Hello everyone! Let me thank you in advance for any type of help you can give us. This will be our 4th week on Keto. I started at 270 and am down to 259, my husband started at 465 and is down to 455. I know men tend to lose weight faster than women but that is not the case here. He has been stuck at 455 for two weeks while I lost weight weekly. We follow a meal plan (this is the last week for it, have been looking for a new one) strictly and have not cheated once. We are actually very proud of ourselves since this is the longest we have gone without cheating and no craving or urges. Back to the main issue, we have keto strips we test with. Mine come out with high levels and his with traces. He is getting frustrated and I do not want him to give up hope. Can you guys please give me pointers or any suggestions as to how I can help him? Any website or app that we can use for him? Thanks!
Need some Advice and tips for the hubby
Kudos to both of for your progress thus far!! 
Think it might be good to show us a typical eating day so we can have a better idea of what exactly you/he are doing and where we can help. Given your SO weight indicates that he is very likely that he is extremely insulin resistant and have changes that may not translate onto the scale. Ketone stix testing is a tool - but can be unreliable depending upon what stage you are at.
Congrats Veronica to you and your hubby; you’re both achieving so much already 
I agree completely with @Ajax comments . He is probably repairing internally first (ie IR) so once that sorts itself just watch him overtake you in the weight loss 
Remember the water, water , water key plus electrolytes are crucial for success with this “magic pill” too.
I use The Keto Diet book, by author Leanne Vogel. We are following her classic keto path. With her diet plan we do not eat any dairy. She encourages the use avocado/olive oil, her drinks include MCT oil, her recipes vary. We use Erythritol in recipes and liquid stevia. A basic day would be 75% fat, 6-20% carbs and 15-20% protein. The percentages vary by day and calorie intake as well. Any recs for other sources?
@buffy Thank you. We do drink electrolyte water. We have a book we follow and it gives us tons of recipes. Any recs for other sources?
We have several cookbooks by Maria Emmerich. One of our favorites is “Keto Comfort Foods”:
https://www.amazon.com/Keto-Comfort-Foods-Maria-Emmerich-ebook/dp/B06ZZMRP4N/
Another favorite is “Sweet & Savory Fat Bombs” by Martina Slajerova:
https://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Savory-Fat-Bombs-Delicious/dp/1592337287/
The DietDoctor site has several recipes that we use too…
Hi Veronica, there are lots of great recipes here on the ketogenic forum (use the search function to find them) plus www.dietdoctor.com . I kept it very simple until I became fat adapted but am now experimenting with recipes plus making up my own (a habit of mine!) Wishing you and your hubby lots of continued success. This forum is very supportive so do keep asking questions when you want to ; we’re all helping each other
Ali
Your husband is a fairly large guy, and so might be more metabolically deranged than you.
15-20% seems low protein to me, but I know some folks like to keto low protein (without starting a fight, their N=1 doesn’t really jive with mine or my research). He might also not be getting enough food.
@LeCheffre Thank you for your response, where can I find a calculator to be able to see how much he is supposed to be eating? I have found a couple online but not sure which to trust.
@KevinB I have her keto book that gave us plenty of info on supplements! Have you followed the Diet Doctor? We were planning on signing up?
I prefer the Protein Power recommendation of x Grams per pound of Lean Body Mass. the x is a number between .5 and .9 based on activity. If you are sedentary, it’s .5, athlete .9. If you are very large, you get a bump up, so your husband would go .6g per lbs of LBM. Or 1.3g/kilo of LBM. That is a minimum per day, not a target.
Yes, I’m a DietDoctor.com member. I initially signed up so that I could watch the video content at that site, but then I discovered that they have some awesome recipes as well. One that we use quite often is the keto bread recipe:
Well we love to help here, and its great to see you are both doing together.
As others have said your husband is probably IR and maybe even an undiagnosed diabetic, this can take a while to heal and adjust the body.
TO you would give you the following recommendations, based on my own experience.
Try and keep meals simple for the first few weeks, I ate bacon, eggs, spinach and salmon patties the first month or so and still do often. There is some pressure to expand your recipe knowledge outside of this let the diet take hold and give some time to work. I am a firm believer in KISS. Several doctors recommend to their new patient to eat bacon eggs for two weeks and come back and see them.
Your macros that you are listing is % and that is really not a good idea, most of us prefer expressing macros in Grams. The one we really push hard is the carb macro which should not normally exceed 20g a day. That is not a target to hit but one to stay away from. If you receive 20% of carbs in a day that could easily push your husbands insulin high enough to shut down ketosis. The protien being the second important one at your phase, and fat to full for now, but ideally to the macro level if possible. During keto adaption a lot is happening its hard to get the fat amounts in but there many ways to do it.
In the first couple weeks I recommend everyone eat to their macro level at maintain, this gives you an ideal of what the amount of food is you need. You need to start learning what some of the signalling your body is doing and can be very different from the hangry feeling we often used to have.
I like to use this calculator , again start at the maintain for a while.
I also strongly recommend that you not use any sweeteners, at all. For a long while.
Stevia in particular may be detrimental to your husband by causing insulin to spike. Learn to eat basic with out the sweetness, it took about 2 months but I not only stopped craving sweets I rarely find them good anymore even keto ones. Also this WOE has made my food taste much better even when it is simple.
If your husband is IR he is going to need to be extra careful to not spike his insulin, and he may have a harder time getting it to drop if he does. This is the prime factor in determine the level of ketones you make. As others have said he may have to do a lot of healing first and I would recommend that you keep your protien level around .7 to lbm at the least for a little while. Otherwise the other things seem ok, but often ther are secret hidden carbs in foods so if you are concerned about your diet do share we can help.
I hope this helps.
I don’t use dietdoctor’s meal plans, but I am a member there simply to support the incredible wealth of information there. They have a ton of good recipes (which I usually “tweak” somehow! 
) but the videos are a gold mine.
With regard to your hubby’s issues, I would bet a month’s pay that he’s not eating enough. Is he getting hungry between meals? (Head nodding) A guy that big is going to have to eat big for a while. A lot of stuff will be healing inside as well as outside. GET MEASUREMENTS AND TAKE PICTURES - you’ll want something to gauge progress against. The good news is, he’ll gradually eat less NATURALLY as his weight comes down. The Newbies section has pretty much everything you need to get started.
We’re glad to have you! Let us know how we can help.
- Grill a nice, fatty steak.
- Fry up some mushrooms. In butter.
- Fry two eggs. In butter.
- Place fried eggs on steak. Top with mushrooms. Dump butter on top of everything.
- Repeat.
@Reyna524 MAKE NOTE of this dude’s nickname. He’s been where your hubby is. Trust the process, and both of you KCKO!