Keto for 8 months, now in a funk! Help!

(Michelle ) #1

I have been in the keto lifestyle for eight months I’ve lost 32 pounds I am now at 123 pounds and I’m trying to maintain, but I do have the most sensational sweet tooth and in this entire eight months I have never experienced with so many of you experience and that’s not being hungry! Not once during this whole experience have I gone without not feeling hungry! Why is that?

#2

Are you fat adapted? Have you checked your ketone levels? When I hear “hunger” and “keto” in the same sentence, my first instincts are to inquire about how many carbs a day you’re eating and suspecting you may not be fat-adapted (which works wonders for hunger).

#3

Do you need to go without? I never really lose the hunger thing either. Sometimes, but not often. Also mine gets confused with head hunger a LOT. I mostly eat two meals a day but there are snacks which I am trying to cut the hell out! What do you need to do to be satisfied? 3 square meals a day? No problem - do that. I also have a sweet tooth. I have been eating ice cream pretty well daily all summer - home made and the most delicious I have ever had. I got to my mythical target weight of 63kg (140 in your number Is think) and that is went everything went wrong. I had been a reasonable moderate LCHF which served me well but left me with yawning cravings which is what I succumbed to when I hit target. I quickly piled on 15kg in a few months and then a friend turned me on to keto which I have been for a year now. I started shedding the weight easily enough but it was the other changes that hooked me - my migraines have almost completely gone (and I was getting best part of 2 weeks every month with them), my depression is much better, my cravings are not completely gone but way less and manageable. I am not perfect and emotional setbacks have led to the odd carb setback. BUT I don’t have to fear falling into the downward spiral I would get into before. Keto saves me from that. I save me from that. I decided quite a while ago that that target weight was less important than eating happily and sustainably so I settled into a pattern of eating how I wanted to - my keto that I knew I could eat for the rest of my life, happily and with no feeling of missing out. The weight takes care of itself and will settle where it settles. Currently I hover around 66kg which is fine by me. Every now and then it starts inching down or might go up a bit. All good. My focus is on my health and my wellbeing.

The other thing that can help - depending what you are like but if you are a data collecting geek you will love (like me!) - are some gadgets. Get yourself a BG/Ketone meter and see where your levels are at. It is useful to know to see how you are doing but also a great little motivator to try and push those numbers down/up a bit. Start journaling everything and see what patterns form. You will quite probably find a number where you feel fantastic - I know plenty of people like this who have a ketone happy range. It’s fun but it can be a little costly. BG testing is cheap and you should be able to get a meter and strips cheaply. Ketone strips are pricey but there are a couple of reasonable options at around $1 a strip. So you can see it is not something you test every 5 minutes! Just an idea. I hope you find your sweet spot with this because it can be a place that is just fantastic. I have never felt this good. I have spent most of my 46 years feeling out of control with food and my weight. It has been a constant mental and physical burden. Well I have shed that. I have ditched half my body weight and I feel like I have almost ditched all that mental baggage too. It has been hard work but worth the slog.

#6

Do you have two accounts? They system flagged this I think maybe because different account but same person?

Pee sticks are a waste of time for testing. Blood meter is a great idea of you can afford the expense. It is worth testing glucose and ketones as both are a valuable measurement. It is often also easy enough to find a correlation so you can test with glucose alone to get an idea what your ketones are doing which is cheaper.

The other aspect of this that I see as my multi-pronged attack has been counselling. That has been invaluable in my progress and something worth considering. Coming off Nexium is great. It has really bad long term side effects and you need your stomach acid at optimal level. I have just read a book that you might enjoy I think. It is called Happy Weight by Daniele Della Valle. It has a lot of valuable info and insight into the female psyche. I really recommend it. Plus please keep us updated. We are always here to help and support you. xxx

(Brian) #8

If you’re always hungry, I would think that’s your body telling you you’re missing something nutritionally.

Hope it’s not inappropriate to add a link to another page but I saw this one yesterday. Down towards the bottom, it has a section about what you’re craving and what you may be missing that may cause that and what to eat to satisfy that craving. I haven’t experimented with it personally but I thought it was interesting. Others here might confirm it’s legit or not legit. Either way, I still think there could be something you’re not getting that you need.

Just one idea. Good luck!

#9

Yes I assumed that. For some reason the system doesn’t like it though and keeps flagging your comments under this username. Maybe we need to delete one of the accounts? I have asked the other admin for advice as it is a bit over my head!

Stress is HUGE when it comes to impacting your health and weight. Please do not underestimate the impact that it has. I think you are going to love this book. Please let me know.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #10

Michelle, I am new to this, so go by what the others are telling you, but do you think you might need more fat? I know that I get hungry when I don’t get enough. Also, they’ve taught me here that sometimes I think I’m hungry but am actually thirsty. Didn’t know that was a thing, but there you go. They were right!

Anyway, take it for what it’s worth.

(Michelle Presnell) #11

Right now at 9:15 i am having a one egg omelette with Monterrey jack (1oz) I’ve been up since 3:30 am i had BPC @ 5 , ugh!!

#12

I would suggest starting a journal. Record everything…

  • food
  • weight and measurements
  • sleep patterns and quality
  • mood and stress
  • just stuff that happened that day, especially if you feel it impacted any of the above
  • how you feel with hunger and satiety. Do you feel satisfied after a meal? Really feel into your hunger when it comes - is it genuine hunger or could it be head hunger?

Doing this will start making you more aware and mindful of everything and may well illuminate some patterns and suggest some options to you.

(Kate) #13

I would recommend a fasting insulin test or check you are actually in ketosis. I was fine for ages and lowered my insulin to non diabetic ranges and then all of a sudden I was super hungry, like the week before a period hungry when you want to eat everything in sight but it was all the time. My fasting insulin was back up and I was back into insulin resistant and no longer in Ketosis as well. I blame it on eating too often and when I wasn’t hungry. I had stopped eating 2 or less meals a day and had stopped fasting. Once I started IF again and eating when hungry I started to lower it again.

(Michelle Presnell) #14

OK so I just did a little bit of research and I almost think it’s something as simple as Splenda! I did not realize how many sugars Splenda has!! And I don’t drink it in my coffee but I do use it on my yogurt with cinnamon and I think the two were canceling each other out LOL

(Ross) #15

IIRC, don’t artificial sweeteners trigger an anticipatory insulin response via taste receptors?

#16

I find water fasting does a great job of resetting my palate. Doesn’t take long either. A few days of water fasting and my sweet tooth subsides dramatically.

(Michelle Presnell) #17

I think you are 100% correct! So now I’m going to start using cinnamon , I failed to mention I get up at three in the morning leave my house at four in the morning to get to work by five and I work 12 hour days so even 16\8 is sometimes really hard to do

(A ham loving ham! - VA6KD) #18

The brand-name Splenda stuff has dextrose in it as a filler. Dextrose is a sugar/carb. Since Sucralose is so sweet, they spray a little sucralose on dextrose powder so that it becomes the equivalent sweetness and volume of table sugar. Those little paper Splenda packets have a more concentrated makeup and are equivalent sweetness of two teaspoons of table sugar.

This worried me a lot as I like a bit of sweetness here and there, and although it’s not a lot of of carb (around 1g per serving), it does add up over a day of consumption. “Pure sucralose” is available to buy and I bought a $50 bag of the stuff about a year ago. It’s super sweet! Even opening the bag and just standing there I can taste the little bit of powder that escapes into the air. For a large cup of coffee (I have a soup-bowl sized coffee cup), I barely put just a tiny dot of pure sucralose powder on the tip of my spoon and stir it in and even then it’s often sweeter than I like… I think my $50 bag of pure sucralose will last me a couple of years. Pure sucralose has zero carbs.

(Ross) #19

Oh you will love the cinnamon in your coffee! Yeah, it is supposed to reduce insulin response also as a bonus, but it’s delicious anyway. Has the added bonus of smoothing out the edge on a dark roast too.

Have you tried Vietnamese cinnamon yet? WOW! Intense stuff.

(Deb) #20

I just started taking L-glutamine for my cravings as someone suggested here. Not a cure but definitely helped. And when the urge strikes, I try to have a cup of coffee first; if the hunger passes, fine. If not, I give in and don’t fret. Live to fight another day!

(Michelle Presnell) #21

I’ve never used it in my coffees but i also have never put sugar in my coffee surprisingly! But I’ll definitely try cinnamon tomorrow, i did have cinnamon in my skyr and pecans at 8:30 It seems to me where my schedule is so screwy that my breakfast is actually my lunch :slight_smile: , but so far no berries, no sugar and keeping my coffee and heavy cream to just 3 instead of all day, i bought chicken broth today as well!

(Ross) #22

Why no berries? I love blueberries and strawberries. They are fine on LCHF within moderation. They are “orange list” items so limited but perfectly OK to eat. Do you have the lists? They may give you the sweetness you crave.

GREEN
ORANGE
RED

They have more detailed updated lists too…but these work.

(Ross) #23

Here are better copies of the Banting lists from Noakes

GREEN
ORANGE
RED

These are the lists I mostly use, but the more modern ones are a little more liberal and reflect updated food testing. (new lists allow for eating parsnips & see no difference between white and sweet potatoes for instance).