My Ketogenic Diet
I have tons of shit to talk about here, so maybe I'll bounce around. The fasting stuff is all a little new to me, so yeahhhh. Lets talk about actually eating food, lets talk about the Ketogenic diet, and lets talk about FOOD.
The idea with eating keto is to get into ketosis, and to eventually become fully fat adapted. Your body gets its energy from fat. To accomplish this you reduce your carbohydrate intake dramatically. You do NOT replace those calories with extra protein. This is an extremely common misconception about keto. I eat the same amount of protein on a ketogenic diet as I do a "standard" low fat diet. I simply replace all those carbs with fats. I aim to eat less than 25g carbs a day. One orange is more than that, for reference. Fiber doesn't count, only digestable carbs.
I enjoy making my own food these days, but I don't put a ton of effort into cooking. I want simple meals. So, how do I eat virtually no carbs and all that fat with a similar protein level?
On a standard diet I'd eat.... on a ketogenic diet, instead I eat...
boneless skinless chicken breast ... chicken thighs with the skin on
the leanest beef I can find in the store ... the fattiest beef I can find in the store
vegetable oils .... olive oil, coconut oil, butter
no bacon ... bacon
I personally don't seem to have issues with dairy, so I enjoy my cheese. Some folks on keto struggle with dairy and cut it down or out. Small servings of nuts are great. Veggies are incredible. I eat tons of veggies. Avocados are life.
I eat the same breakfast every day. 4 eggs, cooked in butter, with a little cheese and salsa on top. 4 strips of bacon and half an avocado sliced up with salt and paprika on it. avocado with the eggs is literally heaven.
I alternate between fish, shrimp, chicken, ground beef, pork chops, and steak. In many of these cases I just have the item as main course w/ whatever seasoning I want, along with a large helping of broccoli or green beans or spinach. I keep it very simple most of the time.
Today I did mix it up a bit, b/c I often don't find just plain old shrimp fully satisfying. Here is tonight's keto friendly dinner!
shrimp soft tacos with sour cream, cheese, onions, green pepper, avocado, salsa. The tortilla is Mission brand "Carb Balance" whole wheat, it advertises 3g of net carbs. I'm always wary of products like this and I don't eat them often, but these do not seem to trigger a blood sugar increase in me or impact my ketosis. I still limit myself to one package a month (so about 3 nights of tacos w/ some food + leftovers).
I think when people think about Keto they think just plates and plates full of meat. And I do eat meat every day. So if you only eat fish or only eat meat a couple nights a week this might seem crazy. But I eat a lot of veggies too, I promise! Its just the carbs that are missing, that's all. I'm cooking for myself every meal. I might order in wings once or twice a month, or occasionally go to Chipotle. This time around though, in two months I've ordered wings in three times. Every other meal I've cooked for myself.
When I do all of this, I end up between 2k and 2300 calories a day, and weight falls off readily. My blood pressure drops. My blood sugars drop to non-diabetic levels. My cholesterol improves, more on that later MAYBE, cholesterol is more controversial than fasting in my mind, I may ignore it. When I eat like this I feel healthy, I feel like I can be a person in the world like everyone else. When my blood sugar is all over the place I feel like I'm constantly a slave to food.