Hi 1960 I use the fatsecret app on my phone to work out carbs on eating days.
Controlling insulin levels is more important than calories, you are going to need to work with your doctor to agree a program for reducing drugs as your blood sugar reduce.
If you need to you can always do what is known as a fat fast to help you get started. The reason this works is the bad gut bacteria which feed off carbs are the fastest to multiply when you step off the wagon and the fastest to die off when you stop feeding them. Unfortunately they are able to signal to your brain that they want feeding. So if you find it a real struggle to control carb intake you can starve them into lower numbers by responding to their urges to feed them by eating high fat no carb. Eat as much as you like of foods like bacon, eggs, avocado, olives and after a little while your appetite will reduce. After a few days the numbers of bad bacteria will have reduced enough so you can ignore them and your body will be used to using fat for fuel. Then you can stay low carb but cut down on the calories so your body uses fat stores instead.
There is some debate on how many carbs to allow yourself. some talk of 50 g, and certainly this will help and is a good start point. However, I found (with the aid of a cheap breathalyser which is an easy way to test for burning ketones for fuel) that Insulin Resistance meant I had to stay under 25g of carbs to stay in ketosis even when being active, if I went over 27g of carbs I would come out of ketosis and it would take me a few days to get back into ketosis – Reduced calories while insulin is high will work for a few weeks but after that you risk putting your body into starvation mode. The point where because your insulin levels are too high to allow your body to use your fat for fuel your body feels it has to reduce your metabolic rate to match the reduction in calories. I believe this is the reason that Dr MM recommends following the fast 800 for only 8 weeks.
