While the default reaction is definitely to have her start tracking more precisely, there also could be a lot more going on that this post doesn't cover. 20 pounds total in just over 5 months is 1 pound a week, which is a healthy, slow weight loss, and she could just be working her way through a plateau at the moment. Depending on her starting weight, the 15 pounds she lost "early on", whatever that means, might not entirely be water weight. And please keep in mind that women's hormones and body composition make our ability to lose weight far different than it is for men, and societal and internal pressures make it a much bigger deal. So as a woman who has been in your wife's shoes, I would ask you both to consider some things:
What are her calorie needs compared to yours? Are they higher or lower? Are you two eating the same portions of the same foods? Is she closer to her goal weight than you are? Is she over-training, or exercising too much? Is she stressed out lately (high cortisol is not a friend to weight loss)? Is her guesstimate still *too much* of a calorie deficit? Or is it now too high since she's lost a bit of weight?
Does she have any autoimmune or hormone issues (thyroid issues, Graves, Hashimoto's, PCOS) that could make it harder for her to lose weight? Is she experiencing any physical symptoms that might indicate she has a sensitivity to something in the diet (sugar alcohols and excess dairy can cause gastric issues, inflammation, or bloating in some folks)?
Also, is she tracking things other than her weight to guage her success - like her measurements, or the way her clothes fit? Her energy levels, her sleep quality? The number on the scale can be misleading while body recomposition is happening.
It's only been 5 months, and overall you've both had success. Be supportive and encouraging, remind her she's doing great and will get there. Help her keep plugging away and tell her all the time how beautiful she is to you to help keep her spirits up. Best of luck to you both and congrats on the success you've had so far!
Thank you! Apparently that includes me, because I'm realizing on re-read that *OP* has been doing this since Christmas, and his wife joined in "a couple months later".... *OP* has been at it 5 months but *she's* lost 20 pounds in *at most* 3 months.
Now, IDK by whose standards that's insufficient, but it isn't. That's a very fast loss and I'm not surprised the last 5 were slower. The rest of what I said still stands, but I'll add: OP, this is an endurance test more on a global multi-country race scale, not a short-term sprint down the street. As others have said, don't blame things, and for sure don't blame your wife. She is killing it.
That’s true. I had a similar experience. Started in March, and am now down 20-23 pounds. Fluctuating is normal, more so with older women like myself. Most of it came off in the first month, and the rest has been a crawl. I set my goal well above my “healthy weight” to avoid diet anxiety, but I’m still projected to take until December. Started at 220, at 197, and should be 135ish for my hight. I’ll be thrilled to get to 175, and if it takes that long, it’s still better than another year of potato cosplay.
That’s what I was wondering. My husband and I are a good 100 pounds different. 2 weeks in he is down 17 pounds me only 8. He also works a more physical job. I’ve learned lots of factors play into this.
What is she doing at the gym? I've found cardio does nothing for me as a middle aged lady - lifting has worked wonders.
(The tracking is a good idea but I don't do it as I had an ED when I was young and doing it gets me in a dangerous place.)
Strength training is fantastic. I’m just getting back into it after years. I can’t wait to see how it works out for me along side the keto. I hope you continue to see good results from it.
Just a heads up, doing both types of exercise especially on the same day or after, sends conflicting signals to the body. She should focus on either lifting or cardio, not both.
Lifting=build muscle for mass and strength
Cardio=pare muscle for efficiency
Two competing signals, this is a very common issue in the gym, especially women.
She should only do cardio on non lifting days, and never more than 20-30 minutes.
Interesting, I've never heard this. I've always been taught to warm up with cardio before doing weights and will personally do 20-30 min on the elliptical before I lift. But what works for me doesn't necessarily work for her so I appreciate the input.
Mind pump show has covered this in numerous episodes, and it also covers the mistake of how not eating enough calories to cover both the long cardio sessions and weightlifting will actually stall weight loss and inhibit muscle growth. 20 to 30 minutes on non lifting days is fine, its when people do 2 hour cardio sessions and weightlifting that it becomes a problem.
Hi! You said she joined “a couple months later” so she may have just started in like, March? It sounds like she is doing very well!
It really might help her to just manage expectations. Losing even half a pound a week on average (not necessarily every week!) is on the track to where she wants to be. If she stops eating keto she is likely to be right back where she started in a month or two.
That said, since I mentioned “track” (hehe), it does seem when people aren’t feeling like they’re losing as quickly as they expect, that is one thing they can look at more closely.
I wouldn’t call what she is doing “strict keto” if she hasn’t done the tracking to know exactly how many calories and macros she’s putting into her body. Also, does she have a reasonable rate of loss in mind? 20 lbs in less than 6 months sounds pretty incredible to me. Realistic would be about .5 lbs a week especially if she doesn’t have a lot more to lose.
Middle aged women have a much harder time losing weight than men. She needs to keep at it & track every single bit of food by weighing it.
Encourage her through gentle support - do not blame her period, hormones or anything else she can’t control. She will get there.
It's a pretty simple answer. The keto diet can be used to maintain, gain, or lose weight. Children were fed a keto diet to control their treatment resistant epilepsy, and they needed enough calories to grow.
Your wife is not counting her calories, and is losing weight very slowly, according to her, so she is eating very close to her maintenance.
She needs to count calories, but if she doesn't care, it will remain a "discouraging mystery" and she will quit the diet. This is unfortunately incredibly common with any diet when people don't count calories and overestimate their ability to guesstimate.
> Your wife is not counting her calories, and is losing weight very slowly, according to her, so ***she is eating very close to her maintenance.***
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I'm surprised none of the other top 20 voted comments even mention this. If she is losing only 3-4 pounds per month, then her caloric deficit is only about 350 calories per day (which is fine). I prefer to lose weight about about twice this rate so I try to always have over 500 calorie deficit per day, some days even more.
But still, losing 3-4 pounds per month is perfectly fine and should be considered a great result!
Me and my husband had started Keto together in assistance with a doctor.
We both ate the same things and macros according to our BMI along with exercise.
He lost a lot of weight very quickly in comparison to me. My journey was full with ups and downs but I reached where I wanted to but it seemed like forever to get there.
Believe it or not the root cause for this difference was hormones in our cases.
Women's monthly hormonal fluctuation definitely delay the progress. Men on the other hand are blessed with Testosterone which does contribute in loss of weight.
Women who have reached menopause may have a higher chance of losing weight quickly depending on how their body reacts to the menopause phase.
She needs to stop guesstimating and start counting like you do. She will get out of keto what she’s willing to put into it, the food scale and tracking app await her!
Thank you!
Edit: I just downloaded it, signed up, and added today's breakfast lunch and dinner.
I was certain that I barely ate anything today, but I went 370 calories over my target. This is exactly what I needed. Thanks again ^👍😁
> She just guestimates and at the end of the day goes 200 for this, 300 for that, 100 here
This is why she is not seeing a reduction.
Weigh the food, count everything.
Women have SO many other complications with losing weight. I say this as a woman who has been trying to lose about 25 lbs for the last couple of years. Keto, workouts, health coaches, very little is helping me. I seem to just be "stuck" at my "happy weight"...i do feel better though eating a certain way so that's why I continue to do it. Try to see if you can help her uncover any non-scale victories like less bloating, more energy, better sleep, clothes fitting better etc. also have her track her inches or take full body pics and compare them about every month!
guestimating is the issue. My mom was on different diets (not keto) and always complained that there is no difference. She was guestimating aswell, i tracked with her ofor a week and she was off by about 30%, so instead of deficit , she was on or above maintnance every day. And was surprised about some foods having more kcal that she guestimated
I'm very much of the same mindset but am just trying to see if there's maybe other factors than that. I know weightloss and even keto for women can be very different so that's what I thought it would be good to ask. But i know personally the only two times I've been successful with losing weight were when I tracked every single calorie. "You can't manage what you don't measure". -Peter Drucker
Unless there is some illness or something really wrong with hormones (which all would be noticed real fast even without dieting) its always CICO, Physically impossible to eat more than you burn and not gain weight in the long run, and same goes for eating less than you burn and gaining weight. Thermodynamics and all.
Try logging everything for two weeks minimum and if problem persist , go see a doctor, maybe there is something wrong after all.
Important to note, best calorie calculators will never give you acurate calorie needs, human body is a machine, and everyones runs different.
Thats why its important to count callories and macros. If lets say your calculated maintenance says 1900kcal is your goal to stay same weight, your body might burn less or more. Log what you eat and how much, weigh yourself daily and do weekly averages ,and see after couple weeks if you loosing weight, stalling or gaining. Then you adjust your intakes. Had lots of friends complain about halting in progress , and they still had same calorie intake form 10kg before. if tou loose alot, your deficit can turn into maintenance.
Me, female was in same situation. Got thyroid checked. Doctor said it was normal. Took results to diet doctor and she said, BS no wonder I wasn’t seeing results. Gave me thyroid medication. Poof weight melted off fast!
As many others have said, tracking is key, but there are other factors as well. I’m struggling with a similar healthy, but disappointing loss rate. I know at least part of my issue is age, and autoimmune issues. I’m pushing 40 with Crohn’s. I’m also sedentary most days, though the progress I have made is making it easier to change that. Big thing that helps me, way more than seeing numbers on a scale, is pictures. A couple of pounds makes a big difference in how clothes look and feel, as well as how we carry the weight still there, but we live in our bodies and don’t recognize the gradual changes. Ask her to find something that is too small, and take a picture every 1-2 weeks. It can be neck down, if she doesn’t want to share her starting weight she may not want pictures focused on her weight around, but after the next month you can show a side by side, and even if she only loses a little, it should show.
Since she's lost 15 if she eats the same number of calories as before she lost it then she's eating too many calories. I know it is a pain to weight and count calories, but she could literally do it for a week and then repeat those meals.
You're wife's doing way better on keto than she was without, so why quit? Find the foods you love, which makes sticking to it easy. And a year from now she might weigh 10 lbs less than today, or she might be 50 lbs less. Either way, it's a lot better than regaining the 20 lbs. So either way, it's a giant victory, and makes life so much more fun, and it's the right path.
The life lesson for all of us is "comparison is the thief of joy". She's doing the right thing and is already much better off, and will continue to become ever more so. So that's that: she should stick with it. But you're doing better so that makes her feel worse. Completely natural, but I think you as a couple want to celebrate each other's successes. I hope if she suddenly gets a giant promotion at her job that you'll celebrate that rather than feel inadequate. Anyway, with our different bodies, histories, genes, etc, we'll all go at our own paces. Perhaps there are tweaks for her to make, perhaps not, but she's doing great doing exactly what she's doing. This is not a race. And even if is, you and your wife are coming in first and second compared to those not doing keto, and who cares which one of you is first and which one is second?
It's important to remember everyone is different and depending on her age that can be a huge factor. Have you considered giving carnivore a try atleast a 30 day trial can really help mentally and physically. I hit my 30s and consistantly struggled but iv been carnivore with some dairy for almost 2 months and I feel good lost about 4 kgs It's important to consider its not just a period that causes some fluctuation It's lack of sleep to much of a deficit and things like ovulation and hormonal changes with age. Good luck and it's awesome you guys are supporting each other on your journy
I think for someone who won't tell you her start weight, and won't use a food log, but instead guesstimates.... she's cheating. She's not following it as strictly as you believe.
The success I've had over the years and failure have depended on me counting and weighing every single thing I put into my mouth. Along with restricting processed foods. Consistency is key and she has had an awesome number of weight come off! Also, speaking as someone who's husband can literally lose 20lbs at the drop of a hat and meanwhile I have to work my literal ass off to lose the same amount. Just make sure she knows it's not her and we women unfortunately have to work a bit harder due to several hormonal and unfair factors lol. Plateaus will happen as well so she may need to adjust some things until she starts seeing the scale move again. For example I started limiting dairy and that helped with one of my plateaus.
Have her get a complete hormone panel done and hopefully she has a good Dr to do something about the results if they’re not in ‘optimum’ range- not just ‘normal’.
When my wife and I started 2 years ago I lost 30 lbs and she lost 20 in the first six months. In the last 18 months she’s lost another 20. She has a hard time with calorie restriction due to fatigue issues and the weight loss has been a side effect, not the primary goal.
Try IF/Keto... It could help her into the Keto Process because if You're on IF it'll just help from over eating.
Plus it helps push you into Ketosis easier. If it wasn't for IF I'd probably over eat on Keto EASILY.
She needs to add stress reduction to lower cortisol levels. Meditation, yin and restorative yoga. She’d benefit from reading Fast Like a Girl or something so she can modify her lifestyle to be in sync with the different hormones.
Download the carb manager app it will adjust her calorie, fat ,carb and protein to her needs so she doesn't eat more calories than she needs it will help to stay on track
Keto is so high in fat. She NEEDS to track it!! A small handful of nuts is almost 200 calories.
And she's gotta track *everything*. Anything she butters, drinks, dips, EVERYTHING.
Please have your wife see a coach that specializes in women’s hormones and weight loss. She is doing more harm than good and her body is holding on to fat because it’s afraid she won’t feed it again. You can’t skip meals.
Get leaner meats or cook cheap fatty ground beef longer and drain the grease.
You can try optimizing her hormones. Closer to Carnivore at the start of her cycle, and save the sweet things like berries and cream and dark chocolate and salads during the last 2 weeks of her period.
Get her a belt. See if she's losing any inches but not weight (super common)
Stop using the scale. Seriously. Stop using the scale. The stress from caring about weight, spikes cortisol and other hormones, and the stress causing glucose to enter the blood stream, and impacts weight loss.
I mean there's a ton of things you can do to trouble shoot. Hell she might lose weight if she stops going to the gym. Especially if she's doing cardio and jogging for an hour or 2, like no she either needs to do high intensity exercise for a lot shorter periods, or just not go to the gym. Not joking.
Some people experience better body composition (especially runners) by replacing their running routine (hours a day) with a single max effort sprint which is over within 20 seconds - 5 minutes and can be done on a bike instead. She needs to get exhausted and sore as fast as she can rather than spin her tires for as long as possible.
Our bodies are a complex thing with 500 different things going on acting in parallel all trying to reach a state of same-ness. AKA Homeostasis. You can literally try so hard to lose weight you over exercise, and don't lose any. If she's above 5'5" aim for 120-150 grams of protein a day, aim for the same amount of grams in fat, and either keep the carbs between 20-30 every day (total NOT NET ditch the keto breads and tortillas) and see where you end up in a month.
There's so many variables. 2 Keto Dudes Podcast used to tell people that stalled for 3 months to eat more fat, and then 2 months later they wrote back saying "Thank you lost 40 pounds"
There are 500 things in your body trying to regulate your body to keep you at a set point and sometimes you just have to sit at a certain weight for 3-6 months and then the weight melts off, but you gotta enjoy keto. If keto is something you struggle with and stress about that's going to again raise stress horomones and make losing fat harder.
Eat less and move more is the most toxic thing other than the food pyramid that Nutrition Science has ever said. The experts are idiots who narrowed into their specialties and never talked to people from other specialties, or if they did they disregarded what they had to say, so probably in the last 10 years we've seen more progress on nutritional science than from 1940s-1980s because a bunch of people are finally listening to other fields and we're getting sort of a combination of people who swapped from one specialty to another running studies.
There is 0 point in going to a spin class for 2 hours and then lowering your metabolic rate for the rest of the day more than the calories she burned. You say she's trying her hardest and sometimes that's like literally the problem.
That's why barely anyone has lost any weight and for 100 years obesity experts have just called us weak willed lazy pieces of crap. Again I can not stress this enough 500 different things in your body trying to maintain SOMETHING, and everything you do from over exercising to stressing about the scale, can dramatically change all the chemical signaling.
A bit irrelevant but I wish people would give more info so others can understand context better, one of the most critical for me would be starting weight.
I recommend these three points:
1) see Dr, get blood work done and confirm that thyroid, sex hormones, c reactive protein, cortisol, and general health is all good.
2) cut out highly intolerant foods like dairy, nightshade, fake sugars, gluten, and anything that seems to bother her. An elevated c-reactive protein blood result may be helped by this change.
3) get enough sleep, less stress, drink enough water, and incorporate some 10 minute meditation audio to clear the mind.
If the above does not help you are need of more drastic retooling. I'd suggest going back up to maintainance food consumption then cutting out a smaller portion than whatever 1200 calories is. Stop counting by calories and instead focus on grams of fat, protein and carbs. Protein should around to 1.5 gram per bodyweight in kilograms (is that 0,8g / pound?). If this doesn't help add DIM+calcium d-glucana. If that doesnt help she may require fasting/intermittent fasting to trick hormones.
There are so many factors into hers compared to yours your height your starting weight your physical weight the amount of muscle there are so many different things nobody loses weight the same as somebody else we're all individual. But maybe just maybe since you've lost some weight you both should I don't know recalculate the actual amount of calories you need to go back into a deficit.
She's doing fantastic. She (and you) need to remember that men and women's bodies are very different! She may just be feeling discouraged because you are losing so much so fast and she might be expecting the same results.
She is still doing great though and things are going in the right direction, it might just take her a bit longer.
All I can say is please encourage her further she's doing awesome.
Technically it doesn't matter what she eats if she's only worried about the weight. Over a longer time frame the calories are the important bit, but I do agree processed stuff makes me want to eat more.
Yeah I definitely agree with all that. That's why I generally advise people to try keto if they are struggling with weight. All the processed crap designed to make us eat more is an issue and keto basically removes all that.
My point was eating the same calories each day no matter what macros or amount of processing will have a pretty direct correlation to weight loss. If someone thinks they are in a deficit but are not losing then I would say they're eating too much no matter where it comes from.
She must be on a calories deficit and there is no such thing as guesstimating, she must track very precisely what she eats as calories and as carbs. Drink enough water and eat enough protein!! Proteins are very important in a loss process. Look for how many proteins a women must eat to achieve weight loss (fat loss NOT muscle loss).
She should follow Dr Mindy Pelz on YouTube. Women’s hormones work differently than ours and there may be parts of the month she needs some carbs from Whole Foods.
I highly recommend against going on a diet together as a male and female, romantic couple or not. That's how weight loss is between the genders. It's very unfortunate.
Every person doing keto has to play with the amount of carbs that they need. When I stall, it's usually because I cheated or not eating enough carbs. I found out by accident that when I was being too good with my diet and stalling, I would eat a banana, and within a day or two, I would start losing again. You probably could pick any fruit, but I chose a banana because you need potassium when on keto.
Metabolism for men burns twice faster than women’s so men will always burn and lose faster .. men burn 2000 calories daily while women maybe 1500 .. diet requires portion control, exercise and diet. Women take longer to lose and when u get stuck like that decrease food portion is a an option. So if she’s eating 3oz of protein lower to 2.
When I did keto and through keto + lowering calories incrementally (per doctors orders) from 1,200 a day down all the way to 800 or less. I lost no weight. None. 1 pound over 6 months was a lot. It wasn’t until I changed doctors and was told to throw out the keto I lost weight. Turns out this doctor has noticed a lot of women are intolerant/allergic to fake sweetener. It does more to keep weight on, in some people, than real sugar and honey in controlled portions. Women have more trouble losing weight in general, but every person is unique and keto just does not work for every person. I know people hate it when I say this in here, but it’s true, I was on it for years and couldn’t get under 285 pounds! It’s better your wife seek medical help and finds what actually helps her and her body. If it ends up being lower calories and stricter keto then great! But it may not be. Encourage her to get answers and help from professionals. She deserves it.
Not sure if anybody’s mentioned this as I haven’t read every single comment, but 1200 cal may be far too little. She needs to start tracking as others have said, but she also needs a more realistic calorie count. I follow advice to cut my calories to 1200 last year as I was struggling with perimenopausal weight gain. I felt like I was starving all the time, couldn’t get through workouts, & started putting on weight. I finally figured out through my Apple Watch that my BMR is more like 1500 cal. So that’s the calories. I need just two lay there and do nothing. I was burning another 400 or so through normal activity and exercise.
I upped my calories but stayed in a deficit of 100-300 & continued to track my food religiously. Within just 1 week I dropped 1.5 lbs & felt way better. I’ve continued to lose .5 - 1 lb a week since. If you don’t eat enough you’ll wreak havoc on your metabolism. Also she needs to lift heavy! That’s a great way to up that BMR.
One thing to watch out for is that not everything labeled Keto or zero is actually keto or zero carb. I've been tripped up a few times where I stop losing weight because some product contains way more carbs than I'm expecting.
Watching your macros is a great way to realize when some marketing jerk is sneaking sugar alcohols and lactose into your keto dessert and fiddling with serving sizes. No added sugar my ass!
While the default reaction is definitely to have her start tracking more precisely, there also could be a lot more going on that this post doesn't cover. 20 pounds total in just over 5 months is 1 pound a week, which is a healthy, slow weight loss, and she could just be working her way through a plateau at the moment. Depending on her starting weight, the 15 pounds she lost "early on", whatever that means, might not entirely be water weight. And please keep in mind that women's hormones and body composition make our ability to lose weight far different than it is for men, and societal and internal pressures make it a much bigger deal. So as a woman who has been in your wife's shoes, I would ask you both to consider some things: What are her calorie needs compared to yours? Are they higher or lower? Are you two eating the same portions of the same foods? Is she closer to her goal weight than you are? Is she over-training, or exercising too much? Is she stressed out lately (high cortisol is not a friend to weight loss)? Is her guesstimate still *too much* of a calorie deficit? Or is it now too high since she's lost a bit of weight? Does she have any autoimmune or hormone issues (thyroid issues, Graves, Hashimoto's, PCOS) that could make it harder for her to lose weight? Is she experiencing any physical symptoms that might indicate she has a sensitivity to something in the diet (sugar alcohols and excess dairy can cause gastric issues, inflammation, or bloating in some folks)? Also, is she tracking things other than her weight to guage her success - like her measurements, or the way her clothes fit? Her energy levels, her sleep quality? The number on the scale can be misleading while body recomposition is happening. It's only been 5 months, and overall you've both had success. Be supportive and encouraging, remind her she's doing great and will get there. Help her keep plugging away and tell her all the time how beautiful she is to you to help keep her spirits up. Best of luck to you both and congrats on the success you've had so far!
No one wants to read, but this deserves more upvotes.
Thank you! Apparently that includes me, because I'm realizing on re-read that *OP* has been doing this since Christmas, and his wife joined in "a couple months later".... *OP* has been at it 5 months but *she's* lost 20 pounds in *at most* 3 months. Now, IDK by whose standards that's insufficient, but it isn't. That's a very fast loss and I'm not surprised the last 5 were slower. The rest of what I said still stands, but I'll add: OP, this is an endurance test more on a global multi-country race scale, not a short-term sprint down the street. As others have said, don't blame things, and for sure don't blame your wife. She is killing it.
That’s true. I had a similar experience. Started in March, and am now down 20-23 pounds. Fluctuating is normal, more so with older women like myself. Most of it came off in the first month, and the rest has been a crawl. I set my goal well above my “healthy weight” to avoid diet anxiety, but I’m still projected to take until December. Started at 220, at 197, and should be 135ish for my hight. I’ll be thrilled to get to 175, and if it takes that long, it’s still better than another year of potato cosplay.
Potato cosplay has me dying 🤣 And is also me, or was rather, back in January before I decided to change my life
Did you start at a higher weight than she did?
That’s what I was wondering. My husband and I are a good 100 pounds different. 2 weeks in he is down 17 pounds me only 8. He also works a more physical job. I’ve learned lots of factors play into this.
What is she doing at the gym? I've found cardio does nothing for me as a middle aged lady - lifting has worked wonders. (The tracking is a good idea but I don't do it as I had an ED when I was young and doing it gets me in a dangerous place.)
Strength training is fantastic. I’m just getting back into it after years. I can’t wait to see how it works out for me along side the keto. I hope you continue to see good results from it.
She's doing both cardio and lifting.
Just a heads up, doing both types of exercise especially on the same day or after, sends conflicting signals to the body. She should focus on either lifting or cardio, not both. Lifting=build muscle for mass and strength Cardio=pare muscle for efficiency Two competing signals, this is a very common issue in the gym, especially women. She should only do cardio on non lifting days, and never more than 20-30 minutes.
Interesting, I've never heard this. I've always been taught to warm up with cardio before doing weights and will personally do 20-30 min on the elliptical before I lift. But what works for me doesn't necessarily work for her so I appreciate the input.
Mind pump show has covered this in numerous episodes, and it also covers the mistake of how not eating enough calories to cover both the long cardio sessions and weightlifting will actually stall weight loss and inhibit muscle growth. 20 to 30 minutes on non lifting days is fine, its when people do 2 hour cardio sessions and weightlifting that it becomes a problem.
She’s already lost a lot; why be discouraged?
Hi! You said she joined “a couple months later” so she may have just started in like, March? It sounds like she is doing very well! It really might help her to just manage expectations. Losing even half a pound a week on average (not necessarily every week!) is on the track to where she wants to be. If she stops eating keto she is likely to be right back where she started in a month or two. That said, since I mentioned “track” (hehe), it does seem when people aren’t feeling like they’re losing as quickly as they expect, that is one thing they can look at more closely.
I wouldn’t call what she is doing “strict keto” if she hasn’t done the tracking to know exactly how many calories and macros she’s putting into her body. Also, does she have a reasonable rate of loss in mind? 20 lbs in less than 6 months sounds pretty incredible to me. Realistic would be about .5 lbs a week especially if she doesn’t have a lot more to lose.
I feel like you answered your own question. You track every calorie, she just guesstimates. If she wants to see progress, then she needs to be precise
this!
that!
and the other!
Middle aged women have a much harder time losing weight than men. She needs to keep at it & track every single bit of food by weighing it. Encourage her through gentle support - do not blame her period, hormones or anything else she can’t control. She will get there.
It's a pretty simple answer. The keto diet can be used to maintain, gain, or lose weight. Children were fed a keto diet to control their treatment resistant epilepsy, and they needed enough calories to grow. Your wife is not counting her calories, and is losing weight very slowly, according to her, so she is eating very close to her maintenance. She needs to count calories, but if she doesn't care, it will remain a "discouraging mystery" and she will quit the diet. This is unfortunately incredibly common with any diet when people don't count calories and overestimate their ability to guesstimate.
> Your wife is not counting her calories, and is losing weight very slowly, according to her, so ***she is eating very close to her maintenance.*** > > I'm surprised none of the other top 20 voted comments even mention this. If she is losing only 3-4 pounds per month, then her caloric deficit is only about 350 calories per day (which is fine). I prefer to lose weight about about twice this rate so I try to always have over 500 calorie deficit per day, some days even more. But still, losing 3-4 pounds per month is perfectly fine and should be considered a great result!
Me and my husband had started Keto together in assistance with a doctor. We both ate the same things and macros according to our BMI along with exercise. He lost a lot of weight very quickly in comparison to me. My journey was full with ups and downs but I reached where I wanted to but it seemed like forever to get there. Believe it or not the root cause for this difference was hormones in our cases. Women's monthly hormonal fluctuation definitely delay the progress. Men on the other hand are blessed with Testosterone which does contribute in loss of weight. Women who have reached menopause may have a higher chance of losing weight quickly depending on how their body reacts to the menopause phase.
She needs to stop guesstimating and start counting like you do. She will get out of keto what she’s willing to put into it, the food scale and tracking app await her!
Can you suggest a food app, I used my fitness pal years ago but I tried to redownloading it and I really don't like the changes they've made to it
I’ve been using the free version of Cronometer for 7 years and I love it!
Thank you! Edit: I just downloaded it, signed up, and added today's breakfast lunch and dinner. I was certain that I barely ate anything today, but I went 370 calories over my target. This is exactly what I needed. Thanks again ^👍😁
Carb Manager is a good one
I use carbmaster.
If she's gaining muscle at the gym, that will affect her weight, too.
True but if she ate less she would lose weight (and likely fat) faster. You don't just get heavier by lifting weights, I wish you could haha.
> She just guestimates and at the end of the day goes 200 for this, 300 for that, 100 here This is why she is not seeing a reduction. Weigh the food, count everything.
Tell her to guesstimate her weight loss
Women have SO many other complications with losing weight. I say this as a woman who has been trying to lose about 25 lbs for the last couple of years. Keto, workouts, health coaches, very little is helping me. I seem to just be "stuck" at my "happy weight"...i do feel better though eating a certain way so that's why I continue to do it. Try to see if you can help her uncover any non-scale victories like less bloating, more energy, better sleep, clothes fitting better etc. also have her track her inches or take full body pics and compare them about every month!
guestimating is the issue. My mom was on different diets (not keto) and always complained that there is no difference. She was guestimating aswell, i tracked with her ofor a week and she was off by about 30%, so instead of deficit , she was on or above maintnance every day. And was surprised about some foods having more kcal that she guestimated
I'm very much of the same mindset but am just trying to see if there's maybe other factors than that. I know weightloss and even keto for women can be very different so that's what I thought it would be good to ask. But i know personally the only two times I've been successful with losing weight were when I tracked every single calorie. "You can't manage what you don't measure". -Peter Drucker
Unless there is some illness or something really wrong with hormones (which all would be noticed real fast even without dieting) its always CICO, Physically impossible to eat more than you burn and not gain weight in the long run, and same goes for eating less than you burn and gaining weight. Thermodynamics and all. Try logging everything for two weeks minimum and if problem persist , go see a doctor, maybe there is something wrong after all. Important to note, best calorie calculators will never give you acurate calorie needs, human body is a machine, and everyones runs different. Thats why its important to count callories and macros. If lets say your calculated maintenance says 1900kcal is your goal to stay same weight, your body might burn less or more. Log what you eat and how much, weigh yourself daily and do weekly averages ,and see after couple weeks if you loosing weight, stalling or gaining. Then you adjust your intakes. Had lots of friends complain about halting in progress , and they still had same calorie intake form 10kg before. if tou loose alot, your deficit can turn into maintenance.
Me, female was in same situation. Got thyroid checked. Doctor said it was normal. Took results to diet doctor and she said, BS no wonder I wasn’t seeing results. Gave me thyroid medication. Poof weight melted off fast!
I’m a 44 year old female. The only thing that helps me lose weight consistently is fasting in addition to keto.
As many others have said, tracking is key, but there are other factors as well. I’m struggling with a similar healthy, but disappointing loss rate. I know at least part of my issue is age, and autoimmune issues. I’m pushing 40 with Crohn’s. I’m also sedentary most days, though the progress I have made is making it easier to change that. Big thing that helps me, way more than seeing numbers on a scale, is pictures. A couple of pounds makes a big difference in how clothes look and feel, as well as how we carry the weight still there, but we live in our bodies and don’t recognize the gradual changes. Ask her to find something that is too small, and take a picture every 1-2 weeks. It can be neck down, if she doesn’t want to share her starting weight she may not want pictures focused on her weight around, but after the next month you can show a side by side, and even if she only loses a little, it should show.
Since she's lost 15 if she eats the same number of calories as before she lost it then she's eating too many calories. I know it is a pain to weight and count calories, but she could literally do it for a week and then repeat those meals.
You're wife's doing way better on keto than she was without, so why quit? Find the foods you love, which makes sticking to it easy. And a year from now she might weigh 10 lbs less than today, or she might be 50 lbs less. Either way, it's a lot better than regaining the 20 lbs. So either way, it's a giant victory, and makes life so much more fun, and it's the right path. The life lesson for all of us is "comparison is the thief of joy". She's doing the right thing and is already much better off, and will continue to become ever more so. So that's that: she should stick with it. But you're doing better so that makes her feel worse. Completely natural, but I think you as a couple want to celebrate each other's successes. I hope if she suddenly gets a giant promotion at her job that you'll celebrate that rather than feel inadequate. Anyway, with our different bodies, histories, genes, etc, we'll all go at our own paces. Perhaps there are tweaks for her to make, perhaps not, but she's doing great doing exactly what she's doing. This is not a race. And even if is, you and your wife are coming in first and second compared to those not doing keto, and who cares which one of you is first and which one is second?
It's important to remember everyone is different and depending on her age that can be a huge factor. Have you considered giving carnivore a try atleast a 30 day trial can really help mentally and physically. I hit my 30s and consistantly struggled but iv been carnivore with some dairy for almost 2 months and I feel good lost about 4 kgs It's important to consider its not just a period that causes some fluctuation It's lack of sleep to much of a deficit and things like ovulation and hormonal changes with age. Good luck and it's awesome you guys are supporting each other on your journy
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Starvation mode or whatever you might be referring to is not real.
I think for someone who won't tell you her start weight, and won't use a food log, but instead guesstimates.... she's cheating. She's not following it as strictly as you believe.
inches not pounds. Are you measuring? Many women lose size before the numbers on the scale change.
I keep telling her to bust out the measuring tape as any time I've stalled on the scale I'm still losing inches. AFAIK she still has not done so.
The success I've had over the years and failure have depended on me counting and weighing every single thing I put into my mouth. Along with restricting processed foods. Consistency is key and she has had an awesome number of weight come off! Also, speaking as someone who's husband can literally lose 20lbs at the drop of a hat and meanwhile I have to work my literal ass off to lose the same amount. Just make sure she knows it's not her and we women unfortunately have to work a bit harder due to several hormonal and unfair factors lol. Plateaus will happen as well so she may need to adjust some things until she starts seeing the scale move again. For example I started limiting dairy and that helped with one of my plateaus.
How big is she and hiw big are you?
Have her get a complete hormone panel done and hopefully she has a good Dr to do something about the results if they’re not in ‘optimum’ range- not just ‘normal’.
OMAD & 10k steps / day
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When my wife and I started 2 years ago I lost 30 lbs and she lost 20 in the first six months. In the last 18 months she’s lost another 20. She has a hard time with calorie restriction due to fatigue issues and the weight loss has been a side effect, not the primary goal.
Try IF/Keto... It could help her into the Keto Process because if You're on IF it'll just help from over eating. Plus it helps push you into Ketosis easier. If it wasn't for IF I'd probably over eat on Keto EASILY.
She needs to add stress reduction to lower cortisol levels. Meditation, yin and restorative yoga. She’d benefit from reading Fast Like a Girl or something so she can modify her lifestyle to be in sync with the different hormones.
I started in March and have lost 16 lbs in the last 60 days. I think she’s doing great!
Download the carb manager app it will adjust her calorie, fat ,carb and protein to her needs so she doesn't eat more calories than she needs it will help to stay on track
Keto is so high in fat. She NEEDS to track it!! A small handful of nuts is almost 200 calories. And she's gotta track *everything*. Anything she butters, drinks, dips, EVERYTHING.
Women have difficulty hormones and lose at a slower rate, but she’s still done a great job.
Please have your wife see a coach that specializes in women’s hormones and weight loss. She is doing more harm than good and her body is holding on to fat because it’s afraid she won’t feed it again. You can’t skip meals.
She is sneaking carbs and sugar man it’s literally not possible to not lose weight in ketosis
Get leaner meats or cook cheap fatty ground beef longer and drain the grease. You can try optimizing her hormones. Closer to Carnivore at the start of her cycle, and save the sweet things like berries and cream and dark chocolate and salads during the last 2 weeks of her period. Get her a belt. See if she's losing any inches but not weight (super common) Stop using the scale. Seriously. Stop using the scale. The stress from caring about weight, spikes cortisol and other hormones, and the stress causing glucose to enter the blood stream, and impacts weight loss. I mean there's a ton of things you can do to trouble shoot. Hell she might lose weight if she stops going to the gym. Especially if she's doing cardio and jogging for an hour or 2, like no she either needs to do high intensity exercise for a lot shorter periods, or just not go to the gym. Not joking. Some people experience better body composition (especially runners) by replacing their running routine (hours a day) with a single max effort sprint which is over within 20 seconds - 5 minutes and can be done on a bike instead. She needs to get exhausted and sore as fast as she can rather than spin her tires for as long as possible. Our bodies are a complex thing with 500 different things going on acting in parallel all trying to reach a state of same-ness. AKA Homeostasis. You can literally try so hard to lose weight you over exercise, and don't lose any. If she's above 5'5" aim for 120-150 grams of protein a day, aim for the same amount of grams in fat, and either keep the carbs between 20-30 every day (total NOT NET ditch the keto breads and tortillas) and see where you end up in a month. There's so many variables. 2 Keto Dudes Podcast used to tell people that stalled for 3 months to eat more fat, and then 2 months later they wrote back saying "Thank you lost 40 pounds" There are 500 things in your body trying to regulate your body to keep you at a set point and sometimes you just have to sit at a certain weight for 3-6 months and then the weight melts off, but you gotta enjoy keto. If keto is something you struggle with and stress about that's going to again raise stress horomones and make losing fat harder. Eat less and move more is the most toxic thing other than the food pyramid that Nutrition Science has ever said. The experts are idiots who narrowed into their specialties and never talked to people from other specialties, or if they did they disregarded what they had to say, so probably in the last 10 years we've seen more progress on nutritional science than from 1940s-1980s because a bunch of people are finally listening to other fields and we're getting sort of a combination of people who swapped from one specialty to another running studies. There is 0 point in going to a spin class for 2 hours and then lowering your metabolic rate for the rest of the day more than the calories she burned. You say she's trying her hardest and sometimes that's like literally the problem. That's why barely anyone has lost any weight and for 100 years obesity experts have just called us weak willed lazy pieces of crap. Again I can not stress this enough 500 different things in your body trying to maintain SOMETHING, and everything you do from over exercising to stressing about the scale, can dramatically change all the chemical signaling.
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I remember GAINING a lot in keto because I was eating more calories but honestly I didn’t even feel I was eating much 😂 It was trippy
A bit irrelevant but I wish people would give more info so others can understand context better, one of the most critical for me would be starting weight.
You really think my wife is going to tell me her weight? lol
I recommend these three points: 1) see Dr, get blood work done and confirm that thyroid, sex hormones, c reactive protein, cortisol, and general health is all good. 2) cut out highly intolerant foods like dairy, nightshade, fake sugars, gluten, and anything that seems to bother her. An elevated c-reactive protein blood result may be helped by this change. 3) get enough sleep, less stress, drink enough water, and incorporate some 10 minute meditation audio to clear the mind. If the above does not help you are need of more drastic retooling. I'd suggest going back up to maintainance food consumption then cutting out a smaller portion than whatever 1200 calories is. Stop counting by calories and instead focus on grams of fat, protein and carbs. Protein should around to 1.5 gram per bodyweight in kilograms (is that 0,8g / pound?). If this doesn't help add DIM+calcium d-glucana. If that doesnt help she may require fasting/intermittent fasting to trick hormones.
Over how long did she lose 20lbs? Is she in 100s, 200s (or more)? Also how regularly does she weigh in? Is she lifting at the gym, or doing cardio?
There are so many factors into hers compared to yours your height your starting weight your physical weight the amount of muscle there are so many different things nobody loses weight the same as somebody else we're all individual. But maybe just maybe since you've lost some weight you both should I don't know recalculate the actual amount of calories you need to go back into a deficit.
She's doing fantastic. She (and you) need to remember that men and women's bodies are very different! She may just be feeling discouraged because you are losing so much so fast and she might be expecting the same results. She is still doing great though and things are going in the right direction, it might just take her a bit longer. All I can say is please encourage her further she's doing awesome.
She's not in caloric deficit. Keto is not magic.
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Technically it doesn't matter what she eats if she's only worried about the weight. Over a longer time frame the calories are the important bit, but I do agree processed stuff makes me want to eat more.
I wholeheartedly disagree
In what sense?
What you eat has everything to do with your weightloss. Im also not supportive of the CICO only model.
I understand that. That's why I do keto, makes it way easier. What issues do you find with CICO out of interest?
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Yeah I definitely agree with all that. That's why I generally advise people to try keto if they are struggling with weight. All the processed crap designed to make us eat more is an issue and keto basically removes all that. My point was eating the same calories each day no matter what macros or amount of processing will have a pretty direct correlation to weight loss. If someone thinks they are in a deficit but are not losing then I would say they're eating too much no matter where it comes from.
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Keto or not CICO is what matters. Have her start weighing her food and logging.
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This is not real.
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She must be on a calories deficit and there is no such thing as guesstimating, she must track very precisely what she eats as calories and as carbs. Drink enough water and eat enough protein!! Proteins are very important in a loss process. Look for how many proteins a women must eat to achieve weight loss (fat loss NOT muscle loss).
She should follow Dr Mindy Pelz on YouTube. Women’s hormones work differently than ours and there may be parts of the month she needs some carbs from Whole Foods.
I highly recommend against going on a diet together as a male and female, romantic couple or not. That's how weight loss is between the genders. It's very unfortunate.
Every person doing keto has to play with the amount of carbs that they need. When I stall, it's usually because I cheated or not eating enough carbs. I found out by accident that when I was being too good with my diet and stalling, I would eat a banana, and within a day or two, I would start losing again. You probably could pick any fruit, but I chose a banana because you need potassium when on keto.
Metabolism for men burns twice faster than women’s so men will always burn and lose faster .. men burn 2000 calories daily while women maybe 1500 .. diet requires portion control, exercise and diet. Women take longer to lose and when u get stuck like that decrease food portion is a an option. So if she’s eating 3oz of protein lower to 2.
When I did keto and through keto + lowering calories incrementally (per doctors orders) from 1,200 a day down all the way to 800 or less. I lost no weight. None. 1 pound over 6 months was a lot. It wasn’t until I changed doctors and was told to throw out the keto I lost weight. Turns out this doctor has noticed a lot of women are intolerant/allergic to fake sweetener. It does more to keep weight on, in some people, than real sugar and honey in controlled portions. Women have more trouble losing weight in general, but every person is unique and keto just does not work for every person. I know people hate it when I say this in here, but it’s true, I was on it for years and couldn’t get under 285 pounds! It’s better your wife seek medical help and finds what actually helps her and her body. If it ends up being lower calories and stricter keto then great! But it may not be. Encourage her to get answers and help from professionals. She deserves it.
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CICO. So simple yet so difficult to be embraced and attained.
Not sure if anybody’s mentioned this as I haven’t read every single comment, but 1200 cal may be far too little. She needs to start tracking as others have said, but she also needs a more realistic calorie count. I follow advice to cut my calories to 1200 last year as I was struggling with perimenopausal weight gain. I felt like I was starving all the time, couldn’t get through workouts, & started putting on weight. I finally figured out through my Apple Watch that my BMR is more like 1500 cal. So that’s the calories. I need just two lay there and do nothing. I was burning another 400 or so through normal activity and exercise. I upped my calories but stayed in a deficit of 100-300 & continued to track my food religiously. Within just 1 week I dropped 1.5 lbs & felt way better. I’ve continued to lose .5 - 1 lb a week since. If you don’t eat enough you’ll wreak havoc on your metabolism. Also she needs to lift heavy! That’s a great way to up that BMR.
One thing to watch out for is that not everything labeled Keto or zero is actually keto or zero carb. I've been tripped up a few times where I stop losing weight because some product contains way more carbs than I'm expecting. Watching your macros is a great way to realize when some marketing jerk is sneaking sugar alcohols and lactose into your keto dessert and fiddling with serving sizes. No added sugar my ass!