3 Things An MD Wants You To Know About Hormones & Weight

A ketogenic diet has its benefits—one of them being weight management—but Gottfried says the restrictive eating plan has the potential to affect your hormones. “I went on keto with my husband,” she recounts. “He dropped 20 pounds in a short amount of time, and I gained weight. I had some initial success, but then it just seemed to reverse the deeper I got into ketosis. I realized that keto is definitely affecting your hormones and not always in a positive way—at least not classic keto.” 

Specifically, the diet seems to affect the leptin hormone: Women, generally, have more leptin sensitivity than men, so they can be more sensitive to when leptin levels decline too low, which can influence anxiety, low-quality sleep, and uncontrollable hunger over time. 

“It’s not that women can’t experience the benefits [of keto],” says Gottfried. “It’s just that we need some workarounds.” To ensure leptin levels don’t get depleted, she recommends introducing more carbs into the diet than “classic keto” might allow. “Even though I was told that was not the way to do keto, I found that many patients are able to get into ketosis focusing on net carbs,” she says. (Read all about carb cycling on keto here.)