I am 49 and my husband is 53. We have been low carb for the past four months. I have lost a total of 20 pounds (w/o much exercise), which is much slower than the 45 pounds I lost in the previous six months doing low cal (w/exercise), and he has lost 26 (w/out exercise).

More than a few times I seriously thought about throwing in the towel, but then the scale would move a little, and I would read more forum postings of fellow keto-ers basically saying the same thing over and over again, "stay calm and keto on." I decided the best course of action is to focus on the positive benefits of low carb and to . . . stay calm and keto on. For me, that includes not being hungry all day, not needing to snack mid-afternoon, no more racing heart after a big meal and no more gassy, bloated feeling. My husband says that he has noticeably more energy now (although, sadly, I have not experienced that) and his doctor is thrilled about his low blood sugar numbers (he's diabetic). Oh, and lest I forget, there is the money we are saving on groceries and eating out because we eat so much less food than before.

I have 45 more pounds to go, but I'm okay with slow going it -- I enjoy the foods I'm eating, I'm finding new delicious, satisfying keto recipes (online) everyday, and I've got nothing but time. I wish you the best of luck in your . . . gulp, dare I say . . . weight loss journey!

I think it's possible, and you need to review what you are doing and see where it is being counterproductive. A common mistake I observe reading MFP blogs is that people do not accurately weigh and record their food. If you guesstimate, there's room for error, or even telling yourself little "lies". Get a weigh scale, and weigh your food. Three oz of meat has to be exactly three oz. if it's more, like 3.8 oz, then record exactly 3.8.

Another mistake is eating too much protein, and not enough fat. I limit my protein to 20%, and I accurately measure so that I do not go over. Excess protein gets turned into sugar in the body, which defeats the purpose of eating low carb.

Take multivitamin. I take a centrum women multivitamin. My personal opinion is that I do this to ensure my body doesn't miss a critical nutrient and go into some sort of nutrient starvation mode.

At each meal, I make sure that fat is the biggest calorie component. Even though I limit my net carbs to 25 grams, I don't sit down and eat a 25 g carb food all by itself without fat. At each meal, I target minimum 50% fat calories. Same thing goes for protein. If you eat chicken breast with no skin with a few leaves of lettuce, your meal exceeds 70% protein, and potentially kicks you out of keto and possibly some protein is converted to sugar. Always eat your fats with protein and carbs. This way, I don't give my body the option to switch off its keto regime.

Another strategy that seems to work for people is intermittent fasting, where you skip a meal, and it forces your body to get energy from your fat stores. I do this, but not intentionally. If I am not hungry, I don't eat. I skip several meals throughout the week. I listen to my body, and let satiety rule.

I am over 40 yrs old and I lost 27 lbs with keto / LCHF diet. In addition, I have been steadily losing at least one lbs per week, and it doesn't look like it is stalling. I realize my MFP tracker below says 17 lbs, but I actually started after I had already lost 10 lbs and unfortunately there is no way to change the initial start weight in MFP profile (really annoying).

My diary is open to friends, and I would be happy to share it with you, maybe it will give some ideas. I have a 1200 cal limit.

Eta: spelling

You could try a fat fast for a few days to shake things up. I have only been low carb for a short time and have not had stalls yet, but in will try a fat fast if I get one. I'm 41 and had zero luck on a low fat high carb. I'm thrilled to be actually losing weight since low carb.

I have lost 3 pounds since I posted four days ago -- this is why I love keto!

I forgot to mention at that time that I, too, intermittent fast (16/8) and have changed my macros since August a few times (starting with 65% Fat/25% Protein/10% Carb). I am finding that 75/20/5 seems to be working well for me -- at the moment.

I'm 67 and started almost 2 weeks ago. Love it!! This is the first "diet" I have been on that I haven't felt like I was starving. Since I'm doing this the rest of my life I don't care how long it takes if the scale keeps going in the right direction.

We all have such different systems and it gets tiring trying to find what works best for us. I've been log carb/paleo for 4 years or so and initially lost15lbs, but had problems not losing and eventually lost faith in what I was doing and just kept working at keeping my carbs down since I'm diabetic that is basically what I have to do.

Then my husband started losing weight without trying he's lost 80lbs so far, is still on diabetic meds but follows the low carb pretty strictly. He gave me inspiration so I started on the NK woe and gained 15 lbs apparently calories do count for some of us.

I finally found more info on NK and keeping track of grams as well as percentages. I lost 4 pounds in the last week, have been keeping track of my blood ketones and it's not getting above .7 so not sure what I have to do, maybe lower my carbs? Last night for the first time since I have been low carb, I started getting dizzy, dizzy enough that I would not drive anywhere, was pretty scary. I read about the salt intake needing to be higher on NK and because I also have high blood pressure I didn't add more salt, until last night. I added some salt to a glass of water and the dizziness went away, and also didn't have leg cramps last night, which is definitely a plus. But this morning I had a 2 lb gain.

I'll just hang in there and keep on keeping on as they say, but it does get very frustrating, being 56 might have something to do with it.

Your Daily Goal 1,982 carbs 25 fat 170 protein 89
Fat (88%) Carbs (2%) Protein (11%)
percentages are right where they should be, this is just for breakfast though,
yesterdays daily totals were:
Totals 1,933 carbs 29 fat 176 protein 61 sodium 4,614
Fat (81%) Carbs (6%) Protein (13%)

My blood ketones this morning was .7

I did read that it could take up to 4 weeks to become keto adapted so I'll keep going, although it seems like I'm getting alot of calories, i am hungry, but not so much that I am tempted to go off plan.

snowyky06 - try drinking a mug of chicken bouillon maybe with a little HWC. I've also heard that using that "lite salt" can help with your keto adaption.

I've also started buying SmartWater because of the added electrolytes.

Good job!

I've been following a ketogenic diet for a bit more than a year now and have lost a little more than 30 pounds overall. For some of us, the loss is just slower. However, I firmly believe that if we just keep on keepin' on, we will eventually reap the rewards. Glad to see you're keeping the faith, tonic!