[devilbunny]

Sure, you're out of ketosis. Anyone who says you have to be in ketosis all the time for low-carb to work at weight loss is confusing medical ketogenic diets (e.g., for epilepsy) with practical ones. Medical keto diets don't have leeway because they depend on the ketone bodies as an antiepileptic drug. Weight loss keto is more about taming the cravings and getting you away from junk food.

I lost my weight over a decade ago, before "keto" was a buzzword. I've become less strict, because I know that if my weight starts going up, I don't have a problem going very-low-carb to drop it again. It's still calories in, calories out, at the end of the day - but for me, it's a very sustainable diet. I like cookies, but if you offered me the choice between a sweet dessert and another steak, I would have taken the steak even when I was a junk-guzzling fatty.

I never asked anyone to do any special stuff for me after the first few weeks. Someone serves you pasta alfredo? Eat it; one meal isn't the end of the world. Unless your social schedule is very different from most, you're not going to eat at someone else's house more than once a week, and restaurants (at least in the US) can be counted on to have a chicken Caesar salad if nothing else.

[ralferoo]

Actually, there seems to be some benefit in having a "regular" meal every now even then, perhaps even once a week - I read once that your body can adapt too well to using Ketones and you stop losing weight at the speed you did at the start (although my caveat to that is that the first time I did keto, I lost pretty consistently a bit over 0.5kg per week for about 9 months apart from a couple of 2-3 weeks plateaus).

Every time I've come off keto, I've always had the intention of staying "lowish-carb" afterwards. It never works. Your body just gets used to whatever it has, gives you cravings before you really need more food, and so you have a bit more and a bit more, and before you know it, you're a full on sugar monster again.

I also think it's worth keeping a food journal. Not even for counting calories or grams of carbs, more that the act of writing it down makes you think "did I really eat that much today?" and gives you a prompt to be more careful.

[devilbunny]

I’m not you, so I can believe it doesn’t work for you, but I don’t have trouble with ditching carbs, probably because I’m almost never a sugar monster. Just not my thing. Lucky for me, sucks for you. Appetite is complex and while I’m not one of those people who can eat junk ravenously and be thin, I don’t have that to deal with. Best wishes.

[ralferoo]

Oh, sorry, I wasn't trying to give you advice as it sounded like your result was pretty stable - was just replying for others reading to let them know that sometimes a carb break in the middle of keto actually helps, and it was meant to agree with your sentiment that you don't need to worry about the odd thing here and there.

The rest was just my experience of after I'd got to my goal weight on keto, of trying to stop keto and do something midway between keto and not keto. For me, that never works - some carbs each day, leads to more carbs, leads to lots of carbs. That was never an issue while on keto - I'd just go back to my highly restrictive diet, just that I never found re-introducing carbs easy to moderate. FWIW it's worth, I'm starting keto for the 4th time now. The first 2 times were effective, until I stopped. The third time I tried to be less restrictive than the previous two times, and I didn't really achieve any weight loss.

The "you" in that paragraph about sugar monsters was actually me, but I used the "you" form because I though it could probably generalise to whoever was reading, not specifically you in particular. Sorry for the confusion.

[devilbunny]

Your comment was appropriate and well-measured. No offense taken. I wish you well.