After seeing so many people trying keto and hyping it up, I decided to give it a try as well. Most people say the first 7-10 days will be when most of the weight changes, so I wanted to try it out for at least 21 days to see what happens after the initial drop. I researched the keto diet and read up on how it affects the body and leads to weight loss. When the body is in ketosis, it uses fat for energy instead of glucose or carbohydrates.
Week 1: During the first week I did have a weight lost of about 4 pounds which I thought was good, but most likely water weight. I found this first week to be the easiest for me. I did not experience the “keto flu” that most people do when their bodies switch over from using carbohydrates to using fats. I think the main reason for this was because was intermittent fasting and eating relatively low carb for about two weeks by this point, so I think my body was able to start ketosis sooner than if I had been eating regularly.
Week 2: I was happy with the weight loss from week one, but things started to get harder this week. I continued to eat foods higher in protein and fat, like eggs, avocados, and leafy greens. Then by the end of the week, there was no weight change from week one.
Week 3: This was definitely the most difficult for me. By this point, I was tired of the foods I was eating and I really missed fruits like apples, mangos, grapes, and oranges. I tried out some different keto snacks from ketoconnect.com which were pretty good, but also required for me to purchase ingredients I don’t normally buy. For example, xantham gum was an ingredient for smoothies.
Final Thoughts:
I don’t think I would be able to live a ketogenic lifestyle. Some of the main reasons being family/social meals and fruit. I cook meals for my family as well, so it was not very easy to incorporate all dietary needs/wants everyday. Since some meals were keto and not everyone was doing keto, the amount of fat and carb combination led to weight gain for some family members. I also never realized how many carbs were in fruits and on the keto diet, I would need to limit myself to mainly berries, which although I do like, are not my favorite fruits. What I did learn was that eating low carb was not as hard as I thought and that I would incorporate it more into my daily life.
One of the claims of the keto diet is “mental clarity” which was an aspect that I was looking forward to along with “sustained energy”. While on the keto diet, I don’t think I felt either of these more than I usually do. I did, however, find myself a little annoyed and tired of having to look up how many carbs were in every food and counting carbs everyday.
The keto diet is also not something that you can do some of the time like intermittent fasting or low carb diets. Once you start to eat more carbs–more than 20g net carbs per day–your body will no longer be in ketosis. This means that your body will revert back to using carbohydrates for energy, so you’d most likely have to start all over again to get back into ketosis.
Have you tried the keto diet? How did it work out for you? Should I try again?
Thanks for reading!!
Rese & Ry 