energy has to come from somewhere.  The less carbs, the more fat is burned.  

Now to fat:  The fat macro depends on where you are along your keto journey.  There are two types of fat: dietary fat that we eat, and adipose fat that’s been stored (think belly fat, etc).  You might eat less at the start as you’re burning stored fat, and will probably need more fat (closer to your macro) as you burn up stored fat.   Dietary fat and adipose fat is processed into the bloodstream and used for energy.  Particularly at the beginning, staying under your fat macro results in more adipose fat burned.  Think of it this way: we burn X amount of fat (combination of dietary and adipose) each day.  But if we eat a lot of dietary fat, all we’ve done is replace some of what we’ve burned (hope that makes sense) so at the start keep below your fat macro if you can.   A good rule of thumb is to eat fat to feel full.

Now for protein:  protein powers a lot of the body’s systems so you need to try to stay close to the macro.  A lot of my reading says that people typically over do their proteins as they’re afraid of eating too much fat.  It might take a while to get over that notion. Try not to go over proteins by too much or too often as excess protein can be converted to carbs and that defeats the purpose of lowering carbs and can kick you out of ketosis.

Also, you should make sure you’re drinking PLENTY of water as it takes water to process fats.   (Just as an example, I’m 63yo male 6’1” and drink well over 21 8-ounce cups a day).  You’ll also need to up your sodium intake to keep up with all the sodium that’s dumped along with the water.  

Summary: stay below carbs, at protein, and fat to feel full.

Hope this helps and keto on!

In a nutshell, I lose weight steadily meeting all the macros, since the carb manager program already takes everything into account when it sets your macros, just follow them don't try to outsmart it.  You never hit macros bang on, but come as close as you can and you'll have good results.  NO snacking.  You have to eat within a 7 hour window ideally, so for me, I eat at 12:30 and 5:30pm.  That's it.  Just tea and coffee outside of those hours.  You'll do great, keto on!

Hi: when you say macros you take keep into account the daily calorie intake the app suggests for losing weight?

Slimjk2020 Hi!  You're not supposed to count calories, but do pay attention to them because they should be pretty close to target if you're keeping to your macros amounts.  The world keeps turning if you come in a bit over, but I find if I'm 200 calories over, I stop losing weight for that day and I feel like I don't want to set myself back, so I'm religious about my macros.  I figure it's really good advice, take it!  But yes calories are of less importance on keto.  

I believe you should minimize carbs. If you can be under that is better. Optimize protein. Under and you could suffer from muscle mass loss which you don't want. Too much and you can have an insulting response that can pull you out of ketosis and don't get the benefits. Maximize fat with-in your budget. Try to achieve your fat to maintain energy since it is your main source of energy and makes your food tastier. You can be a bit low but I don't know how low is acceptable. Just don't go too low. Low carb and low fat is not healthy since you have no source of energy. I have been doing this for months and I am just now playing with fat bomb recipes to help bring my fat up. I can easily hit protein but usually hit my carb limit before I get high enough on fat. Today I hit target across the board so it's helping. I watch calories but you don't need to manager them at all. The three macros will only naturally result in managing your calories.