[Radii]

Originally Posted by CU Tiger

Ive been strictly no/zero carb. Loading up on protein and hitting the (basement) gym for some free weights and recumbent bike.

Just wanted to comment here, it sounds like you've done this before with success but just to be sure

Keto is intended to be high fat. A healthy "balanced" diet and a keto diet usually have similar levels of protein in them. Some folks fail on keto because they replace all their carbs with lean chicken and the like, and that doesn't really work either.

Keto Calculator - Learn Your Macros on the Ketogenic Diet

That's the best calc I know of for giving macro recommendations. Of course you also mentioned hitting the gym more, which means an increase in protein could be warranted, I just wanted to make sure that you weren't trying to do low carb AND low fat. Some folks do that and are miserable.

Feb 1 - 298.
Feb 8 - 288.4
Feb 15 - 286.0

Little concerned at the dramatic slowdown but not real concerned.

Good start! Also totally standard for keto. You can search for the acronym PISS on keto forums and you'll probably find lots of discussion. It stands for "Post Induction Stall Syndrome". Its not uncommon to drop tons of water weight the first week or two, along with a small amount of fat, and then to stop losing weight entirely for awhile. I stalled out for a solid 4 weeks after my initial loss. Most do not stall that long. I couldn't tell you the sceince behind it, its something to do with the body adjusting to burning fat for energy instead of burning sugar for energy. You can search forums for "keto adaptation" and probably find a ton more on that if you're interested. Keto adaptation can take about 2 months and during that time you'll probably find peak performance w/ weights and the bike to be a bit lower. Once fully adapted then its back to normal, or even better than before for many people (lots of weightlifters and endurance athletes who don't need to lose weight experiment with keto to improve performance). Its another common complaint that new folks have who are active.

Keto sticks- Radii talks a lot about being on keto also. Ive done 3 long runs very successfully on ketogenic diets, I've never used the sticks. I know by feel when my body is in heavy furnace burn mode, but not as in tune with the marginal. Contemplating giving them a trial just to see what data they add. Can anyone offer any insight?

If you've started keto before w/o using them, I'd probably say not to bother.

I've used them in the past when I first start on keto, or if I've been cheating and trying to get back on track, but they're not really that reliable or necessary. Ketostix only measure ketones excreted in urine. That can be helpful initially if you're not sure you're doing things right, as seeing the sticks get a little darker is a nice sign that something is happening, but for long term use they aren't that great. As your body gets used to the high fat diet and lack of carbs it gets more effecient, and there's less ketones in waste so ketostix measures can change and you're not really accurately measuring ketosis at that point.

There is a breath device called Ketonix that measures ketones in breath, and you can check blood ketones on a meter similar to checking your blood sugar. Both are considered more accurate than ketostix. The blood ketone test strips are like $2 each though, and fail at a higher rate than blood sugar test strips. Not worth it to me, some folks that go hardcore in tracking numbers do that though.


I've never used a fitbit, so no opinion there.

Good luck! I'll have to get back to posting here more as well