Not feeling ”ketosis”


(Kevin D ) #1

Hi. I started Keto 8 weeks ago. I was heading into Pre-diabetes when I started but it was not severe. I’ve been strict EVERY day without a single day of going past 5-6 carbs/day since starting keto.
I had the keto flu for 2 weeks, and until now, I dont feel ”full” when eating nor do I feel super satisfied? I’ve had a stable weight at 70kgs since starting.

I aint got no keto-breath and cant go more than 11-12hrs of fasting. I thought I would be in a deeper state of ketosis with mind-sharpness and not being kinda hungry all the time ?


#2

Are you tracking your intake minus the carbs? Being in your first 8 weeks it’s not normal to be at the same weight at all, you should have dumped typically around 10lbs from stored glycogen and overall subcutaneous water. Something you’re doing isn’t right. You also don’t have to be as low as 5-6g carbs for the benefits.


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #3

We’ll need more details about what and how much of it you’re eating before offering specific advice. Also details such as height, built, etc. As noted, though, you can usually expect some initial water loss. However, if your start weight is not great, and relatively lean overall, then I suppose you might not have had much glycogen and stored water. Still, after 8 weeks you can expect the scale to move so if not I agree something’s amiss. More details about yourself and exactly what you’re doing will help figure it out.


(Ethan) #4

What are you eating? Are you having a lot of dairy? Are you eating or drinking artificial sweeteners or sugar alternatives?


#5

That’s usually an electrolyte imbalance that can be easily avoided…


(Allie) #6

Still not had that since May 2015… :joy:

There’s no specific keto feeling, changes occur gradually, takes months for some.


(Kevin D ) #7

My height 180cm, 23y. Im fairly lean overall and didnt start Keto to lose weight, more so to control my blood sugar for some time, which I have successfully Done.

Im fairly sedentary, with some walking here and there. I land on approx. 2100kcal everyday, eating different things like eggs, cheese, ham chicken, sauces + taking vitamins and electrolytes. Keeping protein at 1g/kg a day

Im not miscalculating the carbs, barely landing on 5g carbs a day.

Im not saying im ”hungry hungry” between meals tho I could take in more if I wanted to. I do not have the ”so satisfied” feeling, nor do I have consistent energy if I dont eat.


#8

Not everyone gets all these benefits or not in the first months. I never had keto flu, keto breath, any change at mind clarity, euphoria, fat-loss, my energy stayed low-ish too etc. And super satiation/satisfaction isn’t guaranteed even on carnivore (I definitely didn’t have them on my normal keto but I ate way more carbs than you and they messed with me. but it’s individual how strict one should be for the benefits).

How much do you eat that you are hungry all the time? I was hungry on keto first - if I didn’t eat as much as before keto so I did just that so I was satiated most of the time. It will probably change soon, I guess you are just before fat adaptation…? But maybe you don’t eat enough or the right things, sometimes it’s very far from being trivial. Even the effect of fat adaptation varies. It did good to my hunger and satiation, they radically changed but I still need a lot of food on most days… Food choices are important. I can overeat on keto without feeling really satiated - it’s way harder on very low-carb for me but there are the items for that… Chicken and cheese satiates me and many other people poorly, for example. And we are all different to some extent.

It’s not that much for everyone. It was always 4lbs for me in the first years. I can imagine that someone with a fluctuating bodyweight (as it’s normal but mine tended to be super stable) can manage less. There are even people with less muscle than me though I really feel sorry for those poor souls.


#9

Agreed, but from a non keto just starting weight and being a dude I’m assuming a typical amount of muscle mass for a guy, Could be wrong.


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #10

Thanks for the additional info. Keto is a metabolic normalization process. If you are already at your ‘normal weight’, then you’re not going to lose weight from eating keto, aside from some water loss from glycogen when you start. And if you are lean rather than muscular the amount of water stored with glycogen could be little enough not to notice. So based on what you say, I think this is a non-issue.

As for subjective ‘keto feelings’ - don’t compare yourself to others. Many folks don’t experience any of the so-called keto stuff you mention. Many of us did not experience carb withdrawal (aka ‘keto flu’ - a misnomer!), nor increased ‘mind clarity’, nor reduced ‘brain fog’, nor increased energy. As for ‘keto breath’ - you don’t have that with a well-formulated nutritional ketogenic diet. You get that when you eat the very high fat of a therapeutic diet.

You’re 23 years old and relatively healthy. What did you expect? Many of us here wish we had learned about keto when we were 23 years old!

If you are indeed eating 5 grams or less carbs daily, you are in ketosis. Otherwise you’d be dead by now. Whether you feel any different or not. If you stay the course and keep yourself in ketosis consistently, your glucose/insulin problem will resolve itself. You indicate you’ve already got it under control and if so congratulations. Remain consistently in ketosis and it will remain under control.

Don’t be afraid to increase the amount you’re eating so you don’t feel hungry all day. 2100 calories is not all that much for a 23 year old male, even if your lifestyle is mostly sedentary. For example: I’m a 76 year old male with a moderately active lifestyle - I have a full-time job at Walmart that requires standing and a lot of walking and some lifting of heavy stuff during shifts - and I eat 2300 - 2700 calories per day. I have maintained my weight (145 pounds +/- a couple pounds) and BF (14-15%) 3 1/2 years. If you don’t have a lot of body fat, then don’t expect keto to immunize you against hunger if you don’t eat enough.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #11

Ah! If you are lean to begin with, then you won’t see much in the way of body recomposition. We are so used to having people join the Ketogenic Forums because they want to lose fat, that we tend to assume that’s everyone’s reason.

A well-formulated ketogenic diet is not a weight-loss diet, but a weight-normalisation diet. People often add muscle and strengthen their bones (added weight), even while shedding any excess stored fat they might have (lost weight).

So, to answer your initial questions. Since you are already at a good weight for your height, you will probably not see much physical change. You might find yourself getting a bit thinner, or you might not. Since you are eating this way primarily to reverse incipient Type II diabetes, the only real way to tell the effect of your diet is by bloodwork. The effects of ketosis can be subtle, and not everyone experiences the sudden burst of energy and mental clarity that some people describe.

If you were to have bloodwork done, we could give you some idea of whether your new way of eating has helped so far, especially if you have a pre-keto set of numbers to use as a baseline. Typically, we see fasting glucose and insulin drop, along with HbA1C (a measure of glycated haemoglobin) and C-peptide (a measure of insulin resistance). Inflammatory markers, such as white blood cell count, C-reactive protein, and ferritin tend to decline, as well. Blood pressure should drop into the normal range, and your resting heart rate should also become lower.

Lipid numbers tend to be more variable from ketonian to ketonian. In general, triglycerides drop, HDL rises, and LDL drops, but not always. Fasting triglycerides generally drop, since they are a measure of the amount of carbohydrate in the diet. HDL will rise when we eat enough saturated fat. LDL may actually even go up, but if the ratio of trigglycerides to HDL is low, the particle sizes are virtually guaranteed to be in the healthy pattern A, even if the number of particles has risen. (In American measurements, trig/HDL should be 2.0 or less; in everyone else’s measurements, 0.9 or less.)

Finally, as for your continuing hunger, look at the amount of food you are eating, and how much of it is fat. Fat contains twice as many calories per gram as carbohydrate and protein, so it doesn’t take as much to satisfy us as people often fear. Also, it has a minimal effect on insulin secretion, so dietary fat is a safe replacement for dietary cholesterol. Furthermore, if we stick to fats that are mostly saturated and monounsaturated (the exact opposite of current governmental guidelines), we can greatly reduce our level of systemic inflammation (polyunsaturates in the quantity generally recommended are highly inflammatory). So if you are getting a reasonable amount of protein (and most people have no need to worry about that) and eating fat to satiety, you should be fine. It can take a while for insulin to drop low enough for the appetite hormones to start working properly, so eat to satisfy your hunger and trust your body.


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #14

We disagree again, David.



18%20PM

Discussion:


#15

Many of us never can lose fat eating too many calories… And it makes perfect sense too.
CICO always works, it’s impossible not to but it doesn’t really means much on the outside in general as we can’t count CI and especially not CO. But if I don’t eat as little as I can, I never lose anything, it’s quite obvious to me (if I eat as little as I can on normal keto, that’s too much fat too, actually). I can accept that many people works in interesting ways so their carb intake significantly effects their CO. My body doesn’t care. And of course, we are not calorimeters but I am close enough to that. Closer than my ability to figure out my energy balance, it’s a forever mistery! I eat fatty meat, I can’t even track my CI and that’s the way easier side as our metabolism can do interesting things (mine too, it’s not like I necessarily gain if I suddenly eat 1000 kcal more for a month, I tried. I don’t believe in the simple, stupid, wrong CICO, it’s a highly complicated one that works. but even the simple one works well enough for many people if the CI is in the right range. and totally fail for many others, yes). But it’s fine, avoiding carbs actually does the trick if I do it well enough. Lucky me. Some people gain fat or stall on carnivore even when they need to lose fat. Though some people starve but it’s satiation and desire topic, not CICO.
Our own experiences easily matter more if it’s about our own fat-loss than articles about some other people. Well, to me, at least, I am fine with people believing they are just like the average one in experiments or that there are no interesting less known individual factors… It’s impossible to test things really well as there are just way too many factors. Even using the same macros, it probably matters if we are satiated all day or hungry all day… IDK but I can imagine the body would function a bit differently.
If just eating less carbs would work, we wouldn’t have all the people who can’t lose on keto.

But I am aware we on the two sides never will persuade each other :slight_smile:

Oh and overeating isn’t healthy even if it’s keto. So I am sure we should avoid that.