I have found my body gets bored fast. what I mean is that if I stay with lower calories or higher calories for too long I don't lose. Generally I stay around 1500 but I'll have days of 1700 or days off 1300. I'll often see a loss after higher days and gains after lower days. There is no rhyme or reason really. I was told initially not to worry about calories, concentrate on getting your macros right, get lots of fat & keep your carbs under 20g, but after a certain point calories are important too.

My weight loss has been pretty slow. I lost my initial 15lb in the first month & half, the rest has been a roller coaster, up & down the same 2 or 3 lbs, gradually going down a little each month. Not as fast as I'd like but despite this, I feel a lot better, clearer headed and more energy, so I have to weigh the good with the bad.

Like Frob said, it's a marathon, the weight will fluctuate. I have seen 7-12 LB swing depending on what my work out routines were, I ate ton of food and had no problem losing weight consistently. There were weeks I lost o.5 LB of fat and there were weeks I lost more than 3 LB of fat for that week. Also scale doesn't know if you are losing fat or not, your body weight can go up and down because of water weight fluctuations. May be weigh yourself every two weeks.

Think of caloric intake in terms of weeks not days. So instead of sticking to a strict 1565/day think of more of 10955/week. Some days you eat more than 1565 other days you eat; it balances out. You could then "bank" your calories from a few days to eat more on others as in eat more on the weekends than during the week.

You may also be too high with your protein. Best to start at a very high fat percentage ~90% then work your way down till things stop and then you'll know what your "sweet" spot for keto is. Read "The Art & Science of LowCarb Living" by Phinney and Volek for a thorough understanding of ketogenic dieting.

Calorie manipulation is for those who are leptin resistant. When one is leptin sensitive calories on a ketogenic diet don't matter. Plus with the leptin reset there's built-in intermittent fasting after the first week. I'm losing bodyfat eating a 1500 calorie breakfast with another 1500 for dinner...BUT time will tell.

Kinitwite another approach might be to up your fats instead. However I would definitely recommend the leptin reset so that your calories as a ketogenic dieter are inconsequential...naturally this isn't a license to overeat but that when you do it isn't anywhere near an issue. I'm discovering that having hormones in check is THE answer and not metabolism because the former dictates the latter not the other way around.

Leptin Reset - that's this completely unproven out-there concept invented by Jack Kruse. Take that with a huge lump of salt ... personally, I don't find his argumentation convincing. Especially with croooz negating the law of thermodynamics. Maybe you can alter your body composition an eucaloric diet by changing macros, but saying that "calories don't matter" in a weight loss context is always wrong.

Its lawS of thermodynamics not law. It never fails that those who live and die by calories in/out fail point to the first law but somehow it escapes them about the second law. Our bodies are not bomb calorimeters that work with 100% efficiency. Our gender, age, fitness level, and hormones play a major part in our body composition. If you reread I said when one is leptin sensitive calories don't matter. If manipulating hormones with diet is an out there concept then what exactly do you think you're doing by eating? Anabolism/catabolism are protein processes and hormones are the proteins that dictate what is going on and when.

Naughty_ZOOT you sound like what my wife has gone through. Weeks on MFP calculators had her gaining weight. Dropping had her stabilize and then gain weight. Going ultra-low had her maintain but no appreciable fat loss nor change in measurements. I was at my wits end and began scouring for the answer because like Mike I just knew without a shred of doubt that it is all and absolutely only about calories in/out...but my wife and cousin were very disciplined and yet the weight wasn't moving. I remembered from biology that hormones have more to do with metabolism than anything else so I started to look and read up on them and found out about leptin and then found Dr. Jack Kruse's Leptin Reset protocol. I can honestly say I could care less about Kruse's argumentation because he didn't invent this for anyone but something he stumbled upon, applied it to himself, and it worked. So my wife and I started to try it out for ourselves and then decide versus the alternative of assuming we know it all and not experiment for ourselves.

The protocol is simple. Eat 50-75g of protein within 30 minutes of waking up, six hours later eat lunch, and then six hours after that eat dinner. The goal is that you'll only actually eat breakfast and dinner because you won't be hungry during the day. There is absolutely no snacking during the day. So what I do for breakfast is make sure I get ~20% protein and the rest fat so it's ketogenic. You should not get hungry until till dinner time and then you eat dinner. There are zero cravings during the day or night and no bingeing. That part alone amazes me because the cravings would drive me crazy even on keto. Now this is not a weight/fatloss protocol but a reset of the hormone leptin which is noted to be resistant in us's who are fat. It takes approximately 6-8 weeks for things to reset and then after that eating a paleo/primal or ketogenic diet is advised. For me even on keto the cravings were there when I ate breakfast but not with this massive breakfast. I would definitely be hungry come lunch time when I'd eat a massive breakfast of protein, fats, and carbs so there's something going on. I'll let the bro-scientists and pseudo-scientists argue about the theory while I continue the experiment. Heck just the fact that cravings have been zapped is enough to continue this protocol indefinitely for me and my wife. If you google Jack Kruse Leptin Reset you'll find his site and forum with tons more info.

Thank you croooz, I will scope out Dr. Kruse today. I research daily and have a research attitude that basically says that I will read everything, pro or con, and then make a personal common sense based judgment call and you sound similar in that regard, too. I want to know all of the available information that is out there which takes time because it is so extensive and complicated. Just like my diabetes, there is a lot of flow chart "if this, then that or that or that" kind of research going on.

I started my permanent lifestyle adjustments in January when I went very low carb per Dr. Bernstein to try and get off of my diabetic meds and lose weight for glucose control and lifetime health improvements. Type 2 is highly prevalent in my family. I got off of the meds at the end of March and continued on with his protocols until mid-May when I switched up to LCHF after my initial 20lb loss had stopped by mid-April. I want to lose a total of ~80 lbs. I lost all of that weight and eliminated other health issues simply by dropping all grains (Wheat Belly) and the VLC was what controlled my glucose even after 12 years of meds. After mid-May, I have had even more energy on LCHF which I love but the weight loss stalled until I tried experimenting with getting a few more carbs via vegetables at each meal. I was anything but regular in those months with exercise and that is another puzzle piece I am now correcting. I did a berry challenge this week and even thought the results were far better than before, they are not good enough yet to return them to my diet. That was designed to test my insulin sensitivity level and there is progress there which is encouraging. Exercise will build new muscle receptors so that will help, too.

I have not had any craving issues except occasionally for veggies so I started to vary them even more and that took care of those. Hunger has been a complete non-issue on very low carb or LCHF and I was never a big eater anyway so if anything I was eating too little but I also was quite sedentary. Snacking has been pretty much a big fat zero for me since about February and was driven by carbs and sugar back then. I do not eat any type of sugar any longer.

I have not used the preset MFP calculators and do custom mode since they seem to be "conventional wisdom" in regards to the macros which would totally mess up my glucose with the carbohydrate recommendations. My goal all along was to gain mastery over my glucose levels and lose weight as a sideline while improving the overall quality of my life for now and the future.

I get a bit antsy about too much protein and try to space it out evenly during the day due to gluconeogenesis because I have had liver dumps in the past. That may be improved by now, too. I will however challenge it tomorrow since I am reading this too late for the 30 minute window today. I have been up 2.5 hours and eaten nothing yet. I test new things in the daytime so that I have time to respond to any spikes with exercise in order to return my glucose levels to normal since my liver issues always included a night time drop and then a liver dump which always resulted in high fasting morning numbers when I still consumed “normal” carbs. I choose to control my glucose this way if a test goes awry and that is also how I learn what I am sensitive to. I know I am extremely carbohydrate sensitive to grains and most dairy; even raw.

My normal days from mid-May until 2 weeks ago always had less than 20 carbs and were typically an 80f, 15p, 5c ratio with the protein being limited to what was adequate because of the dumping concerns. I started learning about benign fatty liver disease while researching plateau causes and got some milk thistle/silymarin to help with that in case it is part of the equation; especially with the liver dumping. I do think that it is all a very multi-faceted puzzle and I am slowly fitting the pieces together. I will do the course of the bottle and then I have some artichoke extract to do after that which acts similarly. Since benign fatty liver is very common in obese people (and diabetics) and the milk thistle was safe I decided to give it a whirl even though I don't have any known liver issues or a diagnosis.

In the last two weeks I started to make more effort to get some low carb veggies in all of my meals for the calorie shifting experiment (with some small success) and especially at breakfast which was lacking in that area so I typically add greens. I can shift those to later in the day or go back to the Bernstein protocol for a while if need be. Being ketogenic is very easy for me to achieve which is why my husband can't figure out why he is shedding pounds (48 total, 37 just since Father's day) at only a blood reading of .5 and mine weight just sits there unmoved at 3.0. Just shows you how unique our physiology really is and he has the male advantage and he is not freshly menopausal either, lol. That said I have had weight issues since puberty hormones hit so I am not considering menopause to be much of a cause here at the moment. Rather, I consider hormones in general to be the root of all of my lifetime health issues including insulin. I had them measured a few years ago and all come back in the normal ranges so who knows. Obviously something is out of kilter.

My husband’s success in fringe ketosis coupled with Sisson's Primal Blueprint theory about that being the “sweet spot” (and the fact that I sometimes, but not always, I seem to lose when my ketones are lower not higher) led me to add back some veggie carbs in the last 2 weeks which is hard for me because of the food volume. Partly it was also based on a desire to eat more veggies. I have had my blood ketones over Eenfeldt's "sweet spot" of 1.5-3.0 with zero results but he says that there is no point on going over 3.0 because you get no better results. I agree. I have done fat fast days with nothing but eggs and coconut oil but zero change other than to drive my ketones up over 3.0. I had crazy energy though, lol. Pure fasting does that to me, too.

I also am increasing my slow long exercise per Sisson's Primal Blueprint and will be adding my lifting exercises now that my darling hubby has the weight equipment all set up here at home. I am eager to do that.
Have you read Protein Power by the Eades'? From what you are describing, that may be a similar idea to Kruse's. They advocate a high protein/moderate fat/low carb protocol. Personally, that is what my husband gravitates toward but I seem to gravitate toward high fat/moderate protein/low carb. I have not read the Eades’ book yet but it is in the pile. I am finishing up Volek and Phinney today (which I now realize should have been read months ago) but I have a big pile of books and I read them or get in some internet support research daily. Anyway, sorry for the verbosity (I’m ¾ Irish) and thank you for the reference to Kruse.
Zoot