What I learned when doing the “keto” thing.
TLDR — After returning from a great spring break vacation, it was clear that I had enjoyed the German beer, meats, breads and cheeses a little too much. A hesitant step on the scale confirmed that I was about 20 pounds from my ideal racing weight. I knew I would lose the weight, but I wanted to try something to speed up the process.
The internet is buzzing about “keto” dieting. In summary, it’s an extremely low carb, high fat diet that trains your body to burn fat as a primary fuel source. I tried intermittent fasting last year and it really didn’t do much for me. I decided to try a keto diet and intermittent fasting again.
What I normally do:
- Use MyFitnessPal to track my calories and macro nutrients (been doing this for about 8 years)
- Limit my NET caloric intake to my target BMR weight
- Exercise six days a week for at least 30 minutes
What I changed/added:
- Limit daily carb intake to under 100 grams, but target was 40 grams
- Set my eating window from 12pm to 8pm
What were the results:
In little over 2 months (10 weeks), I lost 10.5 lbs. So about a pound a week.
What I learned:
Getting into ketosis took (me) a while
Based on the google research, I figured it should take a few days to get into ketosis. I tried to do some more anaerobic efforts during my workouts to speed up this process, but it still took me about one and half weeks to get into ketosis.
To make sure I was in ketosis, I purchased some ketone testing strips. To my wife’s amusement, she constantly would ask me if I was pregnant each time I tested myself. Each time I tested, I noticed the shade of the strip was progressing to darker shade of magenta/purple until one day it was definitely purple (about 10 days in).
The “Keto” flu is real and yes, it does suck
About 4 to 5 days in, I started to experience energy fluctuations, fatigue despite being rested and I wouldn’t feel full regardless of how much fat and protein I ate.
At about day 6, I started to get an annoying headache that progressed to slightly painful for days 7 and 8.
By day 9, these feelings started to subside. Based on internet research, by experience was probably average.
Your workout performance will suffer at first
For the first week, I lacked the energy to perform any anaerobic work.
Taking at look at the swim data, it was a clear that the low point in performance was about a month into the diet. By the end of month 2, my swim performance had returned to pre-diet levels.
A look at a particular cycling segment shows that my cycling wasn’t impacted that much by the diet. However, I noticed that while I was still adapting to the diet, I had difficulty on hills and chasing attackers on group rides.
On Wednesdays, I run an easy effort 10k. The first week and half I noticed that my performance was dropping and I was increasing my perceived effort to try to maintain pace (as you can see by the heart-rate data).
A month in, my energy levels stabilized, heart-rate decreased and I was able to bring my pace back up.
Using fat as a primary fuel source is awesome
The first time I really noticed that I was in ketosis was when I had a busy afternoon and didn’t have time to eat lunch. Usually if this happens, I get all light headed and “hangry”. For the first time ever, it didn’t happen. I felt fine.
When I got home that day, I tested for ketones and the strip was a pretty deep shade of purple. I tested this for a few days, simply skipping lunch, and was fine. It’s a feeling of, “ I could eat, but I don’t really need to…”.
The next cool adaptation is during workouts, I’ve noticed two main things:
- I can maintain energy level while pushing myself harder than before.
- I can recover a lot quicker after a harder interval or a hill climb.
Conclusion
I’m not sold that the keto diet made my weight loss faster, but the adaptations my body made was worth it. I’ve been slowly adding more carbs back but plan on keeping my daily target around 120 grams.
Is this a diet for everyone? Probably not, but it’s similar to other diets i’ve tried. I think the key is finding one that fits your lifestyle that you can stick with forever. Regardless if it’s low carb/high fat, low fat/high carb or balanced.
Did I have to make any extreme changes? Not really, but not eating bread, pasta, sugar was/is difficult. As someone who religiously inputs food into MyFitnessPal, I also found counting carbs and remembering how many I had left was easier than total calories.
Would I recommend it? Yes, purely for the increased efficiency to use fat as a fuel source.
Have questions or additional tips? Feel free to reach out or share your tips and experiences!
