I have PCOS too. I've been doing this for about 12 weeks, with a few cheat days here and there. I've lost 24 pounds, but it's been up and down the whole time. I actually lost weight after a cheat meal, then gained two weeks later when I stuck to the diet, but overate my calories with protein.
I agree with getting your RMR tested if you can. Don't know where to suggest you have it done, but I had it done at my bariatric physicians office. Kinda spendy
I have found that the subreddit keto is really helpful. http://www.reddit.com/r/keto/

Krista: I'd like to lose another 35 pounds. Another thing that may affect the speed is age : I'm 44. My friend who started the same time as me is 62 and she's lost about 20 pounds. Good luck!

I don't have PCOS but empathize with your plight in trying to get your body to cooperate! Here are a couple of sites that I have personally found useful:

http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/do-calories-matter
http://authoritynutrition.com/debunking-the-calorie-myth/

In regards to the dairy and nut based flours, these are pretty common stall foods. Easy to overeat but also common food sensitivities. I personally have a tendency to overdo the dairy when on keto, it's a convenient fat. Almond flour based things stalled me and caused all sorts of issues- it was an allergy. Beef can potentially be an issue in that large amounts of protein without much fat can cause an insulin spike.

Hope this helps!

I would think increasing your calories would be better, actually. I tend to net closer to 2000 calories a day, even though my diary is set at 1580. When I do it right and don't OD on carbs because I've had a bad week, I tend to average a pound a week. Also, I don't know if this helps or not, but I've NEVER had access to the almond flour, coconut flour...anything like that. I've always had to use flaxseed or buy Double Fiber Wheat bread, or those low-carb wraps. Maybe try to give up all the "recipes" and such and get your carbs from leafy greens and even some berries.

I would think increasing your calories would be better, actually. I tend to net closer to 2000 calories a day, even though my diary is set at 1580. When I do it right and don't OD on carbs because I've had a bad week, I tend to average a pound a week. Also, I don't know if this helps or not, but I've NEVER had access to the almond flour, coconut flour...anything like that. I've always had to use flaxseed or buy Double Fiber Wheat bread, or those low-carb wraps. Maybe try to give up all the "recipes" and such and get your carbs from leafy greens and even some berries.

^^^This! I usually don't bake with almond flour because it's so expensive and I'm the type of person that can't portion control any bread or cake like substance. Best to just go without for me. I did bake some broccoli cheddar biscuits yesterday and have already regretted it! I also started IF'n last week and I feel like that has improved my loss and also helped with bloat. I would definitely try a few of the suggested options before lowering your calories though. I mean why eat less to lose weight when you don't have to right? Good Luck!

I have found that the subreddit keto is really helpful. http://www.reddit.com/r/keto/

Here is another helpful subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/xxketo/
It is for females and there are quite a few posts regarding PCOS and weight loss.

IME, calories do count, but not in the traditional CICO way when you're doing a keto diet. I'm in the camp that strongly believes that it's much more about controlling the particular hormones that drive weight gain/loss. There are many testimonials and experiments that have shown that LCHF type diets do NOT gain the weight CICO would lead you to believe even when individuals are consuming 5000 cals/day. In fact, many of these guys lost weight, but in my mind that's an aberration in the data.

Lately I've experimented with the BMR + TDEE hypothesis of how things work. The idea being that you should eat above your calorie requirements for your BMR and if you want to lose weight you need to run a deficit below your TDEE. So far this is working quite well for me. The advantage you have with a keto diet is the ability to meet these caloric requirements without even sweating it. The satiety provided by this WOE makes meeting your caloric goals much easier. By controlling the weight hormones (i.e. Insulin, Leptin, etc.) you maintain your sanity while also keeping your body from going into critical alert mode (this guy is starving us!).

So my advice is to check out your BMR and TDEE and then figure out if your daily caloric intake is really where it should be. Spend at least 2 weeks tracking and measuring everything you put in your mouth until you re-educate yourself on portion sizes and how the foods you're eating impact your weight and overall body composition.

I did the online BMR TDEE calculators ( I don't have access to testing here) but they don't take into account PCOS so I'm not sure how accurate they are. My BMR was 1469 & my TDEE was 1841. I have my calories set to 1500. I do track everything I eat & drink and weigh everything. I'm pretty meticulous about it.

I've tried upping my calories for a bit & knocked myself out of ketosis or pretty close to it (from 1.5 down to 0.6) and gained 2 lbs. so I'm back down to 1500.

Excellent - glad to see that you're pretty much completely on top of it. I took a peek at your food diary to see if there's anything obvious that you might try. In general your macros look pretty good most days, but what I see lacking is "consistency" (carbs and protein sometimes get a bit out of control). My suggestion is to pre-plan your meals for a week ahead of time (this is just an experiment although you may like going this route permanently if it works). By pre-planning what you're going to be eating you can work out your macro ratios and quantities ahead of time so that you can ensure you have some consistency over a longer time period. I have a spreadsheet called the Ketogenic Diet Meal Planner that I picked up off the web (http://www.theketogenicdiet.org/introducing-the-ketogenic-diet-meal-planner/) that I use to plan my meals.

I know that I'm not logging my meals to MFP at this point, but my ratios are almost always 77-82% F, 17-20% P, and 2-4% C. Of course this has only been true for the past month when I got frustrated and decided that I really needed to learn how food was impacting my weight loss effort. That's when I started tracking and measuring everything. Up until that point I noticed that if I tried "winging it" each day that I would run into problems trying to get my macros correct and would end up unable to assemble a decent dinner to end my day without completely blowing it.

I don't expect to do this forever (tracking and measuring everything), but I look at it as re-learning how to eat correctly.

I just downloaded the copy of the Excel spreadsheet again to see if there's anything broken in it. My version has been heavily modified to meet my needs so I thought it would be best to check out the version you have.

The way it works is that there are 2 tabs. On the first you have to enter your food's nutrition facts. I added a column for "serving size" since the "Servings" column represents how much of it you have actually eaten. When there is nothing in the Servings column you should notice that all the totals are 0.

So put in the food you have for a typical breakfast (verify that you now have actual totals) and then flip to the second tab called "Daily Goals". This page automatically calculates your macro ratios. You can tweak your ranges here just like on MFP (although with more adjustment range). I think the default range for Fat % is too low (mine is 75-85%) and protein is too high (mine is 15-25%) if you really want to attain a deeper level of ketosis.

Hopefully that will help you get started with it. I have added another tab to my sheet to track my ratios for each day and another tab that has my normal "go to" meals pre-stored with all of their ratios already calculated and ready to go.

PCOS is the key here, I think (side note - if you're not in it already, I highly recommend the http://www.myfitnesspal.com/forums/show/3087-p-c-o-sis group). It really does just make things more difficult for us a lot of times. I think you're on the right track though.

When was the last time you had your fasting insulin checked? Not glucose, insulin. If your insulin runs high, even if it's not high enough to be considered diabetic/pre-diabetic levels, it may still be interfering with your weight loss. I had this issue. The cutoff for "high" is something like 20, and I was at 18, so I had to fight to get any medical help, but once my insulin dropped (it was at 12 at my last draw, and I'm currently waiting on the results of today's draw), I started losing weight relatively easily. It takes time, though, so if you run high, you may still be too high to lose weight easily. On that front, just keep at it, and it should start getting easier, once the diet forces your insulin down to sane levels.

The other factor that makes weight loss so difficult for us is estrogen dominance. This can happen either by too much estrogen or too little progesterone. Sticking with whole foods helps the most with this, as does avoiding xenoestrogens (soy is a big culprit, but so are a number of compounds found in things like plastics, as well as drinking water contaminants). Also, make sure you're getting enough magnesium, which can help break down excess estrogen, as well as B6, which helps in the production of progesterone.

Finally (on the PCOS front), if you aren't already, start a good strength training routine. I personally recommend a barbell, but I know some women for whom bodyweight training was sufficient. I don't know the exact mechanisms, but in my experience, it's been a huge factor in balancing my hormones, and I know several others who have had the same experience.

You mentioned that upping your calories nearly knocked you out of ketosis. That really shouldn't happen (after all, there are people here and elsewhere who eat twice what you do and maintain ketosis), so I suspect it may have been something else. I'd guess that either your carbs/protein were too high (especially if you either went only by percentages or let MFP figure it out), or your body was just adjusting (it takes time for the body to adjust to any dietary/lifestyle changes). If your caloric increase came with carbs at all, then your body is going to gobble them up for a little while (in those glucose tolerance tests, this reaction is often mistaken for impaired tolerance), and ketones are modulated by insulin, too.

What I generally do is calculate my protein with the 1g/lb of lean body weight formula and set MFP to the percentage closest to that, determine what gram level of carbs I want and set MFP to the percentage closest to that, and let fat fill in the rest. This does screw with the numbers as MFP calculates it if you do the "net calorie" thing, but with those, I just stick to my set gram-based goals for protein and carbs for the most part.