Two Weeks of Keto

In my year of challenge, April is Keto month. I have been doing keto for half of the month and it has been an interesting experience.

If you don't know what Keto is, it is a low carb, high fat diet. So it is similar to atkins or paleo, the difference is that the majority of diet should be fat, between 60%-75% fat. I am aiming for 60% fat, 35% protein and 5% carbs. Though as long as I get below 15% carbs I don't worry too much as long as my fats are higher. I used my fitness pal in the beginning, but now that I am more familiar with the diet I haven't been using it as much. I was averaging 60%-78% fats and around 7% carbs.

Meal Prepping

I prepared for keto by going to the grocery store and making 8 frozen keto meals that serve 6. I have been using those for dinner. They are chicken or meatball based so I switch off from chicken to meatball each time. These have been going well, but some of the seasoning is bland to me so I will add hot sauce or extra cheese to go with it. I usually get full pretty quickly and feel satisfied.

Meal preparing was so necessary. Not only because it makes it easy to figure out my meals, but because of the covid-19. I had been following it closely since February, and the first weekend of March one of the podcasts I listen to said that people should have a months worth of food in pantry like you do for storms. Being from Arizona, we don't really worry about natural disasters like a blizzard. So I didn't know that was a thing. The second weekend my roommate asked I wanted to go food shopping and I decided that was the perfect time to stock up and meal prep for keto. She got enough for the end of March and I got enough for April. We didn't even need things like pasta or rice.

Bulletproof Coffee

I fast in the morning to around noon, the only thing I have is bulletproof coffee. If you are not familiar it is coffee with butter, this adds in a lot of fat without a lot of work. The recipe I used called for 2 tablespoons of butter and 1 of coconut oil I also add some cinnamon. I did this until the fifth day. The coffee tasted so bad to me. I don't mind black coffee, and this was much worse. So, after a bit of google searching I found out that most people work their way up to that amount. So I started to only do 1 tablespoon of coconut oil.

That didn't help, in fact I felt like it was making it worse and I was actually holding my nose to drink it! So, more google searches, many people said the coconut oil wasn't for them. So I switched to 1 tablespoon of butter. That is so much better. I could actually drink the coffee without wincing. I would even be finished with my coffee without noticing. Since then I have built up to 2 tablespoons. I probably won't add the coconut oil back in. I am not going to say I will continue to drink bulletproof in May, but maybe after the next two weeks I will want to.

Snacks

For my first meal I usually have an avocado smoothie made with avocado, protein powder, unsweetend peanut butter and ice. The recipe adds berries, but I think they have too many carbs so I stopped adding those. For snacks I eat a shot glass of olives, meat sticks, and fat bombs which is peanut butter and cream cheese. I ran out of cream cheese so I don't eat those any more, but they were great. 

Thoughts

If you have done keto or know about it you may have heard about keto flu. The keto flu are symptoms like headache, foggy brain, nausea and etc that some people experience in the first week of keto. Forums will try to explain what the keto flu is, but there really haven't been any studies on what causes the symptoms. It does go away after a few days so it is nothing to worry about.

I had some symptoms like nausea, headache and charly horses. It actually reminded me a little bit of when I have done a three day fast.

When my friend was pregnant her doctor told her to eat before you would get nausea and that would help her not be nausea as much, basically snacking a lot during the day. So I used this trick. If I felt nausea I would have oils or fat bombs if it was between meals or I would eat lunch or dinner. This really helped get rid of the symptoms.

As for the charly horses I started drinking more water and I only had them two nights. I haven't felt any flu symptoms for a while, so it does go away, but it is something to look out for. Hopefully, some of these tips help you.

Progress

So far I have lost 12 pounds or so since starting keto. I know some of it might be water weight at the beginning. So I hope that I because I have another two weeks it will stick to me more. It is a diet that would be hard to maintain for months and months, but I think I am learning that Fats are Friends and to opt for that over carbs.