We all wish for a magical weight loss plan that allows us to put in little to no effort and in return lose weight. That plan doesn’t exist. For me the keto diet is pretty close. I lost about 10 pounds in just a couple of weeks. It’s difficult to see results like that on any other healthy diet, especially without exercising. It wasn’t until about a month into my diet that I began to worry about my weight loss slowing down. I was still losing about a pound and a half a week, but compared to the initial 5 pounds a week it appeared as though something had changed. Doing some research I learned about the dreaded keto plateau. What exactly is keto plateau?

Once a person has reached a state of ketosis and has eliminated all their retained water they’ll see a weight loss of 1-2 pounds per week. At some point in your keto journey you’ll step onto the scale a few weeks in a row only to find that your weight has not budged at all. This is known as a keto plateau. Your body has stopped burning it’s excess fat stores as fuel and you are no longer losing weight.

A weight loss plateau is a common occurence in any diet, not just in keto. It can be frustrating but if you put in some effort to solve the mystery of why you have plateaued you will bounce back into weight loss mode. This can take from a few weeks to a couple of months.

Let’s take a closer look at how you can determine whether you’re plateauing and some common reasons a plateau occurs.

Have You Actually Hit a Plateau?

In the first few weeks of keto you’ll lose a lot of water weight. The keto diet is going to seem like a magical pill that made you start shedding all the unwanted pounds. This is a bit of an illusion because the weight you are initially losing is retained water and not fat. After the first few weeks you’ll notice that your weight loss starts to slow down. You’ll still be losing 1-2 pounds per week, but will probably never get back to losing the 5-10 pounds a week you lost at the beginning. This is a natural and completely healthy reaction and is not a plateau. The goal is to live a healthy sustainable lifestyle, which requires slow and gradual weight loss over many months.

Causes of Keto Plateau

Here are the top three reasons that keto plateau will occur and what you can do to overcome your plateau.

Carbohydrate Consumption

Usually if you have hit a plateau it means you are no longer in ketosis. The number one reason you will fall out of ketosis is your carb intake is too high. Carbohydrates should make up 5-10% of your daily calories, this usually equates to approximately 20 to 50 grams of carbohydrates per day. This is what an average person requires to reach a state of ketosis.

Everyone’s body is different and some people find they won’t reach ketosis until they lower their carb intake to under 10 grams of carbs per day. If you are diligently tracking everything you eat and are still not reaching ketosis you may want to try lowering your carb intake further. Some people even opt to do a full carnivore diet or an egg fast to kick themselves back into ketosis without having to worry about going over their carb limit.

You may be tracking every item of food you’re eating and calculating your total carbs to 10 grams of day and wondering why you just aren’t reaching ketosis. The most likely culprit is hidden carbs. Hidden carbs are the carbs that are unaccounted for in your diet. A large source of hidden carbs can come from pre-packaged or processed foods.

The FDA allows companies to round down to items with less than 0.5 g of carbs down to 0 g of carbs. There could potentially be 0.49 g of carbs per serving and the label may read 0 g of carbs. This works the same as you continue up the scale. The table below shows a great example of this, illustrating the carbohydrates found on the nutrition label for heavy whipping cream. Most nutrition labels for heavy whipping cream show that a 1 Tbs serving is 0 g of carbs. In reality there are 0.4 g of carbs in 1 Tbs of heavy whipping cream. If you’re eating multiple items servings of these items each day they can add up quickly, especially if you’re trying to keep your daily limit below 10 grams.

	1 Tbs	2 Tbs	3 Tbs
Heavy Whipping Cream	0.4 g	0.8 g	2.4 g
Rounded To	0 g	1 g	2 g

Also know that there are tiny amounts of carbs in almost every food you eat. If you are trying to keep a lower carb limit it’s safe to account for 0.5 grams for anything that isn’t pure fat or meat that you would otherwise count as 0 grams.

Another item that can easily add on the carbohydrates is vegetables. I had a hard time adjusting to limiting my vegetable intake when starting keto. We’ve always been taught that vegetables are good for us but on keto we need to adjust our thinking to moderate amounts of certain types of vegetables are good for us. Vegetables are full of nutrients that are beneficial for our health so I was skeptical of limiting them at first. I usually just guessed at how much a serving size was when filling up my plate. After reading about how the average person’s idea of a serving size is often far too large I decided to try measuring my portions for a few weeks to evaluate my version of a serving size. Turns out I was no exception. I was eating well over what I was tracking and consuming additional unaccounted for carbs. Unless you’re already a pro at measuring your portions I’d recommend starting out a keto diet by actually measuring your quantities when tracking until you get a good grasp of what a serving size looks like.

Calorie Consumption

A plateau may also be caused by consuming too many calories. Your body requires a certain amount of calories in order to function properly. This daily required amount of energy is referred to as your TDEE (Total Body Energy Expenditure). To lose weight you must consume less calories than your TDEE. This puts you at a calorie deficit and therefore forces your body to burn stored calories as fuel. Most nutritional advisors recommend reducing your calories to 10-25% lower than your TDEE (depending on how lean your body is) in order to healthily lose weight.

Generally 1 gram of carbs and 1 gram of protein equal 4 calories, and 1 gram of fat equals 9 calories. Your fat calories add up much quicker than your carb and protein calories. When you begin including additional fats to your meals to increase fat ratios, which most of us are not accustomed to doing, the calories add up much quicker than carbs and proteins. Although you have changed the foods you are eating it doesn’t change the amount of calories your body requires throughout the day. Ensure that you are not only tracking your macros but also sticking to the amount of calories your body requires for your gender, age, and height.

Protein Consumption

Protein is a great way to keep satiated longer and help maintain muscle mass. On a keto diet 15-20% of your calories should come from protein. If you consume more protein than your body needs the amino acids from the protein can turn into glucose and cause you to plateau, as your body is no longer in a state of ketosis. This process is known as gluconeogenesis.

A general rule on keto is to eat 0.7 to 0.9 grams of protein per pound of body weight, this equates to 1.5 to 2.0 grams per kg. To calculate exactly how much protein is going to work for your body you need to consider what your lean muscle mass is as well as how active you are. An athlete who exercises multiple times a week is going to require more protein than a person who works at a desk eight hours a day with no exercise. There are numerous keto calculators that can be found online. You can click here for a link to a free online keto calculator that will give you a more precise recommended amount of protein based on your height, age, weight and activity level.