Balancing Macros

This is a consistent management issue.   Most animal products that contain fat also have protein, so it can be difficult to balance.    The problem is that once you get over about 140g of protein or so in a day, your body turns the excess into glycogen.

Staying within this takes some pre-planning.  I do this using several mechanisms:

1. I do both weight training and HIIT cardio over the course of the week to reduce my glycogen stores as much as possible and give me as much protein budget as possible.  I do indulge 25g in a Whey protein shake (with added BCAAs) on weight workout days.

2. The bulk of my daily protein comes from eggs in the morning, post workout supplementation (see above) and meat at the evening meal.   I try to avoid snacking and optimize blood sugar recovery by allowing 4-5 hours between meals.

3. I only track net carbs and eat a lot of fiber.  On days when I eat 3 meals, at least one meal is almost exclusively fiberous vegetables.  I eat salads with olive oil based dressing(s).  I also grill vegetables - cauliflower works very well.

4. I eat a lot of different kinds of nuts after meals (you just have to watch the carbs).  I buy raw nuts and roast them myself in butter to enhance the fat content (they also taste awesome!).

5. I make liberal use of "fat bombs" (sounds disgusting, isn't -- look up recipes on the Internet) to balance out macros, add fat, and deal with an occasional sweet tooth.

I hope this helps.  I'm interested in hearing how other people do this.

I also had trouble balancing macros at first.  The key for me was planning my meals in advance.  I find it helpful to enter meals in CM before I eat to see the effect on my daily Macros.  You can always delete and change to something else if needed.

Stevebro Talk to me about roasting nuts in butter.  I live in pecan country and have ready access to plump fresh pecans.  I've bought them butter roasted at fairs and they're delicious, plus the butter will stick salt.  But I've been reluctant to risk ruining them doing it myself, even here in pecan country they aren't cheap, just better.  How do you prep, cook and store them and how long are they good for?

Coconut products and avocados are a good source of fat without bumping protein.  Coconut butter is a little hard to find, but has about the same nutritional profile as coconut oil.  It isn't greasy, handles more like butter and is delicious (if you like coconut).  I recommend it for fat bombs, keto baking and Thai inspired cooking.   There's also cocoa butter for cooking.  I only recently acquired some and am figuring out how to use it.

Moondrake Not a whole lot to it.  I lay out the nuts (I've tried pecans, walnuts, brazil nuts, almonds) on a  cookie sheet covered with foil.  I melt butter and pour it evenly over the nuts (I use a lot of butter and make sure they're covered fairly well).  I generally will lightly sprinkle some sea salt on top.  

Then I put the cookie sheet into the oven at about 300 for 10 mins, gently flip them over and put them back in for another 10. 

I just buy the nuts at Trader Joes -- would probably be tastier using the ones near you!