Hello all, started on Monday & already lost four pounds (probably water to begin with). Keeping within the 800 Cal’s – give or take, however not sure if I am incorporating too much fat (mainly olive oil & butter) and eating too much protein (red meat, chicken, fish, eggs & small amount of cheddar). Any guidance on quantities/grams per day of protein & fat? Old habits die hard.

Finding it easy & not hungry, so must be doing something wrong?? Maybe eating too much or even too little protein & fat. Eating lots of above ground veg and salad.

Today – two egg omlet cooked in little butter with chopped bacon rasher and two chestnut mushrooms for brunch. Slow cooked lamb caserole with french beans and broccoli (steamed & drizzled with small amt of olive oil) for dinner.
Tomorrow – kipper for brunch and red lentil dahl and veg curry for dinner planned.

Above not really Mediterranean Dishes.

Stop you’re making me hungry!!

I can’t say if what I’m doing is right or wrong either but the Mediterranean diet is not a low fat diet. It includes lots of fish, lamb, eggs olive oil etc so you don’t seem to be doing much wrong. I’m not afraid to use fat (mostly butter, olive oil) but the only restriction I have is that calories stay at 800.

I’m averaging about 60 grams protein, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less (about 240 calories), about 40 grams of carb (160 calories) and the rest fat (about 45 grams) to make up the balance to 800 calories. I often have a knob of butter on vegetables as fat enables the nutrients to be absorbed and used so I’d say just keep doing what you’re doing and look at it again if you aren’t making the progress you want. To be honest, the amount of fat you can have on an 800 calories allowance isn’t enough to worry abour 🙂

Hiya – on day 3 here, but veteran of other VLCDs (the milkshake kind). Having real food is fabulous. 🙂

I posted this yesteday on another thread about how many carbs to have per day – hopefully it’s helpful here too.

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There is a recommendation for grams of protein per day in the book – from memory I think it’s around 50g.

And there’s some research on VLCDs that suggests that you do need to make sure you have at least 7g fat a day (and preferably more) in order to reduce the risk of gallstones – http://www.foodedsoc.org/marks/MARKS34.htm
I’d go for at least 20g of fat, and there’s no reason to be scared of having much more than that now that we know fat doesn’t make you fat.

So, given there’s 4 calories per gram of protein and 9 calories per gram of fat…
4 x 50 = 200 calories
20 x 9 = 180

Total intake from protein and fat = 380 calories.

Which leaves a maximum of 420 calories for carbs – so up to 105g of carb a day (given carbs are 4 calories per gram).

According to many low carb gurus, anything less than 100g carb a day is considered a low carb diet.

But to be honest, it’s probably not worth worrying exactly how you spend your calories (quantities of fat and protein aside) provided you eat a good range of foods each day.

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I’m tracking everything on an app call My Fitness Pal but there are loads of other apps like it. Yesterday I had 25g fat, about 60g of protein and the rest was carbs.

Hope that helps a bit.

Oh and Toedipper, your menu sounds lovely. Could I come round for dinner? 🙂

Today, I’m having grapes and nuts here and there through the day (all measured out) and beef stew for dinner. Not too Mediterranean either but I think it doesn’t matter, so long as the carbs you eat are “good” carbs and you keep away from processed junk.

Hi Both
Really helpful info, thanks
Penny

I’m having more fat and less carbs than mentioned above generally 30-45 grams fat and 50ish carbs. But it varies day to day and I don’t think we need to get bogged down by numbers as long as we stick to the rules. I don’t eat beans or lentils so that could be keeping my carb count so low, I only have vegetables and around one serve of fruit per day as carb sources. It’s working, so I’m not worrying!

So if you are consuming 25g of carbs a day what about the rest to make up to 800 cals?

This is a low carb/vlcd diet.105g of carbs defeats purpose. The point is to limit carbs to engender appetite-reducing ketosis, which is the process by which the liver converts protein and fat to ketones, (a form of glucose) thus eliminating stored fat in liver and pancreas, and utilising body fat. Macro ratio should be somewhere around <60g carb pd, and the remaining cal/g utilised in fat and protein consumption to achieve ~ 800 cal limit.