Hi there! My journey starts here and I have begun recording my food on an app called Fat Secret which also advises the fat, protein and carbohydrate content of my choices as a percentage.
My food today has contained 51%fat, 17% protein and 32% carbs and consisted of B: 1 Poached egg and mushrooms cooked in a small knob of butter. L: Feta cheese, a few walnuts, tomatoes and 1/2 an apple. D: Butternut squash soup topped with curly kale cooked with 50g of bacon lardons with a pear kept for later this evening. According to the app this was 780 cals. I feel I need to up my vegetable intake, definitely, but is there a good ratio/balance of fat, protein and carbohydrate to aim for or I am giving myself too many balls to juggle! Your experiences and advice will be very much appreciated. Thank you 🙂

stay within the calories, let the rest settle out – if you crave veggies then your body wants them. But don’t give yourself too many things to track or the process will consume you rather than release you.

Thank you – am keen to get started without tying myself in knots too soon.

I agree with the advice to not worry about tracking it at first, but just for your information, my percentages over the last seven days are currently 34% Protein, 42% Fat and 24% Carbohydrate. You may want to later on replace some of the carbohydrate with protein on some of your days, to make sure the body has plenty of fuel to build and repair muscles, particularly if you are getting more active, as well as counting the calories. I would tend myself to not have both the apple and pear on the same day, replacing one of the fruit with non-starchy vegetables at one or more of the meals.

Thanks Mixnmatch useful advice. I havn’t actually eaten the pear, in fact, as I wasn’t too hungry but I’m sure this won’t always be the case as I progress on the beginning this new way of life. Do you recommend vegetable choice over fruit choice for the carb value. Any low carb eating advice would be appreciated as am very new to this 🙂

slightly different viewpoint – I found tracking quite useful in understanding and learning about what contains carbs. I started off using MyFitnessPal, then switched to FatSecret. I stopped logging everything a couple of weeks ago, because I was a bit bored with it after 4 months, but may start again at some point.

I’m sure many of us have tracked calories on too many diet to count, but I found adding additional dimensions like carbs, and at one point I was concerned about my fibre intake – made it harder.
The info I learned from logging about what was in different foods made it easier on what to pick up (or avoid) both in supermarkets and making choices in restaurants. I hate planning my food ahead, so being able to make making good choices is important.

Your veg intake seems reasonably varied – you’ve had one portion at breakfast, and two at lunch and supper.

For a more general overview than logging, that is a great visual prompt, there is a site called dietdoctor that has great graphics of the carbs in veg, fruit, berries, seeds.
I made 2 A4 size colour prints that I have on the kitchen wall http://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/vegetables

Actually this is one place where BSD could reduce my grocery costs … because you can usually find a bag of small apples cheap. I usually like those beautiful large gala apples …. but i can often fit in the calories and even the carbs of a small apple. Yippee!! 🙂
Going to make a nice coleslaw with some shredded cabbage, 1 sliced up small apple and a few tablespoons of Miracle Whip mayonnaise (also on sale today) 🙂 …. just the kind of recipe i love …. easy peasy!! 🙂

Thanks Frog – the Diet Doctor site looks full of useful visual information for when my brain hurts from all the things I am reading and particularly for a frind of mine who likes to see rather than read. As a newbie, I found this interesting – https://authoritynutrition.com/5-most-common – though those of you who are further on your journey may be familiar with these facts and I apologise if I appear to be ‘teaching my granny to suck eggs’. Thanks to all for the information and support.

Pottidotti
Thank you for the link. It explained how we lose salt on a low carb diet – which has puzzled me since I started in May I had been a bit worried about how much salt I have to add to my food to avoid night time cramps. Am not worried anymore as it makes perfect sense.