How do I know when my weight is where it should be?


(Amber Gault ) #1

I started keto the end of last year and lost 1 stone and a half fairly quickly I now weigh in the middle of the healthy bmi for my height but ideally I’d like to shift a couple more lbs but for the last few months it won’t go no matter how hard I try, I stick to keto without cheat days (well I’ve had 2) and I do IF 20/4 or omad most days. What I’m asking is this, where my body is telling me its at its ideal weight and stop trying? or should I try a keto reset? Eating carbs to restart seems like going against everything but people say it works? I i would appreciate everyones thoughts on this please?


(David Cooke) #2

BMI is of more use for evaluating populations en masse than for individuals. I have the impression that the waist to height measurement ratio is considered more important (Height more than double waist is preferable). There are studies suggesting that ideal BMI values for older people are higher than for younger persons.
Depending on diet and degree of exercise, loss of weight may be due to loss of muscle, not loss of body fat.


#3

I feel like your body will tell you when you hit your perfect weight. My BMI chart says from 121 to 140, but I’m older and need to keep a few pounds on just in case I get sick, so I’m shooting for a size, not a weight. I’d be happy to be back in a size 10 (US), whatever weight that is. I weighed 117 at one point in my life, but that was way too thin. I honestly just want to feel good in clothes again. I don’t now with my belly sticking out. If I could just get rid of my belly and half my butt, I would be happy, no matter what weight I am.


(Robin) #4

Sounds like your body is telling you the answer. Trust it. Now you can just stay the course and be on auto pilot. It’s the best!


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #5

My experience is that arguing with my body is futile. I lost 80 lb. (36.4 kg) with absolutely no effort, and my weight has remained constant since then, though my body composition seems to shift a bit, depending on whether I yield to carb cravings or not. I’d love to lose a further 80 lbs., but that doesn’t seem to be in my body’s plan, at least for the moment. If my primary reason for eating this way hadn’t been to restore my metabolic health (which has happened, yay!), I’d be more upset than I am.

I was interested to hear Dr. Phinney say, in a 2 Keto Dudes podcast, that people typically lose 20% of their starting weight on a ketogenic diet. Richard remarked that he had lost 25%, and I have lost about the same percentage, so I guess he and I are ahead of the game, even though we are both still fat. In a more recent interview, Dr. Phinney mentions seeing patients whose fat loss started up again after an interval of a few years. He speculated that perhaps the body needed to rest for a while before continuing to shed excess fat. I don’t believe anyone really knows.


(Bob M) #6

That is interesting, as I’ve lost about the same percentage. However, I lost that percentage, then tried The Croissant Diet (TCD), gained a lot back, then went back on my lower fat/higher protein, low carb/keto diet with some >24 hour fasts, and am back to where I was pre-TCD.

Now, it took me two YEARS to get back to where I was, pre-TCD. But I’m hopeful in another 2 years, I’ll weigh less. :wink:

My goal is just to weigh under 200 pounds, which is where I’d no longer be “obese” by BMI. After that, I don’t know where I’ll end up, but it won’t be where I was when I was 20 and a pseudo-body builder.


#7

I agree that this is interesting, especially because I’m approaching 20 percent myself. I liked to imagine that I could just keep losing five or six pounds a month until I dried up and blew away, but it seems more likely that I’ll glide to a landing at a point that leaves me far more comfortable than I was when I started but still pretty chubby in the eyes of the world. Which is okay. I’m not aiming at a specific number. I wouldn’t mind losing 25 percent like Paul, though. That would leave me at a place that bothered me a bit on the way up, but that was a long, long time ago and I’m more accepting now.


(Eric) #8

You never know, you may get lucky and blow past 20-25%. When I started keto almost a year ago, I was 342.1lbs. Today I am 213.3lbs so that is close to 40% of my starting weight lost and still going. Things have slowed down but I am still going. I think there are so many factors that play into this that lead to our n=1 being so variable.


#9

Nice! That’s about where I started. For me, that was “might as well buy loafers” territory, since all shoes quickly became loafers.


#10

I use my eyes and hands to decide if I have lots of fat to lose.
My body actually don’t want to lose fat at this point and it’s not easy as it holds the power but if I am serious (and I am, just not in THAT a hurry…), I obviously can lose fat as I am a healthy normal person so if I eat little, I lose fat and I can find the way. I don’t eat little but I know the method. Meanwhile I try to gain a little fat as I don’t want a specific weight, I want not to be chubby and I want muscles :slight_smile: And it would be nice to eat much fat one day, I don’t seem to lose that dream, I love fat a bit too much…

I don’t see how eating carbs would help, honestly. By the way, I went off keto zillion times (it’s possible that it was more than mere hundreds… I have been doing on/off keto since several years), it didn’t do much beyond triggering overeating and less comfortable days (I mean it mess with my relationship with food, I am typically only calm and okay on very low-carb). Definitely will do my best to avoid eating more carbs if I can do it and it doesn’t seem a wonderful deal due to much, mostly harmless joy. My carbs are for that, they don’t really help with anything else.

Keto alone doesn’t make one slim, amounts and food choices matter. Timing too. And one may have some problem, it’s not all about the eating, it’s known sleep and stress may interfere too.
If I don’t lose fat on my woe, I try to tweak something or if I already found the ideal woe, I focus on my timing.
Then would come EF but my body really isn’t cooperative right now and I usually fancy eating every day anyway. Even more exercise sounds more realistic and I need more activity anyway, it feels good and that makes sense.

How much carbs do you eat now? I doubt I ever could lose fat on mere keto, I needed to stop eating plant carbs (at least not a significant amount). But this is individual. Plant carbs make me eat too much. Added fat and too fatty meat as well unless the amount is tiny.

I lost nothing on keto but I would have if I went to keto from HCHF right away… But nope, I had some nice low-carb times and lost fat there easily. For a while when my energy need was more than my natural, pretty fixed energy intake when I eat as little as I comfortably can. Or something. But years passed, my body surely changed some…
I was 152lbs when I started keto (with water weight so my keto weight was 148), yeah, it’s not easy to lose with such a starting weight when one has a hard time to get satiated… My eating abilities is still impressive enough, I don’t doubt it won’t really change, it just gets better when Carnivore Easy Satiation kicks in. Fat adaptation and ketosis isn’t enough.

So I believe one shouldn’t give up just because fat-loss isn’t automatic. Or quick. Some people loses fat super slowly on the carnivore thread. (I would be among them if I could stick to carnivore OMAD/2MAD I am sure, well with the right rules, I can overeat fat even on carnivore so I should be careful with it).


(Bob M) #11

I’ve seen quite a few people for whom keto alone, eating as much as they want, they were able to get thin again. One guy I followed on Twitter got built (muscular, not much fat), and lost 80 pounds, while eating around 100 grams of carbs per day. If he ate more, he gained weight; he just ate fewer carbs and lost weight.

My theory is that those of us who can’t do this, we damaged ourselves more than someone like him. It’s like Ted Naiman, he got ripped by eating low carb, but he was never fat. He looked a lot worse while being a vegetarian, but he never gained 100 pounds. Similarly, the guy I just discussed, I assume he was insulin sensitive even while heavy, because a lot of people here wouldn’t be able to modify carbs that way.

And I’m sure genetics plays some role. For instance, Asians that gain not much weight are much sicker supposedly than are Europeans at the same weight gain. In other words, a European (like me, 100% European, 75% Eastern European) can gain 50 pounds and even be relatively healthy, but an Asian that gains 50 pounds will be way sicker, supposedly. (Yet one more reason BMI is useless.)


#12

BMI is completely meaningless unless you’re literally skin and bones, try to the best of your ability to determine your bodyfat % and go by that.

On the loss, are you tracking what you eat?

So I’m not a fan of the “reset” term that’s always used there, but it does work. When you take in carbs again, there’s definitely a metabolic boost that happens for a while, which is why most see a drop on the scale again even though they’re holding some more glycogen than normal. You just can’t be stupid about it. The claim is that carbs keep the metabolism a little higher, for me, after going back years in labs the longer I was keto my thyroid numbers did show they were dropping. I know do a hybrid of CKD/TKD so I have pre workout carbs and a reload once or twice a week, and my thyroid values are optimal again, so it’s not all false, but we’re all also different.


#13

Yes, of course. I meant it’s not enough for everyone! Some people comes and expect 100% success just because they are doing keto. It’s not how it works. It may be enough and may be not.

I doubt I had damage, I just eat too much for my energy need. I very easily lost fat on low-carb and never went back to my original weight, maintenance is super easy but finishing my fat-loss is tricky.
For some reason my body (and mind, I suppose. or whatever says it’s satisfying enough) wants a certain amount of food, my actual energy need has little impact on it (unless it’s unusually high). I don’t know why these things aren’t synchronized but it could be worse.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #14

ROFL! I much preferred loafers even when I was as skinny as a rail. Then, after back surgery, I couldn’t bend for quite some time, and the occupational therapist introduced me to elastic shoelaces. I’ve never looked back! :mans_shoe:


(Robin) #15

I never heard that. I’ve lost 30%… (June 22 is my 2nd ketoversary.) I lost the first 20% in less than a year, then the last 10% since then. I never stopped to figure out what the percentage was.


(KCKO, KCFO) #16

(Amber Gault ) #17

Thanks everyone for your knowledge on this, I think I’ll just be happy where I am with my weight loss and see if it very slowly goes down, if not I’ll know this is my body telling me its where its meant to be :blush:


(Todd Allen) #18

Use a mirror not a scale. When you like what you see you are done.


(Joey) #19

Sorry can’t resist, given this thread’s title…

If the weight is in your midsection, it’s not where it should be. :wink:


(Michael) #20

Alternatively, you can do a multi day fast, lower your weight by a few pounds and then go back to normal eating. If the weight stays off, you are good and can fast again a few weeks later if needed to lower again. If it comes back, then you know you are good at that weight.