Warning: Long winded, probably TMI post below but hey, may as well share my experience.
Here’s an update as I’m now just about a week in. I bought a couple different types of urine strips to test my ketone levels before I started the Keto diet on Monday last week. Oddly, both strips indicated that I had low levels of ketones in my urine (0.5-1.0 mmol/L) on the Sunday before I started. That day (last Sunday) had a bunch of wine, sandwiches and other things that were definitely not low carb, and technically I was already in ketosis. Very odd, but I chalked it up as a joke like “my body is already getting into the spirit!”.
The first day by noon (Monday), I was already at 1.5-4 mmol/L in my urine (again, testing with both strips), and by the end of the day on Wednesday (day 3) I was up around 9 mmol/L on both separate tests. At this point I started to do some research because I know that ketone levels that are too high can be dangerous and typically it takes the average person 2-4 days to get into ketosis. My husband at the same time was still showing no signs of ketones in his urine using the same test strips. I added some carbs back into my diet that day for dinner, 1 cup of rice which should have put me way over my daily carb limit but my ketones barely went down at all. On the Thursday I bumped my carbs up to about 30%, and again I sat at about 4 mmol/L. I've been off the keto diet since then and my levels are ranging between 4-8 mmol/L. Everything I’ve read said that if you go overboard on carbs, it’ll bump you out of ketosis. This is not the case for me. In fact, it seems like I need to incorporate carbs in order to keep my ketones between 1-4 mmol/L.
Some background: I’m a 37 year old woman, I’m not overweight at all, I just wanted to get into shape and feel better. A few years ago I went to the doctor for an unrelated issue and needed to give a urine sample. She noted that I had ketones in my urine then, thought it was odd, but as I wasn’t experiencing anything weird besides the issue at hand she packed it away into my file. I have an appointment booked for Tuesday to run some tests, but I’m under the impression that this isn’t the right idea for me.
Does anyone know if it’s normal to be in a state of ketosis as a norm? I’m wondering because I’ve generally struggled to gain weight my whole life. The biggest reason I wanted to try keto in the first place was to drop a few pounds and get better mental clarity (which I’ve read is really a thing). Overall, I felt sluggish and light headed the whole time.
TLDR: I guess Keto probably isn’t for everyone. I’m curious to see what my doctor thinks. I did lose 6lbs, but I didn’t sleep, could barely concentrate and overall felt like garbage the whole time
That being said, it’s working wonders for my husband. He loves it and is shedding weight like crazy. His energy level is high and he feel really good. Go figure.