Slow weight loss on keto

newbies
food
excerise
(Maria Cruz) #1

Hi everyone,

I am new to this group. I started my keto journey on the 7th October 2020. So far i have lost 4 kg.

my weight loss seems to have slowed down dramatically. Please can someone advise not sure if i am doing something wrong.

  1. i eat 1700 calories a day
  2. I am not the most active person at the moment due to covid, but i walk my dogs twice a day and try to play netball once a week depending on government rules.
  3. I fast from 6pm until 12 the next day every day

I am loosing about 0.5kg’s a month.

I drink alot of water (3L a day), my lips get very dry. Why is my weigh loss so slow ? is this normal ? am i not exercising enough to see progress ?

Thanks
Maria

(Alec) #2

Maria
Can you pls give us a few more details:

  1. How heavy are you now?
  2. What is your weight goal?
  3. What are you eating?
  4. How old are you?
  5. Are you hungry? If so, when?
  6. Do you think you are fat adapted?

Exercise is not necessary for keto to work, and can actually be counterproductive. So don’t worry about exercise.
Cheers
Alec

(Maria Cruz) #3

Hi Alec,

  1. I am now 76kg
  2. Goal weight is 70kg (this is what i use to be until 5 years ago)
  3. food is 70% fat (cheese/cream etc) - protein -20% - chicken/fish/sea food - random occasion of pork belly and gammon (this was for christmas day only) - i also weigh everything i eat and i try hard to track it on my fitness pal (i am not great at tracking but i could get better) - eat about 20g of macadamia nuts. I use butter/ olive oil to cook. Overall i am of the opinion my nutrition is good. i bake my own keto rolls when required.
  4. age - 42 in a few days
  5. Yes i am hungry daily about mid day - i try hard not to eat after 6pm but some times i do get a little hungry
  6. Yes definitely fat adapted. - on my nutrition i can stick to 20g of fat effortlessly. I also have a blood machine to measure ketosis. i have only managed to stay in the sweet spot of 2.0 for a week.

Thanks this does put me at ease (on the exercise) - when i do exercise, i noticed i have stopped sweating. i dont even get a light perspiration.

Thanks for the reply Alec! much appreciated.

Thanks
Maria

#4

I doubt the exercise is the problem as you walk and eat little anyway… If you would be hungry below 3000 kcal on your most satiating woe, I would say you probably need exercise (but more exercise is usually good, I like to walk and lift too, I just need to incorporate cardio somehow but I don’t like that so it didn’t happen yet. I do these for health but they are probably important for my fat-loss as well as I can’t eat little enough otherwise)… Your height and weight would be useful information but there are individual factors we can’t even measure… [Oh you wrote that since. So TINY fat-loss is needed, that’s fine, slow fat-loss is perfect then!]
What do you eat exactly? Many people say they experience lack of fat-loss if they eat certain items… [I don’t care about this anymore, you probably do it right? The protein is a bit low to me but it easily may be enough for you, I am just a bit paranoid and like protein so I am used to bigger numbers in grams (I had to calculate, percentages are usually irrelevant).]

Water can’t be a problem, well there is water retention but that has some reason, not just drinking much, a healthy person don’t retain it unnecessarily. 3L is a pretty normal amount.

Maybe you focus too much on your intake… If you get satiated with your food, can’t just eating to satiation (and similarly to how you ate this far) work for you? You seem to eat properly as far as I can tell…

Sorry I just read things… Hunger doesn’t sound good but if it’s little, it may be fine…? I don’t like hunger (even lack of perfect satiation) so I usually tweak my timing and food choices instead. It took years to me though so I understand you aren’t patient enough for that… But maybe you noticed already that some food satiates you better than others…? I quickly noticed such things, I am merely undisciplined to use this information fully.

You surely meant 20g carbs in point 6. :slight_smile: But what does it have to do with fat adaptation? I didn’t change regarding that when I got fat adapted… Whatever, it’s good you can go below 20g easily, I couldn’t do it at all for years and it turned out I needed that, ketosis and fat adaptation wasn’t enough. Some people need to go even lower.

I doubt I was helpful but maybe I said some new things? I wish you good luck!!!

(Maria Cruz) #5

thanks for this @Shinita sorry yes i did mean 20g of carbs! Perhaps i should just be patient. I use to lift as well at the gym but since keto i find that i am not that strong anymore. I have a good amount of muscle - the focus is just to shift the kg’s and fat that i have acquired over the last 5 years.

You did mention a few good things that i need to pay attention to. Thank you for this :slight_smile: - i am so new to this.

(Marianne) #6

Sounds like you are doing well. I am finding the last 10-15 lbs. come off more slowly. My suggestions are to cut out the high calorie/low benefit items - heavy cream, macademia nuts, etc., and to eat two meals a day (because you say you can get “hungry”). I gave up eating one meal a day and fasting, because I really didn’t like doing either. I enjoy eating too much, and I wasn’t overdoing it. For a few weeks or so, you may want to try eating breakfast of 3 eggs in butter with 1-2 pieces of bacon, and see how you do. That should hold you comfortably until dinner. Also, drink water to thirst and not to a preconceived amount. I had been trying to drink 80 oz./day and it was too much and leached a lot of salt and potassium from my body (resulted in a trip to the hospital).

I detest exercising and don’t do it, however, I did enjoy weight training. I did only what was comfortable to me, but as I became stronger, the weights I could manage got heavier and heavier. If you enjoy weight lifting, start low so you can manage the weight comfortably without injury, and increase the weights as you get stronger. I found it doesn’t take long to build those muscles.

Good luck and welcome!

(Edith) #7

I agree with what @gingersmommy wrote. Also, you might want to try eating fattier cuts of meat and less added fat. And, like mentioned above, 3L of water is a lot of water. You are probably leaching electrolytes from your body with that quantity. Since you say you are not very active, I can’t imagine you NEED to drink that much water.

Finally, nutritional ketosis is considered 0.5 mmol/L and up. You don’t need to stay in the “sweet spot,” unless you are following a keto diet for medical reasons. Some of the “experts” feel that if you are eating all the fat your body needs for energy, you will not tap into your own fat stores. You may want to try fiddling with your protein and fat ratios.

Oh, yes, one last thing. Frequently, the scale stays the same while measurements decrease. Keto heals and can improve bone density, for example. It could be that even though you are only losing a half kilo of fat per month, your bones are becoming denser or your muscle mass is improving. You may want to consider how your clothes fit as a better monitor than the changes on the scale. Robb Wolf on the Healthy Rebellion podcast encourages what he calls the tight pants test. You start with a pair of pants that barely fit at the start of your weight loss journey, and then you test them out every few weeks to see if the fit is improving.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #8

You’ve gotten some good feedback from others, so I’ll just add a suggestion to consider eating to satisfy your hunger, rather than eating to a specific number of calories. The latter runs the risk of slowing the metabolism, which is self-defeating. If you are eating enough food, your metabolism will actually speed up and metabolise more fat. A further part of eating to satiety is to eat only when hungry, and not simply because the clock says to. The point of a ketogenic diet is not the traditional advice to “eat less and move more,” but to eat in a way that allows the body’s hormonal response to our food to yield the desired result.

At first, you may find it takes a lot of food to satisfy your hunger. This is normal. Most people find, however, that at some point their appetite drops dramatically, because insulin is no longer interfering with their appetite hormones. At that point, people with excess fat to shed find that their body sets their appetite at a level that allows both dietary fat intake and some of that excess stored fat to be metabolised. You don’t actually want to shed too much fat too fast, by the way, since the fat will stay off better if lost more slowly.

If, by the time you have been eating a ketogenic diet for a couple of months, you find yourself still filling your stomach to the bursting point, then it would be time to count calories. But even then, you don’t want to set an unrealistically meagre target; you want to give your body enough food to thrive.

(Joey) #9

@Maria_Cruz Welcome to the forum and congratulations on a great start to improving your health!

Along with the good advice above, I’d simply ask: how long did it take you to gain the weight you now believe should be disappearing? Based on your initial post, I’m guessing about 5 years.

Keto (as understood around here) is not a “get thin quick” scheme.

You’re slowly getting healthier from the inside-out. It’ll take whatever time that miraculous body of yours requires to get into whatever better “shape” it can… if you continue to take good, patient, consistent care of it.

Keep up your (new) good habits and enjoy the journey! :vulcan_salute:

(Robin) #10

Yes to all of the above. Also, check your clothes. Are they fitting looser? That’s more reliable than the scale, IMO.

(Maria Cruz) #11

Thank you everyone. Much appreciated advice and help!!! i am aiming to lose the kg’s i have old sport injuries on my ankles that are taking much strain due to my weight gain. I am not too concerned about the way my clothing fits its more about putting less strain on my knees and ankles. It took my 5 years to gain this weight and i am going to peel it off one layer at a time - dont care how long it takes but its going to disappear - thank you again for the advice and support. God bless you all and happy new year.

PS: starting my diabetic husband on this today. Will keep you posted here :slight_smile:

(Alec) #12

Maria
Thanks for your full answers! I think the advice given above is spot on. The key bit is: if you’ve not got much to lose (and trust me, you haven’t!), it will take some time. So, trust the process, and be patient.

I think the most important thing for you right now is supporting your diabetic husband as he starts this. You have to be the best example for him. His future health depends on it.

Take care.
Cheers
Alec

(UsedToBeT2D) #13

Keep calm, Keto on! And get hubby onboard. Keto has essentially reversed my type 2 diabetes, it has been amazing for my health and self confidence.

(Allie) #14

Slow and steady wins the race, maybe ease up on the dairy if that’s where you’re getting most of your fats from as it causes issues for a lot of people.

#15

Not a fan of percentages since it typically doesn’t work, but what is your average for fat and protein consumption? At 70% your fat is around 130g or so and your protein at 20% is 85g, which is low IMO, but that leaves 10% still for carbs would be 42g carbs, which would realistically still be fine, but definitely double the 20g you mentioned (this is why percentages don’t work). Make life easy, work in grams.

Waste of money, once you run out of strips, show it the trash barrel. Ketone levels don’t correlate with fat loss speed, so what’s the point? I lost 100lbs and almost never went over 0.4. Chase results, not ketones.

I’ll also 200% disagree with the exercise being counterproductive comment. Exercise is good for you ALWAYS! It burns calories, it keeps you moving which is good for cardiovascular and joint health, mood, brain health, energy, blood sugar control. It’s beyond ridiculous to claim it could be “counter productive”.

Also consider that you may simply be off with your metabolic rate at 1700, going below that would suck, but you may want to just to see if you lose again. If so, rather than continuing down the calorie trap I’d work on getting it back up.