What Happened?

(Athena) #1

I started Keto 24 days ago. I’ve been writing everything down and been very careful to stick to under 20g net carbs. Usually it’s between 10-15g. I have over a hundred pounds to lose. About a week after starting I got the really dry mouth, a sign of going into ketosis. I lost about 10lbs, but I’m not sure; I wasn’t able to weigh myself when I started. Since then I’ve gotten a scale. A little over a week ago I completely stopped losing weight and even gained almost 3lbs! My daughter thought I had bought a cheap, crappy scale because it has showed she had gained a little, too.

Now suddenly I have a super dry mouth again. I guess I went out of ketosis and am now back again. What happened? How did I go out of ketosis? I thought I had been so careful.

(jilliangordona) #2

We will really need more information to help you with this. Can you give us a few samples of your eating habits?

(Athena) #3

Ok, this is from August 19th. I do think I’m a little less hungry now.

Breakfast:
2 eggs with butter
1.5 pork sausage links
1 cup coffee with a teaspoon coconut oil and heavy cream

Lunch:
chicken breast with skin sauteed
3/4 cup zucchini with tbsp sour cream and dill

Dinner:
Skillet Chicken Pot Pie (RuledMe recipe)

Snacks:
1 cup coffee with a teaspoon coconut oil and heavy cream
1/4 cup almonds
1/2 avocado
2 eggs with butter

MyFitnessPal says this is 1602cals, 118g fat 91 protein and I calculated 10.1 net carbs

(Karen Fricke) #4

Possibly too much protein, 1g/kg lean body mass generally works out to approximately 45-50 grams for female and 60-75 for male. Excess protein can’t be stored as protein so it gets converted to glucose.

#5

Agree with too much protein. Also, are your snacks throughout the day? The more frequently you eat, the more frequently your insulin will/may spike.

(Athena) #6

Yes, snacks were throughout the day; I was SO hungry! That was last week. I’m less hungry now and snacking less.

(Allie) #7

Less protein and more fat to fill you up. Try and avoid snacking. If you’re hungry between meals it’s better to eat more at meal times.

Generally it’s best to opt for the more fatty cuts of meat so chicken thighs rather than breast etc.

Also be very careful with sausage / sausage meat as most contain fillers that will mess with ketosis.

(Pye) #8

Yes, cheap sausages they are as high as 7g-8g of carbs. They add the cheap carby stuff to give weight and profit.

The ‘real’ sausage brands come at 4g carbs.

I have to buy the cheap ones but its not a problem for me to balance daily limits of advisable carbs in keto

(Athena) #9

I buy these breakfast sausages at Lunardi’s grocery store at their full-service meat department. I pay $5.99 a pound for them. My son wanted me to make a pizza casserole tonight, with the main ingredient sausage. Not sure now if I will. First I’ll find out at Lunardi’s if they can tell me what is in their bulk sausage (and breakfast sausage) and give me the nutritional information.

(Athena) #10

I just got back from Lunardi’s where I was shown the list of ingredients for the breakfast sausages I’ve been eating. It has dextrose and sugar in it! I’ve learned my lesson now not to buy anything without checking ingredients.

By the way, the last day I ate these sausages was August 20th. I started eating bacon with breakfast August 21st.

#11

If you have an Aldi, get their sausage meat chub. Its $1.99lb and has just pork and pork fat. Protein 17g, fat 17g per 4 ounce serving. Zero carb

(Kari Eagle) #12

I LOVE that you have posted this thread @amargolis!! I was dealing with the same issue (aside from the hunger). I felt like I was slipping in and out of ketosis. I am notorious for NOT tracking everything, so therein lies my own fault and is the likely solution to my issue (aside from sneaky carbs here and there). I hope your ketosis issue is resolved and wish you the very best on this journey!! KCKO☆☆☆

#13

To increase your fat, instead of a tsp of coconut oil and HWP, use a Tbsp or 2, instead of a Tbsp of sour cream, put a dollop. Use a generous amount of butter when you cook with it, and then dribble what’s left in the pan over your eggs or whatever you’re cooking. Increasing your fat at meals will hold you longer and reduce between meal hunger as others have said, and will help you get truly fat adapted which will also significantly reduce hunger. We’ve all gone through some version of the process you’re in of adaptation and learning from ‘mistakes.’ Be patient. It can take a few months to fully adapt and that’s totally normal.

(Athena) #14

Well, things were looking better for a few days. I started using plain ground pork (adding salt and a couple spices) with breakfast, lowering my protein, adding more fat where I could, and not snacking between meals. I lost the three pounds I had gained. So far so good…

…Then I started getting migraines. I’ve never had migraines like this before. They were resistant to my Maxalt medication. If I get a migraine (rare nowadays) I’ll take a Maxalt, and the migraine will be over. Not this time. These came right back, over and over again! I knew something new must be happening I did some research on the forum and thought it might be electrolytes. I tried pink salt under my tongue. Wow, that worked! I have to do it a lot, several times a day, but it really worked! After a couple of days of migraines and pink salt I got to thinking “when was this going to end?.”

That’s when I started thinking about the diuretic I was on and how it’s probably flushing out everything important and giving me these migraines. I know Keto is also diuretic. I didn’t want to be on double diuretics, so I got the okay from my doctor to go off the diuretic medication on September 1st.

Since then I’ve gained a pound a day, 3 pounds. I am upset. What’s going on? Is my body just working things out, adjusting?

#15

I did not know keto was a diuretic. I too am on a diuretic. I have been getting headaches (very small ones) everyday. They go away with just a couple of Advil. I haven’t had a migraine and pray I don’t. I screwed up when I first started Keto, but doing well so far this last week.
Amargolis, have you had the keto flu yet or is this it for you?

(Allie) #16

This is why Ketonians need to manage their electrolytes, because they’re flushed out with the fluids our bodies don’t hold on to.

(Sjur Gjøstein Karevoll) #17

3 lbs is really nothing considering you just went off a diuretic. By the sound of things those are also 3 vital pounds since not having them gives you migraines. Migraine preventing pounds are not the ones you want to lose.

Change in fat mass is small, even 1lbs per week is pretty significant in either direction. With how much variance comes from other factors the change in fat mass is well masked on the scale. You need lots of time to let trends develop before they become noticeable, at minimum two weeks if you measure every day, and that’s only going to be enough if the trend is at least 1lbs per week. That also presupposes that the trend is stable, but some people experience weight loss in spurts where they’ll be the same weight for a couple months then suddenly lose 10 lbs in a week. That’s also 1 lbs per week, but it takes about three months to become obvious.

If you try to change things based on just a few days of data you are doing yourself a big disservice. You really have no idea why your weight changed and therefore no idea what you should change about your own behavior or even if a change is needed at all. If you’re constantly changing things up you’re also confounding your data so you’ll never get a good idea of what’s going on so have some patience.

Don’t pay much attention to the scale in the short term, just write down the number and then after a few weeks you can start looking for trends. The only thing you can really trust that’s on the order of days is how you feel. If you feel fine then don’t worry, but if something’s amiss like your migraines you can try to change things up a bit to see if you can fix it. Just be prepared for the scale changing rapidly in either direction whenever you make a change to your lifestyle. You could easily have 6lbs of variance available to you, I know my own is at least 10lbs.