Keto women over 50

(Anna) #383

I use Magnesium glycinate because mg citatrate gives me the runs. I read a book on Magnesium. The doctor said that once the body has enough magnesium one will have loose stools, that means it is an indication to decrease the dosage. If possible try to get your magnesium through foods, green leafy veggies.

(Anjum) #384

I started taking vitamin C regularly for tendon health. I just bought Raspberry flavored vitamin C from Whole Foods ( i know i know vitamin C is vitamin C) this concoction has added vitamin B’s and electrolytes. I thought what a bonus. I have noticed constipation is alleviated with increased water intake. For me anything less than 3 liters - about 100 oz is asking for constipation. hope this helps. :stuck_out_tongue:

(Anjum) #385

Increased water intake helped me.

(Wendy) #386

Less fibre may help instead.

(Pat) #387

Hi Judy.
This has always puzzled me (i’m a fairly inexperienced keto dieter). Are you looking at that being the weight of say a chicken breast? I’ve read that a 100g chicken breast for example, has 31 grams of protein, so that won’t be the 100g of protein. If I’m misunderstanding this maybe someone more experienced can correct me?

Good luck with your keto journey.
Pat

(Janelle) #388

I’m officially over 50! Just got home from my Greek birthday trip. When I travel, there’s a problem with “regularity” so while we walked like maniacs and kept it pretty strict keto, I don’t dare weigh until things are um, back to normal.

(Laci) #389

I just found this site. I started this way if eating Oct 2018. I am by no means an expert. I have lots to lose. I am 62 years old. I walk 3 days a week for 1/2 hour, and I have lost 35 pounds. I drink lots of water. My daughter who lives in another state is doing research so knows more than I do but she is saying that people above the age of 40 have a really hard time losing weight. There are other reasons I have lost it so fast, but don’t get discouraged. Between my daughter and myself we are figuring out what is causing our own bodies to gain weight. It took me 40 years to figure this out and 40 years to pack this weight on. Now at this age I am determined to get it off. Good luck.

#390

Wow! 35lbs! Congratualations. I was so hoping to have a success story like that too. I started in October 2018 and initially lost about 8lbs but have hovered there ever since. I am 55 yr old gal, 189lbs on a 5’3” frame and I have struggled with weight gain last 3 decades. I have mostly eaten low carb since early 2003 , but have so much to yo yo history and resistance, it is slow going. Eliminating things in my diet never seems to result in the rapid weight loss others share. I believe I am extremely metabolically challenged. Despite strict macros 5/20/75 & kcal ~ 1250/ day , fasting 16/8, not much weight loss seems to be happening. I have read others took up to 9 months for the body to adjust and then the “whoosh “ comes. I would like to drop 60-70 lbs but would be quite happy with even 10-20 at this point. I am trying to stay hopeful! Some of my stumbling blocks seems to be poor
sleep, intermittent at best, too much stress, & fatigue, which is dibilitating. I suffer naseau, dizziness, and general physical weakness. Workouts longer than 10 minutes seem to exhaust me. In the beginning , there were some rushes of energy , which were marvelous , but in the last 6 weeks, I just feel poorly. Is this keto flu? Is my metabolism resetting itself , learning new tricks? I keep telling myself this will pass. KCKO has become a mantra for me, keep calm, keto on.
I love this forum because it seems a positivie path out of carb chaos .
Here is a summary of my first 50 days on strict keto:

  1. mental clarity
  • reason enough for me to KCKO. For the last 8 years I have watched myself become as sharp as a wet papertowel and now my edge is returning. Hooray!
  1. I eliminated my mystery skin rashes on arms and legs by showering several times a day ( apparently skin is a major detox organ and I was having reactions to toxins released in my own sweat, nasty itchy hives, )
  2. my mood is more stabile and positive. Carbs depress me.
  3. warmth: I used to always have ice cold hands and feet. In the last few weeks , my feet are ALWAYS warm, in fact at night I notice I’m a furnace- kicking covers off and even turning down the heater. It is a very odd sensation for me, after decades of icy feet but a very welcome change. At
    first , I thought the heat was hot flashes returning with a vengeance , but now, observing the warmth is constant, I think it is just my mitochondria burning fuel in a way new for me. I am changing my system on a cellular level with this WOE so maybe this is my new normal?
  4. heart rate is significantly elevated from 60 bpm to about 82-90 bpm. Again, I suspect keto induced metabolic frolic. I have read elsewhere that this eventually subsides as body acclimates.
  5. I can now easily walk by donuts, cakes and ice cream , by thinking about some crispy salty bacon and eggs. Fage yogurt and a few blueberries has helped replace the Ben and Jerry binges.
    I am looking forward to feedback , if anyone has had similar experiences. I especially would love to hear from you if you hung in there for months and then your body adapted and started letting go of fat.
    Re: my stall
    I am slowly cutting caffeine, from one cup of instant with coconut oil to 50% decafe. I hope the pure powdered stevia, and erythritol is not the culprit. I like sweet in my coffee. I mostly coffee with oil, bacon and eggs, asparagus , avocados, olives and giant spinach/ iceberg salads with lots of veggies and pink Himalayan salt. I do a daily teaspoon of chia seeds in herbal ice tea ( like Jell-O shot for fiber). Not really sure why the scale won’t move.
    For my insomnia , I am trying to reset my secadian rhythms , watching sunset every day and having melatonin around bed time. I have cut my bp diruretic in half , dizziness is much improved on days I take 1/2. As far as the fatigue goes, I think the prolonged sleep depravation accounts for most. I should probably up my water too from 96 Oz to 128. Any advice appreciated!
    Thanks to all of you for taking a moment to read this, and I wish you all success. KCKO and heres hoping these new keto skills make the upcoming holidays a breeze.
(Blessed with butter ) #391

Hello ladies. Here is one for you. Before keto I had had 4 monthly hemorrhaging months. When I started keto August 11th since then no bleeding at all. But I went to Nevada for a death. For the most part I watched the carbs. But. Two weeks ago I started to hemorrhage again. The only things different were I flew, I had more carbs and I hot tubbed. We went to the beach this weekend for my birthday. I ate tons of carbs. Crazy. But true. I also hot tubbed Now I feel sore and my breasts hurt. So I am thinking I might start hemorrhaging again. Any info you have on this is welcome. But now I am back to keto.

(Kristin) #392

@ketokal give it time. There’s a lot going on. Can you walk for exercise? Regular exercise is essential for sleep for me. Plus taking magnesium at bedtime. And I have found increasing my carb total has been helpful, but I’ve never had a lot of weight to lose.

(back and doublin' down) #393

in my own experience, these are killer stumbling blocks. The stress elevates cortisol, which in my case always hinders digestion. Have you thought about including some meditation? Mindfulness practices? Even doing 5-10 min a day of breathing can turn the tide on stress, which will help with the fatigue and the sleep. There are several great apps for breathing including Breathe2Relax, RelaxLite and Tactical Breather. YouTube has thousands of short meditations, guided meditations, guided breathing. (I suggest starting with SHORT ones, if you’ve never done anything like that, trying a 45 min meditation is a bit like taking up running by signing up for a marathon).

Keep Calm (see…it’s even in our mantra) and Keto On

(Edith) #394

Make sure you are drinking 2 to 3 liters of water a day and getting 5 grams of sodium - the equivalent of 2 teaspoons of salt. That will help with the dizziness and the higher heart rate.

Also, are you actually tracking your macros? When first starting keto, it’s best to track macros. It is easier to overdo carbs than you think. After a while you will have more of an idea of what 20 to 30 grams of carbs really looks like.

If your sleep trouble started after starting keto, it could be stress from your blood sugar dropping too low during the night. The drop in blood sugar causes a release of cortisol which then results in waking up and difficulty falling back to sleep.

I went through many months of that and thought is was from perimenopause. The things that helped with my sleep were 1) completely giving up caffeine, I mean completely, 2) making my diet as nutrient dense as possible, 3) going on a low histamine diet, 4) if I’m a little hungry before bed, I will have a little peanut butter, macadamia nuts, or even a small amount of leftover dinner.
Now I sleep like a log! My anxiety level has also gone way down.

Let us know if you get things worked out and what you did.

#395

Well said. I am so crushed this is not working. I use a yoga nidra guided mediatation sometimes, it does help. My sleep patterns were bad before, now there is no pattern at all. Another issue you mention , digestion.
I barely digest my food , it just sits there and if I eat just a little bit too much or too late or drink water with food, I awaken violently within 2-3 hours with food coming back up in my mouth, terrible burning. Then I have to drink baking soda in water, pray for a belch, and spend rest of the night propped upright like the elephant man on the living room sofa. It is awful. Killer stumbling blocks is right. Two days ago I had 1.5 glasses of wine with friends at dinner ( and I made sure r st of meal was all keto ) and I had the mother of all hang overs next day. When I weighed myself a day later, 5 of the 8lbs I had struggled to lose has come back. So I ‘m hanging by a thread. I really appreciate the replies, I will try anything, I can not go on like this.

#396

Thank you. Yes I track daily, 5/20/75, under 1300 cal. I drink 3 liters water and lots of pink salt .
Today went to all decaf down from half decaf half full caf.
Hopefully something will work soon.

(Edith) #397

It sounds like your body is having a hard time digesting the fats? A couple of thoughts: maybe up the protein and lower your fat, and then slowly up the fat percentage to give your body a chance to adapt. The other thoughts are using apple cider vinegar to help increase your stomach acid. I think some people have used ox bile supplements to also aid digestion, but I don’t know much about that.

#398

Yes, that’s what it sounds like! It takes several months for a sugar-burning GI tract to develop the new enzymes needed for the heavier work of digesting fat and usually more protein.

@ketokal I have found supplementing with dry Ginger capsules to be amazing. It’s an enzyme-precursor which speeds digestion and circulation, and it also reduces cortisol because it’s an adaptogen. I started by taking one capsule with each large meal, then went up to two capsules with big cheesy meals. Now, I just take one a day with my main meal. There are numerous past posts on the benefits of Ginger if you use the search bar :herb:

#399

Thank you all so much. I’m off caffeine, got some ginger, ordered some digestive enzymes, and will go back to the apple cider vinegar on the salads too. Just now made my first glass of keto aide, it tastes fine. It may just be my imagination but I feel more awake now, more than I have in several days. I will report back again after some time. Thank you again for helping me navigate this WOE! This forum is a life saver.

(Anjum) #400

Ketokal- been there and stuck with it, keto is a silent worker bee, fixing what ails you. The body can only do one thing at a time. It can either heal itself or it will lose the fat. I started keto March 21st 2018. I’m 52 - starting weight was 241 and today I am 212. In June I started to lose my hair. It continued until August, and by then I lost 40% of the hair on my crown. Just the mental clarity and over all feeling of wellness kept me going. If I could feel THIS amazing all the time, then heck i could rock baldness. In August the weight stopped coming off. I was 218 in July, August, September, October and November. In December something shifted in 2 weeks I’ve lost 6 pounds. It was frustrating. I kept thinking I’m doing this wrong. I had self doubt, but the way I was feeling kept me on my course. I didn’t see the scale shift and in October I didn’t even have inch loss. I began intermittent fasting in October but it didn’t lighten my scale. Stick with it friend. Things happen slowly, but they are happening. I have a loooong way to go. I weigh my protein, drink 3 liters of water and eat one meal a day. Except on the weekends where I mix it up and eat whatever I want whenever I want. ( keto meals and or snacks only) I thought I was in menopause but the last 2 months I’ve had cycles. I also had the raging heat at night, this has given way to solid 7 hours of yummy delicious sleep EVERY night. I’m no expert, but I’ve had less than typical results, the weight has not melted off, and I’ve had to keep tweaking to find what works. I hope this helps and please know I am here to help in anyway I can. :balloon:

#401

Anjum,Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I am very moved by your story. You give me such hope and it is so sweet that you reach out to me.
I too lost hair around 52, I was fat fasting at the time and never quite figured out what caused it . My menses returned briefly, after starting keto, but luckily hasn’t been back. I guess decades of processed food and carbs doesn’t get fixed overnight. I read one gal stalled Jan - Sept , then whoosh.
So our not typical experiences may in fact be more normal than we will ever know. I have found the fifties are nothing less than a series of character building experiences as we morph into our true essence. I just wish I could use the incredible heat my body produces every night to run some household appliances~ Seems a waste to keep it to myself!
This WOE certainly does change things in the body, & I guess that includes hormones. The clarity and non scale victories remind me of the Jagger tune, “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.” Thank you for joining me , fellow keto warrior Princess! I wish you continued success. Thank you for your perseverance and inspiration. You have such a wonderful joyful spirit , be blessed even more.

#402

Hello everyone,

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to have found this site, it’s a keto wonderland! This thread, in particular is a huge bonus! I have been doing keto for 2 months, so I am a newbie. I turned 57 in Sept., and was struggling with terrible digestive issues, GERD and trapped gas. The spare tire around my midsection was growing and at 5’4” and 164 lbs, I knew I needed to change things. Two days into this woe, my digestive issues were gone! There have been so many health benefits, it’s just incredible.

My only real struggle has been keeping my electrolytes in balance. About 4 weeks in I started feeling heavy legs when I climbed stairs and my heart was pounding. I have never been one to salt my food, so I have to really work on that. I didn’t get keto flu, but I have been trying to make my own electrolytes drink. I have on two occasions gotten it all wrong and had quite the cleaning out. I am taking magnesium glycinate but still have occasional issues with the heart beats and muscle aches. For the most part, I feel so great and much stronger than before.

It’s a journey for sure! Thank you all for sharing your stories, they’re very inspiring. Carl and Richard have really changed a lot of lives for the better.