The Ketogenic Diet
(My interpretation of it)
This diet was something I stumbled onto while doing some research on diets for cutting weight. I feel that it is one the easiest diets to adapt to and actually maintain. It was actually kind of hard at first getting adjusted and learning how to eat but eventually I liked it and liked the way I felt when eating this way that it is how I eat all the time now. I guess for me, it is no longer a diet but more of a lifestyle. This is something you have to remember when doing this type of diet. You really need to commit for at least 60 days for your body to truly adjust to the new lifestyle.
So let's call it a 60 day challenge.
What the heck is a Ketogenic diet?
In short, it is where you cut out the "carbs" from you normal eating and replace it with eating fats.
If I eat fat, won't I get fat?
That is what I used to think, there is a science to it that makes sense. I'm not going to really get into it here but trust me it works.
So what do I eat?
I'm breaking down the 60 days into sections to help ease the transition.
Here we go:
FIRST THINGS FIRST: TAKE A PICTURE OF YOURSELF AND GET A STARTING WEIGHT. Bathroom Selfie or whatever, something you can refer back to in about a month.
Write down everything you eat. This is VERY IMPORTANT. Alot of people neglect to do this and try to head calculate stuff. People make mistakes, you want to be able to refer back and look at what you ate. It helps keeps your carbs in check too.
The first two weeks:
Eat "anything" and as much you want as long as you DON'T PASS 20 Grams of NET CARBS
This is your transition stage... this is where you will be looking at nutrition labels of all your food and seeing what you can and cannot eat.
All you care about at this point is the total NET CARB COUNT.
Here is how you calculate your NET CARB COUNT
Our bodies don't absorb fiber, so carbs from fiber don't count towards your TOTAL NET CARBS. So you subtract Dietary Fiber from your Total Carbohydrate and that gives you your TOTAL NET CARBS.
As you see in the example, I just ate 14grams (Per Serving).. which means I have 6 grams left for the rest of the day.
These 2 weeks is your discovering what kind of food you can eat. It's alot of checking this and checking that and realizing how much sugar alot of things have in it. Especially the things that are the easiest to eat.
If you have a smart phone, you can download "My Fitness Pal" and use it to look up food nutrition values. There are alot of other apps, but I haven't used them. If you don't have a smart phone, then you gotta use a computer to look up the nutrition. NOTE* I don't use the my fitness pal goal/nutrition calculator because it's more calorie/low fat orientated so your numbers will be off.
Try to stay off the scale. I know it's really tempting to jump on from time to time, but don't really focus on weight just yet. Get a starting weight and then try to hold off for at least a week and half.
3rd -4th Week - Possibly HELL WEEK
So you have been pretty good now, you have learned what you eat and can't eat. Probably missing carbs a lot by now. This is normal, we have been eating carbs our whole life and we just took away. You will need to adjust.
Let's start adding some more things to take that are very important to our bodies:
Find a MULTI-VITAMIN (Since you have taken probably 40% of your usual foods out of your diet we want to make up a catch up on any deficiencies of vitamins in our diet) - I get mine from GNC nothing special
Start Taking Magnesium pills (This is good for your heart and good for softening stool to keep your plumbing working the way it should) - I get mine from Costco.. again nothing special
You want to take these things on a daily basis, this is just good for you in general... diet or not.
Maybe towards the end of the 2nd week into the 3rd week, the Glycogen (sugar) in your body should be running close to empty. You will feel tired, possibly headache/light head and just overall weak. This is normal, your body is used to running on glycogen (sugar) your whole life... now it has to find a new source of energy.... FAT!!! This is when your body will create something called Ketones and use fat for energy and brain function. If you are active, this week/week and half is going to suck. Just doing a warm-up, you will feel like you have just ran a marathon. I remember when it first hit me, I was going to an open mat for jiu-jitsu and doing a warm-up roll and I felt like I just rolled with the hulk. For about a week and half, when I rolled it was to survive not actually practice... but I kept pushing through. Then after about 2 weeks, BAM!! my body figured it out and the energy came back full force and a little extra.
That feeling is called the "Keto Flu." It is just something that you have to go through the first time to get your body to adjust. You will notice that you will pee way more than usual. Your body will not hold as much water as it used to. So drink tons of water. *(Side note - Guys! Your muscle mass will drop noticeably because there will be no more glycogen flowing through your muscles so you will get "skinnier" - this is a semi-temporary thing). Even drinking alot of water may not get the headaches to go away so eat something salty to retain more water or even make a chicken broth soup... very salty! Just work through this phase, it will pass.
By the end of the 4th week - Go ahead and jump on the scale and take another photo - Prepare to have your mind blown.
5th Week and on
Now that your body has adapted and is in "Ketosis" it's time to get more into the nitty gritty of how this diet really works. When I first started, I was eating a ton of meat and some veggies. While this is technically ok, this is more like the "Atkins" diet. Over a long period of time, this type of eating is not good for you. The High protein intake makes your body more acidic to break it all down and the excess amount of protein not used actually gets converted into Glucose / Glycogen kicking you out of ketosis! Also, my fiber was lacking and the pipes were clogging up.
The focus of this diet is to eat more fat than anything. The proper formula is 65% Fat , 30% Protein, 5% carbs in your meals. Fat gives your meals it's flavor and it gives you the feeling of fullness. In general, the more of what you eat is what you burn the most of. I'm not the kind of person that is going to sit there for every meal and calculate the weight of each piece of meat to make sure that I have the right percentages. I just keep in mind that I need to eat that fat.
When I fry up a steak or 5, I make sure to put in a good amount of butter to give it flavor and add alot of fat into the mix. When I steam up my vegetables, I drain them and add some butter or coconut oil to melt within. Then when I serve my veggies, I add a slice of cheese on top (even more fat). See where I'm getting at? I noticed overtime, the more fat I ate the less I actually ate because I felt so full. Also in parallel, I was eating fewer calories because I was eating less. (*Important - I have found that BACON is the perfect balance of FAT 65% and Protein 35% meal... and it's delicious).
After 60 days have completed, go ahead and get on that scale 1 more time and take you last picture of the 60 day challenge. Put that first picture and the one you just took side by side and just realized that you did this in only 2 months... imagine what you can do in a year?
The Hard Parts:
Finding things to eat:
The most frustrating part of this diet is when you first start almost everything that is easy to eat on the fly has a ton of carbs and half of the fast food out there is less than filling without the carbs plus it's expensive. I found myself cooking for myself way more to the point where I was cooking everyday. I then created a system where I would spend a good chunk of my Sunday preparing my meals for the next few days so all I had to do was warm them up. Find your way and do what works for you. This is a hard adjustment, but if you really want it... you find a way.
Family and Friends are experts:
When people notice you losing weight and ask what are you doing and you try to explain it to them... everybody suddenly becomes a nutrition expert. How you shouldn't do that and it's unhealthy, yet have no scientific proof to back it up. In short, I don't take financial advice from broke people and I sure don't take nutrition advice from out of shape people. When people ask what I'm doing, I just answer that I have stopped eating sugar and starches... you know... like what your doctor recommends. This is a proven diet and it is a healthy lifestyle. Originally this is an epileptic diet, people with epilepsy HAVE to eat this way to control the spasms. There have been actual scientific studies of people eating this way their whole life perfectly healthy. This is what sold me on the diet to begin with.
Wanting to cheat / Cheat days:
You are going to miss eating all those delicious carbs. Maybe somebody in the house cooks instead of you and "a little carbs isn't going to hurt." Maybe you are at a birthday party and all they have is carbs... what do you do? Let me explain what I learned about how our body works... I could be wrong but it makes sense to me:
When we eat sugars/starches, our body creates insulin to turns those sugars to glycogen. When we have an insulin spike it sends a signal to our bodies says "stop using fat for energy... we have GLYCOGEN!!" Glycogen is our bodies preferred source of energy and you have to get rid of ALL of it to begin to start burning the fat. This is why some athletes "carb up" before a race or any big athletic event or even lift. You body holds so many grams within your muscles and your liver. The rest becomes fat and the fat that was with the carbs still gets added to that fat. It is said, in order to use all the Glycogen in your body with athleticism only, you have do something equivalent to running a marathon. Most people don't run marathons daily, but people do work out.... so it will take you a few days to use up all that glycogen.... meanwhile all that fat you have been eating is being stored in your body. One only has to go to their local Walmart to see that the human body can store an unlimited amount of fat. So let's say you do a cheat day on Saturday, you don't work out on Sunday... get back to the gym on Monday and do a decent workout, then you go back tuesday and do a mega workout... probably by wednesday you should have depleted all that glycogen and you are back into ketosis burning fat. That leaves Thursday and Friday in ketosis... and then you cheat again on Saturday? It only gives you 3 days of fat burning and 4 days of burning glycogen because you wanted a cheat day? You will still lose weight, but at a much slower process. Everybody is different and have different priorities... you decide if that meal/s is worth it. I cheat from time to time, I don't have epilepsy so I like to enjoy a meal from time to time. Sometimes once a month or like every 2 weeks... depends if I need to hit a weight goal or not. If I'm cutting... no cheating at all.
Losing Weight Vs. Being Healthy
With this diet you can lose weight with the craziest stuff. You could literally eat Pork Rinds for breakfast, lunch and dinner and still lose a ton of weight (yes you can eat Pork Rinds!)... but it is just not the healthiest choice. Losing weight and being healthy don't always go hand in hand (check the lemonade diet). I like to follow the guidelines of the Paleo Diet (Basically, if it didn't exist in the caveman days you don't eat it, the meats were grass fed (not corn) and nothing was milled), but it gets really expensive and somewhat becomes a hassle to follow strictly... so again, I just use it as a guideline. It is to good to be aware of what is going into your body though. Just doing 5 minutes of research on random things here and there has opened my eyes to all the craziness they try to get away with in our food. This is a slow evolution for me, I like eating certain types of food and it's hard to break away but I find myself consciously trying to eat it less and less. (Example: Using Mayonnaise for fat, when I could use Avocados. Both have tons of fat but the avocado has healthier fats... some things just taste better with mayo though.)
Standard Diet rules still apply
Exercise, eating fewer calories and alot of other diet rules still apply to this diet as well (for maximum weight lost in the shortest amount of time).
- You want to eat your biggest meal in the morning and your smallest meal at least 4 hours before your go to sleep to really maximize your metabolism. But let's get real here, just trying to eat breakfast and get to work on time can be a mission on it's own and going to sleep hungry because I'm going to sleep in 30 minutes just isn't going to happen. If you are hungry, eat! Listen to your body. Again, I try to follow the rules but sometimes you just can't. If you make the rules impossible to follow, you will quit. Do your best.
- Exercise for 20 minutes at least 3 times a week. Easier said than done for some people. In my experience, if I'm not doing a group activity I just don't exercise. If I'm not working out, I'm pigging out!. I try to workout at home and I lose my drive about 2 weeks in... probably the same drop rate of every runner that you see running around your neighborhood after New Years Eve. Find something you like that physically challenges you but that is also fun for you to do, if it becomes a hassle you will quit. You want some muscle definition or when you lose the weight you will look "droopy." Remember, muscle burns the most fat!!
When you get stuck/plateau
You've been losing weight at a consistent basis and then after a a few weeks you notice you haven't dropped any more pounds. This is normal. That's why I say you gotta stay of the scale and check every so often and take pictures!!! Especially if you start exercising while doing the diet, your muscle gains may sometimes outweigh your fat loss. But for example purposes, let's say you have been on the diet for 6 months and you have been stuck at the same weight and it looks like you haven't slimmed down any either.
There are a few things you can do:
Caffeine: I don't usually drink any caffeinated drinks (I just drink water), but when I get stuck I drink green tea (hot) or some coffee (with Stevia and Heavy Cream - less than 1g of carbs per serving). The caffeine and heat get your heart rate up and gets me sweating. It's like a mini-workout while eating.
Cayenne Pepper: I add this to my hot wing sauce to make even spicier (nose running greatness). Again, it makes me really hot and I start sweating just by eating it. This stuff has alot of natural fat burning properties to it. It is one of the main ingredients of the lemonade diet because of that.
Fast for a day: There we days when I had a little more extra fat on my body that I would sometimes forget to eat. I would be so deep in ketosis fat burning mode, that my body was just feeding of the reserves on my body. I would get so caught up in the day and get home and realize I didn't eat but I truly wasn't hungry. I would never force myself to voluntarily not eat, but sometimes your body has what is needs and doesn't send the signals to say... Hey! Feed me! It has happened to me two/three times in the year and it hasn't happened lately, so don't think this is something that I did often. I strongly follow the rule of, if I'm hungry...eat!!
Fat Fast: I've never done this so I don't know how effective it is, but I've seen it suggested a few times. It's kinda a fast but you are eating pure fats with minimal protein. Things like heavy creavy, sugar free whipping cream and I've even seen people just eat Fat Bombs - http://dietketo.com/keto-food/fat-bombs/
The Atkins/Low Carb diet foods
When I took out the carbs, I really missed them. I wanted Chocolate, rice, potatoes... bread to make a freaking sandwich. You start looking at these "Low Carb" options. Gluten free, 0 Carb formula, shirataki Noodles, etc.... they all taste like crap to me. And to top it off, they are expensive as hell. So you are paying more money to eat food that taste like junk, I pass. If it helps you get through the rough missing carbs stages, go for it it. You gotta ask yourself how can some of these products be "sugar free."
I've found that there are a few alternatives to sugar - high fructose corn syrup, aspstarme, saccharin, sucralose and sugar alcohols.
Pretty much, they all kill you. Most of these things have been linked to cancer but still use them. Use it sparingly if you need to. You have probably been eating it in other foods anyways, but it's just good to be aware of what you willingly put in your body. I myself use stevia every once in a while to sweeten something up.
The reason I really bring this stuff up is because some people can be really sensitive in staying in Ketosis while digesting this stuff. You may read some labels and have it advertise as "0 carbs" then turn it around to see the nutrition facts and see 15grams sugar alcohols. There is claim that you don't really absorb most of those sugar alcohols but some people have reported that they get knocked out of ketosis by consuming these type of products. I just stay safe and try to stay away from it. To each their own.
How do I know I'm in Ketosis
This is the burning question for anybody just starting. It's different for everybody. You could buy Ketone Pee sticks that measure the ketones that you pee out. It's not the best measure because it's testing the excess ketones in the body. I would say don't go crazy over it and don't waste any money that measures if you are in ketosis or not. I'm more concerned when my insulin spikes (when I eat sugar/pass the 20grams). I guess I've been in ketosis for a while now that I can actually feel when my sugar levels increase. I get a slight headache, a burst of energy and then I get really sleepy (sugar crash I believe). Just keep the carbs under 20 and your body will eventually hit ketosis.
What happens when the diet is over
So you hit your goal weight/size and decided that this diet/lifestyle is just not for you. If you start eating carbs again, will you gain all that weight back?
This is a yes and no answer.
When you introduce carbs back into your normal diet, you will gain your water-weight back immediately. You body will go back to holding as much water as it used to and glycogen will be your main source of energy again. So if the number of pounds/size really matter to you, you want to overshoot your weight loss by about 6-8 pounds (roughly what you lost the first week or so on the diet). That way when you balance back, you will be at your goal weight.
If you continue to eat like you did before the diet, you will gain the weight back but I've learned that once people kind of understand how food affects them they don't tend to make the same mistakes. Besides, you worked so hard to get where you got and hit that goal, why would you go and ruin it. I've gone without eating high sugars for a while now and I gotta say that things I used to love taste different now. I had a mental picture of how things tasted and then when I actually ate it, it didn't taste as good as I remembered. Maybe because I'm used to not eating as much sugar and the sugar overdose makes it taste funny to me.. I don't know... but I do know Ice Cream still tastes awesome so that's a weakness I gotta control.
What I Do in my daily life
-----To Be filled out ( remember pizza toppings)
So this is it. It may seem kinda overwhelming at first but once you get the hang of it it all starts to make sense. You eat healthier, you feel better, you even look better, I think it's a win-win.
Good luck!!!
Resources to help and motivate:
This is a great forum to read other people's stories on this diet. Great before and after progress pictures, food tips and other things:
The folk at reddit also made this acceptable food list:
This is a 6 day meal plan idea to get you started:
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