I started “keto” 3 & 1/2 years ago and have successfully lost 190 lbs in the first 18 months. However, I’m still trying to lose the last stubborn 20lbs!! I, obviously have gotten very laxed at staying “on plan” the past 2 years yo-yo’ing quite a bit. 
But my body seems to have completely changed a couple months ago and I don’t understand this at all. Sweet, sugary
desserts/chocolates are my true addiction and downfall. It used to be that going “off plan” used to ALWAYS pull me out of ketosis. But for about the last 45 days, my strips are still showing me in ketosis in the morning, despite me thinking I ate enough carbs the day before to be thrown out. Thought my strips were bad and bought a completely new container with the same results. Has anyone ever experienced this complete change in your system after SO long?? I’m just not trusting that I’m still in ketosis…
How am I staying in ketosis despite eating quite a bit of carbs?
You’d have to define what “quite a bit” means. There’s people here that won’t even eat the 20g that most do, and think 50g is high carb eating.
When we eat carbs out livers load with glycogen, then our muscles, then everything else that’s not burning off as energy in real time can be stored as fat. Muscles don’t give it back, they need to burn it off themselves. So if you burn off what’s stored in the liver (doesn’t take much), you go back to ketosis. It’s not some perfect on/off, it’s a spectrum, just like how high carb eaters still burn fat and keto’rs still burn carbs.
It’s very normal for people eating normal higher carb diets to wake up in the morning in ketosis, if you’re not going crazy, don’t eat your last meal right before you go to bed, and your metabolic rate has time to deal with what you gave it, back to ketosis you go!
Losing 190 is NUTS! Congrats! I thought I pulled off something losing 100! You win! Just tweak your eating back to plan and you’ll be fine. If you don’t see why you’re not dropping the last 20, start tracking if you’re not already, can’t figure out stuff if you’re not looking.
@Ifod14 Thanks! Congrats on losing the 100! That took some hard work, just like my loss. Anyway, I have another question…so, I have been able to count on my strips as a gauge for this entire journey. But now that they don’t seem to be working in the same fashion for me anymore, shall I try to learn about this “testing my blood” that I literally just heard about on here 1 hour ago?? Have never heard of that before. It sounds like something I should atleast try since I can’t trust my strips anymore. Is it just like a diabetic prick in the finger in the morning?? Are they expensive and where should I purchase the supplies for something like that??
These are dangerous, not just because of the carb content, but because the fructose in the sugar (1 sucrose = 1 glucose + 1 fructose) damages the liver and leads to hepatic insulin resistance, which is not going to help your fat loss.
If you have lost 190 lbs./86.4 kg of fat, you might want to stop worrying about the last 20 lbs./9 kg, which always come moff more slowly anyway. Give your body a chance to live with the major change it’s already had to cope with, and it may well surprise you by shedding those last 20 lbs. of fat when you least expect it. (Going carnivore—i.e., no carbohydrate at all—might do the trick. But beware the scale, because sometimes people put on a bit of lean mass while shedding fat, and this can confuse the issue.
The only thing I can think of to explain your current experience is that you are most likely much more insulin-sensitive than you were, so that your insulin response to those sugary desserts isn’t as great as it would have been before. (Insulin is the primary inhibitor of ketogenesis.)
There are three ketone bodies produced in the liver: acetoacetate, acetone, and β-hydroxybutyrate. Each can be found in the blood and is excreted in the the breath and the urine, but for the purposes of home measurement, acetoacetate is measured in urine, acetone in the breath, and β-hydroxybutyrate in the blood. That last measurement is considered the best of the three, since it is less susceptible to the vagaries of the body’s excretory systems. However, a blood meter for β-hydroxybutyrate is more expensive than the urine strips, so you have to weigh the cost against the benefits.
Chasing ketones and monitoring and measuring can drive you nuts, unless you just enjoy data. I never tested anything and eventually gave up the scales too because they played head games on me.
(But others check ketones and weight daily. It’s individual.)
About that last 20.
Those could take a year or more. And if you think about it, that’s good. Your body is learning a new skill… maintenance… trust. But if you really NEED to lose those 20, they will come, just very very slowly. Again… that’s good!
I like to remind myself at how I felt about each weight when I was gaining… 160 broke my heart, 180 broke my ego, and 200 broke my spirit. BUT… on the way back down, those milestones were reason to celebrate and enjoy my smaller clothes and new found pride. I’m at 147 now and I only know that cuz I just saw the doc, and had to buy more pants.
Let those last 20 take their time. You have lessons to learn. How to be steady, how to draw a hard line in the sand with sweets, how to love your body again instead of fighting it, and how to love yourself.
And even if you never lose those 20, you are fabulous. Love the skin you’re in baby… and treat it right. Ditch the sweets and relax.
You got this.
I’ve been testing a TKD (targeted keto diet), where I eat carbs the first meal after a body weight workout (think weight lifting where the “weights” are primarily my body). I’ve eating 90+ grams of carbs in that meal, and my blood ketones are still 0.3 mmol/l or so afterwards. Tested multiple days with the same results.
NOTE: I’m only testing a few times a day, so it’s entirely possible I went to zero, then back again to 0.2 or 0.3 mmol/l. And I only eat this twice a week, with higher-protein keto the other days. AND I’m doing this after 45+ minutes of body weight training to failure, meaning the carbs have somewhere to go (my muscles). AND I’m drinking whey protein (causes lower postprandial blood sugar response) beforehand, and eating most of my (lean) meat before eating the carbs. Both of those should lead to lowered blood sugar (and the meat to lowered insulin response) when eating carbs.
I wouldn’t, they work just like glucose meters, but the strips are way more money. Our ketones really don’t matter. There are a few situations where they would, like a person with epilepsy using keto for it’s original purpose, for them, having their ketones drop could be catastrophic. For everybody else, they’re pretty much meaningless. Our ketone levels don’t correlate with fat loss speed, and that’s why the majority checks them.
You’ve been doing this for a long time, you know what foods to eat/and to not. Checking them is just wasting your time. You’d get way more useful info out of macro tracking and getting a hold on your TDEE than you would your ketone levels as that is directly related to your true metabolic rate whereas the ketones aren’t.
Beware the addiction… it can return at any time, especially if you have been doing “lazy keto”. 190lbs weight loss is an epic life’s work. Don’t let it slip. You deserve better.
They can do various things, I experienced that. Certain old favs disappeared from my life and it feels permanent, others came back after 5 years (and then disappeared), others I never miss but if I stray far from carnivore, it’s like nothing happened and I eat them up again, sometimes in alarming amounts… But it’s after many years, it was worse before… Yep, it’s good to be careful, being fine without a problem item since long doesn’t mean it’s safe to eat it again (at least do it carefully. I got very good at moderation if I put my mind on it). Even if sometimes abstinence isn’t the solution, I have things I can’t even decide to give up for good, it goes against my core personality or something. But I can use moderation and eat it extremely rarely.
To me, having rules for normal days is helpful, it set my attitude. If I just allow anything all the time, even in moderation, that doesn’t end so well. Maybe one day (that’s my goal) but not yet. “Just” (it’s NOT so easy) having determination and rules with the right amount of strictness takes away almost all temptation in my case. And the rest is the job of carnivore, no plant carbs, no interference 
So… It’s both physical (food choices) and mental for me but probably for most people? Both parts help. I mess with the former and can’t balance it out. The opposite is somewhat easier but I need a proper attitude to keep up my dietary rules… So they both are important. Maybe it’s a bit different for people willing to use willpower if it’s about food… I don’t know, I only am me.
And my keto sweets were so good I never missed sugary ones. I wrote were as carnivore changed even my off times… I still eat desserts but different ones.
I can’t answer the question in the title (I could try to say a few things like individual ketosis carb limit, measurement error…) but I don’t even care about ketosis so much, I just wanna feel good. And if I go out of it, I come back quickly enough anyway. So I never choose ketones just listen to my body, it knows pretty well what it wants and what is good for it at this point.
Hi ChaCha, that is one epic weight loss journey you went through, and obviously required real motivation for you to achieve it. Addictions … I had a few. Before an illness struck three years ago I indulged in the sweet stuff, the really sweet stuff, think cupcakes full of icing with my tea. And chocolate, lots of it. After the illness, I quit all refined sugars, and I’ve never looked back. But sugars are in everything. I later discovered I was still eating a lot of sugar, disguised as healthy treats, dried fruits, fruit and nuts bars, I loved those. When I began keto I just kept it simple, cut carbs first to 20, then 10 grams, which is where I am now. I was still indulging in dark chocolate at the start of keto. Then I simply decided I didn’t need it. I still indulge in a small handful of almonds in the morning, about 10-13, and that is pure luxury. Another luxury, and also an addiction I am keeping because life is too short, is my French blend coffee with cream. As to ketones, I never measure those, again, life is too short.
I agree with Robin that you need to give your body now time to adjust to those amazing changes it’s gone through, that’s quite some journey you’ve been on! Maybe rather than rushing to lose the rest of the weight (and potentially becoming discouraged) this could be a time for you to reflect upon everything you’ve so far achieved, think about how good you feel in your new skin and to see the beauty and worth of your body, which has been with you every step of the way through your journey and transformation.