Keto Diet: Weight Gain And Loss Explained

The ketogenic diet is a low-carb, high-fat diet that has gained popularity for its effectiveness in helping people lose weight and improve their health. However, some people may find that they are not losing weight on keto and may even experience weight gain. This can be frustrating and confusing, especially if you are meticulously following the diet.

There are several reasons why you might be gaining and losing weight on the keto diet, and understanding these factors can help you make adjustments to get back on track. Here are some possible explanations:

- Not Achieving Ketosis: Ketosis is a metabolic state where your body burns fat for energy instead of glucose. To achieve ketosis, you need to drastically reduce your carbohydrate intake and increase your consumption of healthy fats. If you are not in ketosis, your body may not be efficiently burning fat, hindering weight loss.

- Hidden Carbohydrates: It's easy to unintentionally exceed your daily carb limit on keto. Sources of hidden carbs include condiments, nuts, keto-baked goods, packaged foods, fruits, vegetables, and restaurant meals. Even if these carbs come from healthy options, they can still fill up your glycogen stores and promote fat storage.

- Cheat Days: Having cheat days or meals can sabotage your weight loss efforts. Bingeing on refined carbohydrates or sugary treats can kick you out of ketosis and lead to stronger sugar cravings and digestive issues.

- Artificial Sweeteners: Sugar substitutes like aspartame and sucralose may seem like a guilt-free way to satisfy your sweet tooth, but they can increase your dependence on sugar and lead to stronger sugar cravings.

- Chronic Stress: Stress can interfere with weight loss by increasing cortisol levels, which contributes to insulin resistance and weight gain. It can also lead to emotional eating and decrease your motivation to stick to the diet or exercise.

- Alcohol Consumption: Alcoholic drinks, even keto-friendly options, are often high in calories and can affect your judgment around food, leading to overeating.

- Eating Too Many Calories: Even on keto, it's possible to consume more calories than you burn, especially with high-fat foods. Calorie tracking can help you stay within your calorie needs and create a calorie deficit necessary for weight loss.

- Not Getting Enough Sleep: Sleep deprivation can slow down your metabolism and stimulate the production of cortisol and ghrelin, the hunger hormone, which can lead to weight gain.

- Lack of Physical Activity: Regular exercise is crucial for weight loss as it increases the number of calories you burn and boosts muscle mass, which in turn increases your basal metabolic rate.

- Underlying Medical Conditions: Certain medical conditions, such as hypothyroidism, PCOS, Cushing's Syndrome, or medications you are taking, can hinder weight loss or contribute to weight gain.

Not achieving ketosis

The keto diet is a low-carb, high-fat diet that causes weight loss and provides numerous health benefits. When following a keto diet, carbohydrates are typically reduced to a maximum of 20 to 50 grams per day. This reduction in carbohydrates puts the body into a metabolic state called ketosis, where it becomes very efficient at burning fat for energy instead of glucose.

However, one of the main reasons people don't lose weight on the keto diet is that they're not achieving ketosis. Here are some reasons why you might not be achieving ketosis:

• Not cutting back enough on carbs: Carbohydrates should represent only 5-10% of your calorie intake on the keto diet. Most keto diets require a reduction to between 20 and 50 grams per day. Even if you feel like you've drastically reduced your carb intake, you may still be consuming enough carbs for your body to produce energy from glucose, reducing the rate of fat burned.
• Eating too much protein: Some people mistakenly believe that a low-carb, high-protein diet is a keto diet. However, this type of diet is unlikely to cause ketosis because the body can break down excess proteins into amino acids and convert them into types of sugar. To achieve ketosis, your diet should consist of 55-60% fat, leaving little room for protein. If protein makes up more than 35% of your diet, you may not go into ketosis.
• Eating too many acceptable carbs: On the keto diet, some types of carbohydrates are acceptable, such as nuts and dairy. However, these foods also contain carbohydrates, and eating too many of them can prevent you from achieving and maintaining ketosis.
• Not counting calories: Even if you're in ketosis, consuming too many calories can lead to weight gain. It's important to track your calorie intake and ensure you're burning more calories than you consume.

To achieve ketosis, it's crucial to minimize your carb consumption, increase your intake of healthy fats, and get regular physical activity. Additionally, home testing kits or a ketone breath analyzer can help you ensure that you're entering ketosis.

Eating too many carbs

Carbohydrates are the main source of energy for the body. When you eat carbs, your body breaks them down into glucose, which is then used as fuel. On the keto diet, the body is forced to use fat for energy instead of glucose, which leads to weight loss. However, if you eat too many carbs, your body will have enough glucose to use as fuel, and it won't need to burn fat. This means that you won't lose weight.

On the keto diet, it is recommended to eat less than 50 grams of carbs per day to stay in ketosis. Some people may need to eat less than 20 grams per day. Eating too many carb-rich foods or not tracking your carb intake can easily lead to weight gain and hinder your weight loss progress.

Even eating acceptable carbs like nuts and dairy can lead to weight gain if consumed in large quantities. These foods are typically high-fat and nutrient-dense, but they also contain carbohydrates. Eating too many of these foods will prevent you from achieving and maintaining ketosis.

Sugar alcohols, often used as sweeteners in keto-friendly products, can also affect your blood sugar levels and prevent you from entering ketosis.

To avoid eating too many carbs, it is important to track your carbohydrate intake. You can use carb-tracking apps like Carb Manager and the KetoDiet App to help you stay within your daily carb limit. Additionally, trying a meat-based or keto carnivore diet can make it easier to avoid carbs without sacrificing optimal nutrition.

In conclusion, eating too many carbs can hinder your weight loss progress on the keto diet. To stay in ketosis and lose weight, it is crucial to monitor your carb intake and make sure you don't exceed the recommended daily limit.

Consuming too many calories

Even though the ketogenic diet is very satiating, it is still possible to consume too many calories on keto, which may cause weight gain or hinder weight loss. To lose weight, you must create a calorie deficit, which can be achieved by reducing your calorie intake or increasing your physical activity.

Keto-friendly foods such as avocados, olive oil, full-fat dairy, and nuts are high in calories, so it is important to monitor your portion sizes and not overindulge. Snacking on high-calorie foods throughout the day can also lead to consuming too many calories.

To manage your calorie intake, consider using a calorie-counting app and paying attention to the number of calories in any keto-friendly packaged goods you consume regularly. Additionally, try increasing your consumption of protein and keto-friendly vegetables to stay full without adding too many calories.

Remember, while calorie tracking is not always necessary, it can be a useful tool to help you stay within your calorie needs and create the calorie deficit needed for weight loss.

Eating too much protein

While controlling carb intake is essential on keto, monitoring protein intake is also important. On keto, you'll consume adequate amounts of protein—never less than you need. This is one of the most challenging macros to nail down when starting keto due to all the conflicting information.

Protein is a building block of life and a necessary component of any diet. It's crucial for healthy brain function, skin, bone and muscle health, building muscle mass, and recovering after workouts. These benefits promote longevity, prevent injuries, and boost your metabolism.

However, many ketogenic dieters worry that overeating protein might kick them out of ketosis. This is because the body can break down excess proteins into amino acids and convert them into types of sugar. However, this is only a myth. Carbs are the only macronutrient that can seriously interfere with ketosis, so it's essential to watch out for hidden carbs and find the carb limit that works for you.

On the other hand, eating protein won't affect your ketone levels. You can eat high-fat and high-protein (preferably fatty cuts of grass-fed meat) and stay in ketosis. That's why people who transition from keto to the carnivore diet have no problem staying in nutritional ketosis.

Gluconeogenesis (GNG) is a metabolic pathway that allows your liver and kidneys to make glucose from non-carbohydrate sources. GNG is a real and necessary process that is already happening in your body. It's not the enemy of ketosis; it makes ketosis possible in the first place. GNG is an extremely stable process; it's not easy to increase it even with extra protein. Studies have shown that GNG production doesn't increase even with extra amino acids.

Eating adequate amounts of protein is beneficial on the ketogenic diet. It helps your body stay in fat-burning mode, it has fewer calories, and it's dangerous not to eat enough protein. Here are three reasons why you should eat more protein on keto:

• Protein Helps With Fat Loss: Most people on keto will limit their protein to 30-40 grams, then eat an excessive amount of fat. If your goal is to lose fat, increased protein consumption is a great way to approach your keto diet plan. Protein is more satiating than fat, and people tend to overeat when protein is low. Additionally, the most effective way to start losing weight on keto is to burn your stored body fat for energy, not the new dietary fat you're eating. You can overcome weight loss plateaus by increasing protein and lowering your fat consumption.
• Protein Provides Fewer Calories Than Fat: Your body needs to use more energy (calories) to burn protein than to burn fat. For example, when you eat 100 calories of grass-fed beef, your body can only store 75% of it as calories because it requires 25% of calories to burn it and use it as fuel. Conversely, when you consume fat, you are storing up to 98% of it as calories. This means you're storing almost all the calories from fat, whereas you'll store less from protein since you use some of the calories to burn it.
• Protein Deficiency Is Dangerous: Not eating enough protein on keto has serious side effects, including worsened workout performance, neuron atrophy, a weaker immune system, and an increased risk of diseases such as sickle cell disease, acute asthma, and certain cancers.

In conclusion, while it's important to monitor your protein intake on the keto diet, eating too much protein is largely a myth. Gluconeogenesis leads to a small increase in glucose production, but we need that to survive. Eating high-fat and high-protein will not affect your ketone levels and can even be beneficial for weight loss and overall health.

Constantly snacking

To avoid this, it is recommended to keep snacks to a minimum and track your calorie intake. Opt for lower-calorie snacks such as non-starchy vegetables or proteins, which can help you feel full without the extra calories. Some examples of healthy snacks include celery sticks and cherry tomatoes dipped in guacamole, or a hard-boiled egg with cut-up veggies.

Additionally, drinking plenty of water can help you feel full and reduce the urge to snack. It is also important to get enough sleep, as lack of sleep can disrupt your body's hormones that regulate hunger, leading to increased appetite.

It is worth noting that weight gain can be due to various reasons, and it is recommended to consult with a doctor or dietitian if you are concerned about your weight. They can help identify any underlying issues and provide guidance on lifestyle adjustments to get you back on track.

Frequently asked questions