Hit a wall at 3 months, too tired to function

#1

Hi, folks. So glad I found this forum, y’all are clearly the smartest and most thoughtful keto group I’ve found. I’m hoping you can help me with a serious problem that is detailing me and wrecking my health.

I have started keto several times and it works well and I feel much better (so. many. chronic. illnesses). I need to lose a lot of weight but more than anything, I need anti-inflammatory effects.

I stick to under 20g pretty religiously.

But like clockwork, by month 3, maybe month 4, I become too tired to function.

Mentally, physically. Worse than my illness alone.

I cannot go on on 20g or even 30g a day.

It’s not an electrolyte issue bc I already had a pre-existing one and know well how to handle it with salt drinks and pills. I also am highly attuned to dehydration.

My morning fasting blood sugar will be sky high — 110+. I will have an impossible time falling and staying asleep, despite my long-standing sleep medicine regimen.

It’s the carbs!! Carbs make it better!

If I eat a sweet potato, I have energy, can sleep, and my fasting glucose drops back into the normal range (70-85). And for a little while, I can up my whole food carbs slightly and feel better and keep the positive effects of weight loss and anti-inflammatory action, but it doesn’t last more than another 3-4 months.

To add another wrinkle, I once tried carnivore and by day 3, I full on dissociated. I had no feelings, I felt like I was floating, all my body parts I knew were mine but they felt like pure abstract concepts. This also went away with a potato. Unsure if related? But it feels related.

Help!!

What’s wrong with me and how can I make this work?

Thanks to my chronic illness/rare disease, I’m scientifically minded and read research papers and all that jazz so hit me with your best shot. (Happy to explain what my issues are but fwiw I’m not diabetic etc.)

THANK YOU

#2

Do you track your intake so you have a birds eye view of exactly what your taking in everyday? From what you’ve described it sounds dietary. Whether it’s you not eating enough, not eating enough fat to fuel your body, or there’s just stuff in your normal dietary intake that’s preventing ketosis is impossible to say without a food log.

At any rate, there’s no (real) rule saying you have to be limited to 20-30g/day but that’s the safe place for many. A fasting # of 110 isn’t even that high, not ideal, but not high, let alone sky high.

#3

Yes I have, I am always very stable in the 1500-1900 calorie range and I don’t see how it could be a problem with too little fat or protein if it’s solved with a potato. But I do not do low-fat keto. I eat avocado, butter, cheese, fatty meats, etc.

I have never had a fasting blood glucose above 90 my entire life — except several months into a good keto diet. So a 50%+ increase from my usual 65-75 on keto is noteworthy.

And yeah I know “you’re allowed” to eat more than 20g but as I said, the positive effects of the diet disappear for me if I do.

That’s why I need to figure out what’s wrong with my body!

#4

Easy, not enough fat equals not enough fuel, constantly not hitting good levels of ketosis means not metabolizing stored fat fast enough to power your body… which is the same thing as not enough fuel. Eating a potato means instant fuel.

Have you still been loosing body fat? If so that would explain the rise.

Take a look at your logs and look at the typical micronutrient breakdown of how you eat, if you can’t see deficiencies there maybe have a CMP done and make sure nothings out of whack.

#5

I get CMPs done regularly because I’m chronically ill. There’s never anything noteworthy.

I’m telling you it is NOT an issue with insufficient fat or protein or calories, it is purely an issue of too few carbohydrates. Hence the dissociation.

This is not a newbie’s issue. I need a real expert to weigh in.

(Jack Bennett) #6

What if you did something like “keto + some safe starches” for the long term?

If I understand correctly, the “dose” of carbohydrate eliminates the symptoms of fatigue (or dissociation that you experienced with carnivore) but increasing carbs over a longer term diminishes your weight loss and increases inflammation?

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #7

If you are only eating 1600 cals/day, then it probably is a problem of insufficient intake. Keeping carb intake low is required, but not always enough. What is also required is to eat enough food to persuade the body to part with excess stored fat. In famine conditions, signaled by insufficient food, the body is unwilling to do that.

This is why we recommend eating to satiety. Once insulin has dropped from the lack of excessive carb intake, the appetite hormones function as they are supposed to, and appetite becomes a guide to how much to eat. Eating to a calorie target risks sending the famine signal, whereas limiting your food to what your body wants does not. On a low-carb ketogenic diet, the body’s hormonal response to food becomes more important than the actual quantity of food, since the metabolism goes up and down to match food intake.

(GINA ) #8

Think it a serotonin problem? They say carbs can increase serotonin. Maybe your system gets depleted and the carbs bring it back up.

Maybe you should try cycling in and out of keto. If keto is good for 3-4 mo this and then eating more carbs is good for 3-4 months, cycle the two every 2-3 months.

Or try something like The Perfect Health Diet.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #9

I’m not sure that’s accurate. Serotonin is made from tryptophan, one of the essential amino acids. Serotonin itself cannot cross the blood-brain barrier, so the brain has to make what it needs from the tryptophan that makes it into the brain. The problem is that serotonin is so useful elsewhere in the body, that a lot of the tryptophan gets grabbed before it can make its way into the brain. So I would expect food rich in tryptophan to be more useful than carbohydrate, if the brain needs serotonin.

#10

Not sure why you keep re-iterating that like I’m dictating to you that’s the problem. YOU said you didn’t understand how that could be the problem. I explained how it could be.

LOL!, Ya, you’re right. 4 yrs keto, over 100lbs lost, total reversal of insulin resistance, complete rebuild of my metabolism and non medically fixed multiple underlying conditions with it… what to I know right?

Oh ya, a hell of a lot more than a person that doesn’t understand why eating a potato fixing the issue points to the underlying diet being the problem.

You should check out this place, this is where all the REAL “Experts” are. https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/ You should also do a little homework before you join a forum as a new member and start accusing known members that have been here for many years of being newbies when you’re clearly the one who can’t figure stuff out.

#11

Hi @fauviste, and welcome! This is not quite in line with this forum, but you might want to check out Paul Saladino if you haven’t already. He was full carnivore for a while and loved it but had some issues that he couldn’t work out by adjusting electrolytes or fat/protein ratios, so he’s been playing around with some carbs. His favorite seems to be honey* - which is actually more ancestrally appropriate than many other carbs - and he has a theory that the carb intake and resulting sugar/insulin spike are great for his overall metabolism. (And unlike some other carnivores or long-term ZC folks, his blood sugar average actually stays quite low.) He’s also active enough that he’s likely still in ketosis much of the time.

I don’t think it would work for me personally but he’s heavy on the science and is a rare keto/carnivore voice who isn’t completely anti-carb, so his work might be right up your alley.

*he doesn’t recommend this for folks who are insulin resistant or diabetic, obviously

(Edith) #12

I agree with the other posters that you are not getting enough fuel. Fat and carbs are both fuel. If you are not getting enough fat for fuel, then eating the sweet potato gives you replacement fuel in the form of carbs.

You don’t say your age, height, or gender. If you are a six foot male, the amount of calories you’re eating is not enough. I’m a 5’3”, 54 year old woman, and I eat more than that.

Also, with your chronic health problems, keto may be helping you heal. Healing also requires more energy.

I would recommend keeping your carbs at 20-30 grams and then eating fat and protein until full. The saying goes, if you get hungry or low energy, eat more fat. Three months is still early in adaptation. Everyone adapts at different rates, some shorter than others. As a person with health problems adaptation will probably take much longer. And, adaptation is not sudden. It is gradual and just gets better over time.

The problem is also that bodies take time to heal and we all want instantaneous results. My brother has very bad psoriatic arthritis. He was on keto for three months before he noticed he psoriasis might be improving. Now at 8 months he is noticing definite improvement, but his psoriasis is certainly not gone, yet. He’s had it for years, but keto is helping him see hope. It’s just taking time.

Edit: I have a few more thoughts:

If you were coming from a diet where you ate a lot of healthy greens, nuts, and berries, you could be dumping oxalate. I won’t got into details because we do have threads discussing oxalate (you can do a search on them.) By eating a sweet potato, which is high in oxalate, you could be putting the breaks on the dumping and that would also explain why you feel better after eating it.

My brother, three months into keto, started experiencing oxalate dumping and his psoriasis flared up pretty bad (a symptom of oxalate dumping), but I convinced him not to give up, and so far, like I mentioned above, he is still healing. He does have flare ups every now and then from the dumping, but they are not as bad. They are like a 1/2 step for multiple steps forward.

(Marianne) #13

I am not an “expert” like many of the folks here, but I’ll give you an unscientific opinion from my own experience. I’ve been on keto almost two years. Although I tracked at the beginning for 3-4 weeks, I never considered calories. Prior to starting, I got my fat and protein macros and tried to meet or exceed those every day, while keeping the carbs below twenty. High fat foods are calorie dense, but again, I never tracked calories and ate a lot of really rich, satisfying foods. I was always fully satiated and able to make it to my next meal more than comfortably. I ate three meals a day, never having done so before, and looked forward to every meal. After probably a month, I found I didn’t need or want to physically eat that much or as many times a day. Three meals became two, which became one with maybe a couple of bacon slices inbetween. However, I never “tried” to reduce the amount or number of times I ate in a day or the amount of calories I consumed. It was a natural progression, and I felt great and still lost 55 lbs.

I think maybe you aren’t eating enough fat calories to sustain yourself comfortably. Do you meet your fat and protein macros every day? Many days I would exceed those, but it never stalled my weight loss. My metabolism and feeling of general well being seemed very steady. If you aren’t meeting the above, why not ditch the calorie counting for a spell and give it a try as an experiment?

I hope you find a solution to your problem.

#14

I agree with you PaulL, I think that the poster is not eating enough calories and should eat more, especially fat. I’m shocked how much fat I need to eat to feel really good and full and to continue to lose weight.

(BuckRimfire) #15

If this timing is repeatable, have you considered cycling off strict keto for a short while before you hit that wall? Not suggesting unlimited Frosted Flakes and Chips Ahoy, of course, but what if in each two month period you were keto for 6 or 7 weeks, then in the last week or two of the second month add in those sweet potatoes, garbanzos, a carrot, you know, some medium-carb whole food side dishes?

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #16

The ancient Greeks believed that the spirit was good and the flesh was evil, and this mind-body dualism has affected Western thinking ever since. The notion that we can out-think the complex bodily systems that evolved over a couple of million years is a result of this dualism, and it’s what gets a lot of us in trouble, I believe. One of the things that keto has done is to show me the benefits of trusting my body and to help me work with it instead of against it.