Reviewed by Dr. Eric Westman, MD, MHS (December 2025)
Introduction
It starts with incredible promise. You read the success stories, you cleared out your pantry, and you committed to a high-fat, low-carb lifestyle. For the first few weeks, or maybe even months, the ketogenic diet felt like magic. The initial water weight vanished, your energy levels stabilized without the mid-afternoon crash, and you finally felt in control of your hunger.
But then, something changed.
Perhaps the scale has been stuck at the same number for six weeks, despite you religiously tracking every macro. Maybe the “keto flu” never quite went away, leaving you with lingering fatigue or brain fog. Or perhaps you’re even in ketosis but you’re still battling cravings, extreme bloating after meals, or persistent joint pain.
If you’re reading this, chances are you’re feeling frustrated. You’ve been doing everything “right,” yet keto has stopped working. You feel stuck, and you’re wondering if you just don’t have the willpower to succeed.
Chances are it’s not you—it’s the protocol.
While keto diets are powerful therapeutic tools that have helped millions, keto isn’t a silver bullet for everyone, forever. For many people, keto is fantastic—until it isn’t. The realization that keto is failing you can be hard to accept, especially after investing so much effort, and particularly if keto worked well for you at first.
The good news is that hitting a wall with keto is often just a sign that your body needs a different level of healing. Keep reading to discover why keto fails for so many dedicated dieters, and learn about what is often the logical and effective next step for those who need deeper metabolic healing: the carnivore diet.
Why Keto Works for Some – But Not for Everyone
Before diving into why keto fails, it’s important to acknowledge why this way of eating became a global phenomenon in the first place.
At its core, keto works by shifting the body’s primary fuel source from glucose (sugar and carbohydrates) to fat. Significantly reducing carbohydrate intake leads to lower blood sugar and insulin levels. Since insulin is the primary fat storage hormone, lowering it “unlocks” body fat to be burned for fuel.
For someone coming from a Standard American Diet – high in processed sugars and refined grains – keto is a massive step in the right direction. It eliminates the worst offenders causing metabolic derangement.
Keto is excellent for initial weight loss, reversing type 2 diabetes, and improving numerous conditions related to insulin resistance. For many people, a well-formulated keto diet restricts carbs enough to improve metabolic health while still allowing for a variety of low-carbohydrate plant foods, like non-starchy vegetables, nuts, avocados, and small amounts of berries.
However, just because keto is better than the Standard American Diet doesn’t mean it’s optimal for everyone, all the time. Keto removes sugars and starches, but it leaves the door open for other dietary saboteurs that can stall progress and cause chronic inflammation in sensitive individuals.
The Most Common Reasons Keto Stops Working
When keto fails, it’s rarely because the person didn’t try hard enough. It’s usually because standard keto guidelines overlook crucial factors affecting metabolism and gut health. If you’re stuck in a rut of keto not working, some of the factors below could be why.
Hidden Carbs and “Keto-Friendly” Ultra-Processed Foods
The explosive popularity of keto has been a double-edged sword. The market is now flooded with products labeled “keto-friendly” – from snack bars and cookies to low-carb tortillas, cereal, and ice cream.
These products typically rely on “net carb” manipulations. They use hefty doses of fiber, sugar alcohols (like erythritol or maltitol), and other alternative sweeteners to keep the technically digestible carbohydrate count low. While these ingredients may not spike blood glucose as sharply as regular sugar, they are far from benign.
For many people, these processed keto foods are sneaky metabolic roadblocks. Sugar alcohols can cause severe digestive distress—bloating, gas, and loose stools. Even more of an issue, though, some of these non-sugar sweeteners may still have a significant effect on insulin—more than you would suspect from a very low net carb count.
Most importantly, these hyper-palatable keto treats keep sugar cravings alive. If you’re eating keto cookies every night, you aren’t breaking the addiction to sweet tastes; you’re just feeding it a different substance. This makes it nearly impossible to intuitively regulate hunger, leading to overconsumption of calories even while staying “low carb.”
Inflammation and Food Sensitivities (The Plant Problem)
This is perhaps the most overlooked reason why keto fails long-term. You removed the grains and sugars, which reduced inflammation significantly. But you’re still consuming other foods that are potential inflammation triggers in sensitive people.
Standard keto allows for foods like spinach, dark chocolate, and various nuts and seeds. These are low-carb, but they contain antinutrients—naturally occurring compounds in plant foods that can interfere with absorption of vitamins and minerals.
- Oxalates: Found in high amounts in spinach, chard, almonds, and dark chocolate, oxalates can accumulate in tissues, causing joint pain, kidney stones, and systemic inflammation.
- Lectins: Found in nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant) and seeds, lectins can potentially damage the gut lining and contribute to leaky gut and autoimmune reactions.
- Phytates and Fiber: Excessive fiber from “keto-friendly” veggies and processed products can wreak havoc on a sensitive gut, causing bloating, constipation, or IBS symptoms that don’t resolve on standard keto.
If you switched to keto to heal autoimmune issues, chronic pain, or severe gut dysfunction, and you’ve only seen partial improvement, these plant compounds could be what’s holding you back. You’ve put out the biggest fires, but you’re still throwing kindling on the embers.
Metabolic Adaptation and Plateaus
The dreaded keto weight loss stall… You lost 30 pounds rapidly, but for the last three months, the scale hasn’t budged one bit. The human body is a survival machine designed for homeostasis—basically, staying in its comfort zone. When you lose weight, your body fights back by lowering its metabolic rate (the number of calories you burn at rest). It also increases hunger hormones.
While keto helps mitigate this better than low-fat starvation diets, metabolic adaptation still happens. If you have been chronically dieting for years, your metabolism may be down-regulated.
Furthermore, if you are still consuming inflammatory plant foods or processed keto snacks that spike insulin more than you realize, your body can’t have an optimized metabolism. It isn’t fully accessing stored body fat because insulin levels are never consistently low enough, and inflammation is keeping your body in a state of heightened alert. To break through a metabolic stall, you might need a more powerful intervention than just lowering carbs a bit more or eliminating dairy.
The Difference Between Keto and Carnivore (And Why It Matters)
Keto calls for removing the foods that have the most profound impact on blood sugar and insulin. Carnivore goes further and eliminates all potential dietary irritants. The carnivore diet is often wrongly classified as just an extreme form of keto. Carnivore eliminates virtually all carbohydrates, but there are important differences between the physiological effects and the rationale for choosing one approach versus the other.
Standard keto focuses on limiting total carbohydrate intake while allowing for a variety of foods that are low-carb. Carnivore, on the other hand, focuses on eliminating all plants and eating only animal products. The goal is not necessarily to be in ketosis—it’s to implement a strict elimination diet in order to identify which foods may be triggering health issues that didn’t resolve on a keto diet.
Here’s a simple framework to understand which approach best aligns with your current reality:
Choose keto if:
You want flexibility, variety, and steady, moderate progress with a nutrition plan you can adapt to most social situations. If you have no significant autoimmune or digestive issues, and you just want to lose a few pounds and stabilize energy, keto is a great tool. It allows for “entertainment food” and plant variety that many people find psychologically necessary for long-term adherence.
Choose carnivore if:
You need a clean-slate reset. Choose this if you are dealing with stubborn autoimmune conditions, severe gut issues (IBS, IBD, severe bloating), mood instability, or if keto helped initially but didn’t completely resolve your symptoms. Carnivore is the ultimate elimination diet, designed for deep healing and breaking through stubborn metabolic resistance. It is for when “pretty good” results are no longer acceptable.
When it’s Time to Move Beyond Keto
How do you know if you have reached the end of the road with standard ketogenic guidelines? If you are “doing keto harder” but getting diminishing returns, it’s time to evaluate.
If you identify with three or more of the following signs, that’s a strong indication that plant irritants, processed keto foods, or residual inflammation may be holding you back:
- The Unbreakable Plateau: Your weight has been stagnant for months despite strict macro tracking and ensuring you are in ketosis.
- Persistent Gut Issues: You still experience significant bloating, gas, constipation, or diarrhea multiple times a week. You feel you “can’t digest” fats well without discomfort.
- Unrelenting Cravings: You still white-knuckle your way through cravings for sugar or carbohydrates, often relying on keto sweeteners or snacks to get by.
- “Keto Flu” 2.0: You still deal with periodic brain fog, low energy, or fatigue, even though your electrolytes are on-point.
- Aches and Pains: Joint pain, stiffness, or skin issues (like eczema or acne) improved slightly on keto but persist at a bothersome level.
- Mental Health Issues: You still struggle with significant anxiety or mood swings that haven’t leveled out with blood sugar control.
- Dependency on Keto “Products”: Your diet relies heavily on packaged bars, shakes, keto breads, and almond flour treats rather than whole foods.
If this sounds like your daily reality, continuing to force standard keto is unlikely to yield different results.
Why Carnivore Works When Keto Doesn’t
When you transition from keto to carnivore, you aren’t just lowering your carbs to zero. You are fundamentally changing the biochemical signals you send your body. Carnivore can be a more effective solution for those who are still struggling on keto because it addresses certain underlying factors that keto doesn’t.
The Ultimate Elimination Diet
By removing all plant foods, you eliminate every potential dietary trigger (except for those who are allergic to seafood or eggs): oxalates, lectins, phytates, salicylates, FODMAPs, and fiber. For a sensitive immune system or a damaged gut, this is profound relief.
When the constant assault from low-level plant toxins stops, the gut lining can finally heal (sealing “leaky gut”), and systemic inflammation plummets. This drop in inflammation is often the key that unlocks stubborn weight loss and improvements in skin problems and GI issues.
True Nutritional Abundance
One reason keto fails is hidden nutrient deficiencies caused by plant anti-nutrients hindering absorption. Animal products—meat, fat, organs—provide more bioavailable nutrients compared to plants. They provide nutrients in the forms our bodies need, without the “anti-nutrient tax” levied by plants. When your body is truly nourished, the relentless drive of hunger begins to fade.
Resetting Satiety and Breaking Addiction
Carnivore removes the crutch of sweet tastes entirely. There are no “carnivore-friendly cookies” sweetened with erythritol.
This absence of hyper-palatable flavors facilitates a complete reset of your palate and brain reward pathways. You stop eating for entertainment and start eating for fuel. You rediscover what true hunger feels like versus cravings or emotional eating. This intuitive regulation of appetite is far more sustainable than endlessly tracking macros in an app.
The Next Logical Step
If keto has stopped working, view it not as a failure, but as a necessary stepping stone. It taught you that carbohydrates are not essential, and that fat is fuel. It got you halfway there.
But if you’re still suffering from symptoms or are stuck at a low-carb plateau, it’s time to stop blaming yourself and start looking at the limitations of your current protocol. Moving to a carnivore diet isn’t about restriction; it’s about liberation from the inflammation, cravings, and confusion that standard keto left behind. It’s the simplest, most effective way to find out how good you are actually supposed to feel.
Ready to take the next step? Join the waitlist for our step-by-step Carnivore Made Simple program.
Reviewer Bio
Eric Westman, MD, MHS, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University, the Medical Director of Adapt Your Life Academy and the founder of the Duke Keto Medicine Clinic in Durham, North Carolina. He is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Obesity Medicine and has a master’s degree in clinical research. As a past President of the Obesity Medicine Association and a Fellow of the Obesity Society, Dr. Westman was named “Bariatrician of the Year” for his work in advancing the field of obesity medicine. He is a best-selling author of several books relating to ketogenic diets as well as co-author on over 100 peer-reviewed publications related to ketogenic diets, type 2 diabetes, obesity, smoking cessation, and more. He is an internationally recognized expert on the therapeutic use of dietary carbohydrate restriction and has helped thousands of people in his clinic and far beyond, by way of his famous “Page 4” food list.
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