My first post and forgive the length but I need to give context to my question.
Been doing Keto for over a year, very low carb, under 10g per day. Blood glucose is normally 90 and blood ketones between 0.1 and 0.3 (sad).
I did a 3 day water fast two weeks ago (Mon, Tue, Wed) and returned to my normal low carb diet on Thursday. Blood glucose dropped to 74 and blood ketones up to 1.4 (moderate nutritional ketosis).
By Friday morning, my blood glucose had spiked to 100 and blood ketones dropped to 0.1.
Following week, sardine challenge, first can on Monday morning, last can on Saturday morning. Monday morning reading BC 90, BK 0.1. Saturday morning readings BC 71, BK 2.4 (high therapeutic ketosis). By Sunday morning my BC had spiked to 100 and BK was 1.0.
My question why can I not maintain a therapeutic (or even just nutritional) level of ketones without starving myself or eating sardines forever? Even with exogenous ketones, I cannot get my ketones off the floor. Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this and i’ll do my best to answer questions in a timely fashion.
Ketosis (Ketone Levels)
Welcome Tim.
Do not worry too much with your BK level - as long as you have some. It will vary for time of day, diet, etc, but as a general rule, these numbers tend to fall as you reach your optimal weight. Your body just learns how much fat you need to burn and will adjust ketone levels down, so that you are not “wasting” fat energy. It is just the way we are built. My BK levels tend to be highest in the morning after a high fat breakfast of goat yogurt and eggs. Goat yogurt is actually quite high in MCTs, and they get converted so fast to ketones, that it is my theory they boost up levels “over and above” your typical baseline of ketones. I am typically quite a bit higher than 10 gr of carbs/day though. I tend to do at least 50 net gr, and a bit of soluble fiber.
Hi Tim. This all looks normal to me. You have been low carb for a year or more. Your body is ketone adapted. So the blood ketones are being used in your daily metabolism. 100mg/dl (5.6mmol/L) for blood glucose is a normal value that many people can struggle to achieve on a daily basis. You have a good understanding, it seems, of ketogenic eating.
Some medical practitioners (e.g. Dr Sarah Myhill) will point out, correctly I believe, that any ketone reading is a good indicator of a low insulin state. If you are able to cross check your health data with a fasting blood insulin, there would likely be more good news.
I think your description is very similar to my current low carb keto experience.
If you listen to Dr. Boz, she has a method, other than sardines (I find that eggs and butter work as well). Meal timing can result in nutritional ketosis in a fasted state on morning wake up. By finishing a daily feeding schedule by 3pm, you may see the numbers in the morning you are expecting by having the low carb food dialled in correctly.
The low blood ketones and reciprocal normal but 100 blood glucose may be due to an over night catecholamine release, that cortisol rise we get on waking. If you are waking at 2am or 3 am, that is a clue. There are strategies to dampen that response down, and gain better sleep, and get better morning stats. But, first if a daily schedule allows it, maybe shift feeding to earlier in the day with a 3pm cut off as an experiment.
Thank you for your feedback @scaperdude. I currently have about 35 pounds to lose to get to optimal and I think that’s how I ended up on water fasts and sardines challenges because for having been on a low carb, high fat diet for over a year I have maybe lost 3 pounds total (goes up and down). Just frustrated I guess. Thank you again for taking the time to answer my question.
Thank you @FrankoBear…a lot of good information here. Dr. Boz and Dr. Berg have been my primary sources of info for Keto and IF. I detest seafood in general so if I can do a 5-day sardine fast then I can definitely do a 5-day egg and butter challenge. And I can easily shift my eating schedule to end earlier (I’m generally done by 5 PM anyway). That will be my next experiment. Thank you again for taking the time to answer my question.
There’s literally no such thing as “nutritional ketosis”, that’s a make believe term invented by Stephen Phiney. It makes no difference what your ketone levels are. I lost 100lbs at like 0.2-0.4.
The only time ketone levels matter is when you’re doing keto as a legit medical intervention, and you’d know it if you were, as you’d be eating very differently than the majority of us if that was the case.
Measuring ketones means measuring what you’re NOT burning as fuel, keep that in mind!
If you’re carbs are at around 10g a day, which is basically non-existant, then you’re very much in ketosis, and plenty of it. If you weren’t you’d be on the floor.
Don’t do scammy crash type diets, labeling them as “challenges” that’s a trick to get people to do them.
That parts easy, are you tracking what you eat with an app that shows you everything? Have you ever tried to calculate your metabolic rate? Are you working out, either cardio or (hopefully) lifting weights? Also, ever done a hormonal panel on yourself or done a full Thyroid panel?
Thanks @lfod14 you’re checking all the boxes here. I was definitely concerned that my frustrating lack of weight loss was what got me onto these “challenges”. Point very much taken.
I can honestly answer “no” to all of your questions and they are now on my checklist.
“Measuring ketones means measuring what you’re NOT burning as fuel”
I did not know that so more good information for me.
Thank you again for taking the time to answer my question.
If you’re not against paying for an app, MacroFactor will do all the background math for you and figure out your actual metabolic rate so you’ll be eating what you need to eat to hit your goals, it also accounts for your normal weight fluctuations so it doesn’t over react based on guesses, it does everything based on your trends and not day to day. For me, I can float around with like 3-6lbs throughout the week.
The other way is all the others like Cronometer that uses Miffln St-Jeor which for many is a way off guess and runs with it indefinitely. There’s free spreadsheets you can use as well, but that’s a lot of moving parts vs just tracking your food and weighing yourself.
Also nice to see your actual trend vs your day to day scale weight, sometimes what looks bad on the scale is actually still you moving in the right direction.
The way I see it when I had my metabolic rate tested, that was like $85, and was a snapshot in time right then. Still got me on track, but a year of MacroFactor is cheaper than that, so well worth the money.
And take a look at the YouTube of Dr Tony Hampton, Dr Anthony Chaffee, Dr Eric Westman etc. They have lots of good advice on maintaining ketosis and the benefits on Keto/Carnivore.
You’ve been keto for over a year and doing fasting and sardine challenges. I’m willing to bet you are actually not eating enough, and that you have slowed down your metabolism over the past year. Like @lfod14 mentioned, it might be good to get your metabolism tested.
Without knowing any more about you, if you don’t exercise and you can, you might want to look into strength training and possibly doing a reverse diet. Building muscle and reversing your diet can help speed up your metabolism.
All of these names are familiar to me but I don’t follow them. I’ll scroll their channels for sure. Thank you.
I can, but don’t do it regularly. I need to make it a habit and am working on that. Also, just now looking into getting a metabolic panel done. Thanks for taking the time to advise me.
Hi Tim, do you use a food app and measure every meal. I switched to carnivore 80% fat 20% Protein and keep my GKI monitor reading between 1 and 2 testing now once a week around 9pm last meal 5 to 5:30 pm.
Hi @Kimo:slightly_smiling_face:
Thank you for posting this, and I am just wondering what your daily meals look like?
The reason I ask is because the way I eat, I believed I was well into Keto, but my numbers were just 0.6 at highest reading. There is a good reason, I believe, and that is because my body is very “Fat Adapted” already, and that means (from google):
“Fat adaptation is the process where the body becomes highly efficient at using fat for fuel, often leading to lower measured blood ketone levels because the body utilizes them more efficiently rather than overproducing them. Once adapted, muscles rely more on fat directly, reducing the need for the liver to produce as many ketones”.
How long have you been eating less than 10 carbs a day and when did you start testing your ketones?
I do not use a food app. Since others on this forum have suggested it, I’m considering it. Thank you @Pokerdice for posting this information.
Several others have posted the same. I guess I just didn’t really understand how it was supposed to work. The morning “pinch test” tells me I’m moving in the right direction as does the scale (albeit excruciatingly slow), but my ketone numbers had me confused.
Breakfast between 5 and 5:30 am, 3 eggs scrambled with about a Tbsp of butter and a sprinkling of mild cheddar, a slice of carnivore bread (I calculated about 2 grams per slice), cup of coffee with a packet of BHB and 5 grams of creatine.
Lunch between 11 and 11:30 am, 2 eggs scrambled, 2 strips of bacon, a cup of cottage cheese, coffee black.
If I’m going to snack, I’ll use macadamia nuts (a handful) and I’m done by 3 pm.
Been doing some variation of this for over a year although I move my eating window around sometimes (lunch and dinner instead of breakfast and lunch).
Just started blood testing about a month ago.
Thank you @Goldengirl52 for posting this information. It helps me to understand the results I’m seeing.
I never focused on my ketones when I started out, my biggest focus was hba1c’s going down, and they did, and then the weightloss, lost that(extra fat). I got really curious though, and spent money for a meter, I regret actually. That’s because I now believe what other were trying to tell me, and that is we can know, to an extent, that our bodies are fat-adapted, main fuel is Fats, not carbs any longer.
I want to just say, discovering my macros were one of the things that took awhile for me, and again, we are all different in what works for us. But I felt I needed a lot more % of Fats, than Proteins, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need my Proteins as well. My percents are around 70 Fats, 20 Proteins, and 10% carbs. The one thing I’ve been doing is less carbs, and more proteins just some days, half the time I’d say.
Glad you are here, lots to learn about and try, I have changed things up a lot as I go, and, maintained my weight, more energy for workouts/exercise/walking. You’ll do great, I can see you are dedicated to achieving the best you can be, Denise:+1: