This post is a recap of my experience with keto. I've heard of keto over the past couple of years, but never really looked into it. Someone on reddit corrected me on my assumptions on high fat diets. I got curious and educated myself about the diet and decided to pursue it as a personal experiment. My diet was high in carbs, I'm not overweight, I'm in pretty good shape, stay active, but still carry a bit of belly fat that I could never get rid of.
So I jumped into keto back in August with some fasting and loading up on high fat foods. As an Asian rice was a big part of my diet for all my life, but it was well balanced with lean meats and vegetables. It was difficult, but I pretty much just cut out rice and bread from my diet and ate more eggs, bacon, sausage, rotisserie chicken, cheese, mayo, almond milk, nuts, avocado, oils, and vegetables. I began tracking my meals the best I could on MFP and initially found it can be very easy to exceed 30g carbs without even trying. I was able to refine my meals and stick with it consistently. I love cooking and found keto recipes to be very interesting, especially the adaptations of high carb equivalents. The holidays did kick my ass and I fell off the wagon multiple times, but at home I continued to maintain my diet with the occasional cheat day.
So overall I've noticed that I don't feel incredibly hungry around noon. I find it easy to skip meals because I don't feel like I'm starving. I don't fall into food comas, get bloated or gassy after lunch and I don't notice severely diminished productivity later in the afternoon. One downside I've experienced and read about is the lack of push in physical activities. For me it was sprinting and climbing hills on the bike. I got worried because I had my first century ride, which I ended up carbing up for it because I was paranoid about not finishing. I hit a wall midway through the ride and struggled to finish. I have a 10 mile run in the spring and I will attempt it while in ketosis. If I'm satisfied with my performance and how I felt, then I'll attempt a century ride as well.
Physically I've leaned up a bit and can notice some more definition in my abs. I don't have a scale to weigh myself regularly, but I continue to weigh approximately the same (140) which isn't surprising because I believe I'm near my natural weight. I began lifting somewhat routinely again, so I've added on some muscle as well.
The big thing I was worried about was cholesterol because my dad has high blood pressure and cholesterol. I have no issues with blood pressure and it is optimal, but haven't had a blood test in a while. I just got my blood test results back from the doctor (which prompted me to write this post) and was told they looked good.
Total cholesterol: 189 LDL: 110 HDL: 64
I asked my doctor if she was familiar with LCHF diets and she said she was and I told her how I was on it and she said that tests says I'm good and had no objections. So I went from skeptic to a believer. While I don't have huge weight loss goals and I'm not able to share in scale victories as many of you, I still find it encouraging to see many of you succeed and I wish you all the best of luck. I've encouraged others to look into keto and dispelled some of their common misconceptions and skepticisms that I once held by sharing my own experience. Is it easy? Not quite due to limitations on high carb foods found nearly everywhere, but nothing in life that requires conscious effort and self control is easy.
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