I am a 34-year old male in great shape and have around 12% body fat. I’ve been eating LCHF for about 2 years now and was doing IF for the first 14 months. I decided to try a strictly ketogenic lifestyle about 4 months ago and I am finding it almost impossible to get into nutritional ketosis. The highest reading I’ve tested on my Precision Xtra was 0.7 and I tend to average around 0.2-0.3 daily. I have no idea what I am doing wrong.

I have tried everything from 40 net carbs to 20 total carbs. Slashed my protein to less than 90 grams a day and my meals average around 3-10 total carbs with 55-70 grams of super clean fats. I take MCT 3 times a day and even have a Ketonix breath ketone analyzer. I do not eat any sneaky carbs or sugars—never have and never will. My fasting blood glucose always seems to be in the 70’s and I just can’t figure out what’s up with my ketone levels. I try to consume around 250 grams of fat a day.

I work 7 days a week and am literally on my feet all day. My sleep is around 6.5-7.5 hours a night and I am militant with my regimen. I do take a lot of supplements but nothing from what I’ve read about them should be keeping me out of ketosis. I am beginning to think I have something else gong on. My energy is nonstop from the moment I get up until I go to bed. I do not drink. I feel fine, but I just know that I have never crossed into the 1.0 mmol and can’t for the life of me understand why. Digestion is fine, hydration is fine, electrolytes are good and my recent blood tests were great except for my doctor’s puzzled look at how and why I feel and look so good with a cholesterol of 249 and an LDL-C of 174. I am not worried about those because my HDL/LDL and triglycerides/HDL ratios are well within range. I workout 2-3 times a week. PLEASE HELP ME figure this out.

Thank you and I absolutely love your show!

I’ve been keto for over a year now and feel great! My energy levels are up, inflammation is down, and I lost a few pounds too. The only negative thing that I have noticed since starting this is my hands and feet are constantly cold and clammy. Is this even related to being ketogenic? If so, what can I do to fix this?

Keep up the great work guys!

I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night hungry. I’ve heard you guys talk about getting adequate fat at the dinner meal and I try to make sure of that. But this hunger in the middle of the night is annoying. I am usually able to drink some water and go back to sleep without eating anything. Then when I wake up in the morning, I’m no longer hungry. I’ve also noticed that sometimes I’ll wake up in the morning hungry and will go running or lift weights at the gym. Counterintuitively, after the workout I am no longer hungry and can even skip lunch. Is it safe to assume that the reason the hunger goes away in these instances is because I am able to sleep longer and exercise which helps me go deeper into ketosis?  What do you and Doc Nally think?

Thanks!

Thanks again!

I am a certified holistic health coach who has specialized in the ketogenic diet for many years now. I love it with my whole heart because the benefits are outrageous and undeniable! However, I have noticed some do not find weight loss success when attempting keto because of one MAJOR issue in my opinion. I see it time and time again. It’s the calories.

I’m not talking about a person mistakenly eating too many carbs for individual tolerance nor am I talking about accidentally eating too much protein. These are people who are fully keto-adapted with adequate blood ketone readings who are working out and sleeping great, managing stress well, and yet they are not losing weight. Why? It’s because they are eating too many calories to give their body a reason to need to tap into body fat stores.

This is one of the things I have heard you guys repeatedly tell people often on Keto Talk—“calories don’t matter, as long as it’s coming from fat and as long as they are eaten to satiety.” But this doesn’t actually work in real life for most people and it also doesn’t make any logical sense. After all, if it were indeed sound and true, people would not be able to maintain weight in ketosis. Health coaches like me who have been in ketosis for years would just forever keep losing fat until we keeled over. But this isn’t happening because if a person is maintaining ketosis, they are eating enough calories from fat that the body doesn’t have to convert body fat into ketones and homeostasis is achieved.

I hear you guys say it’s hard or darn near impossible to eat too much fat because you get full. But, most people coming into this have leptin resistance, binge eating disorder, and other issues that bypass satiety completely. Without proper coaching and calorie accountability they get totally out of control on keto just like any other plan. Now, I’m not saying health isn’t still improving on keto even with excessive calories. Healing will indeed still happen. But not weight loss for most people. I can confidently say that after years of consulting that this is unfortunately the rule and not the exception.

Most people eat way past satiety after the first month or so of keto. It seems that at first they have such great appetite suppression from ketones and are able to stop before consuming calories in excess. But then that satiety dwindles and they start snacking on fat bombs, macadamia nuts, olives, cheese, and other non-protein or carb containing drinks or shakes with tons of cream. It’s an overload of fat calories. They are still having 1 to 2.5 blood ketone readings but they just keep packing in the calories from fat and stop losing weight. Every now and then even gain a little. It’s not water weight either, it’s body fat.

Then, they totally believe all the myths that keto doesn’t work and you only lose water weight in the beginning and that consuming fat ultimately makes you fat. I HATE those myths. We know ketosis is da bomb diggity and will absolutely shift every metabolic marker in the right direction. And in my opinion weight loss is the least important. But not to my clients! And not to the average person interested in health and wellness. I get clients who have tried various high-fat programs and they end up at me after they get frustrated gaining weight and feeling cruddy.

I wholeheartedly believe this weight gain is completely unnecessary if keto-adaptation happened as a result of using the fat on our bodies preferentially over the fat on our plates. What are your thoughts on this? Thank you so much for addressing my little pet peeve and I hope I didn’t come across as a jerk! I want to see this movement succeed and thrive and this is one topic that we need to get right to communicate the best information to the masses.

You guys are my heroes so thank you for doing what you do!