100 days of Keto
Today marks the 100th day of me trying ketogenic diet. I’ve been keeping track of the progress on my spreadsheet. I’ll share it along with my thoughts.
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Motivation
I have been suffering from chronic migraine all my life. I’ve seen specialists, tried a few different medications, and nothing really worked. The trigger was very difficult to identify, and seemingly random. The meaninglessness of the suffering was always the hardest part.
Somewhere on the Internet, I came across people talking about going into Ketosis helping them recover from depression, type 2 diabetes, and one person mentioning migraine recovery! I started reading up about it and many people do it for weight loss. I had a beer belly, so it was a good time for me to kill two economists with one poverty.
Results
During the diet, migraine occured somewhere in the middle, so that was sad. However, I started losing a lot of weight very fast, and that motivated me to keep on going. I wasn’t particularly overweight, but I felt a lot more energised. The progress has been recorded on a spreadsheet. Today is the 100th day, I have lost exactly 10kg (more than 10% of my total weight), and feel so much better.
Here is the spreadsheet:
Basic rules
So when you lower your carb intake to below 20g each day for around 48 hours, your body starts producing ketones. When this happens, the body starts burning fat instead of carbs as the source of energy. As a homeopathic spiritual medium, I decided to stop wondering about the science behind it, and just have a try (There are hundreds of articles around the web, so I won’t go into it).
The simple rules I followed were:
- No carbs (bread/rice/pasta), no sugar (including fruits), and no starch (corn/potato/flour).
- Apparently, alcohol is difficult to burn, but alcohol is also difficult to quit. So I just switched beer to whisky.
- Whenever I break the rules, I write it on the spreadsheet. If you open it, you will see that I’ve been cheating a lot, but never in a major way. Only time I ate an entire meal heavy with carbs was at a wedding.
My go to meal looks like (mmm… so yum):
Mainly, I had a lot of bacon and eggs, or omelettes, both at home and at cafes. As I was losing weight, I noticed I was losing my friends too. Social life was tough when you choose not to drink beer. It was also a good excuse to not mingle with people I actually didn’t want to hang out with. HAHAHA!
Why did it work?
What made it easy for me to follow through was the fact that I was going to the gym every evening, and weighing myself. The progress was gradual, but visible, and even without the numbers, the changes were visible on the mirrors. Unfortunately I forgot to take the before picture, but here is a comparable depiction of my physical changes.
I was generous to myself by allowing small cheats. Lots of dark chocolates helped. Also, being a snob, I ate very well, and have been making it rain at organic supermarkets. The freshest and healthiest ingredients do often taste better.
So was it all keto? Definitely not. Before the diet, I barely exercised, was a frequent beer drinker, and energy drink addict. Changing all of these habits could have been a bigger reason behind the transformation than cutting the carbs.
Long term effects and plans
My source of references were subreddits such as /r/keto and /r/ketogains as well as reading up on cyclical ketosis on bodybuilding.com. I’ve also read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, which opened my eyes on misconceptions around nutritional researches, as well as ecological impacts on eating processed food and eating meat. It is a highly recommended reading.
I have been notified that with the ketogenic diet, there might be some long term cardiovascular risks and other negative effects on health. My plan is to slow down with the diet, introduce more carbs, and gain more muscles by going into maybe cyclical ketosis, Paleo, or just eating healthy organic food. Also, I am hoping to lower the amount of meat I am eating, for ethical reasons.
I’ll keep you updated on my journey. Thanks for reading.
Postscript
I’ve celebrated my 100th day with a chocolate ganache.
Bonus: Pesto salad recipe
I make it when I can’t be bothered to heat anything. I always use fresh ingredients from organic stores, so everything works out to be around $8 (USD) a bowl.
Recipe:
- spinach and kale mix
- mixed olives
- mini tomatoes
- an avocado
- half a lemon squeezed on top of the avocado
- pesto (pre-made)
- mixed roasted and salted nuts (small amount of carbs here)
- pickled chili or chutney in small portion (contains small carbs/sugar)
- little bit of salt and pepper
- feta cheese (not pictured)
- avocado and garlic oil
- a couple of salami sticks in the picture above, but I often don’t add this peasant food
The key is to drench everything in avocado+garlic oil (or olive oil). I would guess the total carbs would be around 5g with half of it being sugar. It tastes incredible.
