According to MyFitnessPal, I’m getting my macros right and I’m eating enough to lose a pound a week. Though I have no idea if their carb count is total or net, but I’m rarely over 20 anyway.
I tried to respond yesterday, but as newbie, the site wouldn’t let me post so much and I had to wait 18 hours.
It takes time to re-orchestrate the hormonal balance though @Olivia1 and you mentioned you exercised 6 days a week w/ free weights/bodyweights and “cardio”. You may certainly need more than “a few days” of laying off to reset. The LCHF/keto trainers Doug McGuff MD and Fred Hahn/Mary Dan Eades MD/Michael Eades MD discuss body recomposition strength training as needing only 30 mins once or twice a week due to the importance of RECOVERY. McGuff even suggests 10-14 days off in between workouts, and cites studies that show that even longer recovery times can sometimes create greater muscle mass increases (perhaps going back to seasonal rhythms, such as the health benefits of hibernating through winter). And they all agree that 99% of body recomposition is dietary, only 1% is through strength training.
In non-overweight folks, there may be no change on a weight scale if cortisol levels are high from stress (including excessive exercise) or if the body is building muscle tissue while it clears fat. In fact, I’d avoid the scale entirely, and only measure your body every three months, so as to minimize mental agitation.
The fat cells swap out fat for water for weeks or months before a swoosh happens and a bunch of fat cells shrink, for example. In a well composed ketogenic way of eating, imho there is no such thing as a stall or “not budging”. Things are always changing under the surface. More on this in Nurse Cindy’s fantastic video:
Sometimes the change is in skin renewal, other times it’s glandular detox, pre-cancerous cellular healing, brain nourishment that is anti-depressive, etc and those subtle changes are prioritized by the body’s own intelligence on behalf of health & healing as far as I can tell.
Feeling like you’re frozen in this state - what’s that coming from? Are you weighing or measuring frequently? Are you emotionally feeling out of control? The body is very primal, and changing the metabolism is a big change that can trigger deeply held fears or addictions, for example.
Staying with the frozen analogy - many frozen rivers and lakes actually have water beneath them, and a lot goes on under the surface. Same with many plants and trees in the winter - as well as plants in true desert - A LOT of energy & activity is going on underground.
How about letting yourself rest deeply, maybe do some hibernating as you keep calm and keto on? <3
MFP shows total carbs not net carbs unless you’ve installed the browser add-in. I was on MFP for a very long time, still am but mostly for my Keto/LCHF groups, I kept adding and dropping weight, and I was tracking as accurately as possible. Summer of 2016, I went on Atkin’s induction. I started losing weight and feeling more in control of my eating. I stalled out after losing a bunch of weight, still had more to lose. I found 2ketodudes, Dr. Fung, and fasting. After I started fasting regularly, I reached my goal weight, I have been maintaining below that weight now for many months. I am a foodie and I tend to eat a lot of food. I love this WOE, because I am not counting calories all the time. I don’t feel deprived or feel like I am lacking in nutrition. I feel really good and my dr. tells me I am very healthy, not just for a woman of my age, but any age.
I do eat slighly more carbs now, not the 20g that most ketoers follow, but I rarely go beyond 50g total.
Stress can cause you to not lose weight. Are you on meds for these issues? Meds are often the cause of no weight loss.
Keep learning and reading here, keep at it you will get it sorted out.
@Olivia1 FWIW, I had the exact same problem. The only thing that worked for me was doing extended fasting. I am finally losing (after 8-9 months keto) due to a lot of extended fasting and trying experiments like The Bacon Challenge.
I would also add that it may be beneficial to get a full hormone panel done. Sometimes when its not the food or stressors or lack of sleep, etc. it could be some hormone levels out of whack.
I finally had my BG measured so I can give you a more accurate report.
It was 77 fasting, then it rose to 92 after two hours of eating breakfast.
Breakfast was two egg omelette with bacon bits, cherry tomatoes, red onion, mushroom, olives, mozzarella, with one tbs of ghee and another of refined coconut oil, and tea with half a cup of unsweetened almond milk and two tbs of heavy whipping cream) I take most of my calories at breakfast and I entered the exact weights of everything I used and the whole meel came to 670 per MFP with 12 grams of carbs (total) 60 grams of fat and 24 grams of protein (and for the rest of the day, I eat another 700 with a total carbs of 20-25) Problem was, this huge breakfast barely put a dent in my hunger, I actually GET hungrier after eating. So maybe this constant hunger thing is a localized problem in my stomach like too little acid or something? As for not budging weight wise, same problem stil.
My opinion, not being able to actual “be onsite to troubleshoot “ so to speak, I’d say the carbs. I would think it takes more carbs than that to have the effect. But I’d start there. Aim for less than 20 for the entire day. Also, try to group all of your meals into a four to six hour window. The smaller the window the better.
Figure out how much protein you need for your ideal weight. 1 gram of protein for each kg of lean body weight. And then add as much fat as you like. I’ll often have coffee with 500 calories. A double sized coffee cup, with 2 Tblsp of coconut oil and a tblsp of ghee or butter and about 2 tblsp of heavy whipping cream. That will usually hold me out until late afternoon. I won’t eat again sometimes until the next day. So it’s been IF fasting everyday, with the occasional EF without eating for a day. When I do this, I won’t eat again after early afternoon. Sometimes I slip up. But that’s the beauty of Keto. It doesn’t matter. As long as I keep my carbs low, and my protein no higher than it should be, and all the fat I want, it’s dang hard to go wrong.
I lost 40 pounds in two weeks. I’ve recently lost another 5 pounds. It took me sticking to my intermittent fasting, with no eating after 1 pm to begin losing the extra, but when I stick to it, it’s nearly as easy as breathing. I occasionally get urges, I feel like I need something to eat, but it’s not hunger, it’s more like the munchies. I’ll put a pinch of salt (dealers choice) under my tongue and within a couple of minutes that urge has passed.
I did the IF for a week about three weeks ago and I actually gained a pound, and the hunger was unbearable. I couldn’t stomach the BP coffee no matter how I tried. But I’ll try to cut carbs completely, go with very basic, simple ingredient and see. They might not be having much of an insulin response per the tests, but maybe my body considers them way more than enough to not burn its own fat.
Some people told me it will be very slow for me to lose the extra weight since I don’t have that much to lose. That would have been totally fine, if I was losing inches, or not hungry. Though I don’t even consider quitting, since when I ate any other form of diet the hunger was even worse…and of course both weight and inches stayed put, too.
I see why you’re hungry. Basically all you had to eat was 2 eggs and a lot of liquid fat. I’d be hungry too.
I don’t know why the no carb camp is so popular on this forum, but it’s unnecessary and less than optimal. Most of the low carb advocates who are health practitioners (Dr Perlmutter, Dr Mercola, Dr Berg, Dr Pompa, et al) advise eating several cups of low carb veggies per day. In your case, it would probably help keep hunger at bay. Try ditching the tomato, mushrooms, and onion and add 12 oz of broccoli florets or cauliflower to your omelet.
Your BG numbers are reasonable. Concentrate more on consuming sufficient food volume and focus less on meeting macros.
I was suffering from this hunger when I was eating lots of food by volume, too, before keto. It started a couple of years ago and wouldn’t stop. The first thing I heard about keto was that drinking fat (in BPC) kills hunger, but in the few times I managed to gulp it down, it seriously grossed me out AND didn’t kill the hunger pangs while at it. It’s really distracting and sometimes distressing that its constant, though I don’t crave anything. I’m suffering from nothing else physically, as I don’t feel faint or anxious or anything along with the hunger and my energy levels are high and constant. Just that feeling of cramping emptiness, no matter how full my stomach is. I do eat lots of vegetables on keto (that goes into the other 700 calories I eat since they’re so low in calories) and that silences the hunger pangs for about an hour maximum. I guess I have to keep experimenting until I find out what’s causing this and how to stop it.
It’s great that you’re finally losing! Were you also constantly hungry in the beginning?
I’ve been avoiding the scale for over three weeks now based on everyone’s advice, but I know I’m not budging since I also see no change whatsoever in my shape, and my measurements are the same. I’m even feeling a bit puffier all around.
But I’ll give all your advice a go and wait until three months have passed. It’s been fifty days exactly today since I started keto and I expected to see ANY result, especially with the hunger curbing by now, but I guess I’ll have to keto on and hope for the best.
I would have said that a year ago, but just the other day I found little tubes of pate at the grocery store and I ate one just like I would have eaten a Mars bar two years ago. 
It probably had 2X the calories of a Mars bar too, but I didn’t think twice about it…it also kept me feeling full for the rest of the day.
@Olivia1 yes, keep experimenting and studying. You may have some other issues like excess stomach HCL or gut imbalances that are increasing your Ghrelin levels. What you describe on first impression may well be about your microbiome balance. You might want to focus on making sure you’re eating “gut friendly” foods (such as veg carbs everyday - lots of us eat plenty of cooked greens slathered with butter for example). Additional assistance may be found in taking Ginger capsules a few times a day, or chewing Fennel seeds (half tsp or so) after every meal to help sweeten & satiate your digestion.
What you’re describing, the “cramping emptiness” is no fun - and I surely hope you can get to the root cause of it.
Norman Robillard PhD (a microbiologist) in the book Fast Tract Digestion talks about the fermentation potential of foods, and how excessive fermentation causes many conditions including SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) and excess acid. It’s a big subject, and the use of one of the four types of resistant starch is a medicine for some folks who don’t suffer from food addiction and aren’t at risk of bingeing on the starch. Since learning about that, I started to eat 1-2 tblsp (8-10 carbs of my allotted less than 50 per day) of cooked & chilled then refried low-glycemic white basmati rice several times a week to feed the good bacteria in my colon - which in turn enhances brain functioning. Robillard recommends sushi rice/sweet rice himself.
However, it could be way more simple for you than the above - it could be that like many newbies, you’re simply not eating enough of the right foods - whether that be veg carb fiber (which feeds the gut) or fat!!! The early months of keto are all about good, tasty, abundant LCHF eating in order to deeply establish and stabilize the new fat-burning body processes. Aiming for 85% fat in a day is a huge change - and if you don’t like butter in your coffee, maybe start eating an avocado a day with extra virgin olive oil or melted bacon fat on it with sea salt. It’s incredibly tasty, and soothing for the digestion too.
Honestly I’ve had to move away from so many veggies. They make me super bloated and made my 
issues (or lack thereof) surprisingly much worse. I eat a lot of avocado (soluble fiber) and some chia seeds now to help with that, plus lots of salt and magnesium.
@Olivia1 I think I had all the same issues as you when I started. I didn’t have some magical lack of hunger or anything either. I’m not insulin resistant and don’t think I’m metabolically deranged at all (based on all my test results), it just seems my body is extremely efficient at using the food I give it. Fasting is the only thing that moves the needle for me.
I’ve stopped tracking all my food because (for me), it caused more stress than it was worth.
TBH, the only real NSV I’ve had is that my (very bad) allergies have basically disappeared. This is amazing considering that I used to take allergy meds 3-4x a week and I would STILL have allergy attacks. Now, I don’t take anything and haven’t had a real “allergy attack” in probably 6 months. For me, that’s the only indicator that keto is good for my body. In terms of weight loss, we’ll see what happens in the next few months with the combo of fasting and keto.
Start looking for any other signs that keto is working for you.
So far, since there’s no inches or pounds lost, the only change is that I’m sleeping early and waking up early for the first time in my life. I don’t know if I can attribute that to keto wholly or even in part, since this started when I started using Night Shift illumination on my computer, but it’s the recent MAJOR change in this confirmed night owl’s life.
I’d love to have a link to this (if there’s one) and how to incorporate it in my diet.
And thanks SO much for the other suggestions. I’m writing everything down and giving them a try to see what hits the spot with me.
Maybe have your Thyroid checked…mine just crapped out on me all of a sudden (age 44, same height and body weight as you) and my metabolism came to a screeching halt! Its a quick blood test and an easy fix with meds. Furthermore, once I got that sorted, by body quickly responded to Keto.
A bit of googling should get you there @Olivia1 
- he’s on Amazon and has a blog I was reading a few months back.
Also - if you haven’t already, search this forum for “swooshes” and “stalls” and you’ll find a whole bunch more handy info!