Keto made easy

Day 18, and the Fourth of July

2017-07-04

July 2017 — days 18 to 22

I'd lost real weight before without keto, and the price was being hungry, cranky, low on energy and taking naps (video cTGYIFOTPl8).

Keto wasn't that. And the moment it stopped being that is pretty easy to point at.

The plan was boring on purpose

My plan for the first stretch was deliberately small. I told myself this was about blood sugar, so I was going to learn how to eat the diet first. No calorie restriction. No intermittent fasting. Nothing stacked on top. Just get used to keto food and the keto way of living, and aim higher later (video cTGYIFOTPl8).

I did log everything, though. Every day, every condiment, in a free app. And I was peeing on ketone strips like it was my job, at least every other trip to the bathroom (video cTGYIFOTPl8).

Around day 18

Somewhere around day 18, I looked at my log and I was coming in 500 to 700 calories under my goal for the day. Sometimes a thousand under (video cTGYIFOTPl8). I wasn't trying to. I just wasn't hungry. I'd eat, I'd be done, and I wouldn't think about food again for a while.

That had never happened to me. Not once, on any diet, in my life.

From about that point on, every strip I peed on said I was in ketosis. Every single one (video cTGYIFOTPl8).

The carb numbers were tight. Most days I came in under 20 grams, and that's counting condiments and everything else. My lowest day was about 7. My highest day since starting was somewhere under 40, I think about 37 (video cTGYIFOTPl8).

Then it was the Fourth

Twice in those first weeks I let it slide.

The first was the Fourth of July. I was out with my girlfriend and I didn't want to be as strict about it. The second was a night out at a bar with my MMA team, and I loosened up there too (video cTGYIFOTPl8).

A lot of people starting out treat a day like that as the end of the world: one night undoes all of it and you're back on day 1.

What actually happened: when it was over, I stopped eating the carbs, and the strips went right back to the color I wanted (video cTGYIFOTPl8). Both times.

The way I thought about cheating

In the same video I put it this way: a diet is what an animal eats over a period of time. If an owl eats a guinea fowl once, that's not its diet. That was a meal (video cTGYIFOTPl8). So "can I cheat on my diet?" No, the diet has to be mostly ketogenic. "Can I have a meal that isn't?" Sure. But every gram of carb in that meal counts, and five or six fries is a very different night from a giant bowl of ice cream followed by a plate of french fries (video cTGYIFOTPl8).

What I'd tell you now

One day off didn't erase the work, and it won't erase yours, as long as the next day is back on plan. Two things I'd change about how I told this, though. First, the strips: in 2017 I tested constantly. By 2019 I was saying flatly that you don't need a monitor, that you can just eat to the plan and you'll be in ketosis (the Men's Health rebuttal; video 1JbK1_ClDmY). Both are me. A strip reads what's spilling into your urine, not what's in your blood; Laffel's 1999 review of ketone physiology and blood and urine monitoring (doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1520-7560(199911/12)15:6<412::AID-DMRR72>3.0.CO;2-8) is the background reading. The guide's pages on urine strips and whether you need to test at all go further. Second, "back in ketosis" on a strip isn't the same thing as "fat adapted"; that takes longer, and Fat Adaptation explains the gap. If you're on diabetes medication, a carb-heavy holiday followed by a hard snap back is exactly the kind of swing to plan with your doctor, not improvise. More in what happens if you cheat on keto and why am I not hungry on keto.

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