6 weeks into keto and still feeling bad - continue or not?

#1

I have been on keto for 6 weeks and I started it to see if it will improve my fatigue. Before that I was doing intermittent fasting for 2 weeks. I didn’t feel any keto flu specific symptoms, but instead I constantly feel bad through all days, low libido, no signs of improved sleep or mental good feeling. There is no difference now after 6 weeks comparing to first days. My heart beat went from 70 beats per minute to 80. When I had ultrasound of heart the doctor said it looks like it runs on adrenaline.

My blood sugar is mainly around 4mmol/L, there was one measure with 2.8mmol/L. Keto strips always shows purple/blue color, no matter when I measure. I think this is the main problem. This bothers me because I read that normally it should show that color just sometimes because body spends ketones. In my case I always have excess of ketones, it seems my body can not use it.

I am into strictly keto, I don’t cheat. I eat under 50g of carbs (bruto) and 50-60g of proteins. The rest is fat mainly from eggs, avocado, olive oil, butter and coconut oil. I get about 3000kcal per day. I eat 5-10g of salt daily, daily I get about 1000mg of calcium, around 3000mg of potassium, 500mb of magnesium and I drink about 3l of water.

I am not sure if I should continue or not. Please share your experience, is here anybody with similar experience that took it so long before you started feeling better even if you followed everything properly?

(Tom Seest) #2

A couple of questions occurred to me in reading this:

  1. Did you feel bad before you started Keto?
  2. What did your doctor say to do?
  3. Are you on meds that may be reacting poorly?
  4. Any known health issues that may effect this?

I have the following comment:

  1. 50G of carbs seems high to me, but I don’t know your circumstances.

Be well, and good luck.

(John) #3

I eat under 20, I feel like I did when I eat much more. My wife can have at least 50 with no issue at all, my mom refuses to eat below 50 when she tries it and she gets nothing either.
You have a lot invested so far, I would try a cut to less than 20 for a week to see before I called off the whole thing.

#4

50g is bruto, not neto. I already tried 10g of bruto carbs that for 4 days and I felt even worse.

#5
  1. Yes but now I feel even worse.
  2. My doctor doesn’t take my condition seriously, she don’t believe about adrenal fatigue and I gave up with explaining her.
  3. Thyroid natural tablets. Lab test showed fine results 4 weeks after keto.
  4. I suspect poor adrenals due some kind of infection.

50g is total, including fibers. Neto is about 20g. I already tried to go lower and I didn’t feel better.

#6

Dang well it definitely sounds like you are doing everything properly.

Other possible factors:

  • caffeine
  • exercise
  • stress
  • menstrual cycle
  • blood ketone levels (not just waste urine ones, per the strips)
  • health conditions like diabetes, thyroid stuff, etc.
  • accuracy of food measuring
(Tom Seest) #7

I was wondering about thyroid and Adrenals, which is why I asked. Unfortunately, this will take longer given any food protocol. It seems like people that hang with it longer have the results long term though.

My wife is kind of in a similar boat.

If it was me, I would keep on keeping on. Some things you might try, which may help:

  1. Eliminate dairy. This may or may not help, but can help some.
  2. Increase or reduce protein. Play with the amount a week at a time to see if you feel better either way.

You may also want to have an RBC test done for Magnesium, Potassium and other electrolytes, as it will tell you if you are in range for a normal diet. Your needs are probably different, given the adrenal / thyroid issues, but it’s good to get a benchmark at the Inter-Cellular level for these things. So much of the healing of adrenals and thyroid, depends on taking baseline numbers and then performing week to month long experiments to see what improvements come.

I hope this helps.