I started keto almost 3 weeks ago. I bought the urine strips to start out to track my progress but now i bought a keto blood monitor . Last week when I first got the monitor the readings would say I’m in or close to the moderate range. I would get readings like 1.5 and 1.8 but now a week later my readings stick between 0.8 and 1.2 . I have noticed I’ll do the urine strips and it will say high (every time) but the blood test won’t match the results because it will be lower so what the heck?! I am feeling discouraged because im eating the same foods as before for the most part . It’s hard to hit my macros because I feel like I never eat because I’m never hungry. I do however make a point to make sure I’m at or under 20 carbs a day. I recently started drinking coffee again but I like sugar with it but of course I use stevia . I wondering if the coffee and even the stevia could be yielding lower results and I should cut out sugar and coffee all together ( by sugar I mean stevia ). Initially I started dieting April 2. I was just on a eat healthy kinda diet lol I lost 6 pounds from April 2-April 16 on my normal diet (NOT KETO) I started keto April 16 and from April 16 to May 7 I lost a total of 5 pounds. Total weight loss from April 2- May 7 is 11 pounds total. I weigh myself every week on Monday so my next weigh in is may 14. I know I have progress but Iv seen so many like " 10 pounds lost in a week " keto stories and I lost only 3 my first week. I feel discouraged yet I know I’ll keep going , I just wish my damn blood monitor would register higher numbers. Please shed some light on the situation
Going crazy trying to figure out what's wrong
There are many things that could cause this. 1. Depending on how much weight you have to lose can make someone who’s say 260 lbs lose 10 pounds (which is likely water) and someone who’s 150 pounds is likely to not lose as much because of less weight to lose. 2. Artificial sugars can affect people in negative ways (ymmv) 3. You may or may not be eating enough. 4. You may want to check your macros for what your protein, and fats should be. 5. Hidden carbs if your not watching all labels. 6. If your eating any nuts or nut butters that can affect people, and you can easily overeat calories and carbs on them.
From what i have researched, as long as you keep your carbs under 20g, and moderate your protein, i don’t think that would knock you out of ketosis? I feel you on the issue of not being able to hit your daily macros, as this way of eating is very very satisfying in regards to hunger. i did hear that urine strips become less reliable because your body gets adapted to ketones and stops leaking them in the urine. Are you doing any form of exercise every day? because i hear if your body is adapting to keto, you will use up free blood ketones for energy which will yield lower ketone readings.
I haven’t started working out yet although I will start soon I just wanted to get this keto thing down and figured out first . The only issue I find now is although I’m not feeling foggy at work or anything when I come home from work I literally go straight to bed and sleep from like 7pm to 5am. When I first started keto I had so much energy but now I feel like I could sleep forever . It’s weird and hard to explain… it’s a different kind of tired then when I was not dieting and eating whatever junk food I want . It’s not like a bad tired just tired
To me measuring ketones is a waste of time and trying to interpret things from the scores is a fools errand. Measured ketones are usually the wasted ones (pee strips - high is bad!), even the blood scores mean very little beyond being in ketosis or not. Two different people can have entirely different scores (low or high) but be equally in ketosis due to differences in efficiency of production and utilization. You need to track the benefits, not the scores… more energy (not related to ketone scores), body recomposition (losing inches… not related to ketone scores), weight loss (you guessed it, not related to ketone scores), health markers (ALSO - not related to ketone scores). If you have cancer, ketone scores count (for the GKI ratio)… otherwise, don’t worry.
Ketone scores are NOT important per se and worrying about it just raises cortisol (and insulin) and makes you rant like a loon on the internet (a prime effect of ketones, apparently) 
If you’ve seen all the “10lbs a week” stories, you’ve also seen all the “only lost water weight for 2 months” stories. You are in between…
Seriously, KCKO… you are doing it right and upsetting yourself unnecessarily.
maybe perhaps, up your salts intake? i found by the end of the first month i was having aching muscles and fatigue. i drastically upped my salt intake and it leveled out well for me, energy wise.
Hahahah I am a crazy loon ranting on the internet 
Oh well better here then to my co workers who really don’t give a rats ass if I loose weight or not hahahaha thank you for your response 
We are all loons at one time or another over one thing or another and this is about the safest space to do it.
It is also good to be talked down now and again too… so you can choose something else to wig out over next time
Haha yeah, you’re absolutely right. If i ever bring up my ‘secret’ to fat loss, they get wide-eyed and tell me im gonna die of a heart attack next week LOL!
Oh I might be back next week , ranting about something else that went wrong on keto lol
I did make keto Reese peanut butter cups the other day and omg they were amazing !!!
I find when i make keto sweets with artificial sweeteners; it screws with my insulin and makes me SUPER hungry if i have no carbs in me at the time.
I just wanna feel “normal” like I’m not on a diet ya know? It’s hard because before this I went out to eat every meal and didn’t even look at nutrition or anything and so it’s hard to go from eating whatever you want to having to be choosey so I try to make sweets to put back the normal lol but I should stop because like I said before it could be the sugar (stevia ) messing with things
yeah i understand that, it was a hell of a change counting carbs and such, from just wanton shoving food in my mouth lol. i find the longer i stay away from sweet stuff, the more acute my taste buds become. I’ve actually found black coffee to be somewhat ‘sweet’ in a way.