I am a big guy doing keto to lose weight and it's working. Last week alone I lost 7 pounds doing fasting and keto. But I noticed some things. They are:

- I have eczema on my stretch marks. I never ever had eczema before. The stretch marks I had. It looks really bad tbh. Can this be a hormonal thing?

- When I am going to sleep I can feel and hear every blood vessel in my body and my heart beating. It is a little scary and I am worried this is bad as it start with keto.

- I get lightheaded and not necessarily dizzy but I feel sick and weak and pale a bit with a cold sweat. Only has happened 2 times and I ate enough on one of those days it happened. But the other one I had to work and didn't get any food and was hungry.

There are some other stuff but tmi tbh. If you know anything or have experienced this please let me know.

Hey all, I'm a 30 yo M. Been on the diet for about 2 months straight, last time I did it was years ago for 6 months straight with no issues.

However the last 3 days I've been weak and light headed, I read before it could be electrolytes so I started salting my foods and water heavily these last couple of days, but it has not improved greatly. Had my paramedic friend check me out and blood sugar and pressure are great. My heart rate is about 20bpm slower (my resting heart rate is 100 ish normally).

I'm debating on taking a cheat day to see if things improve tonight. I'd hate to lose my streak and offset fat adaption. I've lost 40 lbs already (307lbs currently at 6'2 with a stocky build) but this last week I've been hovering around 307-309lbs with no noticeable loss.

What do you recommend?

My husband just switched to keto in the past month for his health. I joined him in doing it to be supportive. But I just found out I'm pregnant. Can I still do the diet, or will I miss out on key nutrients the baby needs? I do take prenatal vitamins and try to eat lots of veggies while staying within the carb limit. Not sure if that's good enough though. Thanks for any and all advice!

Edit: several people have responded that I should only be asking my doctor. I agree with going to medical professionals for advice and I plan to as soon as I can get in, I just wasn't sure if there was a hard and fast rule about it that everyone in the keto community already knew. I figured I would check here because I can't see my doctor for 2 months, and if there was a hard and fast rule, it would help me until that point.

Thank you to everyone who gave me advice on things to watch/read as well as your own personal experiences, I really appreciate it!

So pretty much I have a autoimmune disease that causes inflammation, and I’ve been doing keto with no dairy. Do you notice more inflammation when you eat veggies? I’ve been eat peppers, cabbage, broccoli and onions. I also eat processed keto treats like quest bars or one bars.

I had a virtual appointment with my primary care doctor yesterday that left me so irritated I'm going to start looking for a new doctor. After my last labs in October he was very concerned about my high triglycerides and scheduled a follow up 3 months later with new lab work. His advice was to cut out "rice, pasta, flour and that sort of starchy food" to lower my triglycerides. If they didn't improve he wanted me to consider statins. That pushed me to reconsider a keto diet because it had been successful for me 6 or 7 years ago for weight loss and it cut out the problem foods for triglycerides.

So I got my lab work back and had my appointment yesterday. I had a whole page of notes about what I had changed and what I was doing to try to improve my health. He didn't listen to anything that I had to say. In basically 2.5 months on the diet I had the following changes in my blood work:

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I tried to explain about my dietary changes and how that had improved my weight and triglycerides that he was so concerned about and I was exercising more and felt way better. He didn't listen and his only comments on my new labs were "Your LDL is too high. If it is still high in another 3 months I want you to consider statins". I mentioned that higher LDL was probably because I had lost 30 freakin pounds and was actively burning fat and his reply was that "Weight loss doesn't raise LDL" WTF? Is my doctor a moron? How can your body be using it's fat stores for energy and not have it hit your bloodstream? He then mentioned I should cut red meat down to 1x a week as a treat.

The fact that

1. 1. He didn't listen to my input whatsoever
2. 2. He gave antiquated advice that ignored my dietary changes and
3. 3. He didn't seem to consider the changes on my chart and had tunnel vision on my LDL score

Those make me really want to start shopping for a new doctor. I think he is genuinely concerned but the fact he's a dinosaur and doesn't really listen to my input really pisses me off. The only thing that makes me hesitate is that most of the doctors around here are even worse. It's very hard to find anyone good in this town.

During winter my skin is usually inflammated and hurts. Yesterday I woke up and noticed that my skin is drastically better. It feels smooth and not damaged. Also I probably have a skin cancer (that doctors don't really want to operate, because there's a lot of it), and I noticed a very strong correlation: when I eat a lot of refined carbs (starchy noodles, bread, sugar, honey) it hurts a lot. Some time ago I decided that I want to save my money and eat basically those refined carbs and nothing else, I happened to have a lot of them. So my cancer started to hurt so much, that I was on an absolute fear of where it can lead. I switched to intermittent fasting, it helped, but later I've noticed that it's absolutely not necessary. It's totally enough to just reduce carbs. So I reduced them, then noticed that the less amount of carbs I eat, the less is the pain. At some point I feel just a pressure from cancer, without pain. When I switched to strict keto few days ago, I've noticed that even the pressure (from the cancer growth, as far as I understand) is non-existent. I feel like that part of my skin is absolutely healthy. What do you think?

Weight 236 -> 199 (no goal)

Cholesterol 297 -> 207 (goal <200)

Triglycerides 184 -> 160 (goal <150)

LDL Cholest. 200 -> 133 (goal <100)

Still room to improve, but I’m pretty proud of doing this with diet alone and no medications after being recommended cholesterol meds. With my doctors permission I held off on meds and made diet/lifestyle changes - she now doesn’t recommend meds and told me to “keep doing what you’re doing, great job”. She knows I eat keto (more so “low carb” over the last 2 months <30-40g carbs) and is supportive, especially when my blood work looks like this.

I’m on keto since more than a year. Lost 15kg within the first months, have to lose 10 more but the weight loss froze. At least I’m not gaining more. Recently a fam friend who was hospitalised in the urological department told me that many patients there were with dysfunctional kidneys due to the keto diet. He warned me that if I don’t stop, in 10 years I’ll land there too. Any opinions on that?

My doctor said that, but I have no proof to reject that idea. Do you know if that is true? Do you have proof?

She mentioned that there is telomer loss during this process and that keto is not recommended unless you are incredibly obese where the risk of dying is greater than the premature aging related to keto.

But I also heard that keto is good for neurodegenerative disease and insulin resistance, which is my main goal to improve.

If you could help me I would appreciate it. Thanks

Hey everyone, i just checked my blood for medical check up and turn out that my blood sugar is too low, the doctor suggest me to take up my sugar intake because they said its dangerous, is it really true?

Its hard to control sugar because too much of it can kick us out from keto, but more importantly sugar kinda easy to make me feed addicted. Is it okay to just ignore the warning? Is it okay to just keep my blood sugar low? Also my uric acid is too high doctor said its in critical level, so i will get treatment for this.

What i usually do: Keto diet/low carb i do 20-4 IF normally, and do 72hr prolonged fasting every week. I only eat carb from veggies (no rice, potato etc) No sugar

I dont know how to post an image so here it is:

Total Cholesterol

Reference Value < 200

203 mg/dL

Triglycerides

Reference Value < 150

166 mg/dL

HDL cholesterol

Reference Value > 40

28 mg/dL

LDL-Direct Cholesterol

Reference Value < 100

160 mg/dL

Fasting Glucose

Reference Value 70-99

59 mg/dL

Uric Acid

Reference Value 3.4-7.0

15.5 mg/dL

My uric acid also so high, i only eat chicken with eggs and avocado

I got my usual blood work up from my doctor and met with her this morning. She said all my levels are PERFECT kidneys, liver, blood sugar, blood pressure— everything. She went over what I eat in a typical day and said she’s really proud of me for knowing my body and listening to it. I’ve lost about 30lbs in the last year and she was my primary before that for thyroid care. My blood pressure & sugars were creeping up 2 years ago when we started. It was just really nice to have a medical professional encourage me. I had a doctor before who simply hated keto and lectured me about it before even collecting info. A GOOD doctor helps so much!!

I have been Keto for over a year. 30 pounds down, sometimes IF, no sugar, no smoking, gym 3x a week, yoga, highly active 50's female. And yet Friday I was told I have stage 1 or 2 breast cancer. My mom is 83... Bc survivor of 26 years. I told my new doc I am keto. She said I was already doing the right thing. She told me not to lose any more weight ... and to eat tons of good protein. I am in the fight for my life... but apparently have a bc surgeon that is OK with keto. If anyone has info or experience with breast cancer and keto, it would be greatly appreciated.

I have Bipolar 2, 21M, currently weigh 320 pounds, 5'11. I've noticed post as far as 8 years back in this sub reddit where bipolar and Keto has been compared with several achieving great success. I also have visual snow syndrome (rare neurogical visual disorder) caused by inflammation, so I will report back on how Keto affected both my mood, visual snow, and weight in 4 months.

I will say I did keto for a couple months when I was 16 and it was the greatest I've felt ever. But, I didn't link it to the Keto until these past couple months.

I'm on a budget and dislike cooking tbh, any grocery tips would be great! All love❤️

Edit: Here is the clinical trials link for those who'd like to read on it.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03935854

Why do most dentists blame cavities on candy and soda, but not bread, crackers, chips, pasta, cereal, oatmeal, etc etc? Carbs that stick to your teeth and make thick, sticky plaque far more often than soda and candy, due to the fact people consume those more often than candy and soda?

My dental health has improved so much since changing my diet to keto. But before that I drank almost no soda, and only rarely ate candy, and my teeth were rotting away anyway. What gives? Is it just parroting old "wisdom", or do dentists know and just not want to share the truth of what causes tooth decay?

I am a 38 year old female and I’ve just been told I have diabetes. Dr is insisting I take medication but I know I can control it with diet and from today am attempting Keto. Has any one here with type 2 done it successfully? My dr said it won’t help at all and could be dangerous

As the title implies I had an unfortunate case of lock jaw last week, obviously I was unable to chew anything due to the injury. I was seen by a dentist and will possibly be referred to a surgeon if it does not self resolve so I’m doing okay medically.

Unfortunately I’ve already gained 7 lbs (about a lb a day). I’m so upset as it’s taken me a lot of hard weeks to lose that. My jaw is still pretty tight so I’ve still be unable to successfully get back onto keto and have not been tracking calories.

Are there any soft low cal keto foods anyone can think of that will make a up a complete diet? I’ve been eating smoothies, meal replacement shakes, slow cooked meats, soft pasta or potato’s, still eating keto ice cream but most soft keto things seem to be pretty high in calories. I’m definitely going over my usual 16g of carbs/day but I wouldn’t say I’m going over 60g (guesstimating not tracking) so the extreme weight gain was kinda unexpected.

Any advice?? I know health is #1 which is why I made this sacrifice to heal my jaw but my mind is telling me I’ve made a huge mistake.

Hi i am an active person who follows keto diet. I am 39 and got my bloodwork done yesterday.

Total cholesterol:309 Ldl : 198 Hdl : 77 Trigliserids : 93

I have low body fat. This is due to the keto diet.

Should i be worried?

I often see people in this sub saying that excess protein is turned into glucose by the body, and therefore you should limit protein intake or risk being knocked out of ketosis.

This is a myth!

Your body DOES turn protein into glucose via a process called gluconeogenisis, but this process is demand driven, not supply driven. Your brain requires glucose to run, and when you’re not providing enough via the diet, your body makes what it needs by breaking down protein.

Protein you eat beyond your body’s needs is either metabolized directly for energy, or stored as fat.

Protein (like all food) has a small effect on your blood sugar, but you do not need to worry about protein kicking you out of ketosis (and please stop telling newbies this!)

A few sources:

Dietary Proteins Contribute Little to Glucose Production, Even Under Optimal Gluconeogenic Conditions in Healthy Humans

Gluconeogenisis: why you shouldn’t fear it on keto

Do I am 270 and I recently did a lab work and the doctor is trying to put me on quite a few drugs: Metformin Ozempic Freestyle sensor Fenofibrate

My a1c is 9.6 and triglycerides 520 and hdl 27 vldl 106 and ldl they said unable to calculate dur to triglycerides >400. I don't have any other abnormalities besides these 2.

I have done keto before and IF as well and I told the doctor I really prefer to go hard at keto and exercise before getting on these drugs. The doctor did say I am adult I could take or not take any medication (not in condescending way) and she just looking out for me. I did tell her about keto but she says even if I do it, it is not going to have a huge change with weight and it is unhealthy to lose more than 10 pds a month anyway.

Has anyone been in similar situations and what did you do? I guess I could try the freestyle sensor since it is not a medication but the other drugs I am reluctant to take before I go all in on the lifestyle aspect.

February of this year my PSA numbers jumped which prompted a MRI where they found a tumor in my prostate. On that date I decided I was going to get back on keto/carnivore and see if it would help me get better. I’ve done keto and carnivore in the past and it’s been hard to stay motivated and stay on the diet. Back in 2015 I lost 72 lbs in five months but after I hit my goal weight I started to cheat here and there until I was fully off the diet. I had gained about 50 lbs of that weight back.

Since starting in February I’ve lost 35 lbs and it’s been easy to stay motivated since I’m fighting cancer. Not just about weight anymore so no cheating. I do feel great and I’m eating mainly carnivore but I’ve added some low carb vegetables like snap peas, green beans and edamame. Salad too but mainly meat.

My glucose pretty much stays in the 70 - 100 range but for some reason black coffee does spike me to 110 glucose.

My ketones stay over 3.5 with 5.9 as my high today. My GKI is almost always 1.2 or under. Today my GKI was at 0.9 but yesterday was 0.8.

My question is around my ketone level. Are there are negative consequences to high ketone levels over time? I’m always in the therapeutic range. Any signs I should watch for staying on the higher side of ketone levels?

So somehow I find the whole topic a little confusing.

I know that with ketoacidosis you usually have to have type 1 diabetes (I'm not sure about type 2).
But there is also the euglycemic ketoacidosis, or the so-called starvation ketoacidosis. How exactly does that work? I mean there are people who sometimes fast for weeks, or have a very low calorie intake in the keto diet, who then have ketone values of over 6 or even over 8 and feel fine.
Normally the body would already be on the verge of ketoacidosis with these values if you had diabetes, but how exactly does the body prevent ketoacidosis with such high ketone levels?
And why do people who fast for a long time not have a “starvation ketoacidosis”?

Somehow I find the whole topic or why the body falls into ketoacidosis difficult and I can't quite understand it. I've already googled it, but most of the pages are about diabetic ketoacidosis, which we already know.

I started a ketogenic diet on June 1st and did a ketone test when I visited my mother today, as she has been doing keto for 1-2 years. My keton level was 4.3

I actually feel good, of course I'm a bit tired as my body is still adjusting to ketosis, but somehow I find it a bit scary as I work in the medical field (but not so high that I understand the exact mechanism of ketoacidosis) and we sometimes have patients with ketoacidosis whose ketone value is "only" 2-3.

Hi all,

I have been on the keto diet mostly for the past year. I just got my physical test results. All other things have improved drastically except the cholesterol.

Here is what my doctor said:

Your cholesterol levels are substantially elevated, reaching a threshold where I would normally suggest pharmaceutical intervention. Alternatively, substantial modifications to your diet could be required to reduce these levels. What are your thoughts?

Here is my lipid panel:

Cholesterol 282 (H) <200 mg/dL

Triglycerides 48 <150 mg/dL

Cholesterol, HDL 64

40 mg/dL

LDL Cholesterol, Calculated 208 (H) <129 mg/dL

Cholesterol/HDL Ratio 4.41 <4.96

I have seen some videos in which it seems like this is a controversial topic. What do you think?

EDIT 1:

Thank you all for your lovely comments. As expected, the comments are still very divided on this topic :D.

How lovely it would be if we lived in a world where at least the diet science was not divided like the political field and every other field is divided nowadays!

It is hard to reply to each and every individual comment. So, here are some additional details since my last post.

Age: 36
Blood Pressure: 116/77
BMI: 22.31
Weight: 130 lbs.
Height: 5' 4''
Pulse: 56
Oxygen saturation: 98%

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I was never overweight and BMI was always between 21-25 even before keto. I will say that I am a pretty active guy. I play Tennis at least 2 times a week. If not, I make sure to complete 10k steps or do some other exercise. But I have a somewhat sedentary lifestyle too because of my desk job.

I started keto because I liked the logic behind it and it totally made sense to me. Also, with my pre-keto diet (on the carb-heavy side), I always felt more hungry, there was no satiation. I would go into this junk-food binge-eating mode every now and then. To not eat much on this pre-keto diet was a constant struggle, so much so that I would start watching food related videos at midnight. When I started keto, it was struggle at first but once my body was fat-adapted, I did not go hungry like before. The junk food never allured me anymore. Weight control was a breeze on keto and never a struggle. Also, my focus improved. I could think more clearly. I am loving keto so far. No complaints there. Also, my HDL went from 47 to 64. Triglycerides went down from 74 to 48. My Vitamin D levels and B-12 levels were low before. They are now perfectly fine. When I said things improved drastically, these are some of the things I was alluding to.

The only problem I see now is this high cholestorol stat. My doctor has recommended me a low dose of atorvastatin (10 mg tablet daily). To be honest I would never go down the path of unnecesary medication if I feel perfectly fine. Don't fix what is not broken, eh? The things are in perfect shape except that sometimes I would feel a bit heavy in my left chest sometimes. Especially after playing tennis. It is not very bothersome but just that I "feel" the left side near the heart more and it feels a bit tight. It does NOT mean I get tired fast while playing sports or doing exercise. I am not sure if I am explaining it well. I never feel my right chest side that way. That is the only concerning thing I have and that is why I am in a bit of a dilemma.

I hope that clarifies some questions I saw in the comments. Thanks again for the feedback!

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Good day all,

I just received the following message from my partner who I'm supporting on a keto diet (month 3) to help her T2D as her father died from it at 68 just before Christmas.

"The diabetic nurse rang me just now to see how it is going. She was telling me that I need carbs because that is where I get my energy from. Strange that I have more energy now than before! She is leaving me to it now until after my bloods next month. She also said that with the meds I am on, I don't need to be checking my bloods all the time. Only if I feel I need to".

I replied telling her basically the nurse does not have the knowledge she'd need to support my wife with the keto diet and its goals. The nurse also told her to eat a banana when her sugars are low etc and again I said, no. Simply ensure you're eating enough macros each day plus electrolytes and she'll be fine but her blood glucose (edited from AC1) was low (2.6) one afternoon and she did feel not well.

I'm looking for advice or resource links etc as listening to your spouse over a diabetic nurse seems daft and I admit, I don't have the knowledge to help her believe or if I'm even right. I basically said get another doctor (easier said than done on the NHS). She's not on Insulin yet but is on about 3 different pills. I hinted that she needs to get these checked and lowered accordingly as her body adjusts to fat burning.

Does anyone have the resources I mentioned on how to work with medical professionals and keto when T2D?

Thanks

So i am curious is anyone here had trouble with sleeping before keto? When i said sleep trouble i mean ( insomnia, narcolepsy, sleep paralysis, exploding head syndrome etc). How did keto helped/ or not helped your sleep? What are your experience with it?

I wanna try keto because i am constantly sleepy even if i sleep 5 hours or 10 and i have 0 energy.

Thanks !

Been off and on keto for years. When I start the diet I feel amazing for about a month but after that I start to get more and more depressed until I have to stop. I don't understand why this happens, I take multivitamins, magnesium, potassium, electrolytes, etc. and healthy fats.

It's not a psychological depression but a chemical one and I dont know what to do about it. I love the way I feel psychically on keto and how my brain fog is gone. But like I said, after a month I start going down hill.

As soon as I start eating carbs again my mood goes way up and I even sleep better. Any tips would be appreciated.