A Keto Journey: Intro

I just wrapped up a "Trial run", during which I did Keto for 5 days, then did 2 days off. This wasn't exactly the plan, but the last week and change has been so emotionally rough that when Christmas came I wanted to treat myself.

So I'm starting over today, January 27th. I had 5 blog posts already, which I've since deleted, but I'll give you the cliff notes of what you've missed. This post is going to be fucking massive because it's got just so much to cover. The others won't be anything close to this. I've tried to chunk it up a bit.

An Intro

I assume if you're reading this we probably know each other. But in case we don't - hi, I'm Michael. I'm 35 and a web developer / writer in Boston. I'm sober / straight-edge, single, and I like long walks on the beach. I'm going to be recording my journey / experience of doing the ketogenic diet.

I have done Keto before (this will be my 4th time) so I'm not expecting any surprises. I'm mostly keeping this record a) because I need to track my food and weight anyway, b) I have reasons to track other things like sleep and headaches, and c) because someone in the world might find it interesting. I'm sure other people have done this, but I've never looked. Will this be better or worse, who knows?

Weight & Goals

Let me start by saying that I am not a large man. I'm 5'7" and my shoulders are on the slim side. My ideal weight for my size is in the 140-150 range. The first time I did keto, my weight was about 195. The lowest I got while doing keto was about 137.

This morning I was 182.4. When I began keto last week I was 187.8 - higher than I expected, but it just means I'll see more progress. When I stopped doing keto on Saturday I was 180.2, so I'd dropped 7.6 pounds in 5 days. That's expected the first few days of keto, because the first thing you shed is water weight.

And really, it's one of the things that I love about keto. If you, like me, have a degree of body dysmorphia, then you really rely on the numbers to tell you that things are actually changing. With keto, the numbers start changing and it feels like you have early progress and it's really encouraging during those first days when you need the encouragement.

In the left photo above it is February of 2018 and I am in a work retreat in San Fransisco with my coworker/friend Masa. Just out of frame is one of several wine glasses I've gone through. My shirt is struggling to stay buttoned. I am easily near 200 pounds. I'll stay that way for another year.

In the right photo it is early July of 2019, 5 months after I started keto, and at this point I think I'd stopped about a month prior. I had just had my appendix out (you can see the IV rash on my arm) and it's my first day back at work (at a different job than Feb 2018).

You can't see my gut in the left photo, but you can see how much my fucking face changed.

Typically when I'm not paying attention to my diet, I sit around 165-170, but it's easy for me to get higher because I'm a goddamn sugar fiend. I've never been much for soda, but I love snacks. Berries, m&ms, cereal, hostess cakes, tiramisu. Anything chocolate or sweet, I'm here for it.

My goal this time is to get down to 150 and see how that feels. I may recalibrate once we get there and go closer to 140, but that's still ~35 pounds away so it'll take a few months and should feel like a huge difference anyway.

Why Keto?

Initially, a few people I knew had success with it. Also, and this is something that it's tough for people to get sometimes, but the rigidity of it really works for me. If you're the type of person who can just have smaller portions and more vegetables, that's awesome! But I have such an easy time cheating in that system.

With keto, if you cheat, you're out of ketosis and have to "start over", and that means going through a couple days of carb withdrawl (what people call "keto flu"). Which makes you, at best drowsy, and at worse really headache-y and irritable. It's good incentive not to cheat.

I also, as mentioned, like the feeling of immediate results.

And finally, because you're eating a lot of fats and proteins, it doesn't feel like you're "going hungry" or depriving yourself. I often on keto have to remind myself that I need to eat more.

Those are all incentive enough, but this time around, I have a few additional reasons for doing keto, especially now.

1. I'm gonna do my best not to whine about it like I did in the last (now deleted) blog posts, but I'm going through a bad heartbreak and need something else to focus on. Why not make the goal "keeping my flesh prison alive"?
2. Quarantine / working remotely has been extremely bad for me. I'm very much a "do what I want, when I want" kind of person, and since my job no longer has an office, my day lacks structure. This makes it very easy for me to do things that are bad for me like stay in bed until 11am. I'm planning to use this to start building some better habits.
3. I've been suffering from bad migraines the last few months. I didn't have an injury or lifestyle changes and no other symptoms. I got some prescription medication that hasn't been really cutting it (and is bad for my heart). My thinking is that it's probably been stress-related. I never got acne, but when I was in my teens and early 20s, when I was stressed my body would break out in hives. That doesn't happen anymore, but there's a precedent for my body manifesting in response to an emotional situation. And there's definitely enough to be stressed about these days. *Gestures vaguely to the all of it*. But really, I never sleep or feel as good as when I'm on keto, so I'm hoping that will help.

Okay so what's the plan?

My first time out, I spent a lot of time finding recipes and trying a bunch of things and I got real into it. I never found a smoothie recipe I really liked, but a few things became staples. I did notice though that nearly every meal consisted of: eggs, avocado, sausage or steak or chicken, butter.

This time, I'm in a different place in my life, and getting into that has much less appeal. I'm also conscious that I could spread myself too thin, something I'm trying to get better at. So I'm sort of cheating. I've tried a few food delivery services and I've decided to use GreenChef. I did use GreenChef for one of the past runs of keto, so I know what I'm getting into with them. Their meals have been consistently a) the best tasting, b) the most inline with my needs and wants. They've also gotten me outside of my comfort zone a few times. I was never into pork, and a few of the pork dishes they've gotten me to make have become my absolute favorites. Maybe I'll put up recipes at some point? I'm still kind of vague on what this blog is going to be.

I'll also be doing intermittent fasting, which I try to maintain even when I'm not on keto. GreenChef will provide my primary meal for the day (lunch), and it'll be supplemented with some smaller snack foods through the afternoon (keto yogurt, eggs, fat bombs, pork rinds, jerky, avocado). Everything I get has 2 servings so odd weeks I do 4 recipes (8 meals) and even weeks I'll do 3 recipes (6 meals). It all works out, and I try some different things.

Macros

Okay, let me explain a few things that I'm doing with my macros.

• I always like to have a range, because if there's just a line I inevitably think "How far under it can I hit?" and that's not healthy. We'll be looking at a 20-24% caloric reduction so that I have a minimum as well.
• We'll stick with the standard 20g limit on carbs.
• I'm going to clock my activity level as sedentary at first. I want to get into doing exercising again (and I've got the equipment to do so), but I don't want to overwhelm my body with too many changes at once, so we'll roll into that when I recalculate in ~2 weeks, as it'll raise my required protein intake. (I'll probably move to recalculating every ~3-4 weeks after that.)

Those are pretty close to each other, so we'll run with those as being the ranges I want to hit. And then I'll round a few numbers because I'm neurotic. So all told we're looking at:

That's our starting point.

Last Week Recap

Okay so I had tracked for 5 days before, here are the basics.

What will this be going forward?

Good question, me.

So I'm planning every day to post an update that consists of:

• How much I slept
• What my weight is
• How I've physically felt
• What I ate

Beyond that, I'm not sure. Maybe a weekly digest? Maybe recipes?

I did decide during the Deleted Week to turn on Memberships. I'm not going to make a pitch here, I don't care if you sign up. If you do, you'll get email notifications when new posts go up, and you'll get access to Member-Only posts that you absolutely do not need.

Let me be clear that the Member-Only posts are just going to be shirtless photos. I'm locking them behind membership as a sort of content warning. I'm not imagining them as being triggering more than any of the maths, but I do imagine this blog to be seen mostly by friends / coworkers who may not want to see me in that light. But I do still want to post them because #bodypositive and also I think it'll be cool to see the changes over time.