Hi, my name is Shannon and I live in Sydney, Australia. I've been LC-ing for 2 weeks now and apart from one time, have not been able to get my ketone reading above trace. in the meantine tho, I've lost 4kgs (trying to remember how to convert.....) ok = about 8lbs.

can anyone give me any advice as to why I can't get into deep ketosis?

Shannon, welcome to the forum and congrats - you're a) in ketosis and burning fat and b) 4K lighter Obviously you're doing this right. Deep ketosis, or a dark reading on those strips is usually a sign of dehydration - something to be avoided. Water = hydration = better fat burning. Drinking sufficient water to keep everything working will effect the colour of those strips, as will exercise and foods eaten.

Don't let the little pieces of plastic stress you out. You are in ketosis and you are burning fat.

Nat

Thanks Nat. another question - is it possible to be drinking too much water. I can't seem to stop drinking it at the moment and am getting thru about 3.5 litres (damn these conversions - that's around 7(ish) pints) per day. I'm not even sure if it's pints you use "over there"?

anyway, I've been told by a colleague that it's too much. I didn't think there was any such thing as drinking too much water???

Greetings and welcome aboard!

As Nat said, don't stress over the test strips. Even Dr. A emphasizes that they are not necessary and can be an unreliable indicator for many people.

As long as you are showing trace you are in ketosis. If you ever show heavy ketosis then drink much more water. YMMV

With only 20 pounds total to lose and having already lost nearly half of it you want to switch to Pre-maintenance about, oh, now. You really want to slowly coast into that final five to ten pounds to get your body to make that your metabolic setpoint and allow you to establish a sustainable, permanent LC lifestyle.

Don't be surprised if you gain some weight over the next couple of weeks. You shed quite a bit of water and your body is going to want some of it back.

It IS possible to drink too much water and create a condition known as hyponatremia (low blood salt concentration) but you have to be really serious about your water consumption to do it (like 60 liters a day) as long as you are reasonably normal unless you are on anti-diuretic drugs (including some illicit drugs such as ecstacy) or are engaged in prolonged heavy physical activity such as running a marathon (strenuous physical activity releases anti-diuretic hormones).

thanks wbahn. now this is probably going to sound really dumb, but bear with me, cos i'm new (and Australian!). but what exactly does it mean when people say they're early loss "is all water"? and what do you mean when you say my body is going to want some of it back? surely losing a kilogram is losing a kilogram. hmmm? that's what I thought anyway.

i'm so confused..........

That doesn't sound dumb at all.

Your body is an amazing - and amazingly complex - machine. It is quite sensitive to imbalances and quite good at maintaining those balances. But it is not perfect and takes time to adjust to major changes - and changing the very source of every cell's energy from glucogen to ketones is a pretty major change.

All LC diets are diuretics - they make your body dump water (Your body is over 90% water). Actually - and this is my personal opinion - I don't think that it is so much a case of LC diets being true diuretics as much as it is a case of high carb diets making you retain water in order to accomodate the glycogen process. Once you begin purging the glycogen the extra water gets purged as well - and this happens rapidly.

But then your body ends up with too little water as it shifts over to a fully ketone based process and therefore retains some water to come back up where it needs to be. I suspect that this is driven by keeping the electrolyte balance throughout this process and you need more electrolytes for a glycogen process than for a ketone process and that at the low point during the first week you are pretty much purged of both (one is gone and the other is coming on line) and so need even less water. But at this point your body is largely robbed of any fuel and so you are weak and headachy and grouchy until your body gets fully geared up for ketone fuel.

It doesn't take much of a shift in electrolytes to swing your water needs around quite a bit - a gram of sodium extra in your body will require about a pound more of water (I'm going from memory on this so I may be off a bit) to maintain the nominal balance. A shift of only 3% in the electrolyte levels will result in a gain/loss of about five pounds in your case.

Another effect that you will probably have to deal with is the muscle/fat tradeoff and the fat/water tradeoff.

In the first case, you will probably be building muscle as you exercise more and this will build lean muscle mass - making you gain weight. At the same time you are losing fat mass making you lose weight. In any given week, you might gain more muscle than you lose fat - that's good, but it can be hard to convince yourself that this is happening when the scale only reflects the net increase. But a measureing tape will reveal that you are losing inches since lean muscle is more dense than fat.

In the second case you might appear to gain weight (and not see inches go down, either) if your body is replacing the lipids in the fat cells with water in order to maintain their volume and shape. Water is more dense that fat and so you gain weight. Again, this is good. The fat is gone and as soon as your body realizes that it doesn't need to maintain the fat cells in a state to easily accept fat back it will purge the water. Again, that can be frustrating when you go a week and see the scale creep up. But eventually you will see a rapid weight loss of a few pounds. Some people don't see much of this at all and others see it in a very pronounced way - it all depends on how long your body insists on maintaining the fat cell volumes.

Hope that helps.

Shannon, our bodies need 2 litres every day to function - 3.5 is in no way too much. While it is possible to drink 'too much' it involves more than just drinking the water - you must also lose vital electrolytes and not be replacing them. It's not the excess water that causes the problem, it's the imbalance that results when sodium and potassium is out of whack. To put it in perspective, I regularly drink 10 litres a day and I'm doing just fine

Nat

Shannon,
I think those Keotene strips are garbage. I've lost 36 pounds since Dec 4, 2001 and everytime I've tested with those strips I've just been marginally in Ketosis. I think they work for some people but not for everyone. Trust your body and not the strips. If you are feeling better on this WOL and are losing inches and pounds, then that is what you should go by. Of course 36 pounds may seem like a lot, but then, I've got a long way to go too !!

Anyways, good luck and toss those strips away, they'll only make you upset and depressed if you believe in them.
Regards,
Craig

Thanks Craig! and wow, how well are you doing! I think you're right tho, I was relying way too heavily on what the strips were doing and forgetting about how I was doing.

well it's a gorgeous sunny day here in Sydney - about 30 degrees (celcius, which is about 80 for you guys, I think), and I live on the beach, so I might take myself off for a walk before work.

have a great day!