I have hit a plateau for a while now. I am (in my opinion) doing everything right. I’ve been living the keto lifestyle for about 4 years now. Its been very successful. I have recently moved and with the move we have been exploring our city, restaurants in particular and I have gained some weight back. So i got back into it pretty hard. I am counting my macros, doing HITT 3 times a week (mostly), and just really paying attention to my levels. Which brings me to my question. My GKI level has been in the 1-3 range consistently. The description for that level says “You’re in high therapeutic level of Ketosis”. But it looks like the level 6-9 says “you’re in low level of ketosis - ideal for weight loss and health maintenance”. Is the higher level of ketosis what could be preventing me from losing weight. Really frustrated. I would like to lose about 8 more lbs. I know the weight training can be a factor with muscle mass weighs more etc. Just need some words of advice. I have increased my carb intake the last couple of days to get my levels down a bit. We’ll see…
thanks,
Pam
GKI Level Question
Ketones don’t really matter for losing weight. At least not that I can tell. I have extremely low ketones yet am losing weight.
I gave up taking ketone readings a while ago (it’s only because I have a ketonix that I know what my breath ketones are now; I gave up blood ketones a while ago, and urine way before that).
Fully agree. But the GKI ratio is kind of confused/confusing in the first place. I tracked it daily for almost a year and wasn’t able to make any useful sense from it for my purposes.
Sounds like you’re interested primarily in weight loss. I’d suggest simply being careful to restrict your carbs, stay properly hydrated/electrolytes, and only eat to satiety - preferably 2MAD if you can comfortably swing it to give your insulin a chance to subside outside your “feeding window.”
Exercise is an extremely important part of good health. But generally speaking, it’s not really a terribly effective way to lose weight. It is the only meaningful way to build muscle and tone, and gain other metabolic benefits that are essential (and often unseen from the outside).
So do it, for sure. But weight management has more to do with the types of foods you eat.
Without the carbs, your body will self-calibrate to what will be a healthy weight for your genetic/age/health needs. It may not be the weight you’d like. But it will most likely be what you actually need.
Best wishes.
(ps - one other comment on weight… if you’re building muscle, you may not lose as much weight even while you’re successfully reducing body fat. I’m assuming you agree this would not be a problem but a benefit? If so, lose the scale and focus on your tape measure and how your clothes fit 
)
There may be times when the GKI is a useful tool, such as for cancer or for other maladies such as mental health. But for most people, I think it’s basically useless.
And I often wonder how much we can do to influence them. My ketones have been very low for a long time, as in I gave up blood testing when I got 0.1-0.2 mmol/l every morning. Could I actually eat a PKD (very high animal fat diet) and raise that? If so, by how much?
It’s a test I’ve been wanting to do. One of these days, maybe…
While GKI is relevant for treating certain health conditions, I don’t know what it means in terms of losing weight. I do know, however, that whether your ketones are higher or lower is not really relevant to the amount of fat lost, or to the speed of that loss.
Those eight pounds are going to come off very slowly, even if your body agrees that they should come off, in the first place.
Not to mention the fact that you might put on eight pounds of lean mass while shedding eight pounds of fat. That means that, while the number on the scale might not change, you would still be getting healthier. So if the weight on your scale is your only measure of progress, you could easily be missing the progress you are making.
I had a twelve-month period after my initial weight loss, during which I got thinner, even though my weight remained stable. By the end of those twelve months, I could comfortably wear trousers that wouldn’t even go up over my butt, initially. So obviously, I was adding lean mass (which is much denser than fat) while shedding some more fat, or those trousers would never fit me. In my book, that is satisfactory progress, even though there was never any change in the number showing on my scale.
So as far as the number on the scale goes, @Aqua_chonk’s standard question applies: Would you rather lose those eight pounds and still look the same, or look eight pounds thinner, while remaining the same weight?
I knew I should have shelled out for that intellectual property patent.