Why doesn’t the keto diet always make you lose weight?

When you’ve set a goal of losing weight and changed your eating habits as a result, not seeing tangible results on the scale is frustrating. We understand it. The ketogenic diet does not always produce the desired effects. This can be explained for several reasons.

Too much carbohydrate consumption

The keto diet is extremely low in carbohydrates. Unless you are really careful with what you consume, you are very quickly beyond the authorized limit. As a result, the body cannot go into ketosis, the state in which it no longer burns glucose from carbohydrates, but ketones stored in fat.

Depending on individual needs, we can consume a maximum of 20 to 50 grams of carbohydrates per day. Of course, avoid the more obvious sources of carbohydrates, such as pasta, potatoes and bread. But other sources are too quickly overlooked. Because legumes, starchy vegetables, most fruits and even yogurt contain a lot of carbohydrates.

You consume too many kilojoules (your energy balance is positive)

Weight loss only occurs when you eat foods that are worth fewer kilojoules (energy) than those expended by the body. Unlike other diet programs that don’t need to count kilojoules, the key to a successful ketogenic diet is knowing how many kilojoules you should not consume in order to lose weight. Then, it is necessary to correctly evaluate the proportions to know the quantities of fats, proteins and carbohydrates that can be assimilated.

You are not getting enough sleep

Research has found a link between insufficient or disturbed sleep and difficulty losing weight. One of the explanations put forward is that the production of the hunger hormone increases due to insufficient sleep. If you’ve been on a ketogenic diet for a few weeks, you may experience side effects, such as having trouble falling asleep or not getting long sleep. The drastic restriction of carbohydrates obviously has effects on the chemical elements of the brain influencing sleep.

Getting fat when following the ketogenic diet

As we have said, regardless of the diet followed, there is only weight loss if the energy intake is less than the amount of energy burned by the body. This balance is easier to find in some diets than in others.

The ketogenic diet describes precisely the proportion to be observed between fat, protein and carbohydrates. To really lose weight, you have to know how many kilojoules you can consume per day and apply the proportion to this amount. But if the calculation is wrong, you will quickly tend to exceed the volumes of carbohydrates allowed. The weight gain is also explained by the large amounts of fat that the ketogenic diet forces to consume. Fat is the most concentrated source of energy there is: it contains twice as many kilojoules per gram than carbohydrates or proteins.

Why do I feel bloated from the ketogenic diet?

The bloated feeling is often due to constipation, itself a side effect of the ketogenic diet in the first few days or weeks. Decreasing the amount of carbohydrate also leads to a decrease in fiber volumes and an increased risk of dehydration. These are all factors that promote constipation. If you’re on a ketogenic diet, you’ll need to deprive yourself of valuable sources of fiber, such as legumes, wholegrain bread, or breakfast cereals. This is why it is important to consume maximum amounts of vegetables validated for the ketogenic diet, such as leafy vegetables, and to drink plenty of water.

Weight changes while following a ketogenic diet

If you have just started a ketogenic diet, the initial weight loss is due to the loss of water in the body. In the absence of carbohydrates and therefore glucose, the body is forced to draw glucose from the liver. During this process, the amount of water present in the body decreases, which is why the needle of the scale goes down. But as soon as you start eating carbohydrates again, the process reverses and the pounds return at a gallop. In other words, if you interrupt the ketogenic diet occasionally, even for a day, simply by accidentally consuming too many carbohydrates, it can reverberate on the scale through a yo-yo effect.

Weight gain after stopping the ketogenic diet

Most people who follow a very strict diet regain weight as soon as they stop and get back to their eating habits.