Lessons after 4 weeks of Keto
I have now completed 4 weeks of a Keto diet. Katie joined me for 3.5 weeks. Lisa did it for 1 week before her European girls trip and for 1 week after her trip. What have we learned from this experience? Keto works. It is an effective way to create metabolic flexibility, meaning your body can utilize both fats and sugar as fuel. Burning sugar for fuel is like using kindling for a fire. You have to keep adding kindling on a very regular basis to keep the fire going. Burning fat for fuel is like adding a log to the fire. It can burn for a long time and you have to refuel less often.
First let me talk about the food.
It was easy to eat enough food. We had a few good mentors who have been on this diet and we got a bunch of good recipes from them. Katie has also been very proactive in searching for recipes online and found some winners.
Breakfast was the hardest meal. You can only cook eggs and bacon so many times before it starts to get old. Breakfast was easy for me since I have continued to do Intermittent Fasting, but it was harder for Lisa and Katie.
Lunch was pretty easy for everyone. We have eaten a lot of gourmet salads, lettuce sandwiches, and dinner leftovers. One of my staples for lunch was the Sheldon Shake, taught to us by our friends the Cooks. This is a very high fat and high protein shake that tastes great. I would often make it in the morning, leave 1/2 for Katie for her breakfast, and take my 1/2 for lunch at work. This was always satisfying and very filling.
Dinner was fun. I have never done this much cooking in my life, especially with Lisa gone for 10 days in the middle of all this. Our first dinner attempt was a failure, but other than that, dinners have been fantastic. Our favorite meals have been: Broccoli Chicken Casserole, Peanut Chicken, Cheeseburger Casserole, Cauliflower Cheese Casserole, Salmon, BLT Salad, and meatballs. We have also eaten a ton of vegetables with every dinner. Lots of asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower rice, sweet potatoes, and beans. And of course a lot of grass fed butter.
We love peanut butter chocolate bars. This has been our favorite dessert by far. It tastes just like Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. We tried a bunch of other “Fat Bombs”, but none measured up to this one. And a few of them were actual bombs.
How have we felt on Keto?
We used the KetoApp and it gave us our daily goal of how many carbs, how much fat, and how much protein to eat. We were very careful with our Carb intake since this is the key to getting into Ketosis. It was hard for all of us to eat enough fat on the recommended diet. Our daily protein intake was very easy to attain. Most of the dinners we prepared had meat (a big change for us) and the shake also had a lot of protein.
It was easy for me to stay under my carbs and eat enough protein, but it was hard for me to eat enough fat and enough calories. Despite this, I was never hungry and felt really good with plenty of energy throughout the 4 weeks. I never really experienced the Keto flu and I was also able to work out whenever I wanted to.
Lisa felt very weak most of the time she was on the diet. She was also hungry a lot of the time even though she met her calorie goals pretty well. I think she just didn’t have enough fat in her body to draw on to give her enough energy. The diet was not a great fit for her. She didn’t have enough energy to workout, which is such a critical part of overall health.
Katie was kind of in between Lisa and I as far as energy level and hunger level. She tolerated the diet well and was able to work out sometimes, but overall her energy level was less. Katie also started to get sick of eating what felt like the same foods too often.
Did we lose weight?
I had just come home from a wonderful Chicago trip where I ate way too much (and didn’t feel great as a result) so I had some pounds to lose. I lost 14 pounds and over 4 inches from my waist. I really didn’t have that many pounds to lose but my waist looks better than it has in forever. The most frustrating thing about the diet to me is that I have definitely lost some muscle mass, 1 inch from each of my biceps. One major contributor to this has been my inability to do any upper body workouts for the past 4 months due to a right shoulder labral tear. But I think another big contributor has been my inability to eat enough calories because that much fat was just hard to eat. But I was always full from what I was eating, so I wasn’t looking to eat in between my 2 big meals every day. I felt good and ate what I wanted, but this was not enough calories so I lost both fat and muscle over the last 4 weeks. I wish I would have increased my carbs some more to try and preserve some of my muscle mass better.
Lisa lost a few pounds both weeks she was on the diet, and is sitting at a very low and comfortable weight for her. She was eating cleaner than both Katie and I before we started this so she had the smallest amount of weight and waist to lose.
Katie lost 7 pounds and feels really good about where she is. I have been very proud of the way she just decided to take this challenge on and make the most of it. She has been a great example to me and made it easier for me to stick to my goals.
What is next on our food journey?
The fat to carb ratio we have been on is not sustainable long term and is probably not healthy long term either. We learned some great lessons about how we were eating too many carbs on our previous plant slant lifestyle. We were essentially carbotarians.
We will eat low carb on a cyclical basis. We are not going to try and remain in ketosis, but will continue to eat a much lower carb diet than we were doing previously. We will shift our daily goal from approximately 5% carbs to somewhere between 20-40% carbs on Monday through Friday. We will eat an even higher carb ratio on the weekends and pay close attention to how we feel with these changes.
We will continue to eat a ton of vegetables with as much variety as possible. The most nutrient dense vegetables are the cruciferous veggies such as broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, and leafy greens. We love these foods and will try to eat at least a couple servings of these daily.
We will continue to eat a lot of other non-starchy vegetables, with a goal of 8-10 servings of vegetables per day. The starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes will be less frequent but a regular part of our diet.
We will cut back on our protein intake. We will probably have 1 or 2 servings of lean protein every single day, but not every single meal. 20% protein intake on the macronutrient scale seems to be a magic number. Increasing protein intake over 20% of your daily calories can cause significant increases in the risk of cancer and chronic diseases. And we will also be much more careful about the type of meat we eat. If at all possible, it needs to be from grass fed and grass finished cows, wild caught fish, pasture pigs, and cage free chickens. The importance of this cannot be overstated.
We will eat more fruit. We have focused on mainly eating low fructose fruit such as berries, and will continue to do so, but we will be eating more servings of other fruits that have a higher fructose profile as well.
We will continue to focus on eating a lot of healthy fats at every meal if possible - avocados, avocado oil, coconut, nuts and seeds, organic eggs and butter, etc.
I have made an extensive spreadsheet of the foods we enjoy eating on a regular basis with all of their nutrient profiles so that we can make informed decisions moving forward about what we are eating. I tend to go overboard on stuff like this, but knowledge is power for me.
We will continue to focus on keeping our diet as unprocessed as possible. This entire journey has made the importance of this very clear, and this is one thing that almost every nutritionist would agree on, whether they are proponents of vegan or keto or paleo or anything else.
We will be careful about possible inflammatory foods. The three most common inflammatory foods are gluten, dairy, and eggs. With Luke’s diagnosis, we will continue to have a gluten free kitchen. We may eat gluten other places, but will pay careful attention to how we feel if we do so. As far as dairy goes, we will eat specific types of butter, cheese, and possibly yogurt but we have replaced regular milk with almond milk. We are using eggs from cage free chickens and we will consider eliminating eggs in the future if it ever seems like they may be causing a problem.
I will also continue to monitor the nutrition landscape as far as scientific research goes. There are many studies continuing at this time that may provide additional insight about important dietary changes we need to make. If the science is compelling, we will be open to making additional changes as we see fit.