My daughter and I are both doing Keto. She is not losing weight. Please help

newbies
(Ellen ) #21

Thank you Kirk for all your advice. My daughter started tracking on cronometer. It turns out the bags of Perdue’s organic chicken breast that she made chicken salad with are 27g of carbs with one bag per serving. The bag says 0 carbs. Onions are pretty high in carbs. Who new. Seems hidden carbs are most likely the culprit. Amazing how companies can lie like that. I’ve learned a lot through my daughter’s pain. Her mood today is 100% better than yesterday. Good to know where the problem is…hopefully. Grateful for all the help and suggestions.

(Wandering) #22

Are you sure carbs aren’t sneaking in ? It doesn’t take much … a little too much sugar in a salad dressing, a little too much ketchup on a burger, etc.

What works for me is going hard core for a few days, no more than a few grams of carbs total, only eating foods that are zero carbs per serving, or maybe up to 1 gram if it is swiss cheese or something that is almost pure fat.

Hell I wouldn’t eat a breath mint for fear it has a gram of actual sugar in it.

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #23

What do you mean? So nobody else has the same problem can you explain?

#24

A serving size is likely small - I.e. a 1/8 of the bag and they can say 0 carb per serving but she uses the whole bag to make her meal and that’s not 0 carb is what I think that means.

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #25

Ok, I see what you mean, but what on earth is in the chicken that brings the carb count up so much?

(Ellen ) #26

The 6oz bag of Perdue’s SimplySmart organic chicken breast says it has 0 carb so my daughter was eating 2 x a day with mayo, onions, and tomatoes when she worked. 6 months on keto and she still weighs the same at 238lbs, no weight loss. Suggestions were to track on an app. When we did that today. The app with exactly the same name said Perdue’s bag was 27g carbs. So with all the other additional things she was way over daily carb limit. This has to be the reason for absolutely no weight loss in 6 months. Started anew today and I even a bit lighter. Go figure.

(Ellen ) #27

Right like 3 strips

(Ellen ) #28

I totally can see that now that I’m watching her track. She’s really into it now. Like a new toy, lol.

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #29

Man, that stinks. I’m sure she’s bummed but it’s good she got the app. Tricky liars make the serving size so small it looks safe. I like to make fun of our American products because a serving size will be a teaspoon for a product people use a ton of. Hopefully the app will help her out a lot!

(Ellen ) #30

Yes, thanks PetaMarie. The atmosphere at home is much lighter today.

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #31

Was that the breaded chicken? Looking at the Perdue website they have lots of different chicken strip bags. Make sure that you are actually logging the one that matches. I recommend scanning the barcode to make sure.

(Ellen ) #32

We read them all and finally found the one that wasn’t breaded. It said the exact words that were on the bag. Word for word. I didn’t know you could scan…another toy. Lol. I’ll tell her that tomorrow. Thank you.

(Kirk Wolak) #33

Wow, that is a TON of carbs for chicken.
But these companies are pretty horrible.

BTW, if you ever get to the point that you want to cook chicken breasts for chicken salad.
I love using Sous Vide. It leaves the chicken very moist!

What my daughter does is let me buy a Rotisserie Chicken, and eat the dark meat and skin, then she takes the breasts and makes Chicken Salad, using Avocado instead of mayo!

BTW, this is another reason to test her blood sugar and ketones. THAT amount of carbs would have kept her out of ketosis… And jacked up her glucose. It should have been obvious with some testing.

Good luck to her… Have her watch some Dr. Boz videos. It felt good to know that a DOCTOR made some of the mistakes that Dr. Boz was making… We are all human!

(Robert C) #34

If she is doing long shifts and getting through the end of the day with caffeine - this is likely to mess up sleep. If the shifts are night shifts or a rotating schedule of shifts - that will also mess up sleep. Sleep is really important for hormones.

Technically a job may be perceived as less stressful but - a CEO doing 100 hours a week that loves their job might not feel any stress where a part-timer flipping burgers at diner (even with slow table turnover) might still feel tons of stress if they really just don’t want to be there (but feels they have to be for money).

There is a sweet spot for exercise - too little exercise or too much exercise can cause hormone problems (it can be a perceived stress if overdone, not supplying any pressure for change if sedentary).

This might be hitting the nail on the head. Keto is trying to manipulate hormones through diet. If sleep, exercise and or stress are all over the place - diet will not make the difference you want in hormones to make progress. The diet itself - if one becomes obsessed - can increase the stress problem (especially if you are constantly thinking about it, planning for it, getting orthorexic etc.).

Finally, remember that scale changes of 8 ounces to a pound a week are going to be fat. Bigger changes than that are usually going to be water weight, time of the month, stress related, diet change related, scale error etc. But, most are interested in fat loss so the scale is somewhat useless.

(Ellen ) #35

Thanks Rob and @CaptainKirk I totally agree. I will show her your posts when she gets home tonight. These suggestions and advice have been so enlightening for me as well. Following the cronometer app for only 3 days now I’m down 1lb. My daughter Janice doesn’t really weigh herself. She’s of that mind, listening to her clothes and how she feels. Weighing herself the other day was just to see how she was doing. She refuses to do that again. We have the precision extra glucometer, both our glucose (80-100) and ketones around 0.5 have been good. She was 0.6 yesterday so that’s been oddly going well. Maybe the higher carbs were still keeping her in ketosis just not helping weight loss. She also may have lost weight in the beginning but wouldn’t get on the scale until already into this woe for about 2-3 months in. Grateful for all the help. It’s amazing what I’ve just recently learned. Always a newbie.

(hottie turned hag) #36

What in the holy hell :neutral_face:

Much great advice above but I’ll add, could she be hypothyroid?

I had to go “almost-carn” (mostly meat and very few veg, no dairy) to break a stall. She may want to try zero dairy, more than a few of us on here have found this works, others dairy does not affect but it’s an easy thing to try.

(Ellen ) #37

I totally agree blueviolet, she may very well have hypothyroidism. I was recently diagnosed with it. She’s at work now but I’ll have her read your post when she gets home. Thanks so much.

(Bob M) #38

My kids will eat chicken breasts this way. They really like them. I tend to eat chicken breasts if we have a whole chicken. Otherwise, I generally pass on them.

It’s definitely individual. For instance, I eat a higher protein version of keto, and rarely eat bacon, avocado, mayo, etc. I try to stay more toward meat plus some minor amount of veggies.

(Tammy McCarthy) #39

I never thought I would get to this point…but I’m not paying as much attention to the scale. I have found with my journey that I can lose an entire clothing size and not loose a single pound. I still don’t understand how this is possible…but I can’t deny the facts. So make sure she is either measuring or has some smaller clothing that she can keep trying on to see if she is losing inches despite the lack of movement on the scale.

#40

I don’t get the chicken, where the carbs come from?

Tomatoes and especially onions and tomatoes are carby, they are vegetables, after all, be careful with the amounts.

Hopefully you will find a method she will lose fat with soon!
Carbs alone can’t normally keep one from fat-loss, I was pretty fine on low-carb when I had much to lose. I lost fat slowly but steadily. But everyone is different…
Not everyone loses fat on keto even if the carb intake is right. It helps a lot but it’s possible to eat way too much for some, I do that if I’m not careful about my food choices and end up having too many meals a day… I had no problems when I was heavier but as I wrote, we are different… More efforts may be required. But for now, keeping the carbs low sounds good, there’s a big change it will help. Good luck!