If you are in this for the long haul (and you should be) there will be fluctuations in the scale AND a tape measure. What is important are longer term trends. Like monthly.
I’ve lost inches and no lbs and lost lbs but no inches. Wanting the scale number to drop is psychological - which would you prefer to see drop? For me it is inches, but when one isn’t budging its nice to see the other one move.
@Janie
I guess i would prefer to see the scale drop. It seems somehow more palpable.
Yeah- I am in this for the long run- but this self isolation is making it harder. For you too? I have been holed up for maybe 2 weeks now - but we are looking at a month or two, at least. And the low grade anxiety seems to create a hunger for sweet in me. At least I keep the sweets keto. Made myself some keto ice cream. But this is still a hindrance to weigh loss. But I think I will worry about that later because right now I am worrying about catching an infection that can kill me.
I started 3 months ago, have lost 20 lbs, my blood tests have improved considerably toward normal, and the ketone strips (that my wife gave me) never change color…I threw them away thinking they were past their shelf life. I was going to buy new ones, but I thought why bother? Keto is working for me regardless of the test strips.
If you are eating less than 20 g/day of carbohydrate and are still breathing in and out, that is a good indication that you are producing ketone bodies. The urine strips measure excreted (unused) ketones, and some people’s kidneys are really good at filtering the ketones out of the urine and putting them back in the bloodstream. Even the blood ketone monitors are only measuring the ketones circulating in our bloodstream; they can’t tell us how much we are producing or how much we are using.
There is a difference between losing weight on the scale and losing actual fat. If your body is for some reason adding lean mass, that will make the scale weight appear not to change, even if you are losing fat at the same time. The number on the scale should be used in conjunction with such other markers as how your clothing fits. Since lean tissue is denser than fat, it is even possible for the scale to go up while clothing gets looser and looser.
If you are not losing fat anymore, there are a number of possible explanations: (1) you might not have any more excess to lose; (2) you might be consuming too much carbohydrate (some people have to limit themselves to even less than 20 g/day); or (3) you might be eating too little for your body to feel safe about parting with its energy reserve. So the first thing to try is to cut your carb intake even further. The next thing would be to add more fat to your diet. (And contrary to the standard advice, saturated and monounsaturated fats are much healthier than polyunsaturated.) Try to eat to satisfy your hunger, and don’t eat until you get hungry again. You might be surprised by the results.
@PaulL
Does “lean mass” mean muscle? If so, that’s not me. But I will check out all you say.
@PaulL
I have been thinking about what you wrote and my cravings for sweets lately- and it might be possible that I am not eating to satiety. Like I think I might not be eating enough protein even sometimes. I track my macros but do it sketchily- mainly concentrating on getting the carbs under 20g and the fat up and keeping the calorie count under 1992, my maintence amount. Like I thought losing weight meant I had to eat less than 1992 Kcal/day. But sometimes I dont watch out for how much protein I get. Could this be an issue in not only stalling but craving sweets? Can one lose weight while eating more than this and keeping the carbs under 20g? And does the protein intake play a role in feeling hungrier?
@Chantarella
I will give you my experience as it has been different than the norm in my opinion. I would have a hard time feeling full with high fat and found that I needed to up my protein to get that full feeling. Since my satiation button seems broken, I always consumed all my maintenance calories and stayed even on my weight. The system that finally fit my style was a higher protein diet with eating habits that allowed me to go above my targeted calories occasionally and was able to reduce my weight by fasting 2 , 3 or 4 days randomly between the high feeding days. This up/down fluctuation keeps my body and metabolism guessing so as not too slow down to a specific set level. (many people eat low calories consistently and slow down their metabolism and wonder why they don’t lose any more weight). I have reduced my eating time to OMAD and keep it in a 4 hour window. There are many ways to reach your goals with Keto and it really is individual. You are on the right track from what I can tell, to find your path. KCKO!
@mtncntrykid
Maybe I am the same. I could not do IF anymore because I was simply so hungry. I did not know where it came from and assumed it was the fake sugars that started it - but maybe it was the other way around and too little calories and protein triggered my hunger FOR the desserts instead? I also thought it was my nerves with all this isolation stuff. But there were times that I was not hungry at all before this. Maybe they were the times I had gotten enough protein and calories the day before?
Of all the ways and means of doing keto, this has been most effective for me also (even with a 2 hr window)
It was a great fit with my lifestyle when I was working away from home during the week, as I never had to cook in airbnbs or share houses or try to buy keto take away. I just took 5 lunches with me for the week. Simples.
Since I have been working from home as COVID measure, I find I am back to 2+ meals a day. I need a lunch break from work and I eat with my family at night… which is not base on hunger, but home habits.
Your post was a good reminder for me to go back to what works best. 
It seems IF works for weight loss even in people who dont do keto at all. But how do you manage not eating for so many hours without keto?
Usually no problem at all. When I’m burning fat instead of glucose I have almost zero appetite.
@Paulene
Right, but if you are burning fat, then you are in ketosis. I am talking about the people who don’t do keto at all and are burning carbs. With IF they lose weight too. But I dont think I could control myself if I was not in ketosis. Too hungry with insulin cursing through my veins
My son did OMAD for over a year and didn’t eat keto while doing that. He just had to use willpower at first and eventually his appetite adjusted to that routine so it wasn’t as hard.
“Lean mass” includes muscle, internal organs, and bone. Bone and muscle, of course, are the most variable, because they respond to the stresses on the body. (Otherwise, weightlifting would have no effect.) Many people who have restricted their caloric intake for a sufficient length of time find that a ketogenic diet allows their bodies to add muscle and bone density, even if they don’t work out. Dr. Stephen Phinney tells of one of his experimental subjects, who was devastated that her weight loss was only half that of the other women in the study. It turned out that she had lost just as much fat as the others, but had simultaneously added lean tissue, just from eating an adequate amount of calories for the first time in years.
The “eat less, move more” advice that we generally hear is actually a fallacy. As Gary Taubes likes to point out, eating less and getting exercise are the very things we naturally do in order to work up an appetite, so there is a reason why people who follow the standard dietary advice are hungry all the time. One of the nice things about a ketogenic diet is that because we are working with the body’s hormones instead of against them, we can eat a satisfying amount of food without having to worry about starving ourselves. The fact that we eat in a way that lowers our insulin level for much of the day is what allows us to lose weight.
The high-carbohydrate standard diet elevates our insulin and keeps it elevated—and insulin is the hormone that tells our fat cells to store as much fat as they can. Eating ketogenically allows our bodies to metabolise all that excess stored fat, in addition to the fat we get in our diet. Most people who eat ketogenically to satiety find that their appetite naturally stops them at a point where they can burn off excess fat as well as the fat they eat. Calorie-counting becomes unnecessary.