Fat Adapted and Still Excreting Ketones in Urine: Survey 🔎

[PetaMarie]

Over six months and always get some kind of color on the keto stick. Usually mid range.

[JohnH]

I started in Sept 2018, so coming up on 9 months in about a week.

I did Atkins a long time ago and urine testing was part of the process, so I just automatically bought a couple of 50-count tubes and started testing, in about the second week.

Mine are graded in mg/dL as the units. The colors equate to 0, 5, 15, 40, 80, and 160. In the early days, it would almost always hit the second-darkest color, so 80. Sometimes even a little darker, close to the 160.

When it was that high, I usually felt crappy and that would be a signal for me to increase my carb intake. I have always felt best when I stick with the Westman protocol, which includes a mandatory 3 cups of veggies/leafy greens a day.

Over time, I decreased the frequency of my checking, just because there was no need of it. I was feeling fine, losing weight, had steady energy, and was always eating on plan.

I have been losing weight more or less steadily, and am down about 95 pounds now.

The last few times I tested was only out of curiosity based on a forum post talking about how useless they are. They have shown color every single time.

I used my last strip a couple of days ago, again, to test out the “they stop working” theory. It showed 40, moderate.

I am nearly 9 months in. So it is definitely lower than the 80 reading that was more common when I was first testing. But still showing ketones.

I don’t really have any reason to spend $12 for another tube, so that may be my last test.

[Mo1]

10 months - always get colour.

[BenBoy]

Same here. Nine months and always had color. Don’t check much now just using up my supply.

[Regina]

I will start testing again tomorrow. I had stir Frye with questionable sauce last night.

[amwassil]

LOL. So now the truth comes out! Seriously, I don’t think carbs have anything to do with excreting ketones other than what I explained here as a possibility:

How long did it take for you to become fat adapted?

Off hand, I would not expect eating carbs to cause an acetoacetate ‘dump’. Although maybe if you had a substantial acetoacetate concentration in your blood and you introduced a surge of glucose, the acetoacetate might get dumped to reduce the overall energy load. Have you ever done a blood test after a positive urine test? It would be interesting to see the concentration of β-hydroxybutyrate when your urine is positive. I wonder if the β-hydroxybutyrate would get converted back into acetoacetat…

[Regina]

Ok. Will test at my usual high point of 2:30.

[amwassil]

May 31::12:00 Just did a urine test and got colour, a perfect match with 1.5 mmol/L. Took a BrAce sample immediately after and got 3.2 ppm. That’s still quite low, but not as low as it got yesterday!

Now I am wondering. Yesterday between about 11:45 and 13:00 or so I had a dental procedure that involved a goodly amount of anaesthetic into my upper right gums. My BrAce yesterday bottomed out at 1.8 ppm at 14:00. Starting to look suspiciously like the anaesthetic might have something to do with what’s going on here. I’ll have to investigate that.

[Regina]

Ok - I can never tell when I am between colors. I look closer to small than to trace, I think.

BG 91
Ketones 1.0
GKI - 5.06

I’ve eaten out the past couple of days and I think this is why I have less than stellar numbers! So what this tells me is that, over one year in, while the occasional fling won’t knock me out, it will lower my numbers and raise my BG. So this notion that one is either in or out, the numbers don’t matter, does not resonate with me.

[Karim_Wassef]

Breath, urine and blood measure different things. Why wouldn’t you expect some urine ketones in conjunction with the others?

[amwassil]

@Karim_Wassef I’m testing the claim “Urine keto stix are useless after two or three months and don’t show anything. They’re only useful for newbies to show that they’re in ketosis.”

[Regina]

Well am I in between trace and small? That would lime ip with my low blood levels.

[Karim_Wassef]

They’re not very accurate, and if they show nothing, it’s inconclusive. So their usefulness is limited on their own. Very n=1

[Regina]

But they should be adequate enough to warn a diabetic if they are in the danger zone. I’m going to keep posting my results. The trend I have seen so far with my very limited data is that the higher the blood ketones, the darker the strip.

[amwassil]

They’re not very accurate, and if they show nothing, it’s inconclusive. So their usefulness is limited on their own. Very n=1

Granted. But the claim under test is that they are useless once you are fat adapted: ie they will always show nothing. I’m not trying to determine particularly how useful they may or may not be, only whether or not they show ketones in the urine of relatively well adapted individuals. From the anecdotal evidence so far, little as it is, the answer seems to be yes they do. Just how much parlance to place on their accuracy or not is a question for another day.

[Ilana_Rose]

So this notion that one is either in or out, the numbers don’t matter, does not resonate with me.

Me neither. I can eat a Mars bar a day and still show traces, but I’ll also be gaining weight. When I’m not eating Mars bars and am strictly keto my color is always between medium and high. What my ketone value is absolutely matters to my results.

[Janie]

I’m out of pee sticks but will pick some up next week and compare to my Keto Mojo readings.

Does it matter if I am fasting all week?

[Regina]

Me neither. I can eat a Mars bar a day and still show traces, but I’ll also be gaining weight. When I’m not eating Mars bars and am strictly keto my color is always between medium and high. What my ketone value is absolutely matters to my results.

Thank you! And thank you for responding, the guys are ignoring me, even though I am the first eager experimenter to step forward. Yeah, three days of restaurant meals, keto, but god knows what the stir frye was cooked in. Give me a week and I will prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that pee sticks correlate with blood strips. And, most importantly, that the cleaner keto one eats, the better the results. Ketone production is good for the body and the brain.

You the Mars bar chick, me the English muffin chick. My muffins are probably worse than your Mars bars!

[Regina]

Does it matter if I am fasting all week?

I would say no. Because the theory is that you can’t fast until you are fat-adapted, and that when you are fat-adapted, you don’t register pee sticks. So you would be a prime example.

[buxomlass]

So we’ve all heard the reports that the lowly urine keto stix aka ‘pee sticks’ are only useful for the first few months for newbies. Once you’re beginning to fat adapt the wasted ketones, specifically acetoacetate, slowly and steadily decreases in the urine until the test strips show nothing. End of story. Maybe not.

Amy Berger, noted keto blogger and nutritionist, says she still uses pee sticks (after years of keto/LCHF eating) and she still gets results with them.