Hey everyone! I have been on Keto for just about 3 weeks now. I have been using the urine test strips from that first week and I have always been in between the darkest color range. I test everyday at least twice. Today I tested in the morning and it was the usual darker shade, however I went to the movie and lost control and ended up eating an entire small bag of buttered popcorn (with much regret after). This was around 2:00. At around 8 tonight, I tested my urine and it was just about neg, just a faint bit of color left, from the negative point. Do you think I am out of ketosis now? I haven’t eaten anything since the popcorn at 2:00 and I was thinking I would fast until dinner time tomorrow. I am stressed that I messed up my 3 week progress in Ketosis badly. Thanks!
Ketosis and cheating
Relax, Donna =)). It is done now; and just be thankful you are back on track now. There is no point in stressing about spilled milk. It already happened, so just continue your Keto journey and realize you are human and we all make mistakes at times =).
Just try to keep your carbs under 20 grams tomorrow, onwards =) The next time you are going out; maybe pack a small snack in your purse or eat something before you leave the house. That way you won’t be tempted =).
I appreciate the helpful feedback. I am definantly jumping right back into where I was before the movies. In the past, I would have just kept going for days with bad choices, however when I think about where I was 3 weeks ago and after just getting over all those Keto symptoms, I don’t want to go too far backwards.
Throw away the urine test strips. They are designed for T1 diabetics to test for one specific type of ketone body and not useful for testing for nutritional ketosis.
https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/wiki/faq#wiki_is_testing_for_ketosis_necessary.3F
As @OgreZed says, the urine strips are only a rough estimate of your ketone production, and besides that, they only measure wasted ketones at that. The longer you stay on a ketogenic diet, the better your kidneys get at scavanging ketones out of the urine and putting them back into the bloodstream, which is why most people find that the urine strips appear to stop working after a while.
The most realistic measure is the level of ketones circulating in your bloodstream, especially β-hydroxybutyrate, but even that is not a measure of how much is being produced and used, only how much you haven’t used yet.
A last thought to bear in mind is that the goal of a ketogenic diet is not so much the production of ketones (although they are valuable in their own right) as it is the lowering of insulin levels over most of the day. The fact that the popcorn raised your insulin high enough to temporarily halt ketosis is good information to know, but the human body is accustomed to dealing with rises and falls of insulin; the problem is massive spikes and chronically elevated levels of insulin, and the best way to avoid those is to Keep Calm, and Keto On.
Hey! Are you a nutrition specialist or just someone with long term Keto experience? You seem to really know a lot and are very good at explaining things. I appreciate the feedback!