I heard you in your intended way. Not matter in the sense of strict counting the numbers but the totality of it all: what kind of calories and how it is varied from person to person depending on their body’s physical and chemical composition.
I think at the end of this conversation, its good to see that everyone here ALL agree keto is a great approach to weight loss, overall health, and sustainability.
Hey Jenn. 
I think there is misunderstanding on both sides, here, potentially - don’t think I disagreed with anything you said in relating your experience. Hmm… not sure now, rereading what you said.
The effect of salt - I think we both agree on it - it’s straightforward water retention, which can markedly affect the weight scale.
Alcohol, per se, need not be much of a factor - I agree here too. It can be, but it’s not necessarily so.
What you said before:
Right - I wouldn’t think of eating 3.8 x 3500 calories more than what you burned. So, the explanation must lie elsewhere. Salt and the overall electrolyte balance would be the first place I’d look, since I’ve seen much greater weight swings than what you describe, i.e. me going from carbed-up and a LOT of salt to no salt and keto = like 11 lbs lost in two days. No fat loss necessarily involved.
If you’re in ketosis then the deal about carbs - each carb molecule binds with 3 water molecules in our bodies - is no big factor either. Thus, I’m feeling it’s like a mystery, at this point - you say you can gain 3.8 lbs in one night and hold on to that increased weight for 2 weeks. Other than water retention, nothing makes sense to me.
I wonder if it’s possible for one to have an insulin reaction to calories that are not necessarily carbohydrates that ushers the excess energy from overeating into fat cells. My understanding is the fat cells are still there when we drop all that weight, they have just been depleted and grow smaller. But that just might be another one of those unproven theories the way a set point is an unproven theory. Who knows. It’s just the reality for me. I think that’s why it’s not a bad idea for people to track things so they can figure out what it is that works for them and what it is that might be holding them back.
+10000000000000000000000
yes I’m out of likes again. stupid software
Thanks for your thoughts. I am a little concerned but, not too much.
I know I won’t be eating keto for ever. For me it’s a tool to lose weight for now. I am very nervous about my metabolism reducing to the extent that I can no longer lose weight. But it hasn’t happened yet. I’m losing at approx. 4lb+ per week, and are showing no signs of slowing as yet (3.75lb this week, I weigh on a Monday morning).
I am male BTW. What I’m expecting is, to regain some when I come off keto (water weight). Then I will try to maintain through standard diet (whatever that is!) and see how I go. I will find out soon enough, if my metabolism is so knackered, that I can only put weight on!
And what a freaking bummer. You’re right about this…I’m pretty sure this is a proven fact. The only real way of ridding the actual fat cells is Lipo or other physical removal, that when we lose weight thise fat cells kust shrink. The ghost of our fat will always be there to haunt us. Dammit!! This is why much easier for once overweight person to regain their weight back too. Life just sucks sometimes 
damn you!
There is an insulin response to protein, just over half as much as from carbohydrates, and even fats make for a little insulin response. Coming from a diet with substantial carbohydrates versus a ketogenic one (very low in carbs) makes a huge difference in the ratio of insulin to its ‘opposite number’ glucagon when we eat protein - excellent video on YouTube about this: Dr. Benjamin Bikman - ‘Insulin vs. Glucagon: The relevance of dietary protein’
Coming from a ketogenic diet, you should have much less change as far as insulin/glucagon when you eat protein, versus what would be true if you ate a lot of carbs. You may be an outlier as far as insulin response to protein/fat while on a keto diet - I don’t know. It’s still hard for me to believe that it’s anything but water, mostly, that accounts for your experience.
Fat cells do shrink when we lose weight, and it takes a while. Initially, deflated fat cells may partially refill with water - it’s as if they don’t want to deflate as much as the fat removal would make for. Water is heavier than fat, so the scale may give frustrating results during this time. After a while, the fat cells relax and release that water - this is the ‘whoosh’ effect that many people experience - a delayed weight loss. However, that this effect is real has a lot of controversy - many people don’t believe things actually work this way.
If we are to take water out of the equation, then your weight gain from one day’s big eating is unexplainable for me. Without the water content, the food you ate that day is surely less than 3.8 lbs., no? I’m thinking that yes, perhaps you did store some energy away after that day, but hard for me to believe it’d be more than one pound. I have no good guesses except hormones/electrolytes making for more water retention, and somehow it lasts for two weeks.
It was only 1.8 of it that took two weeks to take off. I was down 2 of that gain in three days so that would correspond to water being held because of glycogen.
My fluctuation has to be water. I can fluctuate upto 4lb in a day, but I only eat an av of <500g of food per day.
I can’t think of any other reason for it.
That is a depressed metabolism, for sure.
I advocate for periods of intentional over-eating, to combat the effects of metabolic drop. And yes this drop can even happen on keto.
Nothing wrong with intentional energy restriction (if you’re doing it intelligently), providing you respect your metabolic rate and occasionally fire it back up.
You’ve got it right. Fat cells don’t go away, except at the end of their lifespan (which I believe is around 10 years), and new fat cells can easily grow, in any case (there seems to be a genetic predispostion in some people to make new fat cells, and there is speculation that this is why some people remain metabolically healthy, despite becoming obese).
Protein and fat also stimulate insulin secretion, which in the main is a good thing, because otherwise we would die. Protein stimulates insulin secretion around half the rate at which carbohydrate does so. Nevertheless, we don’t worry about protein intake, because it is essential for life. Fat barely stimulates insulin secretion at all, in comparison to the other two macros, but it does have some effect. However, in terms of a ketogenic diet, its effect is so low that we can consider it a “safe” source of needed calories.
In the normal course of events (“normal” in the evolutionary sense, anyway), the fat cells are continually taking in energy when we eat and releasing it between meals (especially during the overnight fast). The problem with the SAD is that the constant high carbohydrate intake keeps insulin at a constantly high level, which has numerous deleterious effects on the body, and which simultaneously prevents the fat cells from releasing fatty acids to be metabolized (and prevents the muscles from metabolizing them).
The good news is that a ketogenic diet restores satiety signaling in most people to the point where it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to overeat. There is a famous overfeeding study, focusing on high protein intake, in which one of the participants was nearly in tears at the thought of having to try to choke down one more pork chop. If I recall, correctly, he just wasn’t able to do it. Also, the men in the study gained very litttle extra weight during the study; the researchers concluded from this that the body defends its weight fairly vigorously. This is one of the reasons that the energy-balance hypothesis simply cannot be the entire story.
ETA: Forgot to add a thought stimulated by a much earlier post; namely, that protein and fat contain only approximately 4 kilocalories per gram, and fat only approximately 9 kcal/g. This, together with the inherent inaccuracy of the information in the nutritional panels of manufactured food, makes it impossible to match CI to CO with anything like the level of accuracy needed for the energy-balance hypothesiss of weight maintenance to work. And thank Heaven for that, or we’d really be [spoiler]fucked[/spoiler].
Thanks for the advice. If it’s my metabolism slowing down, how do you account for my weight loss being consistent?
