#like I genuinely don’t usually get meat free options but sometimes your body goes ‘if u put a meat in me I’ll kill you | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pyrogina · 5 years

Text

my keto experience

Intro/TL:DR

As a preface I can report that I lost 17lbs in 30 days while strictly adhering to a keto diet. I'm a 34 year old canadian woman who works from home as an artist and a huge helping factor for me was the freedom to stay home on the bad days and the ability to purchase fresh meats and vegetables on a weekly basis. This is a really tough diet but if you put the right pieces in place, it might work for you too. Additionally, I am NOT a dietitian/nutritionist in any way, shape, or form. Everything posted here is from my own experience and a modicum of research on the net. Please double-check my facts before you begin this diet for yourself.

Is keto for you?

The first and hardest question to ask yourself about a ketosis diet is, Can I Endure this? And you should not feel any guilt if the answer to that question is no, because this is a very invasive and aggressive diet that will cause you physical pain even if just for a brief amount of time. Similar to vegetarianism, or is extreme cousin, veganism, a keto diet involves cutting out large swaths of the food pyramid to facilitate this diet. This does not mean going hungry, the foods that are removed will be replaced with other foods, only without any (or minimal) artificial or natural sugars. Sugar is just a chemical, which doesn't sound like a huge sacrifice, right? Most adults don't bother adding sugar to anything other than tea or coffee, but sugar is much more deeply rooted in our lives than you may realize.

Carbohydrates can be found in virtually every type of ready-to-serve foods: breads, wraps, pastas, fried snacks, hors d'oeuvre (these are examples of things I ate before this diet). All of these delicious and very satisfying foods have a fiber content and sugar content. You're still allowed to consume these, and I encourage you do so, but make sure to monitor the grams of total carbohydrates you consume that day. During this diet you will only be allowed to consume 20 grams (to 50 grams, depending on your body and personal needs) a day. remember this. Those 20 grams of carbs maybe the difference between you having a normal day and one of the worst days of your life.

Before I chose to begin a keto diet, I had been exercising casually (as before I was sedentary, more details on this later) and consuming about half as many carbohydrates as I had normally done in my life before. During the two years I was living this way, I was able to lose approximately 20lbs (from about 230 to 210). If you're starting your diet or lifestyle change from scratch, maybe try starting here first. Its significantly slower (10lbs in nearly a year), but it will not cause any pain or significant inconvenience.

What’s the big deal?/What to eat?

Sugar is a chemical, and more than that, its a drug that your body has been dependent on since you were a wee baby in your mama’s belly. Sugar makes your brain work and when you mess with your brain’s intake of the all-important-life-sauce it goes into panic mode. In the first 2-3 days (up to 6 if your me!) you will literally, physically go into a state of depression. Many had described it to me as ‘keto flu’ but as a survivor of 2009s Swine flu, I can most assuredly tell you that keto is much, MUCH worse.

First, my appetite became very finicky (and i'm already a very picky eater). I had no desire to eat the genuinely tasty keto meals that my boyfriend had lovingly prepared. I didn't want to draw, and I wasn't even in the mood to play easy video games. All I felt like doing was crying or sleeping (which I did, for 9 hours in the middle of my 3rd day). This is why, whenever I speak to someone who’s even moderately interested in this diet to BOOK TIME OFF YOUR JOB!!! It’s inconceivable to me to be forced to face other human beings in this state of physical distress. You need to pamper yourself while in this state in order to endure it and ensure your success.

There was one more bump in the road around the one-week point but i'm fairly certain it came down to a combination of dehydration and moodiness (period) so perhaps that was an outlier. Either way, water is the key when you start feeling shitty. Get yourself a nice BPA-free water bottle that you're comfortable carrying around and keeping full of fresh water. Once your body is in ketosis (you can check using those little paper sticks you pee on from the drug store, wash your hands!) you will get tired and moody the very instant you become hungry at mealtimes. Sometimes you don't even feel the familiar hunger pangs from your previous diet and mistake it for just a general bad mood. Always have a sip of water, babes; that’s your brain telling you to hydrate.

Alternatively, after eating a keto meal you still may feel hungry or unsatisfied, even sad (longing for your favourite dessert). This is where those 20g of carbs come in pretty clutch. Finding your perfect portion of reward may be impossibly difficult, I can only tell you what made me feel better when I got the cravings. Blueberries are quite sweet, they have a lot of natural sugar, but a handful of them sufficed as an incredibly sweet treat (some keto dieters have proclaimed that ‘regular things taste much sweeter than before’, I didn't experience this). Minigo/iogo yoghurt cups are fatty and sweet and work as a decent replacement to ice cream (count the carbs!). On extra tough mornings (in addition to bacon and eggs! Totally keto!) we would split a cavendish oven-fried hashbrown (about 15g; 7.5g split between my partner and I).

There are a surprising amount of natural foods that are not keto, but in careful proportions, can be incorporated into a daily keto diet. Most every fruit (that I checked) is very sugary but can make for a nice dessert. Certain vegetables like carrots or potato have too many carbs to be anything more than a boost when you feel shitty. Red onions have a very small amount of carbs (sugar and fibre work together to your benefit!) and server to replace pasta as a side to a nice steak dinner.

On that note, you need fibre to make your BMs move. Cutting carbs from your life means your number 2’s go bunny mode…. Take a sugar-free metamucil on any day where you have more meat during a meal than other types of food, or the toilet will be a nightmare.

Meals:

Cutting away pastas, breads, and other sides seems like an insane task but with some discipline and creativity, it's quite manageable. Breakfast didn't change much: eggs any way (sunny side for me, cheddar omelette for my BF) with bacon or sausage. Lunch was some combination of chicken breast and various salads (so many salad dressings are low or no carb! Read the back!). On steak night, we replace noodles with sauteed red onions fried and seasoning. Snacktime was usually pre-sliced cheddar cheese (go NUTS that shit is A-OK!), unsalted peanuts (other nuts have marginally more carbs, almonds and sunflower are moderate, check what works for you), or small amounts of beef jerky. Accompany those snacks with a big drink of water, or if you've had enough of that, certain drinks are acceptable like tea or coffee (with sweetner and high fat milk, skim milk is too sugary), diet sodas, sugarfree drink mix (migo, nestea). Just remember water, water, water.

Is it worth it? Pros/Cons

Cons:

-HURTS LIEK DRUG WITHDRAWL (you're literally coming down from the lifelong chemical addiction of sugar. It hurts like Trainspotting)

-MEAT (you will be consuming a lot of animal product)

-POOP (even when you have your metamucil, the toilet can take some time)

-SWEETS (the cravings for your favourite yumyums will almost never stop, it takes monk-like discipline)

-BORING (you can't go out and enjoy meals/drinks with friends and family without them or the restaurant making odd or even crappy exceptions. Keto menu options are slowly becoming popular though)

-TIRED (the first week or two will be very tedious and you won’t have any energy, even your favourite hobbies may seen unfulfilling for a time)

-ALCOHOL (basically none, unless you like vodka and sugarfree mix, you'll get drunk a lot quicker and end up feeling shittier without carbs in your body to process the liquor)

Pros:

-INSTANT RESULTS (in my first week i lost nearly 10lbs, and then two for every subsequent week. note that, just like any diet, there will be bounce-back)

-APPETITE LOSS (once you get into the swing of this, after the 2 week mark, you’ll find you no longer are pained when your hungry and the bigger cravings subside)

-BUDGET (this is a bit of an odd one and may not necessarily reflect your cost benefits. Before engaging in this diet, my BF and I discovered we were spending too much money on restaurants and leaving the food in the fridge to waste. This was primarily because we were too lazy to cook. Getting off our asses and cooking 6 days of the week made an immediate impact on this for us. If you already do that, this won't apply. Concurrently, we spent more money at the grocery store ensuring we always had fresh meat and vegetables; this did net us positive)

-REWARDING MEALS (having to stop and think about what it takes to make a tasty and satisfying meal has forced us to look at things in a different way. Making yourself and your partner a healthy, supremely tasty meal gets those endorphins peaking)

-EXERCISE (Unnecessary! Your choice! Just note that building muscle increases your weight as muscle weights more than fat)

My fave meals:

-Coffee (reluctantly replacing 1tsp of sugar with a fairy-dust sprinkling of sweetner cos i HATE sweetner, its 20-30x stronger than sugar so you only need 1/20th as much)

-Eggs and bacon!!! (sausage sometimes too)

-Garlic grilled chicken with spinach salad (onions, sliced almonds, feta, dressing)

-Steak and red onions (meat rare and onions grilled with seasoning)

-Spicy ground pork tacos (replace the taco/burrito with large boston lettuce leaves, shredded cheddar, green onions, diced tomato, dab of ranch sauce)

-Baked chicken breast stuffed with ricotta and spinach, topped with parmesan

-Slow-cooked pulled pork slathered with sharp cheddar (just eat with a fork!)

-Baked shrimp with garlic butter and parmesan

-Jalapenos stuffed with ricotta, cream cheese and cheddar, then wrapped in a strip of bacon (great late-night snack)

-Even changing the texture of a cheese can change the taste of the meal. Shredded cheddar adds a salty bite to a lettuce wrap, grated parmesan can trick a baked chicken breast into thinking its breaded. creamy cheeses can replace other baking sauces entirely.

-Diet pops (make sure its 0 sugar!), and tea/coffees with sweetner are fine, they do contain a lot of sodium though, make sure to drink 1-for-1 with water (meaning: every diet coke or tea you have, accompany it with the same amount of plain water so your body can process it and pee it out).

Variations/Control:

Vitamins: It should be noted that I take a daily multivitamin (C3+D) as I generally don't get enough sun or fruits. I highly recommend you take these just in general. They help keep skin soft and blemish free (I initially began taking these because of acne on upper arms and it cleared within days).

Activity: As briefly mentioned earlier, I began shifting from sedentary (not moving much, sitting for hours a day) to a more active lifestyle about 2-3 years ago. This entailed a personal regimen of making an attempt at physical activity approximately half the days of the month (period week was generally excluded). Every other day I would attempt one of the following: walking at least 2km, 15-20m of floor exercises (‘lady push-ups’, sit-ups), 15-20m of time on the indoor bike, or an hour of house related chores (lifting, laundry, cleaning, anything that involves getting sweaty). In addition to these, yoga is peppered into my lifestyle as frequently as possibly, particularly in the morning before breakfast. On days where i'm unable to exercise, I at least attempt the basic yoga poses to stave off my (no-longer chronic) back pain.

#personal #diet #keto diet #ketosis #okay to reblog #no one proofread this for me...#ill try to keep edits to a minimum

2 notes · View notes