Keto made easy

Why Am I Not Losing Weight on Keto?

Quick answer: Look at the calendar before you look at your macros. If you're inside your first 60 days, a stalled scale is usually water shifting and your body still adapting, and KetoDick's advice is to give it the full 60 days before judging (video uDw65ERtsA0). If you're past that, not hungry, and still stuck, the usual culprit isn't carbs. It's fat calories: the cream, butter, oil and fat bombs that keep you in ketosis but out of a deficit.

In this article

Step one: where are you on the calendar?

A lot of "keto isn't working" worry lands in week two or three, exactly where KetoDick's schedule puts the first plateau. The early weeks have their own pattern, and it looks a lot like failure if nobody warned you.

Where you are What's usually going on What to change
Week 1 Water leaving with glycogen Nothing
Weeks 2–4 Gut adjusting, low energy, stall Nothing; eat to fullness
Weeks 4–8 Fat loss starting, often slowly Measure, don't weigh daily
Past week 5, stalled, not hungry Usually too much fat in the diet Trim fat, check hidden carbs
Past week 6, still hungry Hidden sugars, triggers, or something else Troubleshoot hunger first

The timeline comes from KetoDick's week-by-week schedule (video uDw65ERtsA0), and the last two rows from his advice on stalls and hunger (videos NUJNFG6lLWw, 7Aixw4uRksI).

Before day 60: what's normal

Week one is mostly water. Glycogen is stored with roughly twice its weight in water, so as it goes the scale drops: about three pounds, or seven to ten for heavier people, in his figures (video uDw65ERtsA0).

Weeks two and three are, from the video, "a slog." Your gut is adjusting to fewer carbs, energy is low, you're not fully fat adapted yet, and most people plateau. That's the one people quit in. There's a whole post on the week-three stall.

From about week four, real fat loss starts: roughly half a pound to three pounds a week, depending on size and what you ate before (video uDw65ERtsA0). In his 2018 beginner video he puts month two onward at about 0.5 to 2 pounds a week (video UygKGoP_BtA).

So what you do in the first month is eat until you're full, keep carbs low, hit your protein, and stay off the scale. He says to skip the scale for the first 30 days, then weigh weekly or every two weeks (video uDw65ERtsA0). And telling a month-one person to cut fat or calories is, from the video, "kind of cruel" (video NUJNFG6lLWw).

After day 60: the usual suspects

Once you're past the early roller coaster, these are the things to check.

1. Fat calories. Keto teaches you to fill hunger with fat in month one. Some people never turn that dial back down. KetoDick's line for this: in the weight-loss phase you don't need to push the fats, so cut them back (video NUJNFG6lLWw). A bulletproof coffee of 400 to 500 calories on a 1,300 calorie plan is about 40% of the day (video cTGYIFOTPl8). If you're past week five, not hungry, and stalled, he suggests trimming about 20 grams of fat a day (about 180 calories) or 30 grams (about 270) (video NUJNFG6lLWw). See does ketosis mean you're burning body fat?

2. Hidden carbs and sugars. If you're still hungry past week six, he points to hidden sugars, triggers or psychological factors (video 7Aixw4uRksI). The guide on hidden calories has a checklist.

3. Your tracking settings. A common mistake he sees is setting MyFitnessPal to "lose 1.5–2 lb a week" from day one, which builds in a big restriction. He suggests setting it to maintain and counting carbs in month one (video DoSUgIr2rNo).

4. The scale itself. It may not be a stall at all. Fluctuations and water can hide fat loss for a while. He prefers tape or string measurements and photos, because the scale exaggerates slips (video UygKGoP_BtA). See losing inches but not weight.

What not to cut: protein. He warns that "breaking a stall" by cutting protein often loses muscle, and says to err high (video UygKGoP_BtA).

A stall-check you can run this week

  1. Count the days since you started. Under 60? Go back to "eat to fullness, measure, wait."
  2. Take a tape measurement and a photo today, so you have something besides the scale.
  3. Log a normal week honestly, including coffee add-ins, oils and snacks. Look at the weekly average, which is how he suggests reading tracking data (video UygKGoP_BtA).
  4. If you're not hungry and the fat line is big, trim 20 to 30 grams a day.
  5. Keep protein and carbs where they were.
  6. Give the change time before you judge it; a few days of scale data tell you very little.

If restriction is starting to feel like a contest, stop and talk to someone. KetoDick warns that the race for social-media results can tip into anorexia, and asks people to include their doctor in any deliberate restriction plan (video 7Aixw4uRksI). If you have a history of disordered eating, start there: the guide's page on eating disorders covers it.

What the research says

The literature agrees with the core of the stall advice: the deficit decides fat loss, and ketosis doesn't override it.

In a metabolic ward study, 17 men switched to a ketogenic diet at the same calories. Energy expenditure rose about 57 calories a day, but body-fat loss slowed after the switch (Hall et al. 2016). In another, 19 adults cut the same calories from carbs or from fat; body-fat loss was 53 ± 6 g a day versus 89 ± 6 g a day (Hall et al. 2015). Neither study found that ketosis lets you skip the deficit.

Back-of-envelope with those numbers: at 53 to 89 grams of body fat a day, a week is roughly 370 to 620 grams, under a pound and a half. That's in a ward with every bite controlled. Real fat loss is slow enough that water can hide it for a while.

Individual results vary a lot. In DIETFITS, average loss over a year was 5.3 kg on healthy low-fat and 6.0 kg on healthy low-carb, not significantly different, and neither genotype nor insulin secretion predicted who did better (Gardner et al. 2018).

KetoDick's take

His view is that calories still matter, but counting them may not (video 8Jk5ShSUpFY). Month one is for getting insulin and hunger under control; after that, hunger drops and a deficit comes without misery. His summary line, from the video: a calorie deficit matters, calorie restriction is not advisable.

He also says plainly that he doesn't think keto works for everyone, because genetics and gut biome vary (video cTGYIFOTPl8). His fair-trial rule is 60 days (video uDw65ERtsA0). If you've given it that, fixed the fat, and still hate it or see nothing, you've given it a decent try. That's information, not failure.

Key takeaways