I have been lurking in the background reading everyone’s posts and learning so much, thank you!
Now, my story. I have been researching Keto lifestyle since February b/c friends have been on it for a few months by that point and lost 18 pounds and her blood levels were getting better being diabetic. She had an episode one evening where she about collapsed & could not communicate with those around her. It frightened me so I started reading and listening to podcasts to make sure she wasn’t killing herself! I only really found information that this lifestyle is good for her. We had a cruise to Alaska planned for July so I had no desire to start any kind of diet until after that. But once back from that wonderful trip I cut out most gluten & cut way back on anything sugar infested until about mid August when I went all in. Expectation: Keto flu, reality not at all. I presume b/c I started slowly? I am 55, post menopausal, heart disease in my family but not me yet, about 55-60 pounds overweight. So, weight loss expectation: 25 pounds by now. Reality only 12. Ugh.
I also read that inflammation in joints would ease off. Expectation: feeling better, reality my knee hurts! I am walking around like I have an injury when in fact I did nothing. I read another post about someone else experiencing this so I don’t feel alone or like I am doing something wrong. It needs to go away though, I have things to do!
Eating Keto isn’t so difficult, I didn’t have cravings. There are things I miss, and eating out & with family gatherings is a challenge, (I am not telling extended family about my changes yet). My husband is supporting me but not keto either. We drive over the road together so eating out of the cooler & restaurants is tricky but I am learning what works.
Energy level, expectation: more energy! Reality, I don’t necessarily feel different except I used to want to take a nap around 11am or would nod off in the truck, that has gone away.
Sleeping, expectation: didn’t really have any b/c I don’t have any problems sleeping in the first place. Reality: now I gotta get up to pee! I’ve never liked drinking water. Husband is always encouraging me (for 34 years) to drink more water. At the end of Sept. I was having pain in my back where my kidneys are located. That scared me b/c it was pretty bad. I ended up putting an app on my phone to track my water intake. Seemed to be the only way to discipline myself to mark those water glasses each time I drank 8oz. It worked, pain gone & feel better even if I have to get up in the night.
I know I should have gone to the Dr before doing this but that appt isn’t until Dec 12. Had to pick a new Dr b/c mine retired. Hoping I have chosen one that is familiar with this lifestyle and will help me. I am currently on a statin and want to get off. Expectation: medication free, reality is yet to be determined. However, I am now losing a serious handful of hair every day. Anyone else experience this? I have gobs of hair so I’m not real concerned, yet. Anxious to have blood levels checked next month. On the flip side, my nails seem healthier. Odd?
Expectation: mental clarity. Reality: Don’t feel any different there either. Bulletproof coffee staves off hunger till afternoon and is tasty but I don’t feel or think much clearer. Will eventually do some personal testing on that and different foods but after everyone’s excellent input on this forum I figured I should make sure I am Keto adapted first. I have urine test strips I have been using. Noticed they fluctuate with my water intake.
I did have a “cheat” day. Deer season means I make sweet rolls for the hunters & dang it I wanted one (3) sigh. My daughter made peanut butter pie too. That really was just one piece. So, I did it all in one afternoon and got right back to proper eating the next day. There were no ketones registered from Monday evening till Friday morning. Was it worth it? Yup. Told me I am strong enough not to just throw the whole thing away. However, those days will be far and few between. I have no fear about the Christmas season.
So, I want my knee to not hurt. Its been 3 weeks now. Any advice? Plus, I read somewhere that calories don’t really count. I have since read that yes, they do. So am thinking I need to track those more closely in order to drop the pounds. Still trying to decide if bulletproof coffee (coffee, heavy whipping cream, MCT oil or butter) breaks a fast, thought I was doing IF but now wonder if that is also sabotaging my weight loss.
I have found the most reliable information on this forum. Thank you all so much!
My expectations vs. reality
I’m sure others will come along with more detailed responses to all your points but one thing that jumps out to me that might be worth trying is playing around with either a full on elimination diet or just testing some of the usual suspects by omitting them for 2 or 3 weeks to see if you get improvement, especially with the inflammation. My first thought would be dairy as I know that messes with a number of people.
Do you take salt every day? I have been militant about this over the last couple of weeks and do feel better for it. I measure out a teaspoon and a half every morning and make sure I have used it all during the day. I’ll add salt to food on top of that.
12lbs in 3 months is not bad at all. In fact it is great, especially taking the menopausal status into account. That is an average of about a pound a week which is fab. Your expectation of 25lbs was unrealistic in short!
Try keeping a journal for a while and note anything useful - what you eat and drink, sleep patterns, mood, stress, exercise, etc. You might start spotting patterns of foods especially that make you feel better or worse.
IF is a great idea - go for it if it feels good.
All in all, it’s still early days so KCKO (Keep Calm and Keto On) but think about tweaking things to see if there is something in particular which is preventing you from feeling as good as you might be able to.
One last thing - thyroid. Have you checked yours lately? It is pretty usual for it to get thrown off balance during periods of hormonal change.
Welcome to the forums! If you’ve been lurking for a while, then you probably know all the basics. Don’t forget that the search function here is pretty decent. For example, there are a few threads about BPC and other things that might break a fast, so doing a search on BPC and fasting or “X” and fasting will turn up a lot of useful posts. Same with the other questions you raise.
A couple of thoughts from my own experience. I didn’t experience the keto “flu” either, because I had been warned about it and kept my salt intake up. I still try to be vigilant about salt, a year and a half later, because when I forget I experience constipation, migraine auras, and other stuff, things that work as excellent reminders, lol!
I may be just me, but my bladder capacity on keto is phenomenal. From childhood I always had to get up in the middle of the night at least once, often three times. These days, I can go much longer before the urge to urinate becomes insistent. In fact, I sleep right through the night and waken amazed at the quantity of liquid in my bladder. One of my diagnostic signs for whether I’m ketototic or not, in fact, is how long I can wait before having to urinate. Too much carbohydrate in a day, and I won’t be able to sleep through the night and will have to urgently urinate small quantities throughout the following day—annoying, and a good reason to keep carbs low, lol!
Like you, I don’t feel much more energetic or more clear-headed, particularly. But my stamina has been raised back up to normal levels (I’ve had trouble with energy and stamina since a bad virus in 2006), and I do just fine on half the dose of anti-depressant as before. And I forget what else I wanted to post—keto hasn’t fixed that, lol! 
Hello and welcome to the forum. 
From what I understand, knee problems could be from a variety of things and diet may or may not help them. Yes, keto helps with inflammation but if you have worn your cartilage down to nothing then you might need to have it scoped to see if there’s some type of permanent damage. For me, I sometimes have problems in one knee and a trip to chiropractor gets everything realigned and the pain is totally gone.
This can be a touchy subject for many but personally I don’t worry about calories much. I know what’s going in because cronometer.com tells me but if I stay under 20 net carbs, then I know I will never eat an extreme amount of kcals. Lower calories is a byproduct of eating ketogenically, not the main focus, IMHO.
Most sources that I’ve read say try to avoid cream, fats and sugar substitutes because they can cause an insulin spike and that can stall your fast a little. I do wonder if you are fat adapted enough to fast. If you are not, it could be that you are going into starvation mode and the body will dearly hang onto body fat and lower your metabolism. Do you get hungry or cranky when you fast? Do your energy levels go lower? Do you have serious cravings?
Forgot to mention knees and hair: my knees are better, partly from reduced inflammation, and partly from the lower weight they have to carry. But it’s been a progression: this time last year, when I’d only been keto six or seven months, they were still bothering me somewhat; whereas these days I can go up and down stairs quite a few times without a problem. Except when I do something stoooopid like eating a small amount of bread. My knees have been hurting for two days, now. (They’ll probably be better tomorrow. I hope!)
As for hair, I haven’t lost any, but the grey hasn’t gone away, as many people report. And it’s been a year and a half, now, and I’m still waiting for my hair to turn blond . . . haven’t grown three more inches, either, for some odd reason . . . 
Of course calories count, but not the way that people who say calories count mean it when they say it.
Our absolute caloric intake is not as important as the kinds of foods we are eating, because the body’s hormonal reaction to those foods trumps the calories. For example, when most people eat a lot of carbohydrate, it raises their insulin level significantly, causing their fat tissue to store fat. When insulin is low, that fat can leave the fat cells and be burned for energy when needed. How many times a day we eat also has an effect on insulin levels. Furthermore, the body can respond to the amount of calories we give it by either slowing down or speeding up the metabolism, so losing weight is definitely not as simple as eating less or moving more. The key to ketogenic eating is to eat in such a way that we work in harmony with the body’s responses to what and how we eat, instead of at cross purposes.
I have considered eliminating dairy, but I like dairy! I did read that it could be a culprit, I want to refuse to believe it to be bad for me. I agree a pound a week isn’t too bad, actually probably healthier but…Thanks for the pep talk. I will be more thankful than disappointed.
I have wondered about my thyroid too and am anxious for my Dr appt to talk to him about it.
I am anxious to drop the weight to be kinder to my joints, hoping I haven’t damaged them too much already.
Won’t worry about calories for now. I think you are right I am too new at this perhaps. Seems like 3 months is a long time but when one thinks of reversing 50+ years of bad eating, ugh.
Thanks for all your input.
I like the way Dr Westman puts it. “Calories do count, but we shouldn’t count calories.”
One nice thing about eating keto is that you eventually feel satisfied with less food. So you naturally eat fewer calories. But if you push through that because of emotional eating or broken satiety signaling, it is going to affect your weight. It is nice to have calories be your servant rather than your master.
All good advice above for you to ponder.
Here’s my two cents:
— Keto is not a miracle cure, but it’s a helluva good tool toward better health and weight loss.
— I am the champion of knee pain. Tore my ACL three times about 50 years ago and 8 years ago I had a total left knee replacement after decades of pain. Losing weight and lightening the load is goal No. 1. Twelve pounds is a good start but until you drop 25+ pounds I wouldn’t look for too much relief. I have lost 51 and my knee still swells up but pain is virtually history. You did not say what’s the source of your knee pain. Injury, age, arthritis, plain old inflammation? Even inflammation has a cause.
— I have also had 44 kidney stones and can tell you that back pain in the kidney area, especially when you have a long intensive pee, can be a normal spasm caused by a sudden release of pressure. Regular peeing will relieve pressure increases. Try not to hold off going to the bathroom.
— High expectations are normal when you have an optimistic view of life. Hope is essential to success. Managing reality is being mentally tough and resolute. Succeeding with weight loss and improved health is a dedication and not a diet plan. Wondering when you might be able to stop keto is self-defeating.
— And don’t beat yourself up if you do succumb to a cheat (I know this from experience as well) because it is a part of life. Just resolve to focus on what the next day will bring. Do you think ancient man fretted over pigging out on a gloriously full berry bush?
— Last. Lighten up. Enjoy the journey, don’t make it an arduous trek.
Re thyroid - please make sure they do the right tests. Many just test TSH and that is not sufficient because it doesn’t give you and accurate picture. You need to get TSH, Free T3, Free T4, ideally also get antibodies (will see if you have Hashimotos IF you have an under-active thyroid and is the most common) and Reverse T3. Check out this website to give you all the info you need about thyroid disfunction:
I am with you on that but you will never know unless you try. It could be any number of things but this would be my top suspect. Do you eat a lot of nuts? They can be problematic, especially peanuts, for some people. There are other things like brassicas but they usually impact the gut more than joints. It really is worth a try at some point when you can clear your diary of cheese for a few weeks! For example, I found that dairy over the lowest of carb (lactose is the issue) levels makes me a bit mucusy. So, in the main, I stick to <1% carbs and, ideally, 0%. That rules out things like cream cheese and cream. I do eat them sometimes and simply accept I will get a bit snotty! So it does depend what impact it has on you - maybe none at all - and whether it is worth still eating it to put up with those issues. If your joint pain vanished when you stopped eating dairy would you still eat it? Sometimes a spell without a particular food can be enough to sort things out and you will be able to reintroduce it at some point albeit probably in small amounts and not so often.
Exactly! It is very normal to be impatient for results but it does take time. It is true that almost everyone sees some benefit almost immediately and certainly within your timeframe and I think you will agree that there has been some benefit already. Keto does not fix everything though. It might simply be that you need to tweak your keto to suit you and that will be all that is needed but there might be other things that need addressing and sorting out that keto simply cannot fix. It will certainly help though and often narrows what needs addressing down by clearing all the white noise.
My take on the thyroid issue:
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Organic sulfur makes the difference in the fat solubility and water solubility of the estrogens that congregate around the thyroid receptors? A water soluble (stays outside or falls off the thyroid receptor) and a fat soluble (gets trapped inside the thyroid receptor) hormone like estrogen will activate different pathways (e.g. auto-immunity disorders) in the entire body through the thyroid gland because of the particular reciprocal relationship estrogen has to the thyroid receptors? Sulfur comes in and makes it water soluble thus cleaning off the receptor of estrogen fat soluble particulates?
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Artichoke extract (cynarin; glucuronic acid-alpha) helps clean up the estrobolome in the gut flora (glucoronic-acid-ALPHA); the author of the book (below) placed an Artichoke on the front of his book (why?) to help illustrate the point I am making here about the significance of the mysterious relation between the Artichoke, Gut Estrobolome and Thyroid axis!
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Personally I have questions about the use and reliance on desiccated (protomorphogens) thyroid supplementation from external or exogenous sources in the sense that; WHAT IS CAUSING THE THYROID ISSUE TO BEGIN WITH? Are we getting enough natural organic sulfurs in our diet and are we eating foods that are grown in chemical fertilizers while organic sulfur and sulphates are slowly depleted from the ground soils and then all these health issues start multiplying and become more prevalent world-wide?
References:
- Thyroid: Sea vegetables, radishes digestive bitters (contains a sulfur compound that regulates thyroxine and calcitonin) Organic Sulfur: Methylsulfonylmethane MSM and its sister compound dimethyl sulfoxide DMSO
- Effect of sulfur on thyroid function. STEFL J. Cesk Fysiol. 1959. Authors
STEFL J. Citation Cesk Fysiol. 1959 Apr;8(3):251.
I didn’t get it either, on Atkins (previously) or on keto. I’m grateful for that.
12 pounds in 3 months is very respectable. Congratulations!
Not sure what you mean by “inflammation.” I have a torn meniscus in both knees, which occurred during a simple twisting movement (turning my body to the side). Could this be what you have? This is not really curable, and some say that exercise without surgery is just as good as exercise with surgery (and if you’re going to have surgery they tell you to exercise anyway). Anyway, good luck figuring this out.
I experienced a similar change. I consider this to be a symptom of more energy.
I used to have to get up several times a night. This was pre-keto. Now my abs are stronger (mostly from hula hooping), which seems to help. I do have to get up once a night now, but I don’t mind, because I’m thirsty in the night too, so I drink about a cup of lemon water while I’m up. (I make a premix of lemon juice, stevia, and water, and squirt a small amount into my water to make it taste better.)
Sorry about the hair loss. It might be menopause. My nails are much stronger too. Others have mentioned this as well.
Well, okay. . . .
[quote=“Kidsnpups, post:1, topic:66396”]
I did have a “cheat” day. Deer season means I make sweet rolls for the hunters & dang it I wanted one (3) sigh. My daughter made peanut butter pie too. That really was just one piece. So, I did it all in one afternoon and got right back to proper eating the next day. There were no ketones registered from Monday evening till Friday morning. Was it worth it? Yup. Told me I am strong enough not to just throw the whole thing away. [/quote]
Hurray!
Yes, this is the land of conflicting information. I guess it depends. We can read all the different points of view, and everyone’s different experiences, and try different things until we know what works for us.
Thank you for pointing this out. I’m acting as if it doesn’t make a difference. But maybe it does. I love coffee and I love cream, but I could give them up if necessary.
Welcome, and good luck!
I had the same experience and i was really scared, but after a few weeks it gets back to normal. Many people had the same problem, so you are not the only one if this makes you feel better