Possible Stall. Not Sure

(Dan) #1

35 Male, 5’10" 277lbs. Been on Keto since March. I have been at 277 since Mid December. It may go up to 278 and back down to 276. I am happy to not have gained any weight. I started at 260 so I am happy with my progress. Is it possible I am at where my body wants to be at? I know “ideal” weight for my height is 165-175. I haven’t changed what I have been eating. I have been doing IF since October and eat OMAD or TMAD. Thank you in advance.

#2

Keto isn’t magic (just like OMAD isn’t), you don’t necessarily reach your ideal or close ideal weight just because you are in ketosis, calories still matter, many of us experience that. Of course it’s not this simple but it’s unrealistic to think eating any amount is fine and will result in fat-loss if there is something to lose. Sometimes it’s very tricky and some problematic food items interfere even if the food intake doesn’t seem off.
You surely have fat to lose (you wouldn’t ask this if you was a steroid user with huge muscles so there must be lots of excess fat there) and if your body has silly ideas, it should get corrected… But I doubt a “smart” body wants this. Some excess fat instead of a slim body, that’s understandable, some extra fat might have some use but too much… I would think you eat too much to lose fat, people do that on keto in many cases, eating huge amounts of fat but as I wrote, some people experience odd things with interfering items. Maybe you need to go lower with your carbs. I can’t know.

(Robert C) #3

Did you mean 360 down to 277?

Assuming that is the case - one possibility is that you’ve slowed your metabolism eating keto foods. 360 down to 277 in March to December is an average of 2 pounds lost per week. That is possible with keto but unlikely - the first 2 or 3 months of fat adaptation don’t usually amount to much of a change after an initial water weight change and usually there are plateaus. But a slowed metabolism (if that is the case) won’t let you lose any more fat.

Ignoring that possibility - the other reasons you can get hung up on far-too-high a weight are:

  • High stress
  • Poor sleep
  • No exercise or excessive exercise

These can counter the hormone changes keto gives you - stopping downward progress.

Another thing you might do - to help keep you going on the positive track - is to get your blood numbers. With that weight loss and being on keto, you should be getting some good news.

This also could be an issue - dairy, artificial sweeteners, counting only net carbs on non-whole foods etc. are traps that can keep you from progress. Maybe do a deep dive into exactly what you are really eating and some selective elimination to see if it moves the needle.

(Paulene ) #4

Maybe it’s time to do just that? Drop carbs, increase fat (within reason), bit more exercise… mix it up, try something else.

#5

First of congrats on all that weight loss, (assuming you were 360 and not 260). That’s amazing! Be happy if you just keep all that off… I find it is easy to keep itoff with lchf/keto diet.

If you are eating the same now at 277 as you were at 360, realize heavier people burn many more calories per day than a lighter person. So you might have reached equilibrium with your current caloric intake.

Maybe cut the carbs and/or protein a bit more to see if weight loss continues? How many grams of net carbs are you eating per day? How many grams of protein?

(Windmill Tilter) #6

Congrats on an amazing weight drop (like other’s I’m assuming you started at 360). The more info you can give, the better the answers will be. A couple questions:

  1. Are you tracking calories/macros? If so, post a week’s worth of data, or a “typical day”
  2. Are you measuring waist & hip with a tape measure?
  3. Are you exercising? If so, what do you do in a typical week?
  4. Tell about the food you eat in a typical week. The more specific the better. Everything.
  5. How many hours of sleep did you average per night? How often do you sleep poorly. Describe.
(Scott) #7

The way I see it not gaining is a victory in itself. Rather than starting with push to create a calorie deficit I would carefully calculate what you are ingesting at your new weight and lower a bit if you are overeating but don’t go so low that you are getting into a large deficit.

Start looking into carbs, especially sneaky carbs. I used to chew a lot of sugar free gum. Sounds safe but it was adding up to 10g carbs daily. If I was going to restrict anything it would be carbs.

Snacking, are you eating between meals? If yes you should stop. Eat more fat during meals if needed and if hungry try popping some salt in your mouth to take the edge off. I do this once or twice a morning.

Try adding some exercise if you like. When the weather is bad or cold you can do planks. When I was doing 15 minutes of planks each morning it was a good workout and made my stomach feel tight. As I lost weight it help my overall tone improve. Congrats on your good work thus far.

#8

HI!

but thing is it was a major holiday…did you eat a few more things than normal, a bit higher in carbs etc?

It is now after the holidays so ALL I WOULD say to you is tighten up your keto back to your beginning stages…you know when you watched ALL that went into your mouth, all that you ate and how you felt great eating.

Back to basics probably is all you need!! We can very very easily carb creep up a bit, have that day we say, oh just a little bit of this or that because of whatever and while we swear we are on plan and doing nothing truly different, we are but in that sneaky bad way…LOL

go back…back to the basic foods you started with. back to the basics of all you did when you started and had a very tight control over how you ate and why you ate that way to feel great.

Plus remember, your body is healing internally. So while you stop losing some lbs and if you lost good pds. well, that releases toxins into your body thru that fat release, our body has to catch up with our losses and heal from that actually…so downtime not losing is your body changing and processing and healing up so when it does catch up with all that, you start to lose again.

I think and bet you are fine if you wait a bit, tighten up that food and hit basics again and just chill thru it. You are doing fine!!!

(Dan) #9

Thanks for all the advice. I started at 260 and am at 177. Sorry for the Typo

(Dan) #10

I haven’t been tracking calories. I have been tracking carbs. It may be the artificial sweetener in the diet soda I have with my lunch. I do track carbs and keep that to 20 grams or less. I have been doing the eat when I am hungry and eat till I am full. Which works out to OMAD or TMAD. It may be time to track calories.
There is some excess fat in my stomach but not a lot. I am also not working out. It may help to start that.

(Windmill Tilter) #11

Here’s my two cents:

I asked if you were exercising because frequently when people post about stalls, they’re often exercising 4-5 days a week. If you’re trying to lose weight, exercise often does more harm than good. The first rule of keto is “eat to satiety”. Exercise scrambles satiety signals for an awful lot of people. Making yourself extremely hungry on a high calorie density diet doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I do track calories and I also eat to satiety, and I often hit 5000kcal after I do my once per week weight training. Guess how much weight I’d lose lifting 3 days a week?

That said, exercise is great for pretty much everything else but weight loss. My advice is generally to exercise only to the extent that you can continue to lose weight. The balance between exercise and weight loss is different for everybody, and the only way to figure it out is to add a bit of exercise, and slowly increase it until weight loss stalls. You might be one of the unicorns who can exercise every day and still lose weight.

If you are 5’ 10", and you weigh 176lbs, you’re getting pretty close to ideal weight. Weight loss is going to slow down considerably no matter what you do at this point. You can try to force the weight off with calorie restriction, but you will regret it. Your metabolism has already been through a hell of a lot just dropping 100lbs in less than a year. That’s not a bear you really want to poke right now. Most people who lose 100lbs regain it within a few years. You don’t want to be that guy.

My advice would be to just to KCKO. The fat is going to start dropping off more slowly now. Add in a weight training workout once per week to build a bit of muscle. Read “Body by Science” if you want a dead simple, 20 minute per week plan. Lots of folks here do that workout and it gets results with as little fuss as possible. You can clean up your diet and drop out things like artificial sweeteners to try to move the needle a bit, but you’re best bet now is just to cruise in to the finish line slowly over the next year.

Congrats again on losing 100lbs!

(J.P. Wells) #12

My first guess is you are eating more than you might realize. I actually did this for a while where I began intermittent fasting as a way to cut calorie intake, and speed up the process. Howevr without even realizing it I subconsciously began eating more at lunch and at dinner. I had no idea till I saw zero results, and a friend suggest I try to go back to the old meal prep schedule where I weighed everything out the night before, and physically saw the serving size difference compared to what I had been eating. It’s really easy to miss. Perhaps get a food scale and weigh out your meals now and see exactly where you’re at for daily calories. Update us on how you’re doing as you progress.

J.P. Wells

(Scott) #13

Ahh, I missed that you are getting close to ideal weight. As soon as I got to less than ten pounds to ideal weight my brakes locked up. I could do more about it but as long as I am maintaining I am just kind of going along with it. Occasionally I get board and do some minor changes to see what happens. This week I started eliminating cheese and heavy cream in my eggs but I also added an extra egg for the fun of it. So far my scale is showing a 2% drop in BF so I will watch and wait.