Hi,
Can I eat organic spring mix baby lettuce as a substitute to lettuce? Please let me know.

Also My daily intake looks like this
Breakfast : IP wild berry yogurt drink

Lunch : 1 cup of brocolli, 1/2 cup of bell pepper, 1/2 cup of Asparagus, organic spring mix baby lettuce and IP mushroom soup
snack: IP Dark chocolate pudding
Dinner : 8 oz protein with 1 cup of green cabbage and 1 cup of spinach and organic spring mix baby lettuce

My ketostix always shows small. Please let me know what kind of changes I need in order to be in high ketosis.

Thank you,

Spring mix is the same thing as field greens, which are listed under the veggies that you must measure and count towards your daily 4 cups. Same thing with spinach. There was some discussion a while back that spinach may be changed to a "lettuce", but the official documentation from Ideal protein does not say that. Unlimited lettuce would include iceberg, romaine and boston (butter) lettuce. Any other greens need to be measured and counted.

Regarding the ketostix, they are useless. There have been MANY threads about ketosis and ketostix - if you are drinking enough water you won't register much of anything on the sticks, that does NOT mean that you aren't in ketosis. For the purposes of this diet, ANYTHING registering on the ketostix (even just a trace amount) is fine.

you do NOT want to be "high" on the ketostix - that is an indication of ketoacidosis, which is a VERY dangerous medical condition.

I get the daily IP Videos, and always read the comments at the bottom. (The responses from Admin are often more informative than the videos themselves.)

In today's comments, the admin person wrote that you CAN substitute spinach for lettuce, as long as you're using it like lettuce. This is the second time I've seen this stated in the comment section of these videos.

Here's todays:

36. Admin says
James…any of the lettuces are OK to have in your unlimited salad allotment. You can also use spinach or kale in that context, as much as you want. (But they are subject to the limitations of 2 cups if you’re cooking with them.)

I'm not sure when Admin posted that, but they are excellent at updating when their information needs correcting, and haven't done that.

I can't imagine spinach (or Kale) wopuld change that much when cooking with them to move them from one category to the other!

I would be very interested in the reasoning behind allowing unlimited spinach or kale as lettuce, but not when cooking it? One of my friends grills romaine lettuce leaves but that does not suddenly make them a measured veggie.

Scorbett - me too, re: what's their reasoning. I'll try asking that question in the video comments section and let you know how Admin responds.

I wonder if the concern is that even though it's unlimited, people will a lot more than they should if they can cook it all the time. (I'd eat kale chips all day if I could, oiled or not, and the few carbs they have would eventually add up.)

Or maybe lettuce/spinach/kale are more filling raw, because a lot of the water hasn't been cooked out of them.

what is daily intake calories during ideal protein diet?

If you are following the protocol sheet you don't need to worry about counting calories, carbs or anything else (it is set up to have all of that figured out for you). But on average, Phase 1 of IP is between 600-950 calories per day.