Won't go into ketosis.

I am on day four of my diet, which consists of 90% fat and 10% protein. I am only supposed to stay on it for five days before allowing myself proteins and 20 grams of carbs daily. I have been checking my blood glucose levels every four hours and got so close to being low enough this morning. I came in at 4.1mmol/L (74/dl). I then went to the gym and did an hours worth of cardio, ate nothing, and came home and tested myself. My glucose came in at 5.4mmol/L (97mg/dl).

How in the heck can this be? I ate no sugars or carbs. I do have keto sticks and they always show negative. Does anyone have any knowledge about this at all? I am an insulin resistant diabetic, can this be why my blood sugar is not dropping low enough?

Give it a few more days. It can take around a week to get into ketosis
the for the first time. Also try to consume your proteins with fat AND fiber to ensure the slow digestion of the protein in order to prevent gluconeogenisis. Give it a little more time and see what happens.

Thanks for the reply, it is appreciated. SInce this is my first time doing this, I don't want to be doing anything terribly wrong. I am currently on the second level of the keto stick, and this is with my blood glucose sitting between 4.2 and 5.6. I find it very difficult to keep my glucose levels low, even though I am not consuming any sugars or carbs of any kind.

I was also wondering when I can take a no carb protein shake. For this first stage of the diet, I was only to take fats and very little proteins. In the past week, my muscles have flattened out and if I have lost weight, I know it was my very hard earned muscles.. I also feel pretty weak and tired, since I train very hard twice a day... I have not even considered a carb up day since I am diabetic and I don't think it would be in my best interest to do so. However I know i cannot continue on like this forever.

I will be gradullay adding carbs into my diet again, but only 20g a day. These carbs will have to include my fiber in them. Also what is gluconeogenisis. Sorry if I seem uninformed. I honestly am, but am doing my very best to be successful at this.

Gluconeogenesis is basically the process where the human body will convert proteins into glucose to fuel the metabolism. This kinda defeats the purpose of a low carb diet. The best way to combat this is to always try and combine your proteins with fat AND fiber(except for post workout where I would just use whey, water and glutamine).

Muscle loss is definitely going to happen without a carb up meal once in a while. You don't have to go crazy, just have one or two high carb meals
in a week to reset your metabolism and tyroid.(Oatmeal is a very good choice) . The carb up will also help with your energy levels.

There is two ways to carb up.
1) Bi weekly carb up meal. Let's just say one meal on monday and one on thursday. Some people claim that having a carb up meal right before bed is best because the seratonin will make you tired and you will not have the chance to crave carbs because you will fall asleep
2) You can consume a small to moderate amount of carbs before you hit the weights but not before cardio. The reason being that your body will run off the carbs while you lift and then you can go right back to keto after the workout.

I think you are doing more harm than good if you are weight training and doing cardio without any carb ups. Your metabolism is going to start to suffer severely, energy will drop and you are going to have some major muscle loss.

Personally i would go 6 days no carbs, protein-20% and fat & 80%, and then once a week just eat your heart out (within reason of course), eat a lot of simple carbs first 1/2 of the day and switch to complex carb the second 1/2. You can ask "livnnfit" for some more info on this as i know she has used keto diets with good success...and also, you might be in ketosis and not show any traces of ketones in you urine, as they are all being burned off to fuel the body, how many calories are you eating a day?, i would say you should be eating between 1500-1600cal a day, but i am not sure how much you weight and what your body compsition is...good luck...XXL

i cant see why youre not in keto unless your eating too many carbs
even eggs have .6 carbs so u have to count that
eliminate all carbs except trace ones until u hit ketosis
then bump it to .5% daily intake 30ish carbs
if you test your blood glucose level it should be higher a few hours after you eat protein. try to go 75% fat, 25% prot, and limit prot to 40g per meal.

check this out from lyle mcdonalds posts on usenet

"Although some mention is made of the adaptations seen during this time period in the discussions below, most of the major adaptations to ketosis start to occur by the third day, continuing for at least 3 weeks (4-6). During the first 3 days of fasting, blood glucose drops from normal levels of 80-120 mg/dl to roughly 65-75 mg/dl. Insulin drops from 40-50 µU/ml to 7-10 µU/ml (5,7,8). Both remain constant for the duration of the fast. One thing to note is that the body strives to maintain near-normal blood glucose levels even under conditions of total
fasting (5). The popularly held belief that ketosis will not occur until blood glucose falls to 50 mg/dl is incorrect. Additionally, the popular belief that there is no insulin present on a ketogenic diet is incorrect (7)."

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=5...0onr.com&rnum=3

what is ketosis

Thanks so much for the reply. I am having difficulty keeping my blood glucose level. I will go to bed and it will be 77.4 (test just before sleeping, no meals), then when I get up I check before training. This morning it was 101. Of course I was negative on the keto sticks. I went and did one hour of cardio with no food, just water, and returned home and tested again. My blood glucose only dropped to 99. Generally it can drop about 27mg after a training session. Although my blood sugar is higher then I like it to be, I did another test with the keto stick and it did show trace amounts.

I am very new to this type of diet, and it has been trial and error. I do count my carbs very carefully. I allow 20 grams a day. I do at least 90 minutes of cardio a day, and then weight lift for at least 70 minutes five days a week. I notice my weight training is suffering since I just don't have the power I did when I ate more carbs. Can I take a small amount of carbs prior to weight training? I do most of my cardio in the mornings and then do about 30-45 minutes after doing weights. I don't want to totally knock myself out of keto, but I do feel I should have some sort of carbs for energy.

Sorry to ask such stupid questions, but I don't want my training to suffer more then it has already. I don't mind losing some muscle, since I am cutting and would like to define the muscle tone more anyways. I do notice that I am getting more used to being on very little carbs and don't constantly crave my cereal (worse then crack cocaine), or feel quite as mentally sluggish as I used to. I also understand that since I am new to this whole thing, that I will sometimes knock myself out of keto unintentionally. I am but only a human. Is there a way I can get back into keto more easily. This last time it took almost 24 hours to get back in. I guess it is not near as bad as the five or six days it took me to get there in the first place. I am gifted with a large amount of metabolic resistance

Thanks for any info.

IMO no carbs is nuts unless its the day before a show or shoot. Now this is just my opinion and i want no offense to be taken to anyone. I did the 0 carb or basicly the 0 carb thing for awhile, i felt like shit all the time and my muscle looked flat. i was going 0 carb for 3 1/2 days and then have a cheat meal of whatever i want with a desert. I would be so nuts because of the 0 carbs that basically i would binge eat in a sense for that meal. Now i still go very low carbs, under 40g a day, high protein 1 cheat meal a week of waterever i want and one day during the week i go to subway right after my workout and have a chicken terriaki sub with no cheese or extras on wheat and then a granola bar. I mean this work unbelieve able for me. i eat 2 protein bars a day, 3 shakes and the rest meals. I only eat the Designer Whey bars or Nitro Tech bars. Each are all under 10g of carbs per bar (not counting glycerine, i feel that only effect you when tring to go into ketosis) and then theres a few carbs in the shake, and some from salad. any way i would say try that, if u want my exact diet give me an email amd i will hook u up

You do too much cardio.Do your cardio max. 3 times per week for 20-30 min otherwise you will lose even more muscle.

Dont drink citrus drinks, even if they are carb free. Citric acid while not a crab, can be used to make glucose. But worse, it is part of the TCA cycle. The TCA cycle is the whole reason you cut carbs, to shut it down.
Not Vitamin C, that is fine. Citric acid BAD.

Quote:

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Originally posted by orto
You do too much cardio.Do your cardio max. 3 times per week for 20-30 min otherwise you will lose even more muscle.

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hahah, I do 45 minutes every damn day, and get bigger and stronger while remaining lean.

So, where does this muscle loss theory of yours come from? Mine comes from experience.

~SC~

Ketosis is when your liver is out of glycogen and it starts to produce ketones. Ketones are by-products of fatty acids.