You've decided to follow a low-carbohydrate diet.
You've read Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, A New Atkins for a New You, or Dr. Eades Protein Power Life Plan. You've stocked the house with appropriate low-carb foods. You've purchased a bottle of Ketostix so you can make sure that you are in ketosis.
But for some reason, your body is fighting against you.
Now, your first week started out great!
You enjoyed ham and eggs for breakfast and a jumbo bacon cheeseburger, without the bun, for lunch. For dinner, you grilled up a Porterhouse steak or a smoked pork butt with a small dinner salad, drenched in full-fat salad dressing.
In between meals, you munched on cheddar cheese sticks, deviled eggs, a few olives, and a dill pickle. Maybe you grabbed a couple of slices of lunch-ham, spread it with cream cheese, and rolled it up into a tube.
Although, excited and anxious to see the urine test strips turn purple, the color on the stick doesn't move.
In fact, it's not even pink.
Okay.
Maybe it's going to take your body a little bit longer to get into ketosis, so you decide to wait a few more days, and then test again.
Those days come and go, but still no ketosis.
You believe you're doing everything right. You haven't eaten anything that wasn't on the Atkins List of Acceptable Foods for Induction, so why are you not in ketosis?
Why You are Not in Ketosis – #1 Reason
For example, fruit is often limited to a few berries.
If most of the foods you eat on keto have little to no carbohydrates, you might believe that the body can't help but go into ketosis, but that is not true.
A low-carb diet is not always a ketogenic diet.
While severely restricting carbohydrates is the quickest way to get into ketosis, if you continue eating a high-protein diet, beyond a couple of days, and you're sensitive to protein or over-secrete insulin, then your biological makeup can prevent ketosis.
In general, ketogenic diets limit the supply of available glucose. For most dieters, this is all you have to do to switch metabolic pathways. Since glucose is always used before fats, lowering your carbohydrates coaxes your body into using fats and ketones for fuel since glucose isn't around.
Now, if you are sensitive to protein foods, however, and eat mostly zero carb, high-protein foods, your body might decide to use some of that protein to make the glucose it needs for the brain.
While there is no dietary requirement for carbohydrates, this is because proteins can be converted into glycogen, and then further broken down into glucose, as needed.
The bad news?
As long as glucose keeps its prominence, the body can't go into the state of ketosis.
What Can You Do About Not Being in Ketosis?
Pick up your low-carb diet book and look at the diet again.
Neither Atkins nor Eades recommends a very low-carb, high-protein diet unless you are extremely carbohydrate intolerant.
The sample diet above contains less than 10 grams of carbohydrates and very few vegetables, yet many low-carb dieters eat that way every single day.
If your menu is similar, you are not doing Atkins or Protein Power correctly.
While being in ketosis is not required to lose weight, overeating protein – the number 1 reason why you're not losing weight on keto – can keep your pancreas over-secreting insulin, as it attempts to keep the level of ketones in your blood from soaring too high.
When your insulin level remains elevated, the body might have trouble accessing your fat stores.
If you're following the Atkins Diet or Keto, the initial recommendation is to limit your carbohydrate intake to 20-net carbs per day, most of which must come from vegetables.
Many low-carb dieters glide right on by the word “most.”
Most doesn't mean less than 10.
Most means more than 10!
In comparison, Dr. Eades recommends 30-net carbs, and initially allows you more variety than Atkins does.
Instead of slowly adding back carbohydrates, on Protein Power you can eat anything you want as long as you stay within your carbohydrate tolerance level. Dr. Eades also limits the amount of protein foods you can eat per day, depending on how much you currently weigh.
Low-carb diet plans are not meat, eggs, and cheese diets, even though that's how they are often portrayed in the media. In fact, Dr. Eades' diet allows you to eat fruit, toast, and low-carb tortillas from the very first day.
Likewise, Atkins 2002 – the most popular version of the Atkins Diet – allows 3 cups of salad vegetables or 2 cups of salad and 1 cup cooked low-carb vegetables per day. Atkins Nutritionals later amended that recommendation to a minimum of 12- to 15-net carbs from just vegetables.
If you are not in ketosis, the first step in correcting the problem is to make sure you are following the plan correctly.
What Does 20-Net Carbs Per Day Look Like?
To a new dieter, the lure of getting to eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, burgers for lunch, and steak for dinner is quite appealing. Go ahead and have them, but keep your protein sizes within the amount of protein you need to maintain your muscle mass and body tissues, plus a little extra for gluconeogenesis.
That comes to about 0.8 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass, everything in your body that isn't fat.
Those who lift weights, participate in sports, or have a physically active job will need a bit more. Perhaps, 1.0 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass.
Once your body adapts to a ketogenic diet, in about 2 to 6 weeks, many brain cells can use ketones for fuel.
Vegetables are an important part of a low-carb diet.
If you're having trouble getting into ketosis, most of the time, you're eating too much meat and cheese. But, you can also be shorting yourself on vegetables.
Non-starchy vegetables provide carbohydrates that are turned into glucose. This glucose is used to keep the brain functioning properly. The brain cannot run on just ketones. And vegetables are a great way to get that glucose.
Non-starchy vegetables are also a great way to increase your fiber intake. However, on many low-carb diets, that fiber isn't counted. Instead, you subtract the fiber grams from the total carbohydrate grams – which gives you the net gram count.
There are many calorie and carbohydrate counters available online for free that can help you discover how many grams of carbohydrates and fiber are in the food you're eating.
The following vegetable list provides a little more than 13-net carbs for the day and about 16 grams of fiber:
- 2 cups salad, with celery, cucumber, radishes, and mushrooms
- 1 cup cooked green beans
- 2 cups broccoli-cauliflower mix
- 4 thick slices tomato
- half of an avocado
You could also spend some of those extra net carbs on more vegetables.
Are High-Protein Diets Good for Weight Loss?
Restricting carbohydrates lowers your basal insulin level and, thereby, improves metabolic issues, such as insulin resistance, but it isn't always better. If your insulin response is still strong enough to handle the effects of gluconeogenesis, you might be able to eat a higher protein diet and still go into ketosis.
But that won't hold true for everyone.
Since ketosis is defined by the number of ketones built up in your bloodstream, rather than the amount of ketones you spill over into the urine, it's also possible to lose weight even if you're not in ketosis.
For some individuals, the calorie deficit is enough.
But if you're struggling to lose weight, have stalled, or just want to experience the depressed hunger and increased energy that ketosis brings, a low-carb, high-protein diet might prevent ketosis.
For those who are really struggling with this, there are ways to check out the ketones in your blood by using a ketone blood monitor, available at Amazon and other retailers.
(Available at Amazon)
These meters and blood testing kits can help you dial in what you're eating to make sure you're getting the proper ratios of carbohydrates, proteins, and fat.
Most people who have used these monitors are very happy with the outcome. For those who think you're in ketosis, but aren't, protein and fats can be adjusted until the proper ketone level in the bloodstream is reached.
Overall, the greater majority of folks who were not in ketosis when tested, discovered that they were eating too much protein. Of those who lowered their protein intake and slightly increased their fats, the outcome was positive.
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