Only a week in

(Jim) #1

Hi, I have suffered from anxiety depression and insomnia for years, practically crippling me most days. I decided to change diet to see what would happen.
I have been measuring and logging all my macros like some paranoid conspiracy theorist and am under 50g quite easy each day.
I still like like utter crap but I do every day anyways. At moment just feeling very lethargic.
I bought a keto mojo ketone device and unfortunately it is faulty so they have sent a replacement, even though I have been told this is best on the market.
I’m pretty sure I am not in ketosis at moment as I haven’t noticed any real change or symptoms of ketosis but it’s probably far too early anyways. Hopefully will start feeling a change soon.
Thanks

(Joey) #2

Welcome to the forum and congrats on trying to seriously take control of your well being.

Yes, it’s still pretty early, and you’ll likely get some thoughts on carb levels, staying properly hydrated, the benefits (and distractions) of keto measurements, and lots more around here.

Do your research and stay the course long enough to really draw meaningful conclusions about how you’re responding. It takes a lot more time than many folks appreciate to turn around years of poor health issues.

:vulcan_salute:

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #3

Hello and welcome :blush:

Initial effects of Keto are probably different for everyone. For the 1st month I went through periods of elation and limitless energy followed by periods of weakness.
Overall health benefits for most people are striking … I would expect you to be no different. Stay with it. And if you can go even lower on the carbs!

(KM) #4

Welcome to keto-land!

Make sure you’re getting enough salt, and don’t under-eat. Plenty of fat, plenty of protein, eat to satiety, and eat when you’re hungry. Getting to be a “fat adapted ketovore” is done in steps, it’s easy to want to jump start the process but that can leave you feeling lousy and discouraged. You can do this!

#5

Forget all the mental and tech acrobatics. All you need to work on is 20 carbs a day, and staying well sated, never hungry, and feeding your body plenty of animal fat so it can learn to switch from using carbs for energy to using fat for energy. Once that happens, things start falling into place, no hunger, no cravings, less desire to eat. That’s the point you want to start working towards your other health objectives, just accomplish Keto first.

We just don’t want you to fall of the wagon while your horse is still in training.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #6

You don’t say how long you’ve been eating ketogenically, but give it time. It is possible, of course, that you are insulin-resistant enough that the insulin response to 50 g/day of carbs is keeping you out of ketosis, so it might not hurt to try a week or two of keeping total carb intake under 20 g/day. If that doesn’t work, then we can take a look at your diet and your general situation to see if we can spot any potential pifalls.

When we drop our carb intake low enough, we enter ketosis within 24-48 hours. Keto-adaptation, or fat-adaptation, as it is also called, takes longer, about six to eight weeks. This is an adaptation that occurs in the skeletal muscles, so a little temporary weakness or drop in athletic performance is to be expected during that time.

Mental reactions to a ketogenic diet tend to vary and are often slow to appear. It is known that the brain does just fine on a high level of ketones, but that doesn’t always translate into being able to toss away your anti-psychotic, your anti-depressant, your L-dopa, or whatever.

My advice would be to give things some time, lower your carb intake even further, if necessary, and see what happens. Keep an eye out for the Health forums to appear. It is locked against bot searches and spammers, but once the forum trusts you (and that should take only a day or two, if you participate actively in the forums), it will give you access to that forum. You’ll find plenty of useful information there.

(David Cooke) #7

Apparently some people can go into ketosis at 50g carb daily, but this isn’t a general rule. Go through your meal items and tick off the ones taking you above 20 - 25g, and stick with it for a month or two. My wife complains about my breath when I’m in ketosis, which is the best indicator I know.
It isn’t a quick fix, but some things will start to improve after a few weeks. You can experiment with higher carbs in a month or two, and you’ll probably find yourself cycling into and out of ketosis as required later on.

#8

Welcome and good luck to find your sweet spot! :slight_smile:

I am very sure there are no general noticeable symptoms for ketosis as I I don’t feel any different (I was already pretty healthy on high-carb, that probably matters…), fat adaptation and going very low with plant carbs were the things bringing very significant changes (sadly, my energy level stayed lowish, more energy isn’t guaranteed… but I got other nice benefits)… So it’s quite individual. You may not get from ketosis what others do.

It’s very much possible 50g carbs is too much for you to reach ketosis (when I had water weight changes when I went in/out of ketosis, I could see I can have a generous amount of carbs but not quite that much… some people can go higher, some need to be super low, the common 20g carb limit works for the majority of people) but you may have changes later…
Or you may need to go further like many of us. Mere keto may not be enough. But it’s probably a good start :slight_smile:

Hunger is individual too but ketosis and at least in my case, fat adaptation helps with it. It tends to get softer (did you ever had that sharp, strong, attention seeking, food demanding but RIGHT AWAY hunger? I occasionally did before fat adaptation. and then I didn’t. awesome. I still need to eat right to get the tolerable type of hunger and big meals are important for long lasting satiation but it’s still a huge difference since then, even on my carby days. fat adaptation doesn’t just disappear when you go off a bit, at least my experiences show that. eventually it goes away but I couldn’t stay off keto if I wanted and I never wanted that) and I already wrote in the parentheses about the tolerable type where you get hunger but it’s more like a warning sign to eat some time in the not too distant future but no hurry is needed, it’s not suffering… Even soft hunger can be insistent but this cute hunger isn’t like that. Sometimes it even goes away for a while. Freedom.

But I suppose it’s different for everyone. And strong, intolerable hunger is still possible but I only get it during/right after a meal if I happen to eat too little and my body wants more. Very good communication, no problem with that, some of us need bigger meals (and satiating items). But I don’t get those annoying weird hunger attacks when I am well-fasted and it’s very precious to me :slight_smile:

So, try to go lower than 50g carbs a day - but if it’s the best you can do for now, try to do that a bit later. Some people need low total carbs too but let’s not complicate things for now. But 50g carbs is too much for the majority of us. Even if you can’t do less all the time, it can be useful to try now and then. And if your body is okay with that, you just don’t know to stop the incoming carbs (some people think carbs are in everything while it’s easy to make a meal plan of less than 3g carbs a day, actually… it’s another matter to stick to it but many items don’t or barely have carbs), ask us, we surely will have ideas. Like meat. But eggs aren’t very carby either. Many cheeses are zero carb…etc. Sorry, my chosen woe is carnivore-ish so usually animal items come to mind but they are good at being close to zero carb, plants are way worse so they should be eaten in moderation. So if you focus on animal protein (with more or less fat), the majority and possibly the really important part of your food may contain little carbs, you add some plants carefully and still stay below 20g or 30g carbs or whatever is needed for you to go to ketosis.

I could write so much more but I better stop already.

Good luck, again! This is a nice forum, it can help you, with support, knowledge, advice. Of course, we say things working for us or many people but it doesn’t mean it will work for you. So in the end, you should think, decide, listen to your individual body, try out for yourself… But we can give you tips and tell you if what you have is normal. Keto can be great but it’s not magic and you need to get used to it, physically, mentally… Especially if you came from high-carb (I couldn’t do keto out of high-carb, it felt absolutely awful - and it turned out my body loves and maybe needs very low-carb… so it was for me but the change still was too huge).

(KM) #9

The title of their post is " only a week in".

(Marianne) #10

Welcome!

In the beginning, I tracked my macros for a month or so until I got a pretty good idea of the carbs, protein and fat grams in my most commonly eaten foods. I think it is helpful to give you a better idea of where you are on any given day. It’s not forever. I’d suggest ditching the ketone measuring devices. They can be off by a lot and cause you to feel you are doing something wrong or worse yet, not doing this correctly. If you keep the carbs under 20g/day, you will be in ketosis. To keep my carbs low, I ate clean, one ingredient foods (okay if you combine them), and usually would confine my vegetable intake to one or two meals a day. Even then, I ate veggies low in carbs like romaine, cabbage, a few brussels sprouts, etc.

Good luck to you. Eat well and to satiety and let the days pass. Try to spend more time doing things you actually enjoy and not hyper focus on macros, food, the scale, or things that can sabotage your progress.

(Jim) #11

OK guys, I just checked the keto mojo for a reading and it reads 4.2 glucose and 1.8 Ketones. Apparently anything above 1.5 ketones means something called ketoacidosis. Should I be worried???

#12

Hello Jim. Those readings are fine. I am going to think that the units are ‘mmol/L’.

Ketoacidosis occurs when your body can not produce insulin. Your body does because the blood glucose reading is good. Ketoacidosis is a concern when you have high blood glucose and high ketones.

What is actually happening is that you are in nutritional ketosis. Congratulations you are on your way to better health

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #13

No. ketoacidosis is a concern for type 1 diabetes. These test, including the urine strips etc are designed as a warning for people withT1.

Sorry Franko … posted at the same moment. I must seem so rude

(KM) #14

if the test is measuring mmol/L (millimoles per liter), you don’t have to worry about ketoacidosis unless it’s up around 16.

Part of the confusing issue is that if you’re simply eating SAD with lots of carbohydrate and no fasting periods (which is what all these warnings assume), there shouldn’t be measurable ketones in blood or urine. So a measure of 3 would be of concern IF you’re not doing anything to put them there.

Once you don’t have sugar in your blood or muscles to burn for energy, your body switches over to making ketones from fat, but it shouldn’t do that if there’s lots of glucose to use.

(Jim) #15

Thanks for all your responses, fantastic feedback from everyone, especially as a complete noob like myself needing guidance. Much appreciated, I honestly wasn’t expecting the level of enthusiasm and feedback. :slight_smile:

(KM) #16

:grin: We’re a pretty nice bunch.

I just wanted to say that “carbohydrate”, “starch”, “sugar”, “glucose” and “glycogen” are pretty much all referring to the same thing; the nutrient that is not fat and not protein. The definition of each is a little different, but for general discussion purposes you don’t need to panic about not knowing one vs another.

(Jim) #17

I relapsed yesterday and went over my carb limit, I ate around 100g of carbs, and yet somehow I tested again this morning and my ketones went up from 2.4 to 3.4, and my glucose is exact same at 4.4.
I use a keto mojo but just how accurate are these things???

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #18

I’m sure that’s possible, I did similar in the beginning, but it won’t last. And the problem with carbs is the more you eat, the more you want, the more you crave.
I’m not familiar with your Mojo so can’t comment.

#19

How is your hunger?

Higher blood ketones at the start until the internal cell engineering can adjust to accepting and using the ketones as a fuel source. Initially, though, the blood ketones may help in hunger regulation by signalling that energy is available despite a blood glucose under 4.5 mmol/L.

#20

I often experience the opposite so it depends… One should figure out their own type and act accordingly.