No weight loss for 4 days. Feeling discouraged

dynosaur

Hi All, I'm new to keto and today is day 16. Early days I know! Over the first 12 days I lost 3.5 kilos, I was feeling great, i was enjoying the food, drinking heaps of water, my sleep patterns improved (which is a BIG DEAL for me, I've always been a poor sleeper) I had extra energy and generally felt healthy and alive.

But the last 3-4 days have been hard. I've had dessert cravings, but more so carb cravings. I'd love a bowl of cereal or a piece of toast. My tummy has felt a bit off, not nausea or pains, just hasn't felt right. I feel less energetic and a bit down, and the lack of weight loss isn't helping my mood. Sleep patterns are still good and i'm still enjoying the food. I find that my water consumption has dropped suddenly too. i'm struggling to drink it now.

I'm usually under my 1300 calorie goal by 100-200 calories, i'm finding it hard to keep under my 16g total carb goal but after adjusting for fibre, net carbs are ok, my biggest problem is meeting my 80g protein goal - i'm always off by 30-40g but have started taking a whey protein supplement which helps. I find that if i look for foods with high protein, my carbs would be way over so i'm struggling with that protein/carb balance.

Is this keto flu? is it just my body adjusting? is this something others have gone through? or am i doing something wrong? I'm reading and researching but still have so much to learn! I know the initial weightloss was water weight but the sudden stop of movement is making me question if this is working for me!

Any advice and support appreciated. I'm not giving up but i just need some encouragement that i'm not doing things wrong! thanks everyone!

KnitOrMiss

I see you found a similar post I was going to link for you. Feel free to update if you have specific questions further...

Jigglypuff00

Sounds like an electrolyte imbalance maybe? You were drinking a lot of water in the beginning, and now you can barely drink any. When I started, I didn't have a lot of energy. I kept waiting for that Keto Energy to hit me. Instead, I felt lethargic, weak, brain fogged all the time. I thought I was keeping up with my electrolytes, but it turned out I was deficient in sodium. Keep track of your sodium on here. Up to 5000 mg sodium, 3500 potassium and 500 magnesium. Pink salt and No Salt or Lite Salt. Measure it out in the morning, add it to your food throughout the day and if you have any left over, add it to water and drink it down.

Your calories are too low. 1200 calories/day is the absolute lowest your body can go. I made that mistake in the beginning too. I figured that eating less would be good. I just felt hangry and tired all the time. Try to get in 1300 - 1500 calories. Every once in a while, go up to your TDEE. If you can't eat up to 80g of protein, up your fats. Coconut oil, butter, ghee for cooking. I add butter to almost everything now. Try all that for a week and see how you feel.

dynosaur

Thanks for the advice jigglypuff - i'll keep an eye on my sodium. my macro is set to 2300 and I've been trying to stay on it but seems like it may be too low. I've been adding salt to my food (rock salt) but have pink salt, and i'll keep track of potass. and magnesium too. love the idea of measuring it out and adding it to my water to get enough. thank you.

I'll try to up my calories but overeating the carbs is so hard! I'll just keep going and hopefully this is just a part of the adjustment period. Thanks again

ladipoet

Most meat has almost no carbs, eggs to (I think it's technically something like 0.5 - 0.7g carb per egg). My point is, meeting protein is not difficult if you just eat some meat. Put butter on it or melted cheese.

Jigglypuff00

Here's a little mind trick that may or may not help...lol! I set my macros to 0%-carbs, 15%-protein & 85%-fat. Because on here, when we go over a macro, the number is in red. So we think uh-oh...red is bad! So we try to do better. No matter what, your carb total is going to be red, unless you eat zero carbs. But maybe seeing a red number will make you think a little bit harder if you want that food with all those carbs in it.

Also, not sure if you are doing this now or not, but start pre-planning your diary. Figure out what you want to definitely eat and when, and add it to tomorrow's diary. Then work around it. So if you really want that food that is too high in carbs or protein, you can plan the rest of your foods so your day isn't completely over. You can add, subtract foods until you get a menu that works for you.

dynosaur

that's great! i'm going to try that 0 macros trick. i havent been pre-planning my food for the day, thank you great suggestions!

Jigglypuff00

Sure, no problem! One more little thing...figure out your TDEE - maintenance. Subtract 200-300 from that. Input that as your calorie goal. Try to get as close as you can to it at least 2 or 3 days out of the week. If you go over, no big deal, you're still under your maintenance. And even if you do go over your maintenance, still not a big of a deal as you might think. You'd need to eat 3500 calories to gain one pound of fat. So any calorie overages most likely won't be that high and if you do gain, it's just water weight and will come off easier.

Remember, although we want to lose weight, our bodies still need fuel to function, so we need to feed it. Going too low in calories will be counter productive. That's where the extra fat comes in to play. Get your body used to being fed again, and it will reward you!

Try this calculator to get your TDEE: https://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

kpk54

I kinda like that calculator/site ^^ @Jigglypuff00. The reason I say that is because when I enter my stats, it hits right in about the average of the multitude of calculators I have played with over the years and I've been on a ton of them. All calculators provide a general guideline but over the years I've seen a maintenance calories amounts for me as low as 1300 something and as high as 1900 (with all entered stats, identical) so took the path of averaging 6 or 7 to assist in maintenance. I like round numbers so 1500 is the number I choose. freedieting.com gave me 1444. Close enough.

I also like that "zigzag" graphic since few of us eat the same exact amount every single day cuz hungry, not hungry and it implies that to be OK and it is OK. It's about averages, long term. Hit the average over a week and all should be fine. I've not read every little thing on the site (yet) but it seems to be sensible without a bunch of woo or extremism.

Oh and FWIW for those who don't care to venture outside MFP: MFP calories seem on target too. For Me. It gives me 1530 for maintenance calories. Close enough. Some of MFP's calorie burns are very high but not all. IMO. Average it.

dynosaur

Just an update, after 4-5 days of stagnant weight, i recorded a 0.8 kilo drop this morning!

i concentrated on drinking more water and reaching my protein macro, i ate up to my calorie deficit rather than 200 calories under, and went over the total carbs a few grams instead of freaking out about how many carbs were in things (i looked at net carbs for a few days). A couple days ago i ate up to my TDEE and splurged on a keto dessert I don't know what worked, maybe it was always going to happen, maybe it was the changes i made or maybe it was just because i stropped stressing so much. But i feel good again

But big thank you Jigglypuff - all those suggestions you gave were excellent and gave me the strength i needed to keep on going

Sunny_Bunny_

No weight loss for well over 2 years...

Hang in there. You can still lose fat without scale weight loss

dynosaur

wow! the scales really do lie. you look amazing! i need to take progress photos. thanks for sharing!