7 reason why keto is not working for you
Keto has become one of the most popular diets in the world. No doubt it is one of the most effective tools for weight loss. If one goes through a proper ketogenic process not only he or she will get slimmer but also it will beneficial for many diseases like diabetes and many hearts and kidney diseases, much hormonal imbalance, etc.
But 60% of the people who start a keto diet do not see any results and don’t continue. In this article, I have written about 7 reasons why keto is not working for you.
Hopefully, knowing these mistakes will help you to correct yourself and get the best result that the keto diet has to offer.
You are not measuring macros
Yes, not measuring what you are eating can be the main reason why keto is not working for you.
Unfortunately, most of the people are not aware of how much macros they are taking when they are following the keto diet. They think that eating a lot of fat and avoiding carbs will do the trick.
Well, you need to know the exact measure of your fat, protein and carb intake to maintain the ketosis properly in your body. If you are not measuring these macros you will not get the best result that the keto diet has to offer.
When you are in a keto diet you should take 70% of your calories in the form of Fat. 25% should be coming from protein and 5% from carbohydrates.
A great tool that you can use in your smartphone is called myplate app. If you want to measure your macros you can download this app. Believe me, it will make your life much easier.
It is very easy to track your macro using this app. You can take a scan of the bar graph and see if the food that you are eating meets these criteria
This app will make sure that you are getting the right amount of nutrients.
Remember if you are not tracking the macros daily you might have too many protein or carbs and not even know it. 70% of the people go through this problem and don’t get the desired results they want.
Not measuring ketone level
So many times people complain that the ketogenic diet does not work. The problem is most of the people who are following the keto diet don’t measure ketones regularly.
They don’t even know if they are in ketosis or not. You may be changing your diet towards eating a lot of fat but you never get into ketosis. The only way to know that you are into ketosis is to measure the ketones.
There is 3 different way to ensure that you are in ketosis
Checking urine
you can check your urine for ketone level. When you start keto diet, In your urine you can find something called Acetoacetate.
when you start to follow keto diet Your body excretes Acetoacetate in ketone form in about the first couple of weeks.
To check the ketone in your urine you can buy these ketone strips. Use your urine on one of the keto strips and compare it to the colors on the chart and find out how much ketosis you are.
Problem with this method is that after the first few weeks your body is not going to excretes Acetoacetate any more.
Breath test
With the breath test, you can measure Acetone. It is the sweetness you taste on your breath.
the problem is that the ketones breathing devices are very expensive.
another problem with this method is that it is not accurate and every time you will get some different results. You don’t get that nice and even breath distribution to be able to know if you are getting quantitative measurement or analysis.
Blood test
The best way to find out your ketone level is through a blood test. You don’t have to go to a lab. You can do the blood test on your own using a specific kind of instrument. These instruments are great for testing ketosis.
Most of these instruments come with diabetes test option also. I will highly suggest you to get this instrument. It will be a very handful in the long run if you are going through the keto diet seriously.
Not getting enough fat
keto is a high-fat diet. Fat is the most important ingredient when you are in a keto diet. It works as the main fuel source of your body.
when you are in a keto diet you are missing the necessary fuel necessary for your body that the carbohydrate generally provides. Fat is the only macro that will fulfill this gap.
So it is natural that you need to have a sufficient amount of fat in your daily meal. There are many kinds of fat available in the market. You need to choose high-quality fat, This kind of keto-friendly fat can be found in salmon olives Avacado nuts MCT oil, ghee or clarified butter, etc.
Remember To get into keto adaptive and keto therapeutic stage 70% of your daily calories need to be fat so you need to make sure that the majority of what you are eating should be in the form of fat.
Too much protein
This may be a reason why keto is not working for you.
If you are trying to build your Muscel doing exercise for bodybuilding chances are that you are eating too much protein.
The great thing about the ketogenic diet is that it is muscle sparing. so you are spare the muscle. You can use less protein than you normally do.
If you are eating too much protein it puts you into something called gluconeogenesis which means you start to produce sugar or glucose.
So the protein that you take can be converted into sugar.
To much protein is not recommended in any kind of keto diet plan, If you don’t do a high amount of physical activity
if you are taking too much protein means you are taking extra calories in a day. So please be careful with that and lower your protein.
To much protein is not recommended in any kind of keto diet plan, If you don’t do a high amount of physical activity
Bad fats
The problem with a lot of people following a ketogenic diet is they just start throwing cheese and fat into there diet and they just eating bacon all day long. And they say that keto is not working for me .
You have to be very careful with this because not all fat is created equal. It has to be quality fat. You need to know about different types of fat like saturated fat monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats and really what they are about and how beneficial they are.
You should not be living on bacon because it’s not a great fat.
Can you have bacon sometimes?
sure you can but at the same time, you have to limit it. You should eat more healthy and quality fat.
Stay away from vegetable oils. They are not good for your health. these kinds of oil oxidize.
Typically they are higher in omega 6 fat. you would be surprised to know omega 6 fat is highly inflammatory. which means you have to avoid vegetable oil.
Too many carbs
Eating too many carbs can be the reason why keto is not working for you
if you want to get the best result out of your keto diet you cant effort to do the mistake that most of the people dose that is taking too many carbs.
In an ideal situation, your carb intake should be less than 5 % out of your whole meal. it’s very easy to ramp up your curb intake by eating fruits.
The Majority of the people think that fruit is very healthy but you need to understand that fruits are very high in carbs. you can eat low carb fruits like berries but avoid most of the fruits.
vegetables have carbs too but the good thing about vegetable carb is that it’s got a lot of fiber with it. So the net carb load on your body is lower.
But you want to stay away from starchy vegetables like squash. You should eliminate starchy vegetables and stick to non-starchy vegetables like kale cauliflower broccoli cabbage.
Not drinking enough water can ruin the result
The process of ketosis will not be fulfilled without drinking the right amount of water.
When you start the ketogenic diet there is a high chance that you are starting to get constipated. It is because you are not drinking enough water.
The lack of water will not allow the effects of keto on your body to tack place.
what is the relationship between water and carbohydrate in our bodies?
For every gram carbohydrate, your body holds four grams of water naturally when you lower your carb intake you are lowering how much water your body holds.
The process of ketosis is very helpful for your body as it gets rid of all the excess water in your body but at the same time, the problem is you are also losing some of the water your body needs.
Some of the thing that you can do
the best thing that you can do is drink more water when you are in ketosis. you can also higher your salt intake. Yes, I know you would be scared because salt makes your blood pressure go high.
Don’t worry if you take salts like Himalayan salts Celtic salt, these salts have high mineral count stay away from sodium chloride the white salt that is probably sitting on your table.
I am sure after reading this article you will find out the reason why the keto is not working for you . It may be one reason or it may be multiple reasons for you. Sometimes only a little correction can make a huge difference in your life. So don’t lose hope keep on going on this healthy keto diet.
