Why Am I Not in Ketosis Yet?

Are you having a problem getting into ketosis?
Here are 12 stumbling blocks
that might be interfering with your success. 

Ketosis occurs whenever your glucose supply runs low, but sometimes the body can fight back pretty hard to protect its fat stores.


In addition, all of those little cheats, low-carb products, daily stress, and even your current weight all affect your body's ability to burn fat for fuel.

I definitely know how you feel. Some people have lots of difficulties getting into ketosis, but don't let that fact overwhelm you and convince you to turn back.

Just because you don't seem to be making any progress and other people are losing a ton of weight on Induction, that doesn't mean that a low-carb diet is the wrong choice for you. 

There's still hope even if nothing you've tried so far has worked, and even if you can't seem to get into ketosis no matter what you do. 

If your clothes are tight, the scale isn't budging, and your Ketostix are either tan or barely pink, all is not lost. There's always a reason why you're craving those chocolate chip cookies the kids are eating. 

There's a reason why you're having a hard time at work and still feel exhausted all the time. You just gotta find the barrier to ketosis and banish it from your life.

Yes, I know that's more difficult than it sounds, so if you're like most people, you're probably wondering:

• What am I doing wrong?
• Why am I not in ketosis yet?

Here's the fact:

Ketosis occurs when the body has exhausted all potential sources of glucose.

Are you still feeling exhausted and tired?
What are you doing wrong? Why no ketosis yet?

For most people, that happens in only a few hours to a couple of days, max. But for other people, the body can put up quite a fight before it relents and begins to use your fat stores for energy. 

If you can't figure out why you are not in ketosis yet, here are 12 common stumbling blocks that might be getting in the way:

1. Are You Following Your Low-Carb Diet Exactly?

A lot of people tell me that they have been following a low-carb diet for one or two weeks, but nothing is happening as they expected. The scale hasn't budged, and their cravings haven't gone away.

When I question them further, they will often admit that they only cheated once or twice during the past 10 to 14 days.

A low-carb diet is not a low-calorie diet. 

You have to follow your low-carb program exactly, or you won't be able to get into ketosis and stay there.

While an occasional cheat day won't harm a low-carb diet after your body has been trained to predominantly burn fats for fuel, if you eat a brownie, drink a glass of wine, or treat yourself to some other high-carb food during the first month or two, it can prevent you from becoming fat adapted.

The heart of a low-carb diet is to deprive your body of high-glucose foods, so it will switch metabolic pathways. 

You need to follow your low-carb plan of choice exactly, to do that. Your body must believe that carby food is no longer an option.

Before fat adaption, you have to do low carb by the book.
Even one little cheat can interfere with ketosis.

If you keep eating higher-carb foods, your body won't make the switch to burning fats instead of glucose. It will just keep on craving glucose. 

Once it knows there are carbs available, the body will use other forms of adaption to wait out the carb famine – instead of burning body fat.

2. Are You Eating Any Atkins Bars?

I know that Atkins Nutritionals, Inc. tells you that Atkins bars are fine to eat on Atkins Induction, but most of that is pure marketing hype.

Atkins bars contain a boat-load of glycerin, sugar alcohols, and other high-glucose carbohydrates that the Atkins diet doesn't count.

While Atkins advertises itself to be a low-carb diet, today, it is a low-glycemic plan. It may, or may not, be low in carbs, depending on your food choices.

Atkins Diet today is a low-glycemic plan.
It is not always very low in carbs.

If you have gastrointestinal issues when using sugar alcohols, you might be able to get away with very small bits of sugar alcohol in your coffee or tea without it affecting your ability to go into ketosis.

If you don't have any gastrointestinal issues from consuming sugar alcohols, this means:

Your body is metabolizing the sugar alcohol as if it were real sugar!

It doesn't ignore all of those carbs no matter what the label says.

Sugar alcohols were once thought to be the holy grail for dieters because they don't raise your blood glucose level and were thought to escape being metabolized. 

However, that theory didn't hold up to biological scrutiny. 

Sugar alcohols cause your insulin level to go up, which is the total opposite of what Atkins Induction is trying to accomplish.

Many people who find it impossible to get into the state of ketosis are consuming several Atkins bars per week, and not just a single bar when low-carb choices are scarce. 

It's best to stay away from the Atkins bars completely, but if you can't do that, at least wait until your body adapts to the state of ketosis before you try to add the Atkins bars to your meal plan.

3. You're Already in Ketosis, but Don't Know It

Getting into ketosis requires you to eliminate almost all sources of available glucose, forcing the liver to rely on its glycogen stores, the storage form of carbohydrates, to keep your blood sugar stable.

Once glycogen starts to run low, the body will turn to oxidizing amino acids to make up the difference. 

If protein burning continues for more than a few days, the liver will stop oxidizing protein for energy purposes and begin to break down fat instead.

If you're eating 20-net carbs per day, or less, it will only take one day for your glycogen stores to diminish to the level where the body begins to adapt.

Most people who fear they are not in ketosis actually are.
If you have eliminated most sources of glucose,
you are in ketosis.

Your body will use other methods to get glucose before it turns to using fat. Without a ready supply of available glucose, the body has to eventually turn to its fat stores, or you would die.

According to The Ketogenic Diet, by Lyle McDonald, this is because the:

• brain
• central nervous system
• red blood cells
• a few kidney cells
• and all other cells without mitochondria

cannot use fatty acids for fuel. These cells are dependent on glucose because it takes mitochondria to burn fat.

While most low-carb experts will tell you that protein can be converted into glucose to save the brain and central nervous system, what they don't tell you is that:

Converting protein into glucose is a lengthy, complex process. The body only uses this pathway if there is no other alternative to get the glucose it needs.

Gluconeogenesis is demand driven. 

Any glucose made from protein goes into filling up your depleted glycogen stores FIRST. It is not used to feed the brain except during a temporary emergency.

It is more efficient for the body to make ketones to keep the brain alive, since the brain can derive up to 75 or 80 percent of its energy needs from ketones.

Once the body kicks up its ketone production, you are in ketosis, regardless of what else is going on.

4. How Do You Know that You are NOT in Ketosis?

Many people tell me that they are frustrated with how their low-carb diet is going. They are having trouble getting into ketosis and want to know what they are doing wrong. 

My usual reply is to ask:

“How do you KNOW that you are not in ketosis?”

Over the years, a couple of people have told me that they purchased a blood ketone meter and using the meter revealed they were not in ketosis. 

But, the number one answer I normally receive is that the:

“Ketosix are not turning dark.”

Some people will tell me that they are in light ketosis because the sticks are only turning pink or lavender, and they want to know how to get a darker color. 

Pink sticks do not mean that you are not in ketosis.

Very few have actually told me that the sticks are not turning any color at all.

For some reason, most dieters believe that the color on these urine-testing sticks, available at Amazon, is an indicator of whether or not they are in ketosis. 

I see this misconception a lot at low-carb forums, as well.

Ketosis is like being pregnant. It's a metabolic state, so you are either in that metabolic state, or you are not. There is no such thing as a lighter state or a deeper state of ketosis.

You are either in ketosis, or you are not.

There are states where you are creating, processing, and hording a larger amount of ketones in your kidney or bloodstream than other dieters, but manufacturing an excessive amount of ketones doesn't guarantee you'll lose body fat. 

It is only when your muscles begin using fatty acids for fuel that you begin to lose a decent amount of body fat each week. If you are turning the Ketostix any color at all, if your blood ketone level is .5 mmol/L or higher, you are in ketosis.

Period.

5. Are You Drinking a Lot of Water?

Water doesn't keep you from going into ketosis. It actually helps you process more body fat. 

But since a large proportion of low-carb dieters insist on using their Ketostix as a measurement of whether they are in ketosis, or not, I thought I'd mention a reason why your Ketostix might still be tan.

Ketostix measure ketones by concentration. 

They don't measure a specific number of ketones being dumped by the kidneys, so if you drink an adequate amount of water, that solution will be diluted.

In fact, when the ketone strips turn purple, that indicates that you are severely dehydrated. If you are drinking an adequate amount of water, the ketone strips will be tan, pink, or lavender. Rarely dark.

I have only seen dark Ketostix in people who have never been on a low-carb diet before. Many newbies will make an excessive amount of ketones until their body learns how many ketones it needs to survive. 

But you can also turn the ketone strips a darker color if you're overeating fat.

6. Ketones Cannot be Stored in the Body

Another thing to be aware of is that the kidneys do not dump ketones consistently. 

They will only dump them when the concentration builds up to an unhealthy level. Since the kidneys have no way to store ketones, they find high levels of ketones irritating, so they get rid of them, but not on a regular basis. 

Ketone dumping is intermittent.

For that reason, the color on your Ketostix won't be consistent. They will read different levels at different times of the day or night. 

If your sticks are tan, that doesn't mean you are not in ketosis. It simply means that either:

1. the concentration of ketones has been diluted by drinking a large amount of water; or
2. you are not dumping ketones at the exact moment that you checked.

Dumped ketones can sometimes mean that you have too many ketones built up in your bloodstream. To correct this problem, and keep you from going into ketoacidosis, insulin is secreted and any acetoacetone ketones are transported from the bloodstream to the kidney.

Beta-hydroxybutyrate ketones do not show up on your ketone sticks. The sticks don't test for beta ketones. They test for acetoacetone ketones, the precursor to the beta ones, so if you're dumping beta-hydroxybutrate, you won't know it. 

You'll only see when acetoacetate ketones are ditched.

The insulin secretion brought on by high blood ketone levels alerts the liver to the presence of high ketones in the blood. These high ketone levels tell the liver to slow down ketone production until further notice.

This doesn't mean you're no longer in a state of ketosis. You are, but the process slows down until the brain has used those extra ketones, bringing them back down to a safe level.

7. Are You Stressed Out and Frustrated?

Stress raises Cortisol levels,
and Cortisol causes insulin secretion.

Making the color of your Ketostix or the number on the scale very important can create a lot of internal stress. When stressed, the body produces cortisol, adrenaline, and other stress hormones to deal with the emergency.

An emergency situation, real or imagined, is always prepared for by creating an extra dose of energy, so you'll be able to fight your foe or run from something that is dangerous.

To make these preparations, cortisol clears the bloodstream of all fats, stores it as triglyceride in your fat cells, and then signals the liver to break down its glycogen stores into glucose and dump that glucose into the bloodstream.

As long as the mind believes you're in an emergency situation, real or imagined, the amount of blood glucose you already have doesn't matter. Extra glucose will go into the bloodstream and fat burning will stop cold.

This has nothing to do with the amount of carbohydrate you're eating. 

As long as your stress level is high, you will continue to predominantly burn protein and glucose for fuel instead of fats.

While consuming less protein can encourage the body to use some of its fat stores, due to a lack of calories, breaking down triglycerides into fatty acids isn't as quick as using protein or glucose is, so the body won't be primed to use fatty acids for fuel if cortisol is always high. 

You won't be fat adapted.

In addition to predominantly using glucose, high cortisol also slows down metabolism, shuts down non-essential body systems, and encourages protein to be stored as glycogen for easier access.

8. Are You Eating Less Than 20 Carbs a Day?

One of the tendencies I often see in low-carb dieters is the knee-jerk reaction of lowering their carbs if the weight isn't coming off as quickly as they expect.

For some reason, many people believe that if 20 carbs a day is good, then 5 or 10 or even zero will cause them to lose weight faster.

This is not true.

While those who are insulin resistant will have to drastically restrict their carbohydrate intake, in most individuals, cutting your carbs down for too long a period will cause cortisol levels to surge.

This is why our article on how to get into ketosis in less than three days includes a very low-carb diet menu that is limited to three days.

9. Are You Eating Enough Fat?

I talk about eating too much fat all the time on this blog because that is the problem I see more than any other. 

If you're having trouble getting into ketosis, eating more fat won't get you there faster. Eating lots of fat on Atkins Induction can give you a false sense of security because the body will use dietary fats to make ketones. 

But if you go too low in fat, that can cause your cortisol levels to rise, and you'll stay in glucose-burning mode.

When I was in my weight-loss phase, I discovered that if I ate less than 60 grams of fat per day, the weight stopped coming off. Not because it takes fat to burn fat, but because my body wasn't comfortable giving up its fat stores when it thought the fat in my environment was too limited. 

Going too low in fat stresses the body.

And, you don't want to do anything that will set off your body's starvation alert system.

This is why I always recommend that you put your weight-loss scale away for at least the first month and let your body adapt to your new way of eating before you start to tweak anything. You can actually make the situation worse by making the wrong changes.

10. Are You Exercising Too Hard?

Beware of too much exercise when getting into Ketosis

Heavy exercise, when combined with a low-carb diet, does some strange things to your metabolism because a low-carb diet uses the starvation pathway. Intensive exercise tends to freak the body out.

I'm talking about an extended intense exercise routine and not something quick like HIIT.

In fact, some dieters have reported that even after several weeks, their body fat still hadn't budged. It was only when some unforeseen circumstance arose that interfered with their exercise program that the weight started coming off.

Apparently, for them, the body saw exercise as a threat to life and slowed down their metabolic rate, plus other adaptions, to match the incoming amount of calories.

Biologically, exercise affects cortisol levels, as described above, so you don't want to overdo it until you know how your body is going to react to carb restriction. 

If you're struggling to get into ketosis, try dialing your exercise back a little to something your body can tolerate without triggering a starvation response.

Intense exercise burns ketones, which can make it look like you are not in the state of ketosis, even when you are.

Initially, almost every body system will use ketones for energy, but as carbohydrate restriction continues, your muscles will go insulin resistant, so they can save those ketones for the brain and central nervous system.

Instead of using ketones, your muscles will start to burn fatty acids for fuel, which means you won't need to make as many ketones as before, so fat loss will slow down and come into line with your activity level.

This shows up as a higher ketone level on blood ketone testing.

11. Is Your Calorie Deficit Too Large?

A calorie deficit is required for a low-carb diet to work. There is no doubt about that.

But if you try to go too low in calories, to pick up the weight-loss pace, you can trigger a starvation response. If this happens, cortisol levels with rise, and your body will quickly slam on the breaks:

• leptin levels will plunge
• lowering your metabolic rate
• shutting down non-essential body systems
• raising your hunger level and cravings for sugar
• going back to predominantly burning glucose

While a large deficit will result in weight loss, with your body on high alert, you won't receive as many benefits from being in ketosis. In addition, once the body adapts to that large deficit, you won't lose weight as quickly as you might think.

12. Are You Already at a Normal BMI?

You wouldn't believe how many people go on a low-carb diet, even though they are already at a healthy weight.

Most of these normal-weight individuals are concerned about a few bulges that traditional dieting hasn't been able to get rid of.

I get that.

However, a low-carb diet isn't designed to attack stubborn fat pockets.

A low-carb diet works best for those who are metabolically challenged or working with severe insulin resistance, such as PCOS. It is also useful for those who need to be gluten free, have cholesterol imbalances, or are trying to control a serious binge-eating issue.

If you're already at a normal weight, switching to the starvation pathway won't work. The less body fat percentage you have, the less body fat your body will mobilize on a daily basis to save your life.

When you are close to a normal weight, your calories have to be quite low to get the job done. For that reason, a low-fat, Protein Sparing Modified Fast (PSMF), or some type of cyclic carb diet works best for those who are already at a healthy BMI. 

This is because the only calories you can decrease without muscle wasting are fat calories. For ideas on how to decrease your fat intake, check out the following article: 

Use These 3 Easy Steps to Trim Your Calories Without Counting Them. 

Trouble Getting Into Ketosis? Give Your Body Time to Make the Adaption

Getting into the state of ketosis isn't hard.

However, you will likely experience a lot of frustration, confusion, and misery if you are trying to use weight loss to measure the metabolic state of ketosis.

Ketosis is simply a state of being where ketones are being made from triglyceride breakdown in the liver to help keep you alive.

Ketosis is no more magical than that.

It's a survival technique, a tool you can use, but you have to understand what you're doing, and why you are doing it.

Becoming preoccupied with the number on your
weight-loss scale keeps you frustrated and angry.
Give yourself time to adapt to Ketosis.

Focusing on weight loss during the first few weeks, rather than giving your body ample time to make the necessary metabolic adaptions, can actually backfire on what you're trying to do. 

Most of the time, fast weight loss – especially during the first few weeks of a low-carb diet – comes from muscle tissue, rather than body fat.

Muscle loss isn't the target.

• Chasing after unrealistic expectations
• using Ketostix for something they were never designed for
• and identifying with the number on the scale

will only cause your cortisol levels to swell and your blood glucose level to go up. Your self worth and self discipline will mercilessly plummet, as well.

The body strives for equilibrium.

It will adapt to your current situation and correct necessary imbalances, but it won't happen overnight.

Ketosis is the easiest way to lose weight, but it isn't the fastest way.

Shedding your body fat permanently will take awareness, re-evaluation, and a willingness to do something different.

If you're looking for a fast fix, ketosis isn't it.