I can't lose wait anymore and my Sibio Keton sensor is dysfunctional?!

(alexandru) #1

Hi, let me start by saying that I am 31 years old, I am overweight about 165kg and 1.90 meters, when I started I had 180 kg. almost 10 months ago.

For the last 6 months I am stagnant at 165 166 167 back and forth. For the last 6 months I’ve been eating around 1700-2000 kcal and keto and One meal a day at evening around 7pm to 9 pm with a 18+ hours of fasting kept very strict on tracker daily. I have a remote job with almost under 1000 steps a day…on my watch tracker. I have walked for 8000 steps at night on fast pace for 10 days with almost no results on the scale.

3 day’s ago I bought a sibionics Continuous Ketone Monitor sensor and put in on my hand on the back side. Now the weird stuff that get make crazy and very anxious.

This ketogenic sensor show at 0.4 up to 0.5 mmol the moment I wake up until at night, at night around 1:30 in the morning, the ketonse start building up again for like 6 hours until 1.4 mmol or even up to 1.7 mmol…but it wont go further and when they hit a 1.8, they suddenly decrease untill I wake up.

During the day, if I have a lot of movement and action, they stay around 0.4 0.5 or even go lower and I can’t understand what is going on!? I am in ketosis or not? the sensor stats say “about 0.6 grams of fat burned per hour” when is at 0.5 mmol.

Please I need your help , what is happening?! I tried to be active…I did walk daily at night fast pace, I have been keeping a very strict keto under 25/30 grams of NET carbs, i did veggies, i did electrolytes i drink water 3L a day …even If i am sedentary, looks like 1600-1700 kcal is too much and I am just at maintaining my 165 kg!!! this way ?!

Last period I ate around 25/30 NET carbs (i even added veggies full with carb, not taking out fiber from anything when calculate), i did around 135 - 150 grams of fat and around 100- 115 of protein.

I’m not diabetic. I also did HOMA TEST which valued 4.4 above all limits for insulin resistance.

I didn’t touch anything with carbs since 8 months ago…

Please help. :frowning:

(KM) #2

First off, welcome, and Breathe!

Don’t worry about the calories. You don’t want to get too low, what you’re eating sounds ok.

It is possible that your carb intake is too high. But you may just be in a bit of a stall.

Finally, sometimes our measurements change even if our weight is stable. You could be gaining muscle while losing fat. It sounds like you’re doing what you should.

(alexandru) #3

Thank you.

I will keep on, one meal a day and keto is perfect for me, even if is hard tracking it with m fitness pal and a kitchen scale. The only down side is stalling in weight which play with my mind. I should lose more even at 1800 kcal, all macro calculators for me shows above 1900 -2000 to lose weight.

I will start do more cardio walking at fast pace maybe full jogging…and I will hit the gym again! No excuses I already paid 1 year subscription, so I can’t just stop :).

5 years ago I did herbalife and I lost from 175 to 150, than…life happened and I was at 185 in 4 years.

(KM) #4

Sometimes we actually lose weight by feeding more, as long as it’s not a lot of carbs. And some people find it helpful to lower the fat a bit and boost the protein. Really high fat is necessary for some medical applications of keto, but it’s not essential for weight loss, bodies differ.

Exercise doesn’t really have a big impact on weight, although it’s an important part of good health and more muscle mass usually means a higher rate of energy burn even at rest. Going crazy with aerobic exercise may not make that much difference.

Hopefully more people will chime in here. To me 15K in 10 months sounds like a good start, not spectacular but not too shabby, either! I know how disappointing a stall can be, but like the old saying goes, keep calm and keto on. :slightly_smiling_face:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #5

Welcome to the forums!

That may be part of your problem, right there. Ignore calories completely. Low insulin (from restricting carb intake) is necessary for metabolising fat, but we also need to be eating enough, or our body will still hang on to its fat. Many people on these forums have found that their fat loss began or improved once they started eating more. If we don’t give our body enough food, it slows down the metabolism, which is not what we want when trying to metabolise fat.

At 163 kg, you probably have around 115 kg of lean mass, so you can probably eat 115-170 g of protein a day, plus an equivalent amount of fat. Be surfe to eat enough to satisfy your hunger. If you enjoy eating only one meal a day, that’s fine, but don’t hesitate to eat an extra meal if you need it.

Just be sure that the food you eat is whole, real food: meat, poultry, fish, leafy greens, vegetables that grow above ground. Strictly avoid all sugar, starches, and grains. Also avoid the so-called “healthy” seed oils. Use butter, lard, tallow, bacon grease as your cooking fats. And if you absolutely can’t live without oil in your diet, switch to one of the fruit oils: avocado, coconut, olive, or palm. The seed oils cause systemic inflammation, which hampers fat loss.

As @kib1 says, exercise is not useful for losing fat. It is great for overall health, though, so do what you enjoy and have the energy for.

By the way, we have a sub-forum in the Beginner’s Forum, in which you can ask people to look over your diet. Sometimes an outsider can spot some food that might be a problem. In the meantime, keep calm, and keto on!

(alexandru) #6

Thank you, indeed 1600 calories goal and skipping by guilt to 1800 1900, might not look enough but I never suffer of hunger, no headaches, no craves, only random craving some carbs like pasta or fries, but it disappear after my normal meal.

I will think about the calories , some people say protein spike insulin if is much more than fat on the diet.

(alexandru) #7

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look at the this graph…someday I am in small ketosis on 2 3 4 5 6 in the morning, and 0 ketosis when in fasting during the day, and someday I am in ketosis in mid day, and not in the night.

This sensor is defective…even if’s inserted in my arm.

#8

I can’t help with your main problem, sadly :frowning: You should have lose fat like that, your metabolism must have been somewhat slow not to or you may be sensitive to some items…?
Many people seems to have problems with fat-loss if they eat sweeteners or dairy… IDK how that works but I heard it from many and they seemed trustworthy enough without no reason to say not the truth… And we know the human body is complicated…

As @kib1 wrote, you may play with your fat/protein ratio, maybe it helps. Or eat more. You eat very little if you ask me, I ate more when I was 70-80kg, no activity, short woman and I lost fat just fine (slowly but that was perfect for me). I didn’t eat keto either but that doesn’t seem to matter to me at all. I may have a bit quicker metabolism for my stats but you are way heavier, active, eat little… You should lose fat. But some people seem to lose fat when they eat more than so little. I am not among them.

Do you need tracking? Can’t you lower your carbs (if there is room for that), eating items where you can be sure it’s fine?

It may, there are examples. Of course, our eating is most important but exercise may help. (Or may not and it’s counterproductive for some people…) And we should do it for other reasons anyway.

Doesn’t matter, really. Hunger isn’t so realiable, one may seriously overeat and still starve all day or one may undereat and feeling full(!) all the time. Not everyone notices when they don’t eat enough. My body may scream at me if I dare to have a deficit (I need many tricks to avoid that) but many others may just lower metabolism and not giving hunger/appetite sings at all… Scary. But happens.
Ditto for the others. It doesn’t always work that way, sometimes you don’t notice you undereat. And you mess up your metabolism.
You don’t eat super low-cal but for you, it may be too low.

I don’t care, I NEED more protein than fat to lose fat - but you probably don’t. But really, does it matter? You need to eat enough protein and right amount of energy and carbs are low on keto… You get some kind of protein and fat range, whatever insulin does, you need them in the right amount, what can be more important than that?
But yes, it’s a range. You may experiment with different numbers, ratios…

Protein always raises insulin but insulin isn’t your enemy, it has its role. Don’t eat excessive amount of protein if you can avoid it, for multiple reasons but don’t be afraid of protein. @Paul wrote 115-170g, is it much in your opinion? It doesn’t seem to be for you if you ask me.

Good luck!!!

(Robin) #9

I agree with @PaulL on this one.
Even if you do no feel hungry, you need to eat more. Without enough calories, your body will assume you are starving it and hold on to all its reserves. This is self sabotage. If you simply can’t eat another bite, have an extra meal later. If you decide to add exercise, you’ll need to add in more calories to compensate.

I know this goes against everything we learned in the past about losing weight. But this way is maintainable and you’ll feel so much better.

I don’t know about gauges and measuring. Can’t help you there, but others can/will.
Good luck, though. Welcome. Glad you are here.

#10

Hi and welcome to the forum. I never knew there are continues ketone monitors at least I don’t think we have them in the uk. I agree with @PaulL I found the most important thing for being in ketosis is lowering blood glucose. It’s as important if not more knowing what your blood glucose is. If you keep your total carbs below 20 or even less I’m pretty sure your blood glucose would fall and ketones would increase. Maybe increasing fasting window would help with this. I been checking by finger blood consistently both glucose and ketones. I wouldn’t worry about fats or protein as you are unlikely over eat on those. Maybe you could also check ow certain foods affect your glucose. I check this by performing finger blood check before your meal and hour to 90 min after eating. This will tell you if the food choice spiked your glucose. I believe if you have a glucose spike your ketones will go down. Apart from that it helps to keep away from ultra processed and processed foods as possible and also sweeteners. If no movement on the scales try and measure your body. This is my opinion and I’m no expert just talking from personal experience. You are on the right path, keep going at your pace.

#11

Are you only tracking carbs? 1700-2000 for somebody that’s essentially sedentary could be too much, things like OMAD make it worse for many people. 6mo with near no movement can only mean you’re eating too much for your metabolic rate, there’s no way around that, even a slow trickling loss would add up over 6mo.

While getting in the steps is always a good thing, anything that becomes a rigid day to day part of your life stops counting (as a benefit) as it’s now just part of your TDEE, which would include whatever you’re eating.

At your weight, eating 1700-2000 is absolute starvation! You know the whole thing about bigger people needed more fuel thing? Ya, it’s very true! While that’s usually used (wrongly) to rationalize more over eating, it’s still metabolically true. Your body is holding onto everything it can at this point.

You need to figure out what your actual TDEE is, and do as you like, but I’d dump OMAD yesterday. You need to tell your body you’re not trying to starve it to death, or it’s not going to budge.

I’m a huge shill for the MacroFactor app since it does all the math, uses AI to ignore fluctuations and it’ll figure out what your expenditure really is, and a year of it is cheaper than having your metabolic rate measured, really can’t lose, and since what you’re doing clearly isn’t working…

There’s a ton of pre made spreadsheets available for people that want to do it the hard way, and I can link some if you like, but that’s a lot of work vs just tracking with that thing and having it do it all for you. Plus, all the graphs and tracking is nice to see what your doing, Expenditure vs Weight vs day to day flucuations etc.

#12

Tracking Ketones is pointless, don’t waste your money. That’s cool that somebody finally made one and there’s a time and a place for it, but since your ketone levels are meaningless in all contexts minus people doing Keto as a medical intervention where serious crap could happen without high ketones (epileptics mainly) all it does is lead you to false conclusions. Also “Nutritional Ketosis” is make beleive, if you’re in Ketosis, you’re in ketosis.

#13

Add me in as a 3rd on this one! If you don’t have the appetite to eat more because of metabolic slowdown, then drink your calories! Make a protein shake and thrown some cream, peanut butter etc in there, it’ll taste awesome and between protein and add-in’s, you can add an extra 500 cals without effort, that’d still have you pretty low though! Real food is better clearly, but gotta get those cals up!

(alexandru) #14

All online calculators say that i need 3500 calories to maintain and around 2500 to lose 1kg in 2 weeks.

If I start eating 2500…I think I i will gain more weight.

I got this Ketone continuous sensor as last 6 months didn’t work for me, i feel great, but not losing more than around 12-15kg, which I believe most of them were water retention.

#15

Maybe you will for a little while but you need to quicken up your metabolism if it slowed down - and with your numbers and lack of results I would think it did.

Of course calculators won’t tell you how big your TDEE is, it can’t be calculated, after all. They give you on idea what is usually normal with your numbers. There are individual differences, of course, significant ones (a calculator once gave me 500 kcal less than my reality was… no activity was involved). As you are very much below with no fat-loss, it’s probably not just a natural individual difference or I would think.

2500 kcal may be a big jump for you (I don’t get it but people apparently like to do super subtle changes regarding energy intake. While I easily double any of my macro from the previous day if I don’t focus very much on not doing it… surely one body handles this much better than another) and fear of fat gain is bad so maybe eat a bit more first…? Maybe half of the difference? But I don’t have experience or knowledge about it, I just try to find some solution your mind and body accepts more…