Ketones 10 days in...

tsmagpi

Hi,
I'm 41 years old, and have about 31 year history of constantly eating tons of carbs processed or not. And a 20 year history of drinking lots and lots of beer.
I've been doing the diet for 10 days. I've measured my ketones twice, once at 7 days and once at 10 days. 0.4/0.3 (went down) respectively. I've measured in the morning before breakfast.

From my readings I was expecting something a little bit higher. In my mind my panic date is 30 days. I'd like to be 1.5 by then.

Does anyone have any insight on:
A: With my age history and weight, could I be doing the diet right and those numbers be right after 10 days? Meaning I'm not worried that it might take time, I just don't want to waste time.
B: Does 30 days out and a 1.5 ketones level seem like a good goal?
C: How hung up on these numbers should I be in your opinion. To be honest one of the things that attracted me to this diet was being able to measure numbers like glucose and ketones and know whats going on. (Besides the other obvious)

Using this for reference: http://www.dietdoctor.com/lose-weight-by-achieving-optimal-ketosis

Thanks in advance...

FIT_Goat

Morning Blood Ketone Levels will typically be your lowest levels of the day. That's been my experience and it seems to be the experience for just about everyone who's doing a ketogenic diet. There's some discussion that I just pulled up by googling it on this page: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/thread96917.html

Also, blood ketones are not about high scores. Anything 0.5+ is perfectly fine. Even if you hit 1.5, you're not going to stay that high constantly. I've seen my number bounce all over the place (typically between 0.8 and 1.9) with little consistency.

A: Those numbers don't tell us much of anything. If you're eating under 25g of net carbs a day, you'll be in ketosis. Don't stress about it. Also, morning numbers are low. Even I get fairly low numbers, if I test when I get up (and I eat no carbs).

B: No. This does not seem to be a good goal. It's arbitrary and inconsistent. A better goal would be afternoon/evening readings consistently above 0.5.

C: You shouldn't be hung up on these numbers. They are good indicators, but there is little objective difference between being in keto with a 0.7 and being in keto with a 1.3. Both numbers mean the same thing.

Edit: I disagree with the need to be higher than 1.5 to be "optimal." At that point, I find myself avoiding protein too much (or eating far to many calories to bring the ketones higher).

tsmagpi

frob, thanks for the insight. Much appreciated.

Leonidas_meets_Spartacus

If you are starting , just focus on getting keto adapted and try to stay over 0.5. Now, that said I saw my best fat loss in the weeks where my ketones stayed over 1.5. The secret is to ease in to it and not worry about ketone levels for few months.

Booksandbeaches

My blood ketones have gone up to 2.4 on certain days and yet I seem to lose weight around 1.5-1.8.

Higher doesn't always mean big losses at least for me.

tsmagpi

all great info, much appreciated. I'm only 10 days in, so I'm not obsessing about it, but it seems a 1.5 goal is something that is better, but doesn't have to be to have progress.
Odds are the truth is its going to be different for everyone including myself, but I have plenty of years to reverse some activities going on in my body and I realize its not going to happen over night.

cdn_beaver

You're either in ketosis or you're not. Do not get hung up on these numbers.