Why Did I Lose Weight The First Week of Keto Then Stop?‍

A keto diet is a low carb, high-fat diet that causes your body to start breaking down fats instead of sugar as its primary fuel source. 

However, if you have done keto for a while, you’ll notice that you eventually stop losing weight. 

In this article I’ll discuss exactly why you stopped losing weight the first week on keto, & how to keep losing weight.

What Does Keto Do?

Keto is a low carb, high fat eating plan. On keto, you usually restrict carbs to under 50 g per day. This process is called ketosis and it allows your body to burn fat for fuel instead of sugars. This is the reason why you lose weight on keto.

Keto has many benefits, & weight loss is probably the biggest one. 

Studies show that when you’re on a keto diet, you experience reduced hunger, increased satiety, and improved glucose control.

Why Did I Stop Losing Weight On Keto?

The most common reason you stopped losing weight on keto is that your metabolism adjusted to keto. This means that your body started using less calories throughout the day since it sensed that you were getting less food. So, to keep losing weight, you must start adding fasting on top of keto. 

There are lots of reasons why you may lose weight on a keto diet and then stop. Maybe you overdid it on the carbs. 

Whatever the reason, the good news is that you can start losing weight again if you just start fasting.

How to Keep Losing Weight on Keto

To keep losing weight on keto, you must start fasting. This is because your metabolism has adapted to the same regimen every day, so if you add fasting on top of keto, you’ll start losing weight again.

First, you should start with the easiest type of fasting, intermittent fasting.

Intermittent Fasting + Keto

Intermittent fasting is a type of eating style where you eat for a certain restricted period of the day, usually eight hours, & then don’t eat for the rest of the day, usually sixteen hours. To simplify intermittent fasting, you can just skip breakfast or dinner.

The biggest benefit of intermittent fasting is that you lose weight really easily.

I personally lost 50% of the weight I needed to lose with keto alone, but then once I added intermittent fasting, I lost another 25%.

In the beginning, you may be hungry, but after you skip certain meals consistently, you body stops getting as hungry.

OMAD Fasting + Keto

OMAD fasting is a type of intermittent fasting where you eat one meal a day. The biggest benefit of OMAD fasting is that it helps you lose weight really fast. In the beginning, OMAD may be difficult, but as your body adjusts, you’ll stop getting hungry.

I personally lost a couple more pounds with OMAD & keto, reaching around 90% of my weight loss goal.

But, I still had some more weight to lose. So, I had to do the most advanced type of fasting: prolonged dry fasting.

Prolonged Dry Fasting + OMAD + Keto

With prolonged dry fasting, you don’t eat or drink water for multiple days. Prolonged dry fasting works because your body can combine the hydrogen in your fat with the oxygen in the air to create water — H²O.

Other desert animals store fat in their humps to create their own metabolic water, for example camels & their humps.

Prolonged Dry Fasting vs. Prolonged Wet Fasting

With prolonged dry fasting, you burn more fat then a wet fast because you burn fat just by turning your fat into water.

Prolonged Dry Fasting for Weight Loss

The biggest benefit of prolonged dry fasting is that it helps you to lose a lot of weight quickly.

You can lose around a pound of fat & one to two pounds of excess water a day with prolonged dry fasting.

Prolonged Dry Fasting for Autophagy

Prolonged dry fasting also is the most effective way to activate autophagy––your body’s way to recycle old, useless cells. This helps you to live longer, have better skin, & stop cancer.

Though prolonged dry fasting may seem really extreme, once you do OMAD & keto for a while, your body will get used to using its own fat for fuel.

I personally did OMAD & keto for most days of the week, but some days of the week I’d do prolonged dry fasting. I just repeated that until I lost all the weight I wanted to lose on keto.

Conclusion

Keto is a great way to lose weight & improve your metabolic health. However, when you stop losing weight, you must start fasting on top of keto. I recommend starting from intermittent fasting, then progressing to OMAD once you stop losing weight again, & then finally prolonged dry fasting.

If you’re interested in starting keto & intermittent fasting, here’s my article going in-depth on every concern you may have about keto or intermittent fasting, & how to start today.