Plateau and reversals

#1

I am at a loss here. Everytime I do Keto I track my carbs, my calories, i exercise, and I give it ample amount of time.

I lose 5-10 pounds maybe even as much as 15 pounds, and then the weight loss slows, and slows, and slows, until I am no longer losing anything. I usually sit there at a plateau for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, and then I start gaining weight.

The only way I have found myself able to stave off the weight gain is to eat less and less. Obviously I come to a cross roads eventually where I am unable to continue this fight without giving up eating.

Fasting and intermittent fasting appears to speed up this viscous cycle for me as well. I don’t know what is going on with this. I feel like I’m fucked if I try and fucked if I don’t.
I have been here on the forums for over 2 years now and I am the same weight today, as I was 2 years ago when I started this circular journey.

I feel as though I am constantly treading water in a sea of failure. Every victory is quickly met with weight regained.

I do not have macros to show you, I do not have logs to show you. I deleted it all, I removed all of my apps that I was using to track and I am done with them. They are either inaccurate, I am unable to do basic math, or this just isn’t working for me.

idk where to go from here, I think if I am going to be fat then I am going to go back to enjoying eating rice and beans. I am going to go back to being able to enjoy eating fruit, and enjoy living my life unrestricted. Everyone on my mothers side of the family is fat and dead by 70. My mom and her sister struggled with weight all their lives, idk why I figured it would be any different for me.

/rant done

(Julie Barron) #2

Sorry that you are frustrated, and that does sound frustrating. I’d be curious to hear from the more seasoned members of the board, but what comes to mind first off for me is that your body is adapting, and you need to change things up. I’ve been following a program called Metabolic Factor that recommends a “carb feast” every four days, for just that reason. You can of course play with the timing of the carb feast, and the amounts. It’s not necessarily meant to be a real pig out of junk food, but may include a starchy veggie or something you normally wouldn’t have, to “spike” levels of things like leptin and kick-start your metabolism again. I find, surprisingly, that often my weight has gone down the next morning, though not always. I would also recommend reading “The Obesity Code” because it has a lot of great information, especially debunking the calories in/calories out debate. It sounds like you are starving yourself. Good luck.

#3

That’s your RMR slowing down. What are you doing for exercise? Not never ending cardio I hope?

That’s the calorie trap. Your metabolism slows down and you’re no longer at a deficit. You drop it even more which puts you back at one, then it adapts to that. It’s a viscous cycle.

EXACTLY what happened to me, IF and Fasting took a bad problem and made it WAY worse for me as well!

Put the apps back in and start tracking, you’re going to need data to fix this! You need to reverse diet and get your metabolism restarted. It takes a while but it works. My last RMR reading was 1700! That’s for an over 200lb dude, who lifts 4-5x week, does cardio 2-3x week and has a physical job. That was less than a year ago. Haven’t been able to get back in and test again because of the world going to hell but right now I’m still slowly loosing and eating ~3000cals/day. It works!

That’s because they either didn’t know what they were doing or possibly didn’t care. Our genes push us into some directions sometimes but they don’t dictate our future. Them being overweight doesn’t condemn you to anything!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #4

Dr. Phinney advises that people feeling stalled should first cut their carbohydrate intake. If that doesn’t work, he says, the next thing to try is increasing fat intake. On no account, he says, should we increase carbohydrate.

(Ken) #5

This is a very reasonable strategy. MY recommendation is to make sure you have a day or two between significant carb intakes to make sure you never fill up your glycogen, which takes quite a few carbs. Carbs for metabolic purposes increase the more someone is physically active, but being aware of liver glycogen is always necessary. Many people save the carbs for the Weekend and are successful at fat loss., myself included.

(Bunny) #6

Water?

I would question:

Am I losing water weight (stored glycogen)?

Am I actually losing body fat as opposed to losing water weight or muscle mass?

Nothing wrong with rice and beans, it is when you eat too much rice and beans at once without fasting a bit between eating windows, people who eat rice, beans and fish (high natural iodine diet) live the longest with no health problems at all, and beyond into there 100’s, no Alzheimer’s, diabetes, bone loss, cancer etc., there are countless number of centenarian people in one of the countries I’m native to in South America and that’s all they eat is rice, beans and corn tortillas from real stone ground corn but they mix ash and lime with it which is the main staple of their diet and has something to do with their longevity…

Footnotes:

[1] Nixtamalization: Lime and Wood Ash; Not only do ash and lime contain minerals, but mixed in water they create an alkaline solution that interacts chemically with corn. This frees up essential amino acids and niacin that would otherwise be locked in the grain. Nixtamalization also softens the corn, making it the easier to digest and process into flour.

#7

thank you for the feedback, guys. I am just feeling very discouraged.

I actually stopped avoiding carbs about 2 weeks ago. my weight didn’t really change adding them back in (not eating garbage)

but, it just feels like keto will get me to lose a little for a bit, but then my body just gets used to being on keto and goes right back to the weight I was.

I have been 160-170 since 2015. Every attempt to lower it either has no effect, or only temporarily brings it down. I am female/33/5’4"

before i joined the military I was 115 easy all the time, joined the army gained a bunch of mass and was up to about 130-140. Stayed there for almost the entire time i was in the Army. When I came home from deployment I had gone through a lot of really traumatic events, both on deployment and after, that left me with severe depression. I went through surgery and gained about 10-20 pounds during recovery. putting me at about 150-155. I stayed there for my last year in the military and was constantly told I was fat and needed to lose weight.

which is when I started trying to lose weight. I did the typical eat less move more. I worked out really hard and ate healthy food, all I could do was maintain my weight. So when I got out of the army, my weight slowly just crept up till I hit about 175-180. that was my heaviest, after I gave up on even trying anymore and was doing and eating whatever I wanted.

I said I would get my life together and I started moving more and eating less. again it just stalled the weight but never actually brought it down. I found hte only way to lower my weight was to starve myself. So I did and it worked. I got down to about 165 by not eating for 9 days straight. I have since then juggled with keto cycles to try and keep it there and potentially bring it lower.

I spent a lot of time fixing my matab and accepting that my weight would go back up, and it did. I brought it back down “the right way” “the Keto way” and for the first year I did that, it worked. But whenever I got to about 155-160 the weight loss would jsut stop. I would stall for months at a time, never breaking the stall and losing anything for more than a few days. I tried everything from 0 carb to intermittent fasting, and extended fasting.

The only way i was able to break that stall was the extended fasts(starving myself again) which would get me down a little bit lower about 150. Then the cycle of calorie reduction and gaining weight would start to happen.

I am at wits end, I am so depressed and unhappy with my body. I have had my thyroid checked and all that is normal. I honestly have gotten to the point of becoming suicidal and starve myself out of self hate to just lose anything. I am at the point where I would accept losing muscle mass and water just to see the scale under 160 again.

the weight causes joint pain, problems with my feet, problems with my self image and self value. The Army taught me being fat is not acceptable. When i was 150 my Sgt told me I was a “skinny fat person” because I held my weight in the right places so i could always pass tape but that I didn’t deserve to.

Even when I was a Keto zealot when I was in school I stalled and I stayed stalled for 6 months. I finally caved and ate carbs and I didn’t see a weight reversal for over 4 weeks eating garbage. slowly then it came back and then when i tried to turn back to keto again, it didn’t work that time (this time)

(Ken) #8

Fairly typical pattern for Metabolic issues, fairly easily fixed. When I had them, it took a couple of weeks of adding some carbs back in to get to normal. Then, I was able to eat limited weekend carbs to keep things going.

No reason you can’t get back to where you were in the Past. I’m a little lighter than when I was in High School, and eventually will be down to when I was an Airborne Ranger.

#9

Maybe I just dont understand what I should be doing. If i’m being strict with myself and adhering to what “should” be working, and it’s not. Then I know something that is actually wrong.

When I figure out my BMR I often have a hard time actually knowing what it REALLY is. Since I have caused damage to it first off, and second off what I consider to be light or heavy exercise is subjective.

Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is: 1,501

This assuming I am just existing (which 50% of the time is fairly accurate right now lol) Should I be eating this much? should I be reducing this? how does one lose weight without a deficit?

I struggle with many forms of exercise due to injuries from deployment so though I do exercise it’s typically in the form of walking or dumb bells because high impact or long periods on my feet cause a lot of pain and inflammation.

I think part of the reason this has been so difficult is even my apps that are designed for Keto (Carb Manager) is trying to say I should eat 1200 calories a day

#10

I don’t know why you aren’t lose fat more permanently, I don’t even know all the infos but there are very baffling cases anyway… Tricky and I understand you are exasperated. At least when I stall for years, I know it’s due to eating too much. It’s so simple for me.

Often? That’s great, I never know it, it can’t be calculated… I have a vague idea about my energy need based on my fat-loss in the past (I suspect it didn’t change much since then) and as I had close to zero activity back then, it must be close to my BMR. But even for someone who just sits at home, the energy need is higher than the BMR. Just not by much.

Deficit is needed, at least my body surely doesn’t waste precious reserves without need, it seems very weird to imagine others are different… But having a more or less vague number for your calorie intake and a mere guess for your energy need is often not enough to decide when you get a deficit.
My stats are very similar, same height, same heighest weight ever, I stall with a bit lower weight but I am older, I have little muscles and I tend to eat a lot. 1500 is a bit low for me on my strictest, best woe but short women often eat less. 1200? Never. Apps are idiots. Someone decided every woman need to eat 1200 kcal to lose fat, NO MATTER WHAT. It’s obviously idiotic, ignore that. The world is full with advice that doesn’t work and even harmful for your individual case, warnings from apps about things that are perfectly fine… The program I used for tracking told me I need to eat X calories to maintain. Nope, I said, ate way more and lost fat. They aren’t reliable. Maybe you won’t lose fat eating as much as the average one, I don’t know. But 1200 kcal? The app doesn’t know you, it has no idea how much you should eat. And it’s not always all about the calories (well I think it is but in a very complex way. 1200 this way or that way may give different results even if both are keto. I don’t have this but many people seems to do).

Walking is good too, I am sure it helps me in various ways especially if I do it a lot but for fat-loss, my eating must be okay, no surprise…

How much did you eat on keto before when you lost fat? Maybe it was too little? Or too fixed? I can’t know if it helps me but whenever I eat at a deficit, I tend to automatically have a higher-calorie day now and then. It feels right and maybe it helps keeping my metabolism normal, not slowing (more than it does due to fat-loss if that happens), it sounds logical to me.

Good luck, I hope you will find some good method soon, you are so much more disciplined than me, you deserve more results…

#11

i agree, i think i have been under eating. If i just eat when i am hungry and eat the amount that “feels” right it’s somewhere between 1500-1700 depending on how much exercise i had been doing.

So trying to force myself to stay around 1200 was really hard and i was only able to do that when I was doing intermittent fasting and eating the 1200ish in one big meal. I will do what i can to try and fix it. I just feel really lost, all the info I see online tell me to eat too little and im too afraid to eat more out of fear of getting fatter and then not getting my weight down again.

(Rebecca ) #12

Thank you for your service. Please don’t be so hard on yourself…you are divinely and wonderfully made…

(Julie Barron) #13

Could you elaborate on this- "I was able to eat limited weekend carbs to “keep things going.” Meaning, carb cycling to jolt your metabolism?

(Julie Barron) #14

It may help you to read “The Obesity Code” to understand why a calorie deficit doesn’t work. That might give you the confidence to eat more and not starve yourself.

(Bunny) #15

I would agree with that but when your relaying information to a person who may be sedentary they have to eat to a deficit because they see no point in pumping a barbell occasionally so they can eat more without gaining a pound.

They will in-turn eat more protein and create more insulin and from a Dr. Fung perspective “it’s about hormones and not being insulin sensitive?” but insulin likes to make more testosterone, which is then transformed into even more estrogen by fat tissue in the belly so maybe get rid of the fat first by increasing muscle volume with that extra bit of testosterone insulin likes to make and lift some weight or get some resistance training once a week?

(Ken) #16

Sure. There are two levels of this. If performing high volume weight training, I would aim for total glycogen recompensation, which when following a CKD which would mean eating a extra days worth of.carbs over a 36 hour period. When eating the carbs in either case you eat low fat so as to avoid the synergistically increased insulin spike of the carbs and fat combination. If not training heavily, its simply a matter of flipping the carbs and fat macros for a day or.two while keeping calories.at Maintenance levels. Typically that’s what I do now, with one day of it midweek and another day of it on the weekend. Just doing it on both the weekend days is fine too. You just have to experiment a bit to see what works. Start out with one weekend day at first, then you can always adjust.

For you it’s kind of a diceroll since you’ve only been doing this for three months, usually metabolic issues take a.little longer to show up. The major exception to this are athletes with already fairly low fat levels and no resistance issues. An example would be Bodybuilders using Keto as a.precompetition cut. In their case metabolic issues.can occur in a relatively short time. For others it varies. When I was.massivly obese and not training it took about two years and a 180 lb. fat loss before they occurred.