Hi everyone. I started low-carb eating in November 2018 and have been going on and off since then. I decided to get serious about it and go keto in January.
I’m a 68 yo female and I’ve dieted all my life. Name the diet and I’ve tried it. I’m 5’8" and right now I weigh 235 lbs. That is down from 240 in January. I want to be healthy and I’m thinking that for me that includes significant weight loss.
Every diet I’ve tried has claimed to be the ultimate answer to lasting weight loss and health. So far nothing has lived up to that claim. That has made me hesitant to go “all in” with keto. So far just cutting out all sugar and grains has produced a little weight loss. But I realize unless I fully embrace the guidelines it won’t last. I must become “fat adapted” an stay there. Beside that, by not going fully “in” I fluctuate between feeling good and having those annoying beginning flu-like symptoms.
I have just been so thoroughly indoctrinated against fat that I get scared to jump in and stay there.
Has anyone else had a similar problem? If so, how did you get past feeling like you were feeding yourself a heart attack?
Hesitant
I think what helped me was understanding the science of it. Understanding that you will use fat for energy rather than carbs.
It is an AMAZING transformation once you become fat adapted! I literally eat only when I am hungry and eat until satisfied and I am averaging 1000 calories a day and steadily losing weight. Fat adaption will not occur until you are about 4 to 6 weeks into eating the keto way.
Like someone told me, try keto for 1 month, you can do anything for a month. If you dont like it go back to your old way of eating. Give it a try!
I agree that once you understand the science and that the standard diet is based off of old and bad science, it’s easier to go all in. When you become truly fat adapted, it’s pretty awesome. You will just naturally eat much less while feeling more satisfied. I think it’s all in or nothing, there isn’t grey area if you want to reap the benefits.
The point is that the standard American diet (SAD—and truly sad) is a highly insulinogenic diet, because of all the carbohydrate. The elevated blood glucose from the carbohydrate, and the elevated blood insulin from the elevated glucose, both do serious damage to the body, in many different ways. A well-formulated ketogenic diet, with its highly restricted carbohydrate intake, can actually reverse much of this damage. Weight loss is actually the least of the benefits of a ketogenic diet.
Although we enter nutritional ketosis as soon as our serum glucose drops sufficiently, it takes nearly two months, sometimes longer, for the body to truly adapt to a fat-based metabolism. Fat metabolism is actually the body’s default, but high serum glucose does so much damage (hyperglycemia can even kill) that the body has to act immediately to get the glucose out of the bloodstream. Chronic hyperglycemia causes the muscles to “forget” how to metabolize fat, and they have to “relearn” the skill. So there are hormonal and enzymatic shifts that take a while to be completed, but at the end of the process, the muscle cells don’t even need ketones, because they can metabolize fat completely. That’s when people usually notice a significant change in how they feel and in their physical performance.
Many people come for the weight loss and end up staying because they like how well they feel. For many reasons, fat loss is more complicated for women, but if you stay the course for a while, you are likely to be pleasantly surprised. Patience, grasshopper! 
Hello and welcome Ketowimp.
I thought I was beginning a diet when I started keto. What i ended up beginning was a permanent way of eating. The word diet usually implies a temporary food plan and it’s typical to only get temporary results from those. Keto is about healing our body and rehabbing our hormones by keeping carbs low. It’s about eating real foods and not restricting calories. It’s about understanding and responding appropriately to our hunger.
If you add starches to that list you are pretty much keto, in simplified terms. I mean if you are not eating those things, the only remaining choices are fat and protein.
Most keto flu symptoms are a result of low sodium intake. If we are eating low carb, we excrete sodium at a much higher rate than we are used to so it’s super important to increase how much we are taking in. Keto flu isn’t something you have to go through.
There is no unbiased science that supports the idea that saturated fat is bad for us. Everything we’ve been told that suggests otherwise, is a big fat lie. I encourage you to do some of your own research. I’m sure you will find plenty of reputable organizations that confirm that dietary fat is actually healthy.
When I Google “The myth about fat”, I get:
About 50,100,000 results
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=2NxxXJjDC7C1gge6voFI&q=the+myth+about+fat&btnK=Google+Search&oq=the+myth+about+fat&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i22i30l2.2431.4509..4665...0.0..1.164.1350.18j1
Here are some tips for simple and easy keto:
Keep net carbs under 20.
~You can likely start a bit higher and work your way down but 20 is a good honest number that will allow you to eat plenty of vegetables along with fat and protein.
Use a carb tracker like cronometer.com
~so you can accurately track your carbs. It tracks many other things but this is the most important
Feed yourself plenty of fat and fairly moderate protein
~These two things are your best friend in regards to keeping hunger and cravings in check. You should not gorge yourself on these things but eat until you are not hungry. It’s very important to not starve yourself, so eat when you are hungry.
Keep your electrolytes up.
~At least 64oz (2liters) of water and 2+ teaspoons of salt per day. We don’t retain either of these very well on a ketogenic diet and those two things are paramount for reducing/preventing the Keto Flu
Don’t stress and get plenty of sleep.
~Growing, healing and losing weight work best when we are relaxed. So try to get 7-9 hours per day and don’t obsess with what keto is not yet doing.
@PaulL off topic, but any idea why my user name is suddenly all wonky and generic? This is JillF. I have been on here 2 months, looks weird today! Think it may be server switch over?
You’re in Anonymous mode. Click on the circled letter where your avatar used to be, log out, and log in as yourself.
Any time anyone wants to get into Anonymous mode, click on your avatar, then on the spy-in-trenchoat-and-hat icon.
Thanks! Who knew? All I know is I ate so much bacon today I have a belly ache, thought you would appreciate that!
Honestly I have struggled for years with the same 30 pounds, I lose it, I gain it back, I lose it, I gain it back plus an extra 5. I never paid attention to what keto was before, but one of the easiest ways to lose weight for me in the past was to cut out added sugar so I started looking up recipes and then read one blog that was talking about the book “The Obesity Code” which introduced me to LCHF eating. I tried it, felt sick for a few days, and then felt great. I had to force the fat and protein up and I went from like 200-250 carbs a day to about 40-45 (15-25 net carbs). Sometimes it still feels weird. I’m doing this with my boyfriend who has put on a 60lbs stress belly since we met (swear I didn’t cause it 
). Tonight we were laughing about having to eat up all the deviled eggs and cheese crisps because we are “on a diet”. He’s finally losing after a month of adjusting and I’m losing about an inch a week off all the major areas. I went from snacking all day then eating a big dinner, to mostly eating a small lunch and a big dinner and three 24 hour fasts a week with few cravings or hungry times. I think before this, my body just had a constant supply of insulin pumping through it just begging me to eat and eat and now it’s going back to how it should be.
It still feels very weird to eat so much fat, like I’m going to have blood the viscosity of bacon grease soon. However, the lack of feeling ravenous all the time and not craving cakes and potato chips every minute of every day has shown me there is something very right about it.
Anyway, I highly recommend “The Obesity Code”. I also started watches a series of lectures by the author on YouTube which led me to more lectures by other experts in this field and I’ve been learning so much. I just started “Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes and it’s extremely in depth. This forum is great too, if you have a question you can either find the answer right away in the search bar or ask away and get lots of help.
So you’ve tried every diet under the sun and none of them worked. This is the truth about dieting to lose weight. If you do keto till you reach your weight goal and go back to your old ways keto will be chalked up as a failure as well. I hate to be blunt but it’s true.
Adopt ketogenic eating as a new lifestyle. That’s what it’s really about, the healing of your metabolism. Weight loss will happen if you’re staying under 20 carbs a day. It won’t happen immediately or in a linear fashion. You will drop some quick water weight as you deplete your glycogen stores but true fat loss takes longer. You’re on the right track being here and giving this a good honest try. Have faith, don’t buy the fat lie and fear it. Drop the toxic food in your life and it will work. My best wishes for your success with your new lifestyle. 
I come from a long line of family that dies from heart disease young. Everyone has bad hearts in my family and that has made me downright paranoid. All of my grandparents, parents, uncles, and siblings have all died young. I was really freaked out about keto and honestly I looked at it like what have I got to lose? It’ll probably happen to me anyway so why not try it. So far its been working out well for me, but we’ll see when I go in for my first physical since starting keto.
Keto was the best thing I ever did. I am a mom of 2 and after having my second I felt horrible about myself. I took a chance and tried something new and IT WORKED!! Went from 219 to 145 in about 8 months. Keep going for it!! You got this!!
Please keep me posted. The heart disease in the family is a big concern for me as well. Good luck!
The best thing for you to do would be to get a CAC scan that looks at any possible damage in the heart…
Thank you!For those that have familial hypercholesterolemia, it has been known since the 1960’s that fully half of such people live perfectly normal lives and never develop cardiovascular disease. This tends to indicate that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease.
It has been known for an equally long time that the people with FH who do develop cardiovascular disease are those with genetic variants of fibrinogen and clotting factor VIII that make their blood more likely to clot than normal. This tendency to clot more readily is exacerbated, of course, by a carbohydrate rich diet, because of the resulting glycation of the hemoglobin, which also makes blood more likely to clot.