Disclosure: We received no compensation from MyFitnessPal or Under Armour for this post.

In a previous post, I showed you how to use the MyFitnessPal app to calculate your daily food consumption for a ketogenic diet. For Barbara and me, this app has been absolutely essential to our keto diet success story.

However, shortly after publishing that post, I realized that most of our friends probably use their mobile devices a lot more than a laptop. Unfortunately, the screenshots I used in that tutorial were from my laptop.

So, in order for you to experience the same keto diet success that Barbara and I have had, I thought it would be helpful if I put together a tutorial on how to use the MyFitnessPal (MFP) app on your handheld device too.

When I initially set up MyFitnessPal on Barb’s phone, I thought it would generally follow the computer program, but it didn’t. The phone app is very different than the desktop program.

I’m not completely tech ignorant but configuring this app took a bit of time. Eventually, though, I got the hang of it, and I must say it’s a handy app. If you’re tethered to your phone, then this app is a great way to keep track of your macros.

Since I’m an iPhone user, I will tailor this tutorial to that specific device. I can’t imagine though that the app would be that different on android devices, but I could be wrong.

Download The MyFitnessPal App

The very first thing you have to do is download the MFP app. That means you’ll have to use your email. MFP will send you an email at least once a week. I hate spam as much as anyone, but I kind of enjoy the MFP emails. They’re not pushy on selling things even though they’re run by the clothing manufacturer Under Armour.

While their dietary theory is not always the same as mine, they often have interesting recipes that can be modified for gluten-free, low-carb diets and their fitness tips can be useful at times. They’ll also send you a summary of your weekly progress.

Okay, once you have the app installed, your first step is to enter your personal goals.

Establishing Your Personal Goals

If you’ve already read this far, I assume you know what your ketogenic dietary goals are. But if you don’t, you can click here to see how Barbara and I do it using ketogains.com. Once you have determined those goals, you can then proceed to the MFP app.

The Home Page

When you open the MFP app, it will display the home page. It looks like this.

As you can see, my personal goal of 1500 calories is already set. Again, I established this goal by calculating my daily macronutrient intake on the ketogains.com calculator. Next, you want to enter your personal goals.

Entering Your Personal Goals

In the above picture, on the lower right, is the more button. Tap this button and it will take you to the More page.

Now tap the Goals button. This will take you to the main Goals page.

On this page, you can set some general health and fitness goals. These include goals like starting weight, current weight, goal weight, and activity level. Notice I set my activity level at “not very active”. Since I’m not on my feet all day and I’m not an endurance athlete, I felt that was the right choice.

As you scroll down, you’ll see Nutrition Goals. Don’t set these yet.

Continue to scroll down and you’ll see Fitness Goals. You can go ahead and set Workouts/Week and Minutes/Workout.

Now scroll back up to Nutrition Goals and tap on Calorie, Carbs, Protein and Fat Goals. If you have the free version app, when this screen opens, the other categories should be locked.

Setting Nutrition Goals

Tap the Calorie, Carbs, Protein and Fat Goals button and the following Calories & Macros screen will appear.

Here’s where it gets a little tricky. Calories are easy to set because you can set them at exactly what you want. Just tap on it and set the number you want.

However, if you only have the free version, like I do, you cannot set carbs, protein, and fat by the grams. You must do it by percentages. Again, if you have your macro percentages in mind, this shouldn’t be too difficult.

First, tap on either of the three macros and you will be brought to this page.

You can adjust any of the macro percentages to a percent you desire. I set mine to 5% carbs, 25% protein and 70% fat. This equaled 100% of my daily allowable macro intake.

As you can see, it automatically set my carb consumption at 19 grams. Protein at 94 grams and fat at 117 grams. This is pretty close to the parameters calculated by the ketogains.com calculator. It may not be exact, but it gives a good basis from which to work. Make sure your macro percentage is set to 100%.

Hit the check mark at the top of the screen and your macros are set!

Now, tap the back arrow twice and you’re back to the MORE page.

Now you’re ready to start adding in your daily food consumption.

Adding In Daily Food Consumption On MFP

Let’s start to add in food. In the above MORE page, tap that big blue button with the plus sign. That will bring you to this screen.

Now, tap that big orange button that says food. You guessed that already, right? You’ll now be brought to the Select a Meal page.

You can choose to add food to whatever meal you’d like. Let’s start with breakfast.

Adding Food For Breakfast

Tap on the Breakfast button, and you’ll be brought to this screen.

From this page, you can search for a food. Most of the food we eat is in the MFP data bank. It will also record your recent and frequent food choices. You can see it has kept a whole list of my recent food choices. I was fortunate that the mobile app imported all my food choices from my laptop version.

Okay, let’s first search for scrambled eggs. Type scrambled eggs into the search bar, press search on your device, and a whole list of scrambled egg choices will appear.

Now tap on Large Egg – Scrambled. Subsequently, a whole lot of nutrition information, including macronutrient data, will appear. Eggs are almost the perfect food. Notice their macro data. They have excellent protein and fat and are in low carbs.

If you’re going to eat two eggs, go to servings, tap it, and it will allow you to add more. The macronutrient data will adjust accordingly.

Since I usually eat two eggs a day, I’ll input that data. Once you have added a particular food, tap the check mark at the top of the screen. It will then bring you to the Today page.

As you can see, you can add more food to whatever meal you choose.

Adding More Food

To add more food, just tap the Add Food button and go through the same process.

I’m going to add in one link of Trader Joe’s Sweet Italian Sausage from the breakfast add food button. Go ahead and search for it. See if you can find it. Once you find it, tap the check mark at the top of the page, and you’ll see that the screen has added in the sausage.

Don’t add any more food right now. I want you to look at the top of the screen where it shows a green 1218 remaining. This is obviously the number of calories I can consume for the rest of the day.

Now, tap the green 1218. It will bring you to the Nutrition page.

The Nutrition Page

My app opens to the Macros selection on the Nutrition page first. If yours open differently, tap the Macros selection first. This screen shows you the macro content of the food you have already ingested for the day.

You can see that I’ve already consumed 4g of carbs, 20g of fat, and 23g of protein.

The Total category shows you my macro percentage of the food you’ve eaten and the Goal category is your original daily macro data.

The Total category is not important right now but will become important later in the day as it will show you how close to or how far you’re over your goal.

Now, don’t leave this screen just yet. At the top of the screen, tap the Nutrients button. 

The Nutrients Selection

When you tap Nutrients, this page will pop up.

This page gives you a clearer picture of what’s going on with your food consumption in relation to your macros.

In my case, you see that I’ve eaten 23g of protein. Since my goal is 94g, I can eat another 71g throughout the day. This will allow me to judge what I can include on my menu for the rest of the day.

Carbs and fat are also displayed as are many other nutrients. Oops, you can see that I haven’t eaten any fiber yet. No worries. That will fill up later on in the day. Or, like today, I ate Barbara’s delicious broccoli frittata. I got some fiber there. Some mornings I’ll saute up some fresh spinach — there’s some fiber!

Remember, fiber can be subtracted from your carb totals to lower your theoretical carb intake. For example, one-half cup of kale has 3 g of carbs, but it also has 1g of fiber. Therefore, your total carbs would be 2g.

The forward and back arrows allow you to go back a day or forward a day. You can ignore these for now. You can also ignore the Calories button. We’re not really interested in calories.

Now, tap the X button at the top left of the screen, and you’ll be brought back to the Today (Add Food) page.

Adding Fractions Of A Food

The two foods I illustrated were pretty simple to input. Two eggs and 1 sausage are complete quantities. What do you do if you want to add a food by particular ounces?

Easy peasy! Okay, if I had a broccoli frittata this morning, I would want to include the ¼ cup of broccoli Barbara used to make it.

Let’s start from scratch. From the Home page tap the big blue circle with the plus sign, then tap the red circle that says food.

From the Select A Meal page, choose Breakfast. Now search for broccoli. When the list of broccoli comes up, choose Broccoli, raw. It will be listed as 1 cup chopped. That’s a problem. Barbara didn’t use one cup of broccoli. Now, what!?

Simply tap the Broccoli, raw button. The nutrient page for broccoli will appear. You’ll see there Serving Size and under that Number of Servings. Next, tap the Number of Servings. This page will appear.

From here you can set the serving as multiple cups or a fraction of a cup. Suppose Barbara used ? of a cup. I simply tap ?, then hit the check mark. That will set broccoli at ? of a cup. Then I tap the check mark at the top of the Add Food page and broccoli is added to my Today page.

Notice that broccoli was added as 0.1 cups and not ?. I guess MFP rounds down, but it’s close enough for me. Play around with the add food page, and you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly.

Editing Your Food Choices

Uh, oh. You added broccoli when you wanted to add kale. What do you do now!!!!

Sometimes you may add a food by mistake. For example, here I have some Trader Joe’s bacon that I want to remove.

To remove the bacon, all I have to do is hit edit at the top left of the screen, and it will allow you to delete any food.

Simply chose bacon and then hit the delete button at the top right, and bacon will be removed.

MFP Saves Your Food Choices

The above process seems like a lot of work, but it does get easier. One reason is that MFP keeps track of all the recent and frequent foods you’ve added. In other words, if you added scrambled eggs today, then that food will show up immediately in your recent food list.

As you add more foods, your list will grow. For example, when I want to add a food for any meal, this list will automatically pop up.

These are some of my Recent food choices. I can actually scroll down for many more choices. If I preferred, I could have tapped the Frequent button at the top of the screen, and it would have given me even more choices. All of these foods were added by me in the past.

If you add food using your computer, they will be automatically imported into the app.

Now, the beauty of this list is that you don’t have to constantly search for foods. Also, and this is a great feature, you can add multiple foods at once.

Adding Multiple Foods

Simply tap Multi-add at the bottom of the screen, and this page will pop up.

You simply check the food you want and then hit Add, and MFP will automatically add them to your food list for the day. How easy is that?

These are the basic steps for getting you going with the MFP app. There are some other features you can play around with. You can add your daily water consumption, keep a log of your exercise, and track your weight loss.

Okay, that’s about it. I hope this tutorial will be of help. I wish you well in your health and fitness journey.

We would love to hear your comments. Have a blessed and healthful week.

This article originally appeared on glutenfreehomestead.com.

The post How To Use The MyFitnessPal App On Your Mobile Device appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.

In previous posts, Barbara and I have talked about our goals and successes with the ketogenic diet. In my last post, I showed you the simple strategy we use to configure our macros for the diet. 

You’re now familiar with what a keto diet is and how ketosis affects your body. You’ve established why you want to go keto (e.g.. weight loss, help in treating a specific health condition, or enhanced physical performance). And you’ve solved the mystery of macro calculation.

So now you’re ready to dive right into the keto diet, right? Well, not so fast. Slow down a bit.

You’re not going to just jump into a lake without knowing something about the depth of the water or its temperature. So it is with the keto diet. Even after knowing what your daily macronutrients should be, there are still several other important things about the Keto diet that you need to know.

You might have heard some of the horror stories from people who’ve tried keto. Some report that they experienced the dreaded “keto flu”. Others complain that their strength training suffered horribly, some are hungry all the time, and others complain that they just can’t find good keto recipes.

In this post, I’ll show you how Barbara and I avoided most of the problems associated with the ketogenic diet and how we quickly corrected a very annoying unexpected problem.

First, let’s get some preliminary stuff out of the way.

Preliminary Stuff

Before Barbara and I went keto, we had a complete physical and blood panel. There was no medical reason preventing us from trying the keto diet. Also, even though we wanted the health benefits of ketones, we weren’t using the diet to treat any specific disease.

As I’ve said in the past, if you’re going to go keto, make sure you’re healthy enough to do it. If you’re using keto to treat a specific disease (type 2 or type 1 diabetes, hypertension, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer) or if you’re taking meds for a condition, make sure you do it under the supervision of a doctor who understands low-carb diets.

Okay, let’s get to the important nuances of a keto diet.

What Does High In Healthy Fat Mean?

A ketogenic diet is characterized as a low-carb (<30 grams net) high-fat diet. It’s called high fat because a majority of your macros will come from fat. Fat comprises about 70% of Barbara’s diet and mine.

However, just because a keto diet is high in fat doesn’t mean that Barbara and I can eat any kind of fat we want. Most of our fat comes from meat (grass fed when possible), butter, olive oil, coconut oil, salmon, sardines, avocados, eggs, and cheese.

I’m a big advocate of quality extra-virgin olive oil. I probably enjoy a good EVOO as much as some people enjoy a fine wine. See my olive oil post here.

The fats we avoid like the plague are highly processed seed oils (corn, vegetable, soybean, etc.). See my post on the dangers of soybean oil here.

Most of the fats we eat are saturated. The mainstream medical community still has this perverse antipathy to saturated fats. However, saturated fat is not your enemy.

Crucial Things We Had To Be Aware Of Concerning The Keto Diet

Before Barbara and I went keto we did a ton of research. One thing we were concerned about was the dreaded “keto flu”.

The Keto Flu

Some people who jump right into a keto diet often report experiencing symptoms like fatigue, headaches, irritability, and muscle cramps. These symptoms have become known as the “keto flu”. But this isn’t really the flu. Experts relate that these symptoms are a result of the body moving away from carbohydrate metabolism to fat metabolism.

The transition away from carbs allows the kidneys to work more efficiently whereby they excrete more sodium and water. Also, a keto diet eschews high sodium containing processed foods. If you were consuming a lot of these foods prior to keto, their removal from your diet may contribute to sodium depletion.

A simple fix for the “keto flu”, or to avoid it altogether, is to maintain the proper intake of sodium and water.

Barbara and I never experienced the “keto flu”. One probable reason is that we had a gradual transition to keto. We were paleo for many years, then switched to low-carb, and then to keto. By the time we went keto, we were already somewhat fat adapted. So apparently our sodium intake was adequate.

Also, you have to make sure you get enough water when on keto.Generally, we drink at least 6-8 glasses of water per day. This seems to be adequate for us.

Barbara and I experience this rapid weight loss when we first went low-carb, but not when we went keto. Our weight loss on keto was gradual and sustained.

Let’s explore the recommendations for sodium, potassium, and magnesium intake in more detail.

What Should Your Sodium Intake Look Like On A Keto Diet?

A teaspoon of table salt has about 2.3 grams of sodium. Doing the math means you’ll need at least a little over 2 teaspoons of salt a day.

No, that doesn’t mean you have to dump all that salt onto your food.

You’ll get some sodium naturally from food (pickles, etc.) and some from salting your food. If you don’t think you’re getting enough sodium, you can get even more from bullion cubes or broth.

In my case, and it’s something Barbara finds utterly disgusting, I’ll put some pink Himalayan salt in the palm of my hand and just lick it up. I learned this from Dr. Mercola who said he does it 6-8 times throughout the day.

Caution On Sodium Intake

Some individuals should exercise caution when adjusting salt intake. Individuals with persistently high blood pressure and fluid retention and people taking NSAIDs should be wary of raising their sodium intake until their conditions resolve. See here. Also, people performing heavy work or physical exercise in the heat may need more sodium.

If you’re healthy and concerned that consuming 5 grams of sodium is dangerous, this 2014 study should allay your concerns. After observing 100,000 individuals, it found that the lowest mortality risk occurred at 5.0 grams of sodium per day.

For Dr. Phinney’s sodium recommendations, see here.

Let’s take a look at potassium.

What Should Your Potassium Intake Look Like On A Keto Diet?

Potassium is another important electrolyte to consider on a keto diet. It is generally recommended that you get at least 1000-3,500 mg of potassium daily. If you’re on a well-formulated keto diet, you should get enough potassium from foods like raw spinach, avocado, mushrooms, salmon, steak, and pork loin.

To be on the safe side, occasionally we’ll sprinkle some of this potassium salt on our meat. Caution: it tastes rather blah.

What Should Your Magnesium Intake Look Like On A Keto Diet?

Magnesium is a mineral that many Americans are deficient in. According to a 2011 report in the Journal Nutrition, 45 percent of American adults do not get the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) amount of magnesium from their diet.

Barbara and I were already aware of the importance of supplementing with magnesium well before we went keto.  We were taking 200 mg/day.

Since we were getting 200 mg from our supplements and the rest from our food, we thought we were okay. We found out the hard way that we were very wrong.

Constipation: A Side Effect Of A Keto Diet

After a few weeks on the keto diet, I developed constipation. This was the first time I had this problemsince before going on a paleo diet years ago. Suggestions to eat more fiber and drink more water were not helpful as I was already doing that.

I read that upping my magnesium intake might help. So Barbara and I increased our magnesium to 600 mg/day. Literally, overnight the problem disappeared and never returned. What a relief that was!!! This is the magnesium that we use.

What About Micronutrients?

Since Barbara and I were on a paleo diet for at least 5 years, we were already eating a lot of whole foods and we continued doing this on our keto diet. We eat at least 3-6 portions of above ground leafy and cruciferous veggies daily. This ensures that we get a good supply of micronutrients.

Maintaining A Good Omega-6 To Omega-3 Fatty Acid Ratio On A Keto Diet?

An important nutritional parameter Barbara and I seek to maintain in our keto diet is an optimal omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio.  These fatty acids are essential fatty acids. That means that even though our bodies need them to function properly, our bodies cannot produce them. We must, therefore, get them from our diet.

Omega-3 fatty acids are recognized as promoting healthy cells and having beneficial anti-inflammatory properties. Several studies had been performed that show they help in reducing the risk of heart disease. See here, here and here.

Omega-6 fatty acids are important for maintaining cell wall integrity and providing energy for the heart. However, when the omega-6 level is elevated, they become pro-inflammatory in a negative way.

Increased omega-6s have been associated with chronic inflammatory diseases such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, CVD, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease. See here and here.

More importantly, for health concerns, is the proportion of omega-6 to omega-3 you get from your diet. Here’s why.

Today’s research suggests that a healthy ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 should fall between 1:1 – 4:1. However, with today’s Western Pattern diet this ratio has now increased to between 15:1 – 16.7:1. See here and here.

This ratio does have health consequences. For example, a ratio of 4:1 was associated with a 70% decrease in total mortality, a ratio of 2-3:1 suppressed inflammation in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, and a ratio of 5:1 had a beneficial effect on patients with asthma, whereas a ratio of 10:1 had adverse consequences. See here.

An Additional Supplement To Our Keto Diet

In my last post, I included a sample of what we eat during a typical day. You may have noticed that MCT oil was on that list. MCT oil is not essential to a keto diet, but if you’re looking to up your ketone production, it may help.

MCT Oil

Remember one of the main reasons for us going keto was so that our bodies would be in a state of ketosis. MCT oil is a supplement that is known for increasing ketone production in the body.

It’s a medium chain triglyceride oil that is derived from palm kernel oil or coconut oil. Upon being ingested, MCT oil passes directly to the liver where it is metabolized into ketones.

MCT oil has been reported to help with metabolic syndrome, and to increase cognition in mild to moderate Alzheimer’s patients.,

Also, since your liver converts MCT oil directly to ketones, it won’t store the oil as fat. The newly produced ketones, therefore, are an instant source of energy for our bodies.

Anecdotally, individuals had reported increased clarity and energy after consuming MCT oil. You can add my name to that list.

This is the MCT oil we are currently using. I pour one tablespoon into my 12:00 PM green tea, and I’m good for the day. There is no change in the taste of the tea, but the consistency is a little oily. It is oil after all.

For more on the benefits of MCT oil, see here. It’s important to note that you don’t need to consume MCT oil to be in ketosis.

Some Cautions When Consuming MCT Oil

There’s one more diet tweak I’d like to mention.

Fasting

Many people who practice a keto lifestyle engage in fasting. If you refrain from eating, your body will have no choice but to consume its own fat for energy. Thus you will lose weight. Also, because no carbs are being consumed, your body will produce ketones.

Fasting will also aid in bringing your body into a better state of insulin sensitivity.

However, I have tried prolonged fasting (more than 24 hours), but it doesn’t work for me. I’ve found the stress on my body is too much for me to handle. Barbara coped better with it, but she also found it stressful.

Since we were not trying to lose humongous amounts of weight, we decided not to incorporate it into our keto regimen.

For everything, you want to know about fasting, visit Dr. Jason Fung’s site here.

There’s also some controversy in the keto world about the dangers of a loss of muscle mass when fasting. Dr. Phinney says it’s possible while Dr. Fung says it’s not. The jury is still out on this issue.

While we don’t fast, we do engage in delayed onset eating.

Delayed Onset Eating

While we don’t do prolonged fasts, we do practice delayed eating. We generally finish eating about 8:00 pm and don’t eat again until at least 12:00 PM the following day. That gives us a 16-hour fast period every day. Eating this way should produce better insulin sensitivity and more ketones.

I’m never really hungry until about 12:00 PM so I’ve experienced no problems with this practice. At 12:00, I’ll have a couple of eggs, bacon or a sausage, some greens, green tea, MCT oil, and a scoop of collagen, and I’m good until about 4:00 PM. At 4:00, I’ll have a sardine salad, EVVO, greens, almonds, more green tea, some avocado, and maybe some blueberries. Then at 7:00, I’ll have whatever Barb is cooking up for dinner.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Going forward, we’re concerned with 4 things:

1. Maintaining our waist measurements
2. Increasing muscle mass
3. Optimizing body fat percentage
4. Continuing to produce ketones

In order to accomplish these goals, we’ll stay on a keto diet. We don’t eat a lot of refined carbs, potatoes, or rice so that won’t be difficult. Some keto experts state that when individuals who have been on a keto diet become fat adapted they can up their carb intake.

I don’t anticipate doing that at the moment.

In order to gain muscle mass, I probably will up my protein intake to 0.8 grams per pound of lean muscle mass. That means I’ll consume about 104 grams of protein a day.

I may also slightly increase my fat intake. But I have to be careful here because I still have a bit more body fat to lose.

Barbara is completely ecstatic with the diet. She’s just about hit her target weight and has boundless energy. Keep going, girl. 61 is the new 41. She may up her protein a little, but for now, she is happy where she is.

Do You Strength Train And Walk?

While the keto diet is a healthy diet, it’s not everything you needfor a long, healthy life. Strong muscles and moving often are also important.

If you already strength train, keep getting stronger. If you don’t but want to, here is the easy method Barbara and I use.

And keep walking. It may be one of the best exercises you can do.

That’s it! Oh, wait, no, it’s not. Remember, we have over 50 delicious low-carb recipes for you to check out. See them on our home page.

If you’re someone who needs more keto info, see the ketogains.com Reddit FAQ page here. Also, check out Mark Sisson’s new book, The Keto Reset Diet. It containsa wealth of information on the keto diet.

Okay, that’s definitely it for this post. We love to hear your comments. Have a blessed week!

This article originally appeared on glutenfreehomestead.com.

The post Our Keto Journey Part 5: Important Tweaks We Made For Keto Success appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.