Need advice to understand what is happening

#1

Hi all,

I’m posting on this forum with the hope to understand what is happening to my body.

I’m gonna start with a bit of context, I started Keto in may 2020, at the start of the pandemic following the advice of my girlfriend at the time. As the pandemic prevented me to go out and see friend it was super easy to follow the keto macros stay in Ketosis. I lost around 10kg in 2+ months with periods where I would lose around 400 grams per day over multiple days.

I then stopped keto and went back to eating normally. As the pandemic continued and my moral lowered, I regained some of the weight I had lost. I restarted keto in February of 2021 and there again, managed to lose weight pretty damn fast.

Forward to September 21 and again, not feeling great, my weight goes up and I try to do keto again. Except this time it does not work. Probably coming from the fact that I was hanging out with friends often and eating outside which complicated things.

– End of context –

We are now at the beginning of 2022 and I decide to start keto again but this time well determined to keep my weight after that (I was losing weight organically before that, keto was only supposed to be a boost) As lockdown kind of restarted where I live, getting into keto is easy again. I have my macros on spot, I eat 75:25:5 and I even manage to eat little amount of calories.

But my weight did not go down much (100g per day max). I then thought that I was simply not in ketosis, even though I didn’t eat any carbs on some days. So I bought a blood ketone meter to check. Turns out, I’m basically constantly in ketosis (1.5-2.6 mmol/L).

I thought at the beginning that I was not eating enough, slowing down my metabolism and preventing weight loss. So one day I ate the amount of calories needed to keep my weight. The next day my weight dropped the famous 400g I was looking for. However I tried the next day as well and suddenly, I gained 1kg. And checked ketones and still in Ketosis.

So all in all I really do not understand why my body keeps retaining water, and also why I’m not losing weight as fast as I used to in my previous attempt.

Also important to mention I guess, I do sport quite often (3-4 times a week) mostly climbing and dancing, sometimes skiing.

I am rarely hungry and I feel like following my hunger might lead me to very low calories values, and I’m not sure if that’s a great idea, also I need some extra energy before I go climbing so I often force myself to eat to reach some kind of minimum energy level before climbing.

I would like to understand what is the best approach here, I would like to lose weight as fast as possible because I don’t necessarily want to stay in keto for too long due to the large amount of saturated fat that I ingest.

Should I force myself to eat to reach a certain amount of calories to prevent my metabolism from slowing down?
Should I listen to my hunger, risking to not eat enough, potentially shrinking my muscles and slowing down my metabolism?
Should I do something else all together? (I have been taking MCT oil recently, maybe that’s good to enter ketosis but slows things down afterward?)

Thanks in advance for all your answers!

#2

Maybe don’t do keto if you mildly starve on it and you will quit it anyway? Can’t you just find a woe that you can follow even after reaching your goal weight?
(I am one of the not many people here who has zero problem with people using keto to fat-loss only but it doesn’t seem to work it well for you now and you gained back fat every time too… So choosing some good lifestyle that you don’t abandon soon later sounds better.)

Eating way too little is definitely wrong, don’t mess with your muscles and metabolism, that’s not healthy and somewhat counterproductive fat-loss wise too.

I don’t care about saturated fat myself (and I eat the least amount of it on extreme low-carb anyway) but I am sure you don’t need to eat large amounts of it on keto…

#3

If I read what you are saying correctly - you started keto again about 2 weeks ago.

You have been going in and out of keto for a while…its going to take your body however long it takes to get adapted again. You are just going to have to give it a bit more time I think.

Eat enough / don’t under-eat. Stay under 20g net carbs. Sleep well. Reduce stress. Give your body enough time to recover between exercises.

I don’t recommend adding MCT oil. Adding extra oils and fats when trying to lose weight may be counterproductive. Better to stick to the fats that comes naturally with your proteins.

(Bob M) #4

I’m not sure about MCT oil. For me, it can cause gastrointestinal distress, so I avoid it.

However, this study found more satiety from MCT oil, but that was relative to coconut oil or vegetable oil:

This also discusses some purported benefits of MCT oils:

For me, the only one that does not cause me distress is C8. I can eat coconut flakes and some coconut oil, though.

#5

Thanks a lot for your answers, I will definitely not under eat then.

Shinita you’re right, however I have a reason for not really looking to have a diet that I can follow (there is laziness but not only). When there is no lockdown and no covid, I have healthy food at work and that works great and I can keep my weight easily (even lose it slowly). However when I cannot go to work, I eat at home and that’s when things start to go south. I don’t have the motivation to setup a full healthy routine, cooking everyday when I know that in 1 or 2 month I will go back to eating healthy.

So for me keto is only to offset my weight during the 1 or 2 months or WFH left, until I can go back to work and have a healthy nutrition. That was also the goal before. The pandemic just lasted longer than I expected and restarted many times :confused: