I have been following the keto plan for the last 2 months strictly,(1 bad weekend after 1 month). 5% carbs, 25 protein,70 fat. Also 18/6 IF.
I was 180 , 33%bf now 172, 28% bf
56 yo, active. Gym 4-5x/ wk. Either tennis,weights or hiit.
I cut out dairy last week to see if things would budge( sown a lb ,but right back to 173 again). I have been hovering around 173 for about 3 weeks.
I eat approx.1400 calories/ day in 2 meals and I am stuffed. I take my total cals expended and subtract 300-400 per day for deficit.
I try to keep total carbs under 20.
Body wise, I can tell my upper body is losing some, but not significant.
I haven’t lost more than 2 lbs in 6 years so I’m still very happy, but Im looking for some tweaking ideas from some veterans.
I dont sleep well, and I do know my cortisol has been off the charts the past few years.
I’m trying and have tried absolutely everything to remedy this, magnesium, magnesium oil, melatonin, meditation,etc.,etc.etc.
2 months on keto- not much movement
I tried kava supplement recently for sleep, working pretty well so far. Sleep will make a big difference to your weight loss but your body is likely healing internal inflammation.
Can you give more information about yourself? Height? For females, up to 25% bf is fit, and 28% is in the healthy range. Dropping from 33% to 28% sounds like more than “not much movement” to me.
Sorry I missed this originally. I’m going to add my regular recommendations below. But, I hope you’ve been able to start feeling better by now. Did you figure out why you feel the way you do? The things I’d consider from the original post are low calories and electrolytes.
We have a few sayings here, “keep calm, keto on” and “trust the process.” Keto isn’t a quick weight loss diet. It’s a health gaining way of eating with fat loss as a side effect. If the scale is an unhealthy obsession, put it away for a couple of months or give it to a neighbor you don’t like.
There are two phases to ketosis and a ketogenic lifestyle.
Nutritional ketosis is phase one. Your body begins to produce and uptake some ketones while dumping the rest. It will still search for glucose to use as fuel. In this phase it’s not an efficient process. It has to work actively to get rid of stored glycogen, clean up excess blood sugar, and turn on the ability to use ketones.
Fat adaptation is phase two. Your body is efficiently producing ketones from intake and stored body fat and is also using them efficiently for energy. It takes around 6-8 weeks of strict keto to achieve for many but not all.
The basic “rules” I go by and many others can agree with especially for beginners are:
*20g net carbs max (you might tolerate more but, starting out, 20g net carbs or less will get you into ketosis.)
*Moderate protein (1g-1.5g per kg of lean bodyweight is a good goal based on the 2 Dudes recommendations.)
*Fat to satiety (add fat to every meal and, if you are hungry, eat more fat. Don’t be afraid of fat. It is energy.)
*Do not restrict calories
*Do not exercise excessively
*Drink plenty of water
*Get plenty of sodium and other electrolytes
I don’t understand the “do not restrict calories” theory. Almost every book, article, recommendation I read is that calorie deficiency is what creates the weight loss. I’ve done gluten free before, while still eating rice, potateos and fruits, and have dropped a bunch. After a year of carby eating habits (although usually lower fat and cals), I jumped on the Keto wagon - I researched it for a bit, and know several successful Keto losers. As per recommendation, I’m eating 22 or fewer carbs a day (my calculated 5%), added fat to everything (ewe), moderate protein (standard for me) and largely (33%) calorie deficient (puts me at 1250 per day). I’m drinking my half gallon of water, green tea and coffee with butter/coconut oil (no immersion blender) and have eliminated my biggest source of calories and carbs: wine! I’m sedentary for work 14 hours per day but do get out for about an hour walk each day, and my calculations took this into consideration (along with gender, age, weight, height, etc.) All that said, I’ve been on the WOE for 4 weeks, went thru the Keto flu, and I’m up 2lbs. My hormones have been checked to make sure everything is normal. I’ve always been the anomaly (pregnant 4 times on the pill lol), so I guess this is just another wasted investment of time and torture on my body.
Anyways, back to the original question on this thread, why is calorie deficiency bad?
You can lose weight restricting calories, at least in the short term. The problem is when you restrict calories, you lower your metabolic rate. Then you have to reduce those calories even more. It turns into a vicious cycle where your body becomes very efficient at burning only what you take in in those reduced calorie meals. (Think “The Biggest Loser” and remember that most of them gained it all back, with a vengeance.)
You don’t get the same BMR reductions with intermittent or short term fasting, I’m not sure what the limits are.
So rather than reducing calories, either eat well or don’t eat at all. When you eat well, your BMR may even rise a little. When you fast in the short term, your BMR is likely to either stay the same or rise slightly for the first couple of days. When you just eat smaller meals, you train your body to live on less food.
Spend some time with Dr Jason Fung’s videos online. Some of the charts he uses in his presentations are illuminating.
Also, resting / fasting insulin levels tend to respond well to extending out the periods of time we don’t eat. Eating keto helps because it keeps the spikes that happen normally when we eat, lower. Going to one meal a day or alternate day fasting can sometimes be very helpful in bringing down stubbornly high fasting insulin levels. Again, Dr. Jason Fung’s information is illuminating.
Not sure if any of that is of interest, just throwing it out there. Good luck!
CICO still counts. The big difference is that Keto curtails hunger for many people, so calories get restricted naturally.
I only successfully lost weight on other ways of eating when I also took appetite suppressants. With Keto, I don’t need them. I still eat too much at meals, because I have bad habits from five decades of binge eating. But I rarely snack these days. I no longer am ravenously hungry all day long like I used to be.
I don’t recommend calories restriction of the fat macro until you are fat adapted, I did it for a while and while I was loosing weight I felt horrible. When I stopped cutting I felt better, and I actually at the moment started lose faster for the next couple weeks, then I fat adapted. This is the BMR concept as already mentioned. The other reason is you need to understand the concept of satietion, and probably just as important how much fat you need to intake to get to it. The macros help guide you to that point and think a lot of people coming here have had a hard time understanding when to stop eating for various reasons(guilt, self control, too much dieting etc). This simple approach helps get them closer to their goal with minimal fuss.
CICO in my mind is a over simplification for people who need something basic to understand.
BMR however is a farily easily idea to follow.
The easiest way to put it is in these terms, if you had a pair of twins for arguments sake.
If they were identical at the start of this experiment metabolically and no other con founders they are clones. Both coming from a high carb high fat (SAD) diet with equal metabolic damage.
During keto adaption phase but before fat adaption phase feeding the same protien and carb levels, only changing the fat %
If you feed twin A a LCHF diet and they follow the macros to maintain and gets to full fat adaption, their BMR will be running at normal speed(no change) since they have had no energy cutbacks to deal with. Immune system is full speed, brown fat is working, white fat is probably beiging, and they will be energetic, ketones will probably be higher. And probaly loosing weight.
If you feed twin B a LCHF restricted diet of 30% of fat their BMR will have dropped. They will not be burning brown fat, the immune system will be turned down, they will be cold, and they will in general feel like crap. Their ketones will be lower, there insulin will probably be higher and they may start to scavenge lean muscle mass after some time. Although they may loose weight it probably will not be as much as Twin A.
So once twin A gets to fat adaption(probably sooner), they are running in higher gear feel better and if they desire will be able to burn fat faster with less problems. Also chances are they have a better mitochondrial setup than twin B because they body allowed more to be repaired/built. They will also be more energetic, less likely to get sick, and warmer. They are not likely to be hungry.
Twin B will be still able to burn fat, it probably took a little longer to get there, and they will probably feel like crap all the time still. If you were to end the diet restrictions at that point although that twin could fast most likely they would only get worse since they probably have lower amounts of repaired mitochondria. They are still cold, still feel crappy, and will most likely be hungry still more than twin A. They are probably hungry most of the time.
Both being fat adapted now you can restrict calories in the form of fasting, Twin A can go into a fast with a higher BMR, they will burn off more fat, in the same amount of time and feel better. I would also pretty much bet if you could take any mental blocks out that Twin A could also go much longer without being hungry. Twin B would probably still be hungry most of the time despite being fat adpated(this is signal from there body). If you were to look at the time frame I am almost sure that A would hit fat adaption first, so that would allow more loss Since B would not be there yet even though they on paper had much less intake.
I’ll leave a couple of articles below from my personal favorite fat doctor, Dr. Adam Nally and one from Dr. Jason Fung just so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. But, basically it comes down to the fact that the idea of CICO is based on thermodynamics and it’s not that simple. It’s true that our bodies use calories as energy but, it’s a complex system of hormones that controls the use. The calorie itself is determined by equipment called a bomb calorimeter, which our body is not. A calorie is the amount of energy it takes to heat 1 g of water by 1 degree Celsius. Our bodies also are not grams of water and our food isn’t being burnt in a gram of water to measure energy expenditure. Calories like BMI and bathroom scales provide little in the way of actionable data. We like the idea of being in control and having a clear path with exactly how much to eat but, we don’t have that fine tuned control that we’ve been led to believe we can have. It’s not that simple by half.