Hello,
Some of us see our BG going up as we keto and fast. It’s been my personal experience. Some see it going up while going carnivore. I’ve tried it, too.
Do you know what types of food one can eat to decrease BG and keep it down? I’m struggling to find a WOE to be healthier in general, including keeping low BG. By low, I mean below 100 mg/dL.
Thank you very much for your help.
Fasting can release stored glucose. That will stop after a while, as you use it up, the bump up is temporary. Dr. Fung mentions this in several of his presentations.
Protein meats, low carb veggies, like cauliflower, broccoli and brussels sprouts, and green leafy stuff should keep the BS low. You might want to limit cheese to the hard ones, not cream cheese and similar ones. They have lactose that can up the BS.
All the best sorting yourself out. If you currently have high BS it will take your body a while to heal and respond better so be have some patience while you heal.
Good luck on sorting yourself out.
As long as you’re eating keto friendly lower GI foods it’ll go down, but as @collaroygal said, fasting, as well as simply burning a lot of fat storage is going to artificially raise it. All the sugar didn’t disappear, it just got stored. As long as you’re eating right don’t worry about it it give everything time.
I assume you mean your fasting number and not all the time right? Even if you only mean your fasting number always below 100 can be pretty un-realisitc for many. I’m usually around 110-120 thanks to dawn phenomenon, yet I have great A1C’s, so who cares?
Don’t overthink it!
I agree, I’m on prednisone and have never dropped below 100. Still lost 70 lbs though. There’s a lot of people who say you can’t be in ketosis with fasting BG that high because of insulin levels but that wasn’t my experience at all. It’s a common misconception. 
@Ifod14 & @David_Stilley, i also have high fasting BG, usually 120 +. Do you guys ever measure your blood ketones, and if so , can you share those numbers?
How long have you been keto? The values will change over time.
My ketones are very low. 0.5 mmol/l or less, blood ketones, in the morning. About 100 blood sugar. But I’ve been low carb/keto 6+ years. Blood sugar goes up until around 11 am or so (don’t eat breakfast), then down all day, hitting a nadir around midnight or so. Ketones go the opposite of that (though I can’t test those in the middle of the night; only know about blood glucose due to wearing a CGM).
According to Dr. Bikman, if you have any ketones at all, your insulin is low. I’m always low. See below. First column to right of time is Keto Mojo blood ketones, then Precision Xtra blood ketones (always read 1/2 of Keto Mojo), then ketonix breath ketones, then blood sugar (pin prick, Free Style Libre):
Fasting 56 hours, and I only get 0.8 ketones. You can see exercise (typically) causes my blood sugar to go up a lot, and ketones to go down. I don’t eat breakfast, so I’m exercising in the mornings without food.
Just a reminder that measuring blood ketones is telling you only the gap between what is being produced and what is being consumed. It doesn’t tell you how much ketones you are making or using. If the blood ketone reading is low, the idea that we aren’t making enough is only one possible explanation. Another possible explanation is that the liver has gotten good at matching production to need.
Dude, you need to tell all the people who are coming here asking about this, then. 
Amy Berger just had to do a video about “low” ketones.
I personally blame the issue on the concept of “ideal”/“optimal”/“nutritional” ketosis, like this:
This type of material causes people to freak out when their ketones don’t match whatever is supposedly “good”. Statements like this for instance can be downright harmful:
From there, aim for “optimal ketosis,” which is when your ketone levels are between 1.0 mmol/L-3.0 mmol/L.
Or this:
Below 0.5 mmol/L is not considered “ketosis”. At this level, you’re far away from maximum fat-burning.
The only way I can get above 0.5 is if I test in the evenings – sometimes – or if I fast multiple days. The latter is only good for a while – there are only so many days I can fast.
We need to rise up against our ketone oppressors!
This is where I’m coming from, low ketones, 0.3 - 0.5 at best. I was under the assumption that since my blood sugars are chronically high, it was severe insulin resistance that was keeping me from developing higher ketones. Running below 0.5 I thought is just pissin in the wind. But if others continued to lose weight at lower ketone levels, I can stop banging my head against the wall.
Bob, I’ve done my best to keep pointing this out, but I can’t keep up with every forum thread anymore.
Dr. Stephen Phinney and Professor Jeff Volek coined the term “nutritional ketosis” and defined it as the range of serum β-hydroxybutyrate between 0.5 and about 3.5 (as I recall). They picked 0.5 as the minimum because it was generally at that level that people began showing the benefits they observed. Dr. Phinney admitted at Ketofest 2018 that the definition is somewhat arbitrary.
We know from the testimony of many forum members that serum β-hydroxybutyrate can range from almost undetectable to quite high and people can do just fine. It is generally true that β-hydroxybutyrate levels on a ketogenic diet tend to run lower than β-hydroxybutyrate levels seen in fasting. And it is not till β-hydroxybutyrate reaches about 20 mmol/dL that ketoacidosis starts to become symptomatic. (And diabetic ketoacidosis is not a risk for anyone whose pancreas is producing insulin.)
It is certainly true, to quote a forum member whose name I have forgotten, that “if you are not eating carbohydrate and are still breathing in and out, you’re in ketosis.”
Here’s a Diet Doctor podcast, with Dr. Bret Scher interviewing Prof. Benjamin Bikman, in which some of this gets discussed:
I am still losing weight after 6+ years of low carb/keto, even with my paltry ketone levels.
I also often wonder if muscle acts like a ketone sink? The more muscle you have, the lower your ketones? An interesting question. I’ve definitely gained muscle in the last 6 years.
Paul, that might be the one where Bikman says if you have any ketones, your insulin is low enough. But I try to listen to him every time I know he is interviewed, so I could be wrong.
Now if we could only cleanse the Internet of this stuff…maybe that would help? Even if they said, “You know, not everyone needs to have high ketone levels, and many do fine without them.” I’d be happy with that.
It’s like LDL. People think higher LDL is better for you. But some of us (ie, me), no matter how hard we try, won’t get high LDL. Similarly, we won’t get high ketones. (I CAN get higher LDL or ketones, if I fast multiple days; again, only so many times you can do that.)
My BG also goes up after exercising.
At least your BG is below 100 when you’re fasting.
Could it be BG has nothing to do with carbs? Just like cholesterol in the blood has nothing to do with eating cholesterol? So all the demonization of carbs is another big misunderstanding? Like cholesterol->heart disease was?
And how do we know we aren’t producing insulin, since we can’t measure that at home and see how it goes up and down?
I still don’t understand how high BG is ok if we’re in ketosis. The bad molecules are still in your blood, wrecking havoc with your capillaries…
It reminds me of that research with mice that they said became diabetic after keto/low carb.
How long have you been doing keto?
I’ve noticed a trend of my BG going ever higher, not down, since staring keto. At the beginning, it was seldom above 100. Now, it’s becoming the rule. And higher! Above 110!
I had read Dr Fung book and was expecting my BG to go down. It did, right at my keto beginnings. Then it started going up.
I’ve been lo carb/keto/carnivore for 2+ yrs. Weight loss has stalled for some time now. focusing on reducing my fasting BS and that is getting nowhere fast. Always thought I had really messed up metabolism and severe insulin resistance. But I respect Bikman’s opinions and if he says if you are producing any ketones at all, your insulin has to be low, then I’m good with that and must be in a healing mode. Time will tell. Either way, this is my woe, end of story.
Mice…You really have to be careful with mice studies. Often the “low carb” or “keto” diet given to them is filled with PUFAs, which will cause you to become obese.
Anyway, consider this. There are two sets of “rules”. One for high carb people and one for low carb/keto people. If your (morning) blood sugar is going up (EDIT:) on high carb (END EDIT), is that bad? Probably so.
What if your morning blood sugar is going up if you’re low carb? Is that bad? Probably not. You have to realize that your body needs some amount of blood sugar (though it’s unclear exactly WHY this is true). The morning effect is a high insulin resistance (maybe, insulin sparing?) effect, so you get higher blood sugar. But that type of blood sugar is not bad for you (to any extent I can see).
Consider my data:
You’ll note that my blood sugar is highest in the morning (I do not eat breakfast, 99% of the time anyway), yet goes down all day. It ends up being lowest at night. By the way, multiply by 18 to get US numbers.
Note the estimated A1c, even though my blood sugar is “high” in the morning. Now, my actual A1c is slightly higher than that, 5.1 for the last few times I took it, but that is based on many factors, such as how long red blood cells last.
I personally am not concerned about “higher” morning blood sugar. But if you are concerned, you can do things like eat earlier, take some apple cider vinegar before bed, etc., which will help to lower your morning blood sugar.
Before you do that, though, I’d take more blood tests during the entire day, to see what your blood sugar really is.
Just what we’re you eating before KETO that allowed lower BG levels than keeping carbs under 20g per day? This baffles me.
Interesting question. I had heard that the muscles prefer fatty acids to ketones, and that refusing ketones as well as glucose is part of physiological insulin resistance.
