Keto Lifestyle but Can't Get Into Ketosis

Net carbs are the carbs minus fiber. This is a calorie counting site, so you’ll have to do the math yourself to track your net carbs from the nutrition of your recipes. Most of us eat whatever we want and just eat in a calorie deficit to lose weight here. I believe there is a keto group though, that might be of more help and support.

Rathiain wrote: »

I am tracking calories as well. Before I started on this, I was consuming easily over 2500 cal/day and maintaining. When I started on this track, I set the goal at 1700 as was recommended to me, and I recently dropped it to 1500 for the past 5 days with no changes.

The only way one can lose weight is a calorie deficit, carbs do not matter. If you don’t see a loss over time you might want to start weighing your food on a food scale. Read the stickies as to why that makes a huge difference in your logging accuracy.

Rathiain wrote: »

I have been good with following the Keto diet and maintaining carbs below 22g per day, exercising (cycling, ellytical, walking) about 3 times per week @ 40 minutes each time, and managed to lose 22 lbs in the first 3 weeks, but haven't lost any in the last 2 1/2 weeks. I have a total of 100 more lbs to lose, so I would not expect to plateau this soon. I never felt like I had gotten into ketosis (no typical side effects) so I got the Ketostyx to test but apparently I am only showing trace amounts of ketones. What am I doing wrong?

You lost 22 lbs in 3 weeks, so not losing for a bit (2.5 weeks isn't that long) is normal. It was obviously working, so cutting cals likely wasn't a good idea -- it can add stress (and ketoing also can raise cortisol), so could actually make it harder to lose. Adding exercise can also cause water retention, so if you increased exercise intensity, that could be a culprit. I'm not sure how keto would affect it, but it's not uncommon to lose a bunch of water weight and then gain some back while losing fat so it looks like you are staying the same but there actually is fat loss.

I can't check the diary (you have to be careful about the entries chosen), because it is not open, to see if there's some issue with the diet that might lead to no ketosis, but ketostix also aren't that reliable (but no symptoms is interesting).

One other thing that can make a difference is time of the month. Some women don't lose in a certain part of the cycle and then drop weight in the other part. (What part varies by woman.)

I normally would eat back at least some exercise cals, but there are inflated cal amounts often -- what cals are you logging and for what exercise?

On another note, the carbs that are tracked in the food diary, are they net carbs? because the recipes are not broken down as net carbs, so my counts are typically showing total carbs, so as far as net carbs go, I am consuming considerably less than the 22g.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Choose fiber as one of your logged things and then subtract. But you need to be careful about the entries chosen, again.

When you did the initial profile, what did you put down for activity level?

If you are actually only eating 22g net carbs, the chances of you not being in ketosis are extremely low. The reason keto sites tell people to limit to 20-25g net is because that will get damn near anyone into ketosis. Most people can actually eat more, and particularly if they're active. I'm lightly active at best and will be in ketosis at around 50g net.

I'm going to agree with @psuLemon that the mental clarity and energy aspects of being in ketosis are perhaps overstated, or at the very least not universal. Also, my understanding is that those things are more attributable to being fat adapted, and that can take quite some time to achieve. It's very individual.

You've lost a large amount of weight in a very short amount of time. As others have said, you likely just need to be patient. Give your body some time to equalibrate. I would raise cals back to 1700. Being at too steep a deficit is not a good idea.