So Confused by the pee sticks!


(Jeff) #1

I’ve been on Keto for 8 to 10 days now. I’ve eaten very clean (Keto wise). I’ve peed on a stick some times two or three times a day from the start…nothing.

I then REALLY looked at every single carb (yes the hidden one…counted every single thing I put in my mouth)….peed on a stick (maybe … and I mean maybe) a shade change…or not.

Next day under 10 carbs all day (basically just eggs, butter, bacon, ground beef just to see)…pee’d on a stick absolutely NOTHING. Tried a different brand of stick…nothing.

I’m 230 lbs dude and I am currently taking in between 1500-2000 calories. Aside from the initial few days of water weight…nothing on the scale either.

What the heck gives?

I don’t particularly want to start poking my finger.

If the scale or the damn sticks don’t start moving, I’m seriously thinking about just switching back to the Haggan Dazs Coffee Flavored Ice Cream diet cause I had zero problem following that one!

Either that or I am getting a Sharpie out and colored the pee stick myself!

Someone talk me down from the edge please!!!


(Susan) #2

Welcome to the forum, Jeff. I have been on Keto since February and I have never spent any money on any of these sticks, or any meters. You don’t have to, Just breathe and relax =).

As long as you are eating 20 grams or less of carbs a day, NO sugar, adequate proteins, healthy fats, and enough calories, plenty of water and keeping your electrolytes up, then that is all you have to do.

Just keep up the good work, don’t worry about those strips, or the scale for a bit. Your body will change, and you will lose inches, and pounds. Your body has to adjust to stripping it of Sugar and Carbs, and it will, just be patient =). You didn’t gain it all overnight and it will come off but it is not magic.

Just relax and Keto on, and it will happen!


(Jennifer ) #3

What Mom said.
Plus you have worked it really hard. I can imagine that you might need to feel the reward for your efforts. Esp. for making such huge changes in behavior and self-gratification. What you’ve done is really huge, man.
BIG!
:1st_place_medal: :sunflower::clap:t3::clap:t3::clap:t3:

~K-Bombs


(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #4

I wouldn’t sweat no seeing anything on the sticks. You might just be efficient at issuing that particular type of ketone. Focus on other victories. How do your clothes fit? Don’t worry about the scale, etc.

What are your goals for keto?
Age? Height?

Are you eating enough? Are you logging?


(Jeff) #5

I feel full. Calorie wise, I track it for a day or so and am at roughly 1,500 - 2,000 calories. Not a lot for a big guy, but not “starvation mode” either.

Aside from 3-4 lbs of initial water weight loss in the first 3 days from the loss of carbs / fiber the scale isn’t moving at all.

I’m watching the carbs so closely, I’ve cut out most fiber sources which I don’t like long term for my colon health.

I’m 225 goal is to sustain (key word) under 200 lbs. plan to do by Keto and weight lifting (to keep muscle mass and prevent yo-yo dieting). I do lots of cardio too.


(57 yo female started keto Jul '19) #6

My 2-cents:

  • patience: give it more time
  • the pee sticks can be bad (happened to me)
  • don’t overdo weight training and cardio in the beginning; relax a bit and also focus on good sleep

Edit: removed proteine item


(Jane) #7

^^^ good advice!


#8

GNG (Gluconeogenesis) is a process that can convert proteins and fats into glucose. As needed. It doesn’t produce the glucose simply because the proteins and fats are available.

Throw them away. If you’re sticking to 20 net carbs per day, you will be in ketosis after a few days.

The pee strips are designed for T1 diabetics to check for ketoacidosis, not to check for nutritional ketosis. They look for excessive amounts of one type of ketone body being excreted as waste. When fat adapted, that type of ketone body may not exist in much quantity, and your body may be more efficient at producing and using ketone bodies, so there is little, if any, excess to go into the urine.

Weight loss by caloric restriction is a slow process. Plateaus are nothing to complain about unless months have gone by. Body measurements may be a better metric than weight.


(Jeff) #9

Good answer thank you!


#10

What they all said. Early on I got a bit obsessed with seeing the colors change on the sticks. Someone mentioned testing at a different time of day and that did show a change, but by that point I realized how up in my own head I was getting. I had to step back and realize I was only two weeks into changing how I ate. My body needed time to adjust. I just changed the route after it had been on cruise control for decades. It was lost for directions. But it figured it out and yours will too.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #11

Welcome to the forums, Jeff.

People enter ketosis almost as soon as they stop eating carbohydrate and their stored glucose runs out, which only takes around 24 hours. Unless you are extremely insulin resistant, eating less than 20 g/day of carbohydrate is guaranteed to put you in ketosis. If you want to be really sure, eliminate all carbohydrate from your diet for a while. If you do that and don’t keel over and die, then it is guaranteed that you are in ketosis at that point, since the human brain does not last long without fuel, and it needs either glucose or ketones to keep going. If at that point the strips still don’t show ketones, then you have a bad batch of strips.

All the urine strips do is to measure wasted ketones, in any case. They don’t measure actual production by the liver, or actual consumption by the body. It is possible, I suppose, that your kidneys have already become very good at filtering ketones out of your waste and sending them back into your bloodstream, but at ten days in, it is more likely that your strips are bad.


#12

I remember someone mentioning that the only way the pee strips would show the presence of ketones is if they were consuming exogenous ketones.

Yeah. That’s the body getting rid of all those useless ketones it can’t use. :slight_smile:


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #13

And then there’s this.


(57 yo female started keto Jul '19) #14

I removed the proteine item from my post. I was not thinking about gluconeogenesis. My understanding was proteine triggers a small insuline release, which suppresses ketone body production. But I might very well be wrong, which is why I removed the item.


#15

The insulin issue gets into whole new realms. But, yes, I’ve heard that proteins have half the insulinogenic effect of carbs.

I’ve even seen the extreme where someone claimed if the only thing i ate was fat, no insulin would be produced, so it would be impossible to gain weight. No matter how much fat I ate.

Of course, you’d eventually die as the body cannibalized enough muscle tissue for proteins. Probably of cardiac failure. The heart is a big muscle.


(Mark Rhodes) #16

Reading through all the comments sure brings me back to my confusion. So here it is:

aceacotate is a ketone we do not use much at all. It is excreted. This is what is identified on the UA. You might hear that it isn’t useful. Oh but it is if you want to see how much you waste on an extended fast but IT IS NOT useful for determining nutritional ketosis as defined by Stephen Phinney and Jeff Volek. So what is?
The next type of ketone is beta-hydroxybutyrate or BHB. this is what the blood meters measure. ,5-3.0(rev5.0) mmol is the range for nutritional ketosis. Do you need to know where you fall on this scale to get well? NO. AND THE REASON, should you ever get a meter that higher readings do not equal more fat loss is that BHB is a passive measure. Those little ketone bodies are just swimming in your blood waiting to be used. Having 7.2 mmol just means you are making far more than you can use. As an example in the beginning my fasted BHB level was just that 7.2 mmol. But now as I became far more efficient at making what I need even on a long term fast I rarely get about 3.0mmol

So three types right? ok then. BHB spontaneously decarboxylases into acetone and is deposited in the lungs to be exhaled. This is what breath monitors measures. Here you can see my current ketone breath measure.

Again do you need this? absolutely not.You will find out that a lot of us are data nerds. I collect and use data to diagnose other issues as well.

I will venture this too: My wife DOES NEED to have higher ketones and does use meters as a means of treating her bi-polar. If you have no other issues you do not need meters.

One last thing. Keto works not because of the ketones. Those things are required to aid other things but the nutritional plan of staying under 20 g of carbohydrate is like a fasting mimicking diet.I believe keto works so well for weight loss is it limits insulin production even if you continue to eat 6 times a day and that too stops once you become fat adapted, you just stop being so fucking hungry all the time.

So welcome to the best decision you have ever made.


(Jeff) #17

What became clearer to me from a earlier comment is this…

My understanding is that a regular Keto person might see between 0.1-3.0 where a diabetic could see 10x that. I looked at the increments if the Keto sticks (I have 2 different kinds so it’s not a bad batch scenario) the values go way past what a non diabetic would see.

3.0 would only be in the first 2 shades of the Keto sticks. If I’m only at 0.5 it might be hard to see on the sticks.


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #18

Some misunderstanding here. First, the acetoacetate molecule is the energy package contained in ketones. It is the primary, and in my opinion the only true ketone, from which both β-hydroxybutyrate and acetone are derived. Second, to suggest that it is not used much, but only excreted, is very wrong. It is utilized directly by most cells and organs that can utilize ketones, which is most. Acetoacetate is unstable, so the liver converts some to β-hydroxybutyrate, which is simply a more stable form of acetoacetate, and releases the rest of the acetoacetate and the β-hydroxybutyrate into the blood stream. If the free acetoacetate is not utilized soon after release into the blood stream it will spontaneously disintegrate into a molecule of acetone and a molecule of CO2. All cells and organs that utilize the released β-hydroxybutyrate break out the acetoacetate to obtain the energy.

If the liver is busily synthesizing acetoacetate and creates more than is required for use within a few minutes, a lot of both acetoacetate and β-hydroxybutyrate are released into the blood stream. Because an ‘excess’ results, some of the acetoacetate will get excreted in the urine and some will break down into acetone which is then exhaled. The rest of the acetoacetate, along with most of the β-hydroxybutyrate, will get utilized by cells and organs.

In addition, β-hydroxybutyrate apparently functions as a metabolic hormone.


(Mark Rhodes) #19

Yes. Twice i identify what the community often thinks, in fact I heard Carl just the other day say just this similar thing that acetoacetate is waste. While I felt no need to correct I did note it. What I intended to do here was factually calm the newcomer. I also did not want to overwhelm. And measuring acetoacetate is really not useful in nutritional ketosis in my opinion. That β-hydroxybutyrate is really a hydroxyl alcohol would also be confusing. Again here I just wanted to affirm and guide. That the blood measure is between a range as set by Phinney and Volek is not up for debate nor is the idea that more BHB equals more lipolysis.

I suppose here we should also point out that lipolysis is the mobilization of fatty acids into ketone bodies. It just isn’t going to do more for you fat wise by being higher. In this the measure is not a measure of much. These ketones have not been used and hence in my mind i refer to it as a passive measure…

Acetoacetate to BHB to acetoacetate, yep. once it is acetone though it must be purged it cannot be used again.Cells with mitochondria can use them as acetyl-CoA, which can then be used as fuel in their citric acid cycles. Red blood cells must find a differnt energy source.


(Ken) #20

Paul, I think you mean to say stored glycogen runs out. Dietary glucose first, then comes glucagon secretion and glycogenolysis, and finally lipolysis with the secondary process of ketosis along with it.

IMO, the OP just needs to be patient, not restrict calories according to some subjective calculator, and if in doubt eat.more fat.