Keto made easy

What Ketone Level Is Best for Weight Loss?

Quick answer: There isn't a ketone number that makes you lose more fat. Ketones tell you which fuel your body is running on; whether you lose fat depends on eating less energy than you use. KetoDick's position is that ketosis isn't the goal, low carb is, with ketosis as a perk for energy and hunger (video 1JbK1_ClDmY). Chasing a higher reading can even backfire if it means eating more fat.

In this article

The myth: higher ketones, faster fat loss

The idea sounds logical. Ketones are made from fat. More ketones, more fat being burned, more weight off. So people get a blood meter, aim for a particular reading, and feel like they're failing when it's low.

What holds up is narrower. A reading tells you ketone production is running. It doesn't tell you where the fat came from, how much total energy you ate, or whether your body fat went down today. Those are separate questions, and the scale answers the last one far better than a meter.

Why the number and the scale can disagree

Think of ketones like the fuel gauge on a car that can run on two fuels. The gauge says which tank you're drawing from. It says nothing about how far you drove or whether you filled up on the way.

Your liver makes ketones from fatty acids (StatPearls, Biochemistry, Ketogenesis). Those fatty acids can come from the butter on your plate as easily as from your hips. So if you eat a lot of fat, you can have plenty of ketones and still not be in a deficit. There's more on this in does ketosis mean you're burning body fat?

KetoDick makes the same point from the other direction: eating fat doesn't "fire up" ketosis; restricting carbs is how you get there (video NUJNFG6lLWw). And calories still matter on keto, even if counting them may not (video 8Jk5ShSUpFY).

How people push ketones up, and what it costs

Tactic What it does to the reading What it does for fat loss
Adding more fat (fat bombs, oils, butter coffee) Can raise it Adds calories; can stall loss
Exogenous ketone drinks Raises it directly Ketones you drank, not fat you burned
Cutting protein to "stay in ketosis" May nudge it Risks muscle (see below)
Fasting Can change it Works through eating less, not through the number

On added fat, KetoDick's arithmetic is blunt. A 400 to 500 calorie bulletproof coffee on a 1,300 calorie plan is about 40% of the day's energy (video cTGYIFOTPl8). That might lift a meter reading. It doesn't help a deficit.

On exogenous ketones, he doesn't recommend them, and notes the price and the multi-level-marketing selling around them (video cTGYIFOTPl8). There's a fuller look in exogenous ketones and weight loss.

On protein, he warns that "breaking a stall" by cutting protein often means losing muscle, and says to err high (video UygKGoP_BtA).

What to watch instead

So what you do is swap the meter for things that track what you actually want:

  1. Hunger. If you're eating less without fighting it, keto is doing its job. That's the appetite effect KetoDick keeps coming back to (video 8Jk5ShSUpFY).
  2. Carbs. Keep them low and steady. That's the lever that produces ketosis in the first place.
  3. Protein. Treat it as a target, not a limit (video 1JbK1_ClDmY).
  4. Fat as the dial. Past week five, if you're not hungry but have stalled, he suggests trimming about 20 to 30 grams of dietary fat a day, which is roughly 180 to 270 calories (video NUJNFG6lLWw).
  5. Tape, photos, the scale over weeks. Not the meter on a Tuesday.

If you still want a reading, a simple positive tells you carbs are low. See the guide on blood meters and on whether you need to test at all.

What the research says

The best evidence on this comes from tightly controlled metabolic ward studies, where researchers control every bite.

Back-of-envelope on that second one: the difference is about 36 grams of fat a day. Real, measurable, and small; it's under a tenth of a pound. Either way, the deficit did the work.

In free-living trials the picture is similar. In DIETFITS, 609 adults lost 5.3 kg on healthy low-fat and 6.0 kg on healthy low-carb over a year, not significantly different (Gardner et al. 2018). A meta-analysis of 13 trials lasting a year or more found very-low-carb ketogenic diets came out 0.91 kg ahead of low-fat (Bueno et al. 2013). The National Lipid Association concluded these diets are not superior for long-term weight loss, though they may give more short-term loss (Kirkpatrick et al. 2019).

None of the studies on the evidence pages compared different ketone levels against each other for fat loss. So there's no evidence here for a "fat-burning zone" number, and you should be wary of anyone who gives you one as a target.

KetoDick's take

His position lines up with the studies on the main point and leans further on appetite. Keto, as he reads it, works because it suppresses appetite and lowers how much you eat: "that's the point," from the video (video 1JbK1_ClDmY). He calls ketone monitors optional and says ketosis is a perk, not the target.

Where he and the ward studies differ is emphasis. He talks about insulin and hunger as the reason keto makes a deficit easier (video 8Jk5ShSUpFY). The ward studies held calories fixed, so they can't test that appetite effect; they only show that, calorie for calorie, ketosis didn't burn more body fat. Both can be true: no magic number, but possibly an easier deficit. The Kevin Hall studies explained post goes into that.

Key takeaways