Hi all,

Been off the wagon for a while but finally back on it and have lost a lot of the weight I put back on (167lbs originally, down to 145, up to 158, now down to 152… probably lower as currently on holiday without scales and am firmly on the wagon!)

My question is, I wanted to find a way to track whether or not I’m in ketosis. It seems to take me a loooong time to get there, and I like to be able to track things with numbers. I’m a couple of weeks in this time around and I’m still feeling quite groggy and tired.

I bought a blood glucose monitor last year after hearing on a podcast (which now I can’t find!) that you could track ketosis this way. My fasting blood glucose is 4.2 most days, and I tracked 1 hour after dinner last night (for the first time) and it was 5.3.

Does anyone have any advice on what blood glucose should be in ketosis? I’m aware that you can have higher blood glucose in the morning but wondered what the ‘normal’ readings should be. Thanks 🙂

Hi Nichola, I am a diabetic and I have no idea what you are comparing. BG is sugar in the blood stream, ketosis is ketone in the urine (or breath) showing you are burning fat. I dont know of any connection except if you are losing fat then your BG should be lower but they dont go hand in hand. A normal fasting (I.e. before breakfast) is between 4.5 and 6.75 and it will go up and down depending on food intake. The difference between diabetic or non diabetic is that the BG will regulate itself depending on lots of factors (food eating, exercise, time of day). A diabetics BG is not self regulating. Your BG sounds perfectly normal and i cannot understand why, knowing you are not diabetic or pre-diabetic, you need to know this as the numbers are irrelevant to any other changes in your body. Maybe someone else can come up with something for you but it is above my head.

Hi SunshineGirl, thanks for taking the time to reply. What I’ve read is that blood sugar and ketones are inversely correlated, so when ketones go up, blood sugar goes down. So, instead of testing blood ketones, you can test blood glucose as a much cheaper alternative (breath and urine tests aren’t as reliable). Clearly I’m not diabetic or pre-diabetic, but I want to be in ketosis, and as I’m still feel groggy etc, I want to find a way to quantifiable way to track whether I’m in ketosis, using the resources I already have.

Sorry, I didn’t think my question would be over anyone’s heads but maybe I’ll try some keto people instead.

I think you are testing BG unnecessarily. For me, it is something I have to do twice a day. There is the pain, the risk of infection and loss of sensitivity in the fingers if you are not doing it right. If I were you (and I know I am not) I would suggest ketone sticks which work fairly well or I believe you can buy a breathalyser. As a none diabetic your BG will not usually go below normal (the numbers I quoted) so will not really be useful regarding ketosis. Why stick needles in yourself when you dont have to.

Hi Nicola,
I’ve just finished up a month long experiment with a continuous blood glucose monitor as I have reactive hypoglycemia and it helped me to see how I could avoid hypos. My blood sugar level really had not much at all to do with whether or not I was in ketosis. I wasn’t monitoring ketones, but I can tell by the metallic taste in my mouth when I am in ketosis or not. The only thing was that if I ate certain carbs, I would get a spike in blood sugar, and my system would then be mopping it up and running off that sugar for a while, so I would no longer be in ketosis. When I was in ketosis, my blood sugar level seemed to tick along at between 3.8 and 4.8 the entire time, with some morning levels as high as 5.1. The interesting thing was that I didn’t have hypos when I was fasting, my system was keeping my levels up through gluconeogenisis. But if I was eating, even if I wasn’t eating sugars or high glycemic carbs, I could have hypos, especially if I ate too much protein and my system released insulin as a result. If your system is working fine, then you are not really going to get much benefit from monitoring your blood glucose levels if you are just trying to figure out if you are in ketosis, as SG says. What I discovered is that mine can fluctuate quite a bit even when I’m not eating anything and clearly in ketosis.
If you think about it, Type 1 diabetics that are uncontrolled can have really high blood sugar levels and such high ketones at the same time that they go into ketoacidosis. It isn’t so much about one being related to the other, it is a much more complicated interaction.

Hi Nicola, Its not blood sugar and ketones that are correlated, its Insulin and ketones that are the opposites of each other. – So if you have high insulin levels you will not have ketones, low enough insulin to be in fat burning mode then your body is producing ketones for fuel.

I would agree that the research suggests that testing urine for ketones is considered unreliable, because the ketones in the urine come from the body over producing ketones. Once the body is adapted to being in ketosis it tends to only create as many ketones as it needs for fuel. However, I have read that testing breath for the byproducts of burning ketones is reasonably reliable because you are testing for the ketones used. You do have to get the technique right, so that you can blow the last of your breath into the machine. – I use a cheap breathalyser to monitor for ketosis. – An AT6000 which you can buy via Amazon for around £10. It only lasts for a few months, but so much cheaper than testing strips.

Last night I posted a link on the take a look at this thread to a podcast by Dr Bikman comparing the impact on cells of Insulin to Ketones. – It is just one of a number of talks at a keto conference held in salt lake this year. You could use it to locate all the talks at the conference.

I have been on a carb high diet from childhood. So I have discovered that I am very Insulin Resistant, which means that I have a high background level of Insulin, and my spikes in Insulin from eating carbs are higher and last longer than they would if I was sensitive to Insulin. However, I believe that the patterns I am seeing suggest that I am improving my Insulin Sensitivity.