Interesting thread, but I am not fully convinced that it is a progressive 1->2->3 process.
From my not so comprehensive reading I think that Ketostix are a blunt instrument and just measure the ketones that your body is throwing away.
Some people may settle into ketosis and their body may balance their blood ketone level to nicely match their ketone consumption so the Ketostix show little or no ketones when there are loads in the blood.
I also thought that the breath analysis was broadly comparable to the blood test (no false positives) but bloody expensive for the accurate kit.
I do note that the breathalyser approach assumes that you are throwing ketones away in your breath, which seems similar to the Ketostix approach at the other end, but it may be that once you have ketones in your blood some are naturally passed through the blood/air barrier in your lungs along with CO2 and stuff.
In my case I am pretty sure that I have been in ketosis since at least January and testing with Ketostix still shows a dark pink between 1.5 and 4 mmol/L so I am throwing away a lot of ketones.
One key part may be the storage of surplus fats from the blood stream. According to a quick search Insulin is the major factor in the storage of fats.
A random link
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/fat-cell2.htm (no guarantee this is accurate) says:
If this is even mainly true it suggests that if your body has insulin resistance then it may fail to keep your blood fat level down in the same way that it fails to keep your BG level down.
Which would be an interesting take on high cholesterol and triglycerides when on LCHF.
I have wondered about this for some time; is there a complaint "fatabetes" which is similar to diabetes but is poor control of blood fat levels?
It would be just my luck if my blood fat control is as broken as my blood glucose control.
I am managing my blood glucose by not eating carbohydrates.
If I can't eat fat either, and too much protein screws your body up, then where do I go for my calories?
but thanks - what is clear to me though, is that for many of us - getting rid of the sugar addiction is the real key and once you have achieved that - all of the other stuff becomes possible because you are no longer plagued by a hug desire to eat at every possible moment .The thing that you characterise as Psychological is to my mind a by product of, a very hard to get rid of, assumption that your weigh gain and lack of willpower regarding food is a symptom of your mental state . I have found the most liberating part of all this has been realising that actually that's not psychological at all, its physiological and as the damage done from the previous intake of rubbish foods starts to go away, so will the things you can achieve through diet start to expand and the idea of ketosis, fasting, very low carb will start to seem like natural developments of an already healthy path rather than something so far away its beyond comprehension. I look back on myself 12 months ago and I am an utterly different person as regards my own personal health than I was then The only thing I really changed was getting the processed foods and sugar out of my life.
