After being successful for 8 months and losing over 53 lbs. i’ve stalled for the past 3 months and gained back about 7 lbs from my lowest weight point. i still have 15 lbs to go IMO. I’m female, 46 yo, my bmr is about 1300 cals but i burn between 1800 - 2100 during the day of normal activity. don’t go to the gym. my food intake hasn’t really changed since February. i eat around 1500 cals a day. always stay below 25 net carbs. eat a lot of fat and mod protein. the only thing that changed is my job, which stress and less sleep may be causing me to hold on to my weight. i test my ketones every once in a while and i’m not getting back into nutritional ketosis so easily anymore. i do IF as well. i was going to try to fast longer but i do get cravings to eat so i don’t make it past 24 hours. i even add ketone salts to my coffee every morning to see if that will boost my ketones. but it only seems temporary. should i switch it up? i saw a video here about this happening to some women, that after being in ketosis you can stall and not get back in. am i eating too few calories and holding on to the fat i have? i also think all these sugar-free alternative foods have ruined me, like fat snax and nutilight. but i was eating those before too. i don’t know.
Help! 3 month stall, can't seem to get back into Ketosis
Do not add ketone salts.
Eliminate all artificial sweeteners, get back to basic ingredients.
Stress is an influencer.
But, the signs are there - you are craving food and that comes from carbs (artificial sweeteners) in your intake.
How are you feeling? Are you still feeling fat-adapted? Are you eating to satiety? Do you know what your body composition is? Did you use to restrict your calories quite a bit? What’s happening with your dress size?
These are all questions I’d suggest looking into. You gals have a harder time losing than us guys to begin with, and your hormones seem to complicate things. It is also possible that your body is quite happy with its current state, even if you aren’t. Also, as close as you are to your goal, weight loss is going to be slow, in any case.
If you restricted calories for a long time, it is possible that the added weight is lean tissue, not fat. Since it is denser than fat, the added lean tissue should still leave you skinnier than you were, so perhaps your tape-measure would give you a better indication of progress than your scale.
Also, if the body doesn’t get all the calories it wants, it goes into famine-mode, and hangs onto all the fat it can, while lowering basal metabolic rate in order to compensate for the low intake. Paradoxically, giving the body more calories rather than fewer can help stimulate weight loss, because the body will ramp up the BMR and will feel free to burn any excess fat rather than hanging onto it. So one thing you could try is to increase the amount of fat you eat. Fat, as you probably know, doesn’t stimulate insulin production, and it contains twice as many calories per gram as protein and carbohydrate, so it makes an excellent source of additional calories.
In case it helps, I’ve been stuck between 185 and 195 pounds since last November. I didn’t go keto in order to lose weight, however, so I’m sort of okay with the fact I’m not losing the additional forty pounds or so I’d love to lose (actually, I seem to be getting a tad thinner, even without losing weight). I’m no longer pre-diabetic, so I can cope. Not only that, but he sixty pounds I’ve lost so far have made life so much easier, that I will count any further weight loss as gravy. But I’d still like to be 6 inches narrower in the waist . . . . (sigh)