Mixing it up, but still at a stall! Keep Calm and Keto on?

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(Kayla J Hower) #1

I gradually started keto after Thanksgiving this year (2017) and was fully keto by Christmas. Like many people I experienced rapid weight-loss in the beginning. 10 pounds in 2 weeks! Now I think I’m at a stuck point. I’m down to a weight that I had been at for several years during college and I think my body is comfortable. I have tried mixing it ups, 1 meals a day, 36 hour fasts, feasting, and I started exercising again. I know that I should keep calm and keto on, but I’m just looking for some ideas that helped others blast out of a rut or comfort zone.

I started at 270, now I weight 238. I’m 5’7 and 26 years old.

(Dameon Welch-Abernathy) #2

How long have you been stalled?
I just spent the last month basically stuck around 235.

That said, there was a bit more work-related stress in my life that included travel across many timezones, with the resulting lack of sleep.
In the last week or so, now that I’m home again, I’ve finally broken through and I’m starting to see weight loss.

I would KCKO but make sure you are adequately addressing stress and sleep.
They are often overlooked, but they definitely play a role in this process.

(Kayla J Hower) #3

It’s been about a month. That just seems so long in “keto land.” I for sure should take a look at my general stress and everything. Thanks!

(KCKO, KCFO) #4

Stress, too much protein, too much dairy, too many nuts, carb creep. These seem to be the most common reasons talked about in this forum and on MyFitnessPal.

For the 36 hr. fasts, do you just eat a regular keto meal or do you over eat? Have you tried longer fasts?

Are you getting enough fats and salt?

All the best on sorting it out.

(Adam Kirby) #5

You might not be doing anything wrong at all. @richard has a very compelling alternate theory about stall points that I’m buying into more and more, given how ubiquitous stalls are. Basically your fat cells have become more insulin sensitive and healthy over time on the diet, yet if your fasting insulin is still too high then you’ve reached a point where you can’t draw down any more on your fat, because they are actually responding correctly to elevated fasting insulin. So the question becomes, how to lower your basal insulin further. The three methods seem to be fasting, high-intensity exercise, and time. High stress won’t help the situation either, so maybe knowing that you are not messing anything up will help in that regard!

(Liz) #6

Recent stall myself…yes, just keep hanging in, I upped my fats for two days, ate no veg so carbs were under 5g and lost 0.2lb…good enough for me to KCKO…it does seem that we all vary in how our body responds but ‘shocking’ it by doing something slightly different does seem to stop the metabolism from getting complacent. I ususall skip breakfast but every now and then I don’t for that reason.
Good luck on your progress.

(Banting & Yudkin & Atkins & Eadeses & Cordain & Taubes & Volek & Naiman & Bikman ) #7

KCKO
Your body is figuring it out. weight that’s been with you a long time can be stubborn before it’ll go. And a month seems like a long time, but it’s not really a stall until it’s three months.

That said, no one likes to stay stuck in the middle and the move is to create some disruption in your metabolism.

Things that worked to break my stall once upon a time:
More meals (I was 5MAD to 6MAD)
ECGC supplementation through green tea
full body lifting in circuits
HIIT on the bike.
Carb blow.

I dunno that I recommend any of these things. But disrupting your usual caloric intake generally tricks your metabolism into loss again.

(Moriah ) #8

I started fasting the middle of November, was on a stall and started Keto. I think I was totally on a stall for about 2 months and just now have been a couple lbs down. I just kept doing 24 hour and then occasional 36 hour fasts. Eating fat to satiety. I probably did that almost every day for several weeks. @akirby83 thanks, well put.

(Moriah ) #9

I’m printing this out and hanging it up on my wall!

(Kayla J Hower) #10

Thank you all so much. I think there might be a bit of carb creep happening. Sometimes I get a bit carried away with nuts or dairy. Those are often my go to “lazy keto” foods.
I think being more intentional about the actual carb content of keto foods will be important to monitor, but also relaxing and giving myself a break --that a month isn’t really a stall!
Also, the info that @akirby83 shared helps me to chill out, while I make a few little adjustments.

(Liz ) #11

Hey you are getting good advice here already but I will also jump in to say, be sure you aren’t eating between meals! Any time you eat you spike insulin. I feel like DON’T SNACK (after the first two months, say) should be part of the standard Keto credo.

But also I’ll add that I saw the scale stall out for months but my body continued to change composition so that I went down TWO SIZES, keto is mysterious and magical lol. So even though I have more weight to lose I’m happy to keep trying the things like lowering protein, fasting, changing my eating window up, changing up my caloric intake until my basal insulin rate falls enough that the scale starts to move again because probably other good things are happening I can’t measure with a scale. KCKO!

#12

Your observations from your own experience are so helpful!! The snacking thing is key and something I missed for the first 6 weeks on Keto.
I am curious, what were your eating habits like before Keto? I might be mixing you up with someone else but I think I read that you were following low carb/Paleo for a bit? I’m just curious if people have more success coming into Keto from a carb heavy diet, or already having gained momentum from cutting carbs, or not.

(Liz ) #13

Yes that’s me! Thanks for the kind words :blush: I lost 60 pounds on Atkins in 2003 but that left me at 200 pounds (at 5’8”). Atkins “stopped working” but I stayed lowish carb even so because I knew I had a sugar addiction. Over the years I gained 20 pounds, lost 40, gained 30 til I started Keto one year ago. With the adoption of Paleo a few years ago I let carbs back in in the form of sweet potato, fruit, honey, & maple syrup, a carb creep which triggered my addiction. So I still had to make that leap to go Keto even though I knew all the principles of low carb & why it was better for me. I still went through withdrawal. Had to carefully plan meals. Let go of foods that were harming me. Break the spell. But I didn’t have to unlearn low fat, for example. I already didn’t believe the bullsh*t about cholesterol. I knew sort of why carbs were harmful but it was with Keto I learned about the role of insulin and meal timing/fasting. And that science is the game changer.

#14

I’d done low carb versions before, so giving up serious carbs was not that great a leap. All of 2017 I did lazy keto with reckless abandon. I vaguely kept carbs low, but indulged in keto treats, and HWC past reality. I don’t know that I ever enjoyed food so much. Love the fat!!! , I gained 10 pounds.

This year I started in seriously about Jan 10. I write everything I eat down. and for me weight loss is still slow, but it is happening. Fat never has and probably never will ‘melt off’. But over the past couple months, as an old female, I have had to mind every nook and cranny in keto to make slow progress. But what alternative is there? None.

So now, No snacking between ‘meals’, closely monitoring the difference between real hunger and ‘wanting to eat’, dropping keto treats, dropping most HWC in too many coffees, … and what others above have said.

There is still much to learn about the nuances, and it is hard to find consistent answers… it is a bit of a wild west in KetoLand. But I absolutely know this is the way to go.

It may be easier going for younger males to lose weight, but for many mature women? Not quite so much.

#15

Side thought: I hate that whole “Keep calm and {insert blank} on” meme that has been floating around the internet the last couple years. I wish this community hadn’t embraced it, but oh well…

(KCKO, KCFO) #16

:heart::heart::heart::heart::heart:

(Banting & Yudkin & Atkins & Eadeses & Cordain & Taubes & Volek & Naiman & Bikman ) #17

Yep.

It’s also hard because everyone reads a plan and adopts portions and has it work well.

Keep carbs below your limit, tweak from there. The only consistent advice is to keep carbs low.

(Kayla J Hower) #18

Now that I read your comment, I identify with this so much. Not really feeling hungry but just eating because I want to. This has been a big barrier for me when it comes to fasting. I will get to a certain point and just sabotage because I don’t like to be uncomfortable I guess.

(Banting & Yudkin & Atkins & Eadeses & Cordain & Taubes & Volek & Naiman & Bikman ) #19

Tuning your appetite to internal cues (I feel hungry) rather than external cues (my plate isn’t clean) is a revealing exercise. I highly recommend it, not even for fasting but general eating.

(Ethan) #20

Right. I have often summarized @richard’s theory as follows:

Let x be the number of Calories your body can reduce its BMR to when fasting
Your body will strive to keep storage of y pounds of fat such it can draw x Calories from that fat for z days of fasting.

Here is my analysis:

Clearly, y is determined largely by insulin level. If a person’s insulin level is consistently high, he or she does not have access to draw Calories from fat; thus, his or her y is relatively high. We don’t know what z is. I heard @richard speak about it as 1 day. It may be easier to fix it at 1 day when analyzing how to solve the problem. (I think it actually isn’t 1 though, since the body needs to be restricted for a while to drop its BMR, which is used in the calculation of y.) If we hold z at 1, though, we can address the problem with only a focus on insulin level and BMR:

  1. Fast more so that insulin drops (hopefully reducing it permanently)
  2. Decrease BMR so that your requirement for y Calories is also decreased!

I think everybody here is on board for the first solution. If we fast more often, longer, or differently, we can hopefully reduce our basal insulin levels so that less fat is required to get the same Calories out of it.

I think the second solution is going to hit people like a ton of bricks. We tend to talk about increasing BMR or at least not reducing it so that we don’t stop losing weight. However, I posit that a high BMR results in more need to keep more fat reserves on hand. I have experience with this, too. The times I have lost weight in the past never resulted in a stall–except this time. I think it’s because I am not Calorie restricting this time. My body has kept its high BMR, so I keep gaining back losses after my extended fasts. My body wants to keep some fat storage to keep the BMR functioning. I am curious what the @dudes, Dr. Fung, and @meganjramos think about that theory.