Being kicked out of ketosis is something common on the keto diet. Sticking to keto diet plans might be challenging. This appears especially when most of the snacks out there are made of high carbs, like burgers, pizza, chocolate, and cookies.
However, it is hard to resist your favorite comfort foods, particularly on occasions and parties. Sticking to healthy food without the flexibility to have a keto-day free makes keto different from any other diet.
The point is, that you can go through hard times applying your keto rules, which makes it easy to break them.
Eating carbs more than recommended on keto can be tricky unless you are fully focused. Sometimes, you can assume wrongly that some foods are allowed on keto while they are not. Moreover, you can consume foods that are allowed on keto but in amounts higher than recommended. That can result in exceeding your carb limits and finally getting out of ketosis.
You can learn more about foods that are better avoided on keto here.
Then, getting into ketosis can take from one day to a week to allow your body to deplete its glucose stores and run mainly on fats. This process may seem the toughest part of keto as you probably will experience keto flu with its nasty symptoms of dizziness, nausea, and sugar cravings in a welcome party for you on ketosis.
Anyway, going through all that will make you think twice before ruining your diet plan. Since it can get tricky, some signs tell you that there is something incorrect and that you are kicked out of ketosis.
1- Returning to hunger and sugar cravings:
Following a keto diet is all about consuming types of food that have a low glycemic index to prevent spiking blood sugar. As studies showed that consuming sugar or even carbs that are transformed into glucose, is directly linked to an increase in insulin levels.
As we know, insulin is the hormone responsible for regulating your food intake, by telling the brain how high is your blood sugar level.
Then, the increase in insulin levels before sugar or carb intake will lower your blood sugar levels. Then, your brain is convinced that you need to eat sweets to balance your blood sugar levels again.
However, people on the keto diet are more sensitive to sugar because of prolonged cuts in carbs. So, glucose deficiency leads to a response higher than in normal individuals.
Despite the effect of insulin, sugar also can affect the brain directly and trigger overeating.
2- Water retention:
Going on a carb-strict diet will make you surprisingly lose weight fast, as your glycogen stores are depleted. Studies proved that glycogen stored in the body is coupled with water. Also, each gram of glycogen stored in the muscle holds 3 grams of water, and maybe even more.
So, refeeding your body with carbs will make your body restore glycogen in the muscles again preventing water loss.
Then, going one step back on keto can make you gain the weight you lost by losing water. The good news is returning on keto for a few days can reverse water retention. So, when the excess water is absent, you can drop extra pounds again.
3- Fatigue and brain fog:
Being on ketosis for a while will make you feel the difference in your energy levels when you are out. This may not be obvious to new ketosis dieters as the ones who have been on ketosis for a while.
Studies proved that sugar consumption is linked to poor cognitive functions. So, being on a keto diet that forbidden sugar enhances brain ability and memory.