The true keto experience

2019 started a health craze. 13 new diets materialized out of thin air, all of which kinda sound the same but also kinda sound like a load of bull. Living on liquid? All the bacon I can eat? Apple cider?

I’ve tried quite a few different diets, for a few different reasons. The majority of the ‘dieting’ I’ve done probably don’t count as real diets, but more nutritional changes in my every day routine. Some of those include 16/8, 6/2, 5/8, keto (low carb and no carb), carb cycling, and the Atkins diet.

By far, the only diet style that affected me enough to remember (if you couldn’t guess by the title) was the keto diet. There are a few reason for this.

Firstly, I like science. If there isn’t a good explanation for how it works, or if it seems like a bogus explanation, I’m not doing it. It’s as simple as that. I do my research.

Keto is a little less new than when I started it, but from the beginning, the science made sense.

The biggest point behind the keto diet is that you’re retraining your body to use the fat it already has stored instead of the carbs it gets from our daily eating.

This is done by decreasing the amount of carbs you eat, and increasing protein and fat levels. How drastically you decide to change those levels is up to you, and is also dependent on your current eating habits.

For example, when I first decided I was going to do keto, I took two weeks and wrote down everything I ate in the MyFitnessPal app.

From this logging period, I found out that on average I ate 300 carbs a day, 20 grams of protein, and 45 grams of fat.

For you health freaks out there reading this, yes, I know, I was awful.

I then used the Atkins keto app to input my values and some personal Heath information, including height, weight, age, and gender. The app generated some numbers (which I wrote down and then almost immediately lost. The only number I remembered specifically was carbs, 20g per day). Basically I needed to dial back the carbs and increase fat and protein significantly.

For me (and I imagine for many of you reading this) changing foods was the hardest part. I could no longer just buy whatever I wanted for lunch; if I wanted to maintain my Marco goals, I had to plan out my meals and snacks so I didn’t go over. I don’t mind cooking, but the planning my meals and prepping them was such a pain.

Needless to say, if you already cook regularly, you won’t have near as many issues with getting into keto (or many other diets, for that matter) as I did.

Yada yada yada, pain and suffering later, here’s the truth about keto: unless you are a health freak, or turn into one during keto, this is not a long lasting diet. Maybe a year if you’re really dedicated.

Keep in mind this is coming from someone who has a major sweet tooth and a knack for trying new things.

Keto is fantastic for losing the weight, and teaching many important skills for keeping the fat off. I will preach that until the day I join the earth . It is so important to know how to read a nutritional label, and that’s not something they really teach in schools.

I was on keto for 4 months consistently (during the holidays, no less - thanksgiving and Christmas both). During that time I went from 192.7 lbs to 158.6. That’s about 35 pounds in 4 months, or an average of 2 pounds per week.

That may not sound like a lot, but also keep in mind I was not exercising (at least any more than I already did - being a personal shopper in retail basically requires a minimum of 10k steps per day)

For me, that was all I needed. I’m one of those people who can keep it off once it’s off. For others, it may not be so easy. But better than the actual weight loss was what the diet taught me about my lifestyle.

I learned to plan meals, ate a lot of new foods, and learned more about nutrition and cooking in those 4 months than the previous 20 years of my life.

In my opinion, this diet is for someone who needs more than just to lose weight. If you know you need to change what, how, and when you eat, keto is for you, 100%.

One important disclaimer I always warn people about when I suggest this diet: keto does not appreciate cheat days. Occasionally you may be able to get away with it, but regular cheat days kill the diet.

Cheat days are normally okay on diets that just get you to eat less, or eat better, because you’re not trying to change how your body digests the food you eat. All you’re doing in those diets is changing what it has to digest.

In keto, regular cheat days (even twice a month) give your body the signal that it’s time to start using carbs again. This means you have to get it back into ketosis (the scientific term for being in keto) which for me took about two weeks.

If you want to be seriously serious about getting into ketosis, there are also urine strips you can buy in the pharmacy area at most grocery stores that give you a scale for how far into ketosis you are. I used one only because others in my household used them. It’s interesting, but in my opinion, not necessary.

That's all I've got on this diet. Good luck with your nutritional expeditions!