My stubborn keto

#1

Hi everybody, I just joined looking for few answers regarding my keto that doesn’t seem to work as expected.

Few facts first:
Age 65
Height 5’11”
Weight 176 lb

Not overweight by any means, just upset with my belly fat. Whatever fat I have all seems to be accumulated on the belly. So 7 weeks ago I decided to go on keto.

I also decided to start the morning with roughly 15 min of light workout followed by brisk walking on the treadmill for 30 min (that’s all before breakfast).

In roughly 10 days my weight dropped 3 lb and that’s it. It didn’t want to move any more. It was constant at 173 +/-0.2 lb for 2 weeks at least. I even suspected my scale, but checked it and it was fine.

Reading more about it I found out I need to stay under 20 grams of net carbs and eat max 3 times / day, but 2 times would be better.

Before getting deeper into these guidelines let me tell you about the only successful keto case I witnessed myself. A colleague of mine weighing over 400 lb at the time went on a keto diet and lost 130 lb after one year. Don’t remember what program he was on, but he was receiving prepackaged food in portions of 100 cals and used to have one of those every 3 hours and then in the evening he would have grilled chicken, pork or beef with fresh greens and olive oil and vinegar. He explained the idea behind having 5 meals a day was to make the body believe there is an abundance of food so it wouldn’t go into storage mode. I also remember his carbs guidelines were to stay below 50 g.
But that was then and that was another person. He had plenty where to loose from. In my case maybe since there is not much to lose it may be harder.

Back to my case, the keto strips used to indicate a low to moderate keto level at best. Reading that the ketone strips are not accurate in assessing the keto state, I bought the Keto Mojo blood tester a week ago and my readings are still kind of low: 1.1 – 1.4 mmol/L. One day only it was 1.8 and have no explanation what was different that day.

For almost a month now I stay under 20 g net carbs and watch my portions like a hawk using a spreadsheet. I total 1500 – 1700 cal / day with 65-75% coming from fat and 30% from protein.

I will add a thought I have. It may be my impression, but I think I notice a bit of improved muscle definition on my upper arms so maybe I gained a bit of muscle mass and since muscle is heavier than fat, you don’t need to gain a lot in order to mask the total weight loss. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, I don’t know. However now I set my belt is one inch tighter.

I guess this summarizes it pretty well, sorry for the long story. Comments are appreciated.
Thanks.

(Full Metal KETO AF) #2

Hi and welcome to the forum :slightly_smiling_face:. I think it sounds like you’re doing things right but you should give more information about yourself to help people give you good advice. The best place to start would be knowing what you’re eating on an average day.

The old school thought was small mini meals through the day, but that keeps insulin high all day and insulin causes fat storage. That’s why we avoid snacks and only eat when we’re hungry, to keep insulin low. I think you are over stressing about fat and protein macros. Those are goals, not targets. Think of it this way, carbs are a limit (20g), protein is a goal (okay to be under or over daily), and fat is a lever, add some to give yourself energy and satiety, or when fat adapted cut back to burn body fat. It’s called Lazy Keto. You eat until your not hungry, not because you need to finish your meal and certainly not to cut it short because macros tell you what you’re body wants is too much. Your energy and nutritional needs vary from day to day. You can’t formulate that with an app that generalizes everyone into having the same nutritional needs. Listen to your body instead of a calculator.

You’re also going to have plateaus, body recomposition and weight loss, it’s not a linear process. A stall is six weeks or more. :cowboy_hat_face:

#3

Thank you for the reply.
Here are more details about my meals. I have three per day / 6 hours apart.

Breakfast is invariably almond milk with instant coffee plus a scoop of whey protein powder plus 15 g of butter and 15 g of coconut butter.
370 call: 69% from fat / 28% from protein and 3 g net carbs

Typical lunch at work: one large avocado, one boiled egg, 2 oz feta, olives
580 cal: 80% from fat / 14% from protein and 7 g net carbs

Typical dinner: 200 ml chicken broth, grilled chicken breast, lettuce with feta crumbles, green onions, olive oil, 1 oz sun flower seeds, 4 oz black berries
600 cal: 60% from fat / 33% from protein and 11 g net carbs.

#4

Due ur age ur bmr and natural testo levels drop a bunch so try to cut down mealsize to 1-2 a day, preferably IF, add testo boosting foods like dark green veggies (broccoli is perfect) with lot of fatty cuts of meat, eggs, supplement zinc, avoid all dairy (whey too, if u really need it use isolate) and try to eat as clean as possible. Exercise more, those morning exercises are good. Check out fasting section in the forum, also very good way to combat slower bmr + u dont got that much to lose. Key is to have testosterone as dominant as possible, as estrogen likes to store fat in belly area.

(Carl Keller) #5

Hi Adirom.

It doesn’t sound like you have far to go until you reach a healthy weight. I’m an inch shorter and about four pounds lighter and my body is pretty comfortable where it is. With that being said, losing your remaining belly fat is not going to be easy. I have a small amount in comparison to what I used to have and if I really wanted to lose it, I would probably drop my carbs as low as possible and maybe even go mostly carnivore. That, along with one meal a day for three to four days a week and I’m pretty sure I could continue losing.

As for your meals, I see a lot of empty calories in your breakfast. If you are going to spend 400 calories, I would make it real food that you are eating. Instead of whey protein and butters, I’d have an egg and a few pieces of bacon.

Ideally, I think skipping breakfast altogether might benefit you by keeping your insulin level low for a greater period of time. If our insulin is regularly being called on, it makes weight loss more difficult. I would try to eat a larger dinner and push through breakfast with just coffee and maybe a little butter or cream.

The other meals look fair. I do like the variety and see a diverse array of nutrients in your choices but I wonder if these choices are leaving you hungry or satiated. We need to make sure we are not under eating. Patterns of restriction and lingering hunger risks lowering our metabolism and then weight loss is not only difficult, it becomes unhealthy.

My personal philosophy is to eat meals featuring a fatty protein and supplementing with a buttered cup or two of vegetables, occasionally a salad and frequently with a few fried or boiled eggs. This is not only satisfying, it makes grocerry shopping and meal prepartion quite easy.

#6

My meal list didn’t count all obviously. It was more of a sample. Breakfast is the constant part and also one avocado per day. But I often also have broccoli with mayo, bacon, etc. Salmon twice a week is present as well.

Regarding protein I am a bit worried not to have too much as I know the excess can be turned into glucose. Of course I don’t know where the threshold is as numbers I see are pretty wide (0.5 – 1 gram protein / kg body weight).

As for eggs and bacon for breakfast, I would love it, but this means a high protein / fat ratio and can’t bring enough fat during the rest of the day to compensate.

I should also mention I am not hungry any time of the day. Before starting this diet I was probably eating 2000-2200 cal daily and 3-4 hours after each meal I was already hungry. I felt the urge to have a sandwich right before going to bed.

Not sure about skipping breakfast. I always used to have a healthy one. Long ago, in my teen years I used to skip lunch completely except during weekend; but never skipped breakfast.

(Little Miss Scare-All) #7

Those KetoMojo numbers aren’t low, considering .5 is beginning of ketosis. 1.1-1.5 is pretty good, tbh. There’s nothing wrong with those numbers.

Since you arent technically overweight, it will take longer to see results, and since you’re a little older, that only lends to the slower speed.

You may have some internal fat that cradles your liver or other organs, and perhaps your body is chosing to clean up the inside, before it cleans up the outside.

If you adopt the keto WOE as a lifestyle, rather than a diet to lose body fat, you’ll find yourself less discouraged.

(Alec) #8

I seriously wouldn’t worry so much about fat protein ratios. Bacon and eggs is fantastic keto food, hard to beat. If you want more fat, have a side of butter or mayo.

Are you sure about this macro analysis? The fat looks sorely lacking in the food there… any reason you are eating grilled chicken breast? This looks more Mediterranean diet fare than keto.

#9

My dinner numbers are based on product labels or web info and are right.
I can’t stand fat meat, not even marbled. For me it’s chicken breast or salmon. I love fillet mignon too, but at $32/pound it’s only when my son comes for lunch.

Thanks a lot for the replies, it seems I’m not quite off, I just need to lower my expectations and build up more patience.

(Running from stupidity) #10

Widely-reported myth. #DONTFEARPROTEIN

(Carl Keller) #11

Many of us believe that gluconeogenesis is driven by demand, not supply. Ted Naiman recently did an over eating experiment and this is what he concluded:

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I was able to lose 40 pounds in six months eating between 120 grams and 150 grams of protein per day. Protein played a big role in filling me up and keeping me from being hungry for longer amounts of time.

(Alec) #12

I was so the guy on carbs and fat: “load me up, I want more, more, more!!”, tongue hanging out.

#13

KarlKeller, that’s good to know, thanks.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #14

If you have had to tighten your belt, then keto is working as advertised, regardless of what your scale is teling you.

Here’s a question to ponder: Would you rather look like you’ve lost twenty pounds and have the scale show no change or lose those twenty pounds and continue to look the same way you do now?

#15

New facts to report. Monday and Tuesday I adopted the scrambled eggs with bacon plus the fatty instant coffee for breakfast. No protein powder.

Fat 43g / 387 cals

Protein 27g / 108 cals

Net carbs 3g / 12 cals

Overall 507 cals and probably good ratios for keto.

To my surprise I survived without much trouble from 6 am to 6 pm.

But now the question is what to have for dinner to amount for 1000 - 1200 cals? To ingest that much becomes a task in itself.

I kept reading through other posts and elsewhere on the web that you shouldn’t starve yourself and shouldn’t stuff yourself either. How can you judge whether you’re close to either extreme? It seems to me I could eat less, but is it OK or it’s just a false impression caused by too much fat that suppresses hunger?

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #16

Eat until you are satisfied. You should be able to tell if you are still hungry or not. If you aren’t sure then wait a bit after eating to set of you are still hungry.

As for a meal, eat chicken thigh with skin, cook using butter, add butter on your veggies, use heavy cream. Make an oil and vinegar (check carb counts) salad dressing.

I eat only one meal a day, and I usually eat around 1900 calories (I’m 5’2", 114 lbs).

I eat:
<20g carbs (usually under 10g)
50-70g Protein
170g+ of fat

Listen to your body about hunger signals, and feel free to experiment.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #17

When eating to satiety, you should be able to go quite a few hours between meals. If you find yourself needing a snack, eat something fatty (pork rinds, buttered cheese, that sort of thing) and then increase your portion size at the next meal.

It was about the middle of my third week in ketosis when my satiety signaling suddenly kicked in. Up till that point, I had been eating to what I thought was satiety, but it was my usual carb-burning portion sizes. But suddenly, in the middle of lunch, I realized I was done. With half a plate of food, no less! But there was nothing for it but to put the plate in the fridge for later—much later.

I have since come to the conclusion that I needed the very large meals early on to help my body heal, as well as to get my insulin low enough for long enough at a time for the leptin produced by my fat tissue to start getting through to my brain again. But I have to say it’s a relief that, these days, I stop being hungry long before that point and can go hours and hours between meals, now.

#18

That very likely applies to me too.
My adaptation period was probably more than a month because initially I only tried to stay below 50 g carbs and later on went below 20. I too felt hungry between my 3 meals. Recently I realized I don’t feel like eating between the 3 meals anymore and I also feel full before finishing a meal. But I thought the fat rich meals just cut my appetite. I guess no matter the reason, I’m just full.

(Bunny) #19

Those prepackaged something’s (highly speculative) he was eating every 3 hours could have been laced with type 2 amylose maize highly resistant starch that ferments in the gut, lowers blood sugars and skyrockets ketones?

For example if you take a potato and boil it and then stick in the fridge let it cool completely then take it out and boil it again, put back in the fridge and take it and boil it again, then again, and again the more resistant it becomes to being digested, you can do the same thing with rice, eat as much as you want and not have it effect your Ketogenic diet (ketones) at all, and improve your leptin and ghrelin signaling sensitivity (“…so it wouldn’t go into storage mode…”); by doing this you are activating the AMY1 genes (amylase), the more copies of these AMY-1’s you have in your saliva the better it will work and at the same time feel full hence, “abundance of food.”

#20

From what I’ve read, the key making the starch resistant (RS) is reheating it by frying only, not re-boiling, as water-based reheating (ie, in soup and gravies) makes the starch soluble, makes it dissolve before it reaches the large intestine and thus renders it non-resistant (somewhat sadly).