2.5 months in keto and something is wrong, need your help

#1

(If i cannot explain myself clearly please ask me detail because english is not my native language)

Hi, i have been eating keto like 2.5 months ago. First month i felt awesome very increased energy, mood etc etc. But last 1.5 months it is just opposite. I feel very fatigue, brain foged, some hair loss, cannot hit gym because feeling very tired even when just sitting.
I don’t feel fat adapted ,because everyone says consistent energy etc when fat adapted, but i ony feel that i am not hungry anymore. I can fast at least 16 hour without any hunger but no energy :frowning: I tried OMAD maybe it give me energy for 2-3 days but it gave me physically stress (increased cortisol i think) and worse crash after breaking fast and i step back to 3 meal a day.

I don’t know what is missing i need your help. I need that initial energy that keto gave me.

My stats;
28 M 75kg 180 cm

5-10 g net carb
160 g fat
110 g protein
2 liter water at least

Thoose gave me at least 1900-2000 calorie, TDEE says i need 2400 calorie i’ll try up for this 400-500 calorie deficieny i don’t know is this a issue…

Sodium : 5-6 g
Potassium : 3-4g
Magnesium 400-600 mg

I take supplements multi vitamins, fish oil etc. according to cronometer i don’t have any deficient for vitamin/mineral.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #2

Welcome to the forums!

You appear to be doing everything right. But don’t force yourself to drink when you are not thirsty. You seem to be getting enough salt; others can tell you more about potassium and magnesium. If you have excess fat to shed, then 1900 calories is not a bad amount to be eating, but if you are already lean, you may well need to eat more. Would it be difficult to force yourself to eat more fat? (It supplies energy without stimulating insulin.) If you are consuming a lot of your fat as vegetable oil, that may make you feel nauseated, in which case you will probably find saturated and monounsaturated fats (the kind found in butter, tallow, lard, and attached to meat).

Are you taking any medications? What kind of foods are you eating? Have you seen your physician? Do you know what your body composition is? At two and a half months of eating a ketogenic diet, you should be past the keto-adaptation phase, so your endurance should have already returned. It is possible that you have some kind of health problem that is unrelated to the ketogenic diet.

In any case, I’m sorry not to be more helpful. Perhaps someone else will read this thread and be able to give you more insight.

#3

Thank you for reply :slight_smile: I don’t have any issue that i know medical. I don’t take any medication .I saw physician but he said everything is ok from blood test. Before keto i tested for food intolarance and it seems i have intolorance some food like gluten, egg yeast and don’t have them.
I force myself for drinking water because i thought maybe it helps.

I eat mostly chicken, meat , vegetable lettuce, spinach, olive oil, ghee, mct oil coconut oil.

Edit:
Is it possible that i am not fat adapted still? Or maybe 500 calorie deficit is much more? Because i saw in this forum one lady said she up her calorie and felt very fine
I have very lean body, don’t have any fat store i think :slight_smile:

#4

It can be a lot of things, but all that combined also fits metabolic slowdown, which is consistent with under eating, especially if you’re working hard at the gym. Last thing I’d do while having energy issues is any type of fasting.

Given that you’re not overweight, can I assume your goals in the gym are muscle gain? If so, your protein is pretty low. I’d take down the fat and up the protein, but eat more either way. Definitely up that, but don’t jump 400-500 cals at once, do like 200/day for a week or so then up it again, unless, you can get away with it without gaining.

Also up your water, you’re on a diet that acts like a diuretic to begin with, plus you’re working out. Drink more. There’s a popular theme here for under hydrating, your call, but the best way to make your body hold ON to more water is to not drink enough of it. That’s very well known when it comes to water retention, which a good amount of all of our weight actually is. Upping my water was a game changer for both energy and dumping water retention.

#5

@lfod14 My gym goal little bit muscle and just make movement actually, because my life is very low active.
I am not overweight i eat 110g protein because this calculator say so https://calculo.io/keto-calculator I’ll try up my calorie intake. This lady solve her energy issue maybe this is a issue for me too https://www.ketogenicforums.com/t/calories-does-matter-on-keto/39392

I drink 2 liter water but i force myself to that 2 liter already :confused: I don’t feel thirsty do i drink lot more from 2 liter?

(Joey) #6

Welcome to the forum.

In short, as others have suggested, I’d encourage you to eat more healthy animal fats than you are currently eating (yes, those additional 400-500 calories can make a difference). Losing weight isn’t your problem, so don’t worry about getting “too much” nutritional energy to fuel yourself at this time.

Absent any other health issues, it’s most likely that you’re sending “starvation” signals to your body that are slowing down your metabolism.

Assuming you’re tracking food correctly, your level of carb restriction (5-10g net carb) seems to be far into the zone to sustain ketosis. In fact, it’s extremely low (which would typically be good) … but makes me ask you to reconfirm the accuracy of your nutritional math. Are you sure your current diet is still providing the macro-nutrient breakdown as you’ve shared above?

Your electrolyte intake sounds great - congrats on keeping that up to where it needs to be to ease the transition from carb-eating to keto.

A few other thoughts besides energy level:
Have you lost weight?
Do your clothes (waistline) fit looser?

Again, based on everything you’ve shared thus far, my thought tracks with comments above: Eat more healthy fats, ideally pace your meals at 2x daily, but even 3x daily shouldn’t be an issue based on what you’ve been doing and you have no insulin resistance issues.

Best wishes, and keep us posted please.

#7

@SomeGuy Hi thank you for your reply,

-I lost weight about 7-8 kg but it is not my main goal but i lost weight anyway. (maybe according to that i should eat more i don’t know …)
-Maybe it is not 100% accurate what i ate but it i s mostly like it that i share.
-I am sure i eat max 10g net carb daily because i am very strict about it, and it comes from nuts or vegetables, shoud i increase my carb intake?

#8

Just a thought it should be silly.
Is it possible that i felt great first month because i have body fat and i lost 7-8 kg and now i have very little body fat that cannot give me energy? :thinking:

#9

Yup, what she did without realizing is what we now call a reverse diet, eat too little, your metabolic rate slows down. Only way to get it back up is to slowly raise them. Took me a year to fix mine after under eating and fasting destroyed mine.

The calories absolutely matter. Tracking mine was a huge improvement. I’m one of those people that are never satiated when I eat, I can eat from when I wake up until bedtime. When I destroyed my metabolism, it was one of the few times when I wasn’t constantly hungry, that should have been a huge red flag for me, sadly it wasn’t. Doesn’t matter what the breakdown is, until I’m at the point where I’m sick, I’m hungry.

Also, yes, I’d still up the water. That’s not a lot of water at all either way, but espeically for somebody that works out. I use those flavor drops so I’m not drinking plain water all the time, only time I like “real” water is when I’m in the Sauna. You can get good naturally sweetened ones so you don’t have to feel guilty about it. I literally go through like 10 of those things a week. I’ve already put down more than 2 liters and it’s barely 2pm here. In my case (when I’m home at least) I have a 2L pitcher in my fridge that I drop an electrolyte tab into, and know I have to drink at least 2 of those a day. That’s on top of what goes down at the gym or when I’m out.

#10

Did i destroy mine metabolic rate too :(( How long did you eat like very little calorie?

#11

Only way to (truly) know is to have it measured, but if you can’t even eat a standard 2000 cal day or what I call “3 adult sized meals” without gaining, pretty obvious then you’re running slow. I was an extreme case, I was ignoring calories and only eating when I was “hungry”, I quote hungry because I’m always hungry, so then, hungry meant when I couldn’t take it anymore and was about to eat anything, whether food or not. That was the beginning of my slowdown. Then I stopped losing, so I started fasting, started by skipping breakfasts, then I started skipping lunches, so I was doing OMAD basically. Worst part, is I felt AWESOME doing that!

I probably did that for 1.5yrs, combined. Took a little over a year to fix, for my height and weight I should have been eating 2500-2700 cals /day per most calculators, my RMR was measured at 1700! That’s while lifting heavy 5-6 days a week in the gym. Now after rebuilding I’m eating more like 3000-3300/day and still taking off fat. Not much has changed training wise, whats’s different is I’m tracking macros now, and a while back switched from standard keto to a hybrid of both Targeted and Cyclic keto, so I’m getting in carbs around workouts.

My starting weight when I had my initial RMR measurement and DEXA was about 230lbs and I was I think 16% bodyfat, my followup was 220lbs and 11.5% bodfat, I’ve got to schedule another but right now I’m around 225lbs, I’m noticeable leaner, my strength is way up from then (I track my lifts too) so I’m hoping for around 9% or so.

Ultimately, it didn’t take a lot of tweaks, just some here and there that were right for what I was trying to accomplish.

Everybody is different, the viewpoints from somebody that’s trying to manange a medical condition, those who are only about fat loss, those who are only about muscle gain, and those of us that want both fat loss and muscle gain will all have very different views on what’s right and wrong. Two people can give totally different answers, and they can both be right.

My huge mistakes were, not counting calories at first, eating to “satiety”, protein was too low, over consuming salt, overconsuming fat, caring about things like ketone levels. Many here will literally say the exact opposite of all of that. All depends on your goals, and what your body responds well to.

#12

Everyone says OMAD makes awesome feelings, i wish to try it but it is not good idea right now :slight_smile:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #13

Definitely possible. If you have very little body fat, then all your energy needs have to be met from the food you are eating. So follow the advice to eat more. You will probably have to experiment to see whether you need more protein or more fat, but definitely eat enough to satisfy your hunger. Up to a point, eating more fat causes the body to burn more fat. So don’t choke down fat, just eat enough to be able to go several hours between meals. Some people need more protein than others, so you may need a somewhat higher proportion of protein as compared to fat; you’ll have to experiment a little to figure that out.

Also, if you are trying to put on muscle, eat foods that will give you plenty of the branched-chain amino acids (leucine, iso-leucine, and valine). But if you are not trying to add muscle, then the need for BCAA’s is not very great at all.

Don’t try to fast at the moment. Eat enough to keep your body happy. At some point, you may find yourself skipping meals without even thinking about it. That is the point at which fasting may be useful to you.

(Joey) #14

Yes, this!

#15

Thanks, as i said i lost 7-8 kg and now i cannot see any fat in my body it seems very lean , i had belly fat only and it’s gone. Maybe i burned that fat store first month when i was calorie deficit. Thank all support i’ll definetely increase fat/protein intake and will keep update.

(Fabrizio) #16

Hi, I agree that calories intake is very important. But, and probably someone will hate me for what I’m saying, carb intake could be important too. You are eating very few carb, and for some people (like me) this is an issue in their long run, because some hormones don’t work properly. If I was you, I would try a carb reload. It doesn’t mean necessarily going out from keto, before example you could bring your carb intake to 50, or 70 grams, for several days, it shouldn’t kick you out from chetosis, and give many advantages. Try also to combine glucose and fructose (eg. rice + fruit).

(Edith) #17

I’m of the belief that you shouldn’t force yourself to drink water if you are not thirsty. Plus, drinking too much water can flush out electrolytes.

I do agree with the others that you are not eating enough.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #18

That depends entirely on how insulin-resistant someone is. The greater the degree of insulin-resistance, the less carbohydrate someone can eat without getting kicked out of ketosis.

#19

First i’ll try up my calories and do some movement incase of low metabolism then i can try up my carb a little, since begin keto i am very strict about carbs.

Edit:
I am little bit confused , i thought lower carb as possible is a good thing. Am i wrong because i am very strict about carb intake. All my carb come from nuts or vegetables

#20

I made this mistake :slight_smile: One day i drunk a lot of water and didn’t take my electrolytes. After 2-3 hours i felt very bad i felt anxious and another mistake that i made is i didn’t supplement potassium for a few days and it felt miserable too…