I am 60 years old, been on strict keto since July 4th. Weighed 206 when starting and the main reason I went on a Keto diet was to get my blood sugars down. Success there, down at least 40 points! But now I want the weight off as well! I have only lost 8 lbs as of today, Aug 30th. I have a body fat of 27.5% and am lightly active (play golf at least 3 times a week, usually 4) I am using the Cronometer app and track everything! Weight hasn’t normally been something I worry about because even for my weight, I look okay for me! But as you know, weight is what the doctors label you by! My A1C 6 months ago was 7 so now my doctor is anxious to put me on meds and I don’t want to start that! I already take blood pressure medicine and is another reason I want to loose weight, to get off those!
Anyway, I have been keeping my protein at 25% of my diet with Carbs at 20grams and the rest in fat. Which generally means over 100 grams a day (and I struggle to do that! I really don’t eat much for a fat woman…lol) My calories are usually between 1200-1400 a day.
My question is (finally!!) What should I do? Lower my fat content or lower my calories? I see all these other people who are dropping weight like crazy and I can’t seem to do that! In looking back at my records, it seemed I was losing more weight when I was only consuming 70 to 80 grams of fat.
By the way ,I have lost over 8 inches overall, so that is something!
Thanks for any suggestions you can give!
Jane
Need some insight and help!
You should eat fat to satiety… don’t overeat just to hit the macros.
Some people need a bit longer to allow their body to heal before the fat loss happens, although if you’ve lost eight inches I say it’s already happening.
Forget the scale, measure yourself.
Stop counting calories and limiting yourself.
Keep the carbs low, meet your protein (between 50 - 75g is ample for women), and eat fats to satisfy your hunger.
Let’s dissect this a bit, shall we? You have been strict keto for eight weeks. You have lost eight pounds. That’s one pound a week! Congratulations! Tons of people pray for that, and still never reach that goal! I wouldn’t feel shame or anger toward that number, you should be proud of it. Eight pounds is the size of a newborn baby!
Now, on to the other portion: Your body fat percentage is actually relatively low, in comparison. When I started, mine was almost at 60%! That number is really good! I’ve been losing, on average, two pounds per week. Twice the body fat, twice the loss. Make sense?
You’re an active person. You could be losing fat and gaining muscle. While muscle doesn’t “weigh more” than fat, it IS more dense. This means that muscle takes up less space. A loss of eight inches for me meant a loss of about 20 pounds before I started gaining muscle.
The best advice that I can give you is this: Eat less than 20 g carb per day, fat to satiety. Otherwise, KCKO! Congratulations on your victories so far!
I don’t limit myself based on calories, that’s just what it ends up being. I only limit myself based on Macros.
When I first started keto a few months ago I read about PISS, Post Induction Stall Syndrome. Many people lose a fair bit of weight during the induction phase and then the weight loss stalls while the body heals and adjusts to the new way of eating. Once the body adjusts and/or heals the weight loss frequently starts back up.
Patience may be in order.
Edith
Just an update here, I decided to get out of my stall I would do some IF 16:8 to see if that would help, which it did, until my blood sugar started going through the roof! Since that was a main reason for doing Keto, I stopped the IF and went back to regular eating and they came back down! I was eating less than 5 % carbs and went back to my starting keto where I was losing at least a pound a week and I was eating 20 grams a day. So I allowed myself to get back to 20 grams a day and now I am back to losing a little each week and the measuring tape is starting to respond again. I don’t know if maybe my body was still in healing mode when I started to fast or what, but I decided to give it another month or so before I start the IF again. I do think I am insulin resistant though, and don’t know how to get out of that without IF! Any suggestions?
Dr. Fung and Megan Ramos have discussed this for a while. I can’t recall their findings, but if you listen to their appearances on podcasts, you may have some luck. They discussed that some patients will have high blood glucose for a while I think while doing some fasting.
I can’t recall which…but I do know they mentioned that they had T2 patients whose sugars were very high during a fast. I cannot recall whether they just powered through it or had another measure though.
I measure it at various times during the day either two hours after I’ve eaten or an hour before and of course first thing in the morning but you know with the dawn phenomenon I don’t rely on that too much