What I Learned from Spending a Month on the Keto Diet

Let's just get this out of the way first.

Giving up carbs is hard.

As somebody who eats rice and bread with most of my meals, spending a month following the Keto (or Ketogenic) Diet was no easy feat.

What is the Ketogenic Diet?

When your body runs out of glucose to use as energy, it enters a state of ketosis where your liver begins to metabolize fat into ketones. The Keto Diet is a guidance of macros that allows your body to remain in this state to take advantage of its fat burning mechanism. Typically, the goal is to consume 65% of your total calories from fats, 30% from proteins, and 5% from complex carbs.

Why would I do this to myself?

Over the past few years I had watched myself slowly increase in weight from 135, to 150 around late December. I tried to increase the amount of physical activity I would do on a weekly basis as well as modify how much I ate, but what I found out the hard way was that there's no way to outrun a poor diet.

I had briefly considered Keto before, but quickly dismissed it thinking I could never do without all of the carby foods I was used to eating. My typical lunch at work was a sandwich with chips, for dinner I would often pizza, and if I did cook, usually it would include a hefty side of steamed rice.

On a whim, I was researching online looking for diet tweaks to implement to help myself train for a half-marathon was a month out.  I again came across Keto on a website, and after reading about it a bit, I decided to give it a second thought.  I did a bit of cross-research, found a subreddit (r/keto) to see what experiences people had, and I also found a grocery list and meal plan online. After a bit of reading, it was decided, I would attempt to follow this meal plan for a week to see what happens because, why not.

The Trial Week

I can't say that the first week was super difficult and caused a lot of suffering because that simply wasn't true. The meal plan actually starts out with a "Keto Stir Fry" on the Sunday night before the diet actually starts, kind of as a warm up. This is most likely because the meal plan is set up in a way to where your breakfast is usually some variation of eggs and the lunch is the dinner from the night before. On this diet, you will be eating  a ton of eggs. The meal plan I was following prescribes a couple of eggs for breakfast every single morning.

There wasn't much change the first two days, and for the most part I kept it under wraps that I was trying something different.  I was even going home during my lunch hour as I wanted to avoid any question as to why I was all of a sudden bring a lunch now.

By midweek, I was dropping a lot of water weight. One of the most surprising side effects though was that through was that I never felt hungry. This is more than likely because fat helps you feel satiated, and being that this diet is pretty high in fat means that your meals feel more satisfying.

I didn't really experience what most could call the Keto Flu. As your body transitions away from running on glucose, many people experience almost flu like fatigue that can last for a few days.  There were some events I came home tired, but that was the extent of my experience with it.

In the first week, I ended up dropping a total of 5.8 pounds and actually decided I kind of liked the results I was seeing.

Some early learnings:

• My body wasn't really retraining much water. When I would carry around my usual water bottle, I would need to use the restroom pretty frequently.
• I was having some difficulty finding a source of electrolytes. Gatorade (and the like) were out of the question as they are loaded with sugar.
• My skin looked great.
• My anaerobic exercise performance suffered pretty significantly. When working out, I felt like I was running on 'E.'
• I wasn't running much since I did feel a bit tired after working. I chalked this up to being on an adjustment period.
• My social life also kind of took a hit since I wasn't able to go out for dinner/drinks/lunch as I was typically able to.
• I was doing A LOT of dishes from all of the cooking I was doing at home.

Weeks 2-4

In the subsequent weeks, I sort of hit a groove which is why they are easy to group together. Rather than follow the meal plan onward into week 2, I found a rotation of 5 meals that I enjoyed that were easy to remember how to cook. I actually began to intermittently fast, where I would skip breakfast, eat lunch around 11, have dinner about 7, and then not eat again under dinner the next day.

While I did stay away from traditional sugars and sweets, I did come across 'Halo Top' ice cream as well as the Atkins line of low sugar low carb desserts.  I would allow myself an allotment of each a week basically as sort of a reward for sticking with the program.

I still found myself eating a lot of eggs, and I was taking a daily vitamin to try and get some of the nutrients I couldn't have been missing out of on a strict diet. I was difficult to not cheat at times, and even my parents were really questioning (and to an extent I was as well) whether or not what I was doing was actually healthy. The main thing really keeping me from cheating on the diet is that there really isn't room for error. Having a carb-filled meal could kick me out of ketosis, and I'd have to start the two-day initial process over again.

I began get back into my normal workout routine. The jogging was fairly easy and I found that I had enough energy to easily finish my usual runs. The weight lifting is what suffered. I dropped my usual weight-load and my in-between set recovery time seemed a bit more labored. The goal at this point wasn't really to get stronger, but more to maintain the level I was at previously.

The Verdict

I think that this diet worked out fantastic for me. After the adjustment period, it was really easy to get into a groove and really understand what I could and could not eat. The fact that this diet also relies on consistency and adherence builds in an anti-cheat mechanism. Basically, I knew if I ate a meal that didn't follow the guidance, I would do days of damage rather than messing up a single meal.

I ran well, I slept well, and I felt great. I also saved money by not eating out at all. I would recommend this to anybody trying to lose weight, and tone up. I would not recommend it to somebody trying to gain strength.  I found it possible to maintain what I had, but building muscle while on keto, while possible, would be quite difficult.