As you hang around the keto worlds, you will hear a lot about the "evils" of Ancel Keys, the founder of the "saturated fat causes heart disease" movement. Even he didn't believe dietary cholesterol had an impact on heart health. A few things to know:
* The original panic about dietary cholesterol came from feeding rabbits high cholesterol diets. It turns out that herbivorous rabbits are particularly poorly suited for a diet high in animal fat. Go figure.
* Your body has a cholesterol "set point": an amount of cholesterol it wants for daily activities like building cell walls, repairing tissue, making hormones, etc. If you do not eat it, your body will make it. If you eat it, your body won't make it. Regardless of your diet, the end result is the same.
* There has never been a causal relationship shown between cholesterol in the blood (much less diet) and coronary disease. Since cholesterol is part of the immune response, it is, quite literally, like saying we need to remove fire fighters because wherever we find them, we find fires.
Don't be afraid of the cholesterol. Now, there are some numbers that have some correlation with heart disease, but every single one of those numbers are improved by a low carb, high fat diet. See several of this points in this[1].
On getting carbs down, there are a few things to recognize:
* There are gradual improvements. For people who are "carb intolerant", every carb removed from the diet comes with an improvement in general health. If you can't get to 25g to start, try 75g (note: I had serious issues with carb cravings, so I could not do this; it had to be all or nothing).
* There is a step, going from "sugar burning" to nutritional ketosis (generally defined as >=0.5mmol blood ketones), that, for most people, causes a significant increase in energy, clarity of thought, etc. Some people don't experience that and may do better with slightly higher carbs. Experimenting is good.
* It takes a few weeks to get the body fully converted to burning fat (keto adapted). During that period, it is not uncommon to feel sluggish, have headaches, have strong sugar cravings, etc. This can and does pass (many of the older papers showing how "bad" keto diets are ended after 2-4 weeks, right in the middle of keto-adaptation).
There is a strong reddit community[2] that is worth checking out, with a lot of good "how-tos".
On calories, my advice is to always start eating to satiety. During the first few weeks, as craving hit, feed them with fat (bacon is particularly good). Don't worry about calories at all for the first two months as you become keto adapted.
After 6-8 weeks, start really paying attention to your body. Eat when hungry, stop eating when you get full. Your body's satiety signals will usually start working correctly again when the insulin levels are lowered.
Most people will find that their appetite self-regulates into a pattern that causes fairly consistent loss (there may be some plateaus, but that is normal). If you are in this category, just keep going. Worry about your carbs and nothing else.
If you find that you aren't losing "automatically", don't automatically assume you need to force reduce what you eat. Look for other things like too much stress, too little sleep, food intolerances (wheat and dairy impact a lot of people), etc. before trying to will-power your way to loss. Your body wants to be healthy, so find what is keeping it from being there (some people have a really unhealthy relationship with food, so fix the relationship rather than just axing the food).
You are welcome to email me any questions as well. My email is in my profile.
1. http://www.nutritionjrnl.com/article/S0899-9007(14)00332-3/f...
2. http://reddit.com/r/keto