I’m not new to dieting and have a long term interest in health and nutrition. Having read Michael’s book (Fast 800), I’m still left with a few questions. Apologies if these were answered somewhere else (including the book if I missed the sentence about it!):

1. The focus of the initial phase is getting into ketosis. Typically on a ketogenic diet people aim for <20g of carbs per day. With Fast 800 it doesn’t seem as strict. I know that people’s bodies vary in terms of the threshold for ketosis. What amount of carbs should be the upper limit for those starting this diet in order to achieve ketosis in a reasonable amount of time?

2. I tend to only eat one or two meals per day, and the recipes in Fast 800 are mostly geared towards 2 or more people. The meal plan splits into 3 separate meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner). Are there any (free) online resources with additional recipes, especially for just one serving?

3. One of the typical problems with ketogenic/low carb diets is the lack of potassium. We need a minimum of 3500mg per day and supplements tend to only give low doses (as large amounts of potassium can be very harmful). A whole avocado only has around 800mg-1000mg and the replacement shakes only have 500mg per serving. 800kcals seems very little in terms of getting enough potassium. The book doesn’t really go into it. Urinating more frequently also means you expel the retained minerals like potassium so your stores deplete quicker. Has anyone experienced any issues on this diet with symptoms like heart palpitations or a prominent/heavy heartbeat?

4. A bit like the first question, is there a specific amount of protein, fat and fibre we should be aiming for per day?

5. I’m a simple guy and could just live off meals that are one/two/three ingredients e.g. salmon and eggs, steak and mushrooms, fruit with yogurt. Can we generally eat what we like as long as it fits the low-carb, Mediterranean-style whole food ethos?

Thanks.

Hi arthur, I will try to answer in order.
1. to be in ketosis MM said on his recent TV show that 100g carbs will do the job, people tend to stick to around 50g and some are more strict on 20g. Dont rely on ketone measurements as once your body has reached fat burning mode and gets used to it, you wont be showing ketones and that can make people think it is not working, It is if you are low carb,
2. To make the meals for one you just have to do some maths or make enough for 2 and save, freeze the other portion. If you want to eat only one or two meals you will have to count the calories (before you eat it) to divvy it up to 800.
3. Potassium supplements are not necessary or recommended by DrM. Just drink plenty of water to replace what you are passing and add a pinch of salt to some veg or an egg, just a small amount – most table salts contain potassium as well as sodium. If you are eating a balanced diet and not just living on meat and eggs (this is not a high protein diet) you should be getting lots of green leafy veg, broccolli, spinach, sprouts, kale and so on which have plenty of potassium. If you have any problems with heart palpatations etc then you must see a doctor. No such symptoms have been reported on this site.
4. There are ideal amounts of nutrients and it has been discussed here. Sorry I cant recall as I wasnt concerned as I eat a well balanced amount of everything except white starchy carbs. Someone else might answer that for you but it is something to do with x grams of protein for x amount of kg you are. If you do a search you might find it using key words like protein.
5. I guess you can eat what you like as long as you stay off the white carbs and within the calories but…. would that be healthy and balanced. By the way, mushrooms are full of potassium and I heard a doctor (Sarah Jarvis) say if you put them in a sunny position for a couple of hours before eating you can double the amount.
Finally you asked if there is a source of recipes besides the ones in the Fast800 book. There is a book that goes with the BSD diet called the BSD cookbook, written by DrM’s wife, Dr Claire Bailey. Another excellent site is the http://www.dietdoctor, where you will find lots of ideas of what to eat and good list on what not to eat.

Hope that helps. Don’t try to make it too complicated for yourself and you will have a better chance of sticking with it. Keep us posted as to how you get on.

Wow, appreciate the detailed response sunshine-girl – certainly enough info to clear up most of what I was a bit uncertain on especially re: potassium. I only mentioned palpitations as it’s something fairly common as a side effect early on with strict keto diets (very strictly <20g) and I’ve had them in the past when eating such low carb.

Can easily be fixed with plenty of potassium but unfortunately most good sources of potassium are high carb (e.g. potatoes, bananas). Will aim for <30g to start with and taper down.

Thanks again.

Hi Arthur2020,

I have a different opinion to Sunshine-girl on point 1. I don’t think its wise to make assumptions on the level of carbs you can tolerate and be in ketosis. – If you get the level wrong, then while you will lose weight, you may also have an impact on your metabolic rate.
because what you are doing is no different to any calorie counting diet.

So my advice is to either play safe and stick to under 20g of carbs, apparently even people who are insulin resistant will be in ketosis at that level or to test. – Testing with the pee sticks is not reliable, but either blood or breath testing techniques tests to byproducts of burning ketones, so are more reliable for long term use.

Dr Phinney works with experienced competative cyclists and advises 100g carbs for them. My experience is that I a heading towards 3 years of eating low carb but am still insulin resistant so that anything over 25g of carbs kicks me out of ketosis and it will take me a couple of days of staying around 20g to get back in. I use one of the cheap breathalyzers you can buy from Amazon an AT6000 to monitor for ketones.

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Diet doctor website has a selection of menus as well, or just search for keto menus, you will be surprised how many resources there are online nowadays. – I use the fatsecret app on my mobile phone to enter what I am thinking about eating and see the breakdown of carbs, fat and protein .

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The general guidelines on protein is 0.6 to 0.8g per kilo of TARGET weight for a woman and 0.8 to 1g per kilo of TARGET weight for a man. The balance of your calories then comes from healthy fats.

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I am with sunshine-girl that increasing salt works.
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I had heard that leaving mushrooms in sunlight for 2 hours increases the Vitamin D which is something that was shared on the forum when there were discussions about Covid and vit D

Hi JGwen, when I stated 100g would put someone in ketosis I was just repeating what DrM said in his programme on Wednesday, but I obviously dont follow that myself but there is no way I can get as low as 20g, tried very hard but still end up around 50.
The Vit D with mushrooms makes sense, got that wrong then. Hey ho, just know they do you lots of good.

Hi Sunshine-girl,

I thought it was interesting that Dr MM’s program has sort of skimmed over any need to find each persons limit on carbs to get to ketosis. However all of them are being shown to be deeply in ketosis from the pee sticks. I don’t remember seeing the bit about 100g of carbs to get into ketosis, perhaps the dogs decided to bounce on me at that point. With a young collie who is full of energy and an old collie who wants to be the center of attestation I do get regularly treated like the castle in a game of king of the castle.

Dr Bikman, is the source of anyone who is severely IR will get into ketosis at 20g.

For what it’s worth, I think you can do your noggin in trying to listen to too many voices with this. There’s a lot of info out there on the web about doing keto, some of it right, a lot of it hearsay and just repeated so often people think it must be true.

The Fast800 is not a Keto plan. It’s a low carb plan. There’s a difference. If you want to do Keto while doing the Fast800 then there’s nothing to stop you, but losing weight on the Fast800 is a given, in ketosis or not, because it’s a low calorie diet. The jury’s out on whether it’s ketosis itself that causes appetite suppression or whether it’s the reduction in insulin or something else.

So try not to bring too many snippets of wisdom from other plans to this because you’re likely to tie yourself up in knots—in fact, it sounds like you already have. 🙂 You can derail yourself that way—I’ve certainly derailed myself by trying to apply everything I thought I knew!—and from there on it can take a bit of doing to get back on track. Try it first of all (making food you love is fine—you don’t have to follow the recipes!) and if it doesn’t give you the results you want after a few weeks that’s the time to tweak.

Hi Lily,
By coincidence there is an article in todays Times which suggests things are going to get more complicated. – A Professor Spector, has been working with a US/UK company to develop a new app which based on analysis of your gut bacteria advises you on what eating program to follow for you.

Someone was mentioning a few weeks ago that they wished there was a magic bullet. I think in a few years time it will progress to personalised programs to adjust the gut bacteria so people who have been eating a lot of processed food / or a high carb diet repair their gut bacteria mixture.

Maybe there will be but it might take a long time to become mainstream. I was doing low carb 20 years ago when everyone said I’d damage my kidneys and have a heart attack because of the increased fat.
And I’m not seeing too many signs that public advice, certainly not here in the U.K., is going to suggest we all eat “real food”. There’s a lot of money to be made in peddling carbs and processed junk.

Meanwhile, I don’t think BSD or the Fast800 is supposed to be overly complicated and that’s why MM doesn’t specify a carbohydrate level daily intake, only that we eat a Mediterranean style diet in consuming our 800 calories. If you’re only eating 800 calories the carbs look after themselves. It wasn’t designed to be a very low carb diet, it’s a lower carb diet almost by accident. If you do a milkshake style VLCD (as I have more than once in the past), some VLCD brands have you on 80-100g carb daily and weight loss still happens. But the 800 plan is only designed to be followed for a maximum of 8-12 weeks and that’s another reason why this isn’t more complicated—when you start adding other rules like “keep carbs below 20g a day” it can become a real chore to follow it.

You are so right Lily, I have been doing this diet for 4 years (always low carb and sometimes 800 cals depending) and I am still learning stuff. I am never sure why people want to know minute details of nutrients etc. If you are eating a well balanced plate, you are satisfied and the diet does what it says, in my case low carb equals low glucose for my diabetes. We are not scientists, we should just do what our bodies tell us is good for us.
For some simple tips on Keto and low carbing I watch snips from Dr Becky – she is clear and to the point and sometimes funny, using herself and her husband to test theories out.

Yes, I’ve really enjoyed watching Dr Becky—thanks for recommending her. 🙂