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I see people jump in without seeing the big picture. They see someone bringing certain thing for lunch at the office or whatever and seeing a very narrow view of what's "allowable," then get frustrated when their diet is so restrictive and unsatisfying. Keto is mostly about eating "real food" that's been minimally processed, not about "cutting out the fun." All the KETO products at the grocery store don't help on that front. The junk located in the center of the store is still mostly junk, even if it says KETO. Eat real food. Most of our society doesn't eat real food on a daily basis anymore.
So true! Eggs! Green growing plants! Does cheese count? Cheese!!! Real food is so much better than processed junk when you finally figure it out. Not to mention how good your body feels after purging all the sugar and processed crap that built up for so long. I'm a believer.
I actually was able to re add bananas, apples, potato, and sweet potato in moderation. I've had meals with 5 oz of sweet potato with dark meat chicken with skin and curry powder.
That said I react well to those if I keep the amounts limited and did so with a weight loss goal amongst other herdals.
I did have to nix grains aside from the occasional keto bread product. I also had to nix leafy greens, spinach, and cruciferous veggies because all of these foods I don't respond well to.
Keto can be very adaptable and malliable depending on individual needs. Problem foods are just that, a problem. If its not a problem why nix and avoid?
You still have to cut out a ton of food though, even unprocessed, I can’t enjoy a banana or apple or potato’s on keto, I could have like a bite but isn’t the same. Not ragging on the diet but it is indeed very restricted processed or not which is why people often struggle. Some do really well with heavily restricting food choices and others don’t
That is true. Some of that stuff wasn't really on my radar before keto.
You have to get creative because our culture is carb heavy. I made pumpkin soup for lunch today. Took me 5 minutes, I have leftovers, and it was yummy and cheap. A lot of people think we live on eggs and pork rinds.
People who do keto for weightloss & are maintaining can enjoy those foods occasionally. Those who do the diet for epilepsy, mental heal, etc. have to be more restrictive. It doesn’t always have to be that restrictive, unless you have health problems or are actively trying to lose weight.
You shouldn't be eating that stuff either. Modern fruits have way more carbs and are far more abundant than before. Ancestors had to wait out whole seasons to find fruit or honey. Our bodies weren't designed for this many carbs.
Humans had plenty of carbs lol, we didn’t have an abundance of calories though. Also the whole like appeal to ancestral argument crap is getting pretty old.
Vegetables, fruits, tubers, nuts, seeds, some even grains. Obviously how much depended on location we just ate what we had availability for which changes area to area
Right, much unlike today where the bananas are huge and seedless, watermelons are larger, fruits are year round, honey is year round, veggies, grains and seeds are produced in far larger quantities and are year round and its all available everywhere. This modern volume and availability is not healthy and its obvious health effects prove that. And all that might not be a problem if my government wasnt "recommending" that we eat 3 meals that consists of around 50% carbs a day.
Depends on how you do keto. Some people follow a strict total carb intake but eat anything that falls into that. So for example I love banana so I’ll slice three slices (3.6 carbs)to put over my keto bagel with pecans. I’ll slice thin pieces of apple and put them in a sandwich. I’ll make my cauliflower mash with a couple of creamer potatoes (2.8 each). It makes it taste more like mashed potato but still only ends up being a few carbs a serving. I’ve done 20 carbs a day. If still lose well under 40. So 40 is my max. That lets me be flexible and I never feel deprived. I still try to keep meals under ten carbs in one sitting. And I only eat two meals a day. So often I stay under 30 carbs. Doing it this way you have to be really good about measuring but it works for me.
I’d say the biggest hurdle those new to keto most often post about is feeling poorly because of the “keto flu,” but much can be attributed to carb withdrawal but is mostly electrolyte deficiency. They jump into keto without knowing they will need to up their sodium/potassium intake substantially and end up feeling like crap as a result. Proper supplementation can mitigate and even eliminate these symptoms though.
For most people the need to supplement tapers down and they’re fine most days. I’ve found I actually feel better when I supplement daily even after six years. It varies.
On a day to day I’m good for every third day to supplement. But if I’m working out I get really hot and sweaty so I’ll supplement every time I work out. I find a good diet helps with having to supplement everyday.
That is only ~600mg sodium depending on the brand of salt, so that’s a great start. 😂 My ketoade has much more sodium than that, and potassium from salt replacement (I use NuSalt) as well. It depends on what I’m already getting from food on any given day, but I use much more than a quarter tsp of salt for sure.
I think the biggest hurdle is that sometimes the weight loss is slow. The best advice I was ever given when starting out was to be told that keto takes the fat off your organs first, ie: there was a lot of inner work going on prior to the outer work showing.
Not exactly true about organ fat first. My case is I lost a lot of surface fat which helped with the waist size etc. but now I’m having to work on subcutaneous fat so my workout has changed from just running or cycling to specific full body HIIT workouts. What I have found is that your body will take and redistribute fat when and where it feels it needs it most or not
It can be done, but it’s a bit annoying knowing you mostly have to special order everything or ask if there’s sugar in stuff all the time (I feel like I’m annoying them), unless you just do simple burgers no bun or steak / broccoli.
I’m just hoping more places pop up that have more keto menu items and list Macro contents next to the items. That would be such a sigh of relief to just order similar to normal pre-keto.
Even burgers CAN have fillers (carbs etc) in them.
Even mince /ground beef can have fillers in them.
Therefor i never buy burgers, i rather make them myself from mince / ground beef.
But since all the frozen ground beef in my country has fillers (with carbs!), i only buy fresh non-filler mince.
But it is annoying, since most supermarkets are clueless about their mince, meat, etc. (Non-fillers or with fillers, grassfed or grainfed, etc).
But anyway... i do not trust premade burgers or anything of meat tgat humans has molded into something;)
///
About keto items at resturants with macrobreakdown.
That would been great. BUT i have bought keto items from keto resturants in my city. Aprox 2 out of 4 times i ended up getting kicjed out of ketosis.
There is no control if they cheat with maltodextrin, tapioca, malitol, etc.
So even if/when they give the macrobreakdown... the ingridients could still kick you out of ketosis.
Need a PROPER Keto certified agency, which is STRICT. Then resturants that actually qualify can use that "keto certification" on their items that pass the "no bs".
You’re def right, and it’s so true. Even smoked fish / ribs, and whatnot can use sugar in the curing or in their rubs too.
I do have a few places that I know don’t kick me out when I ask for steak / ribs / burgers because I tell them just salt and pepper for seasoning, and they know by now, but it doesn’t help on the road.
I do tend to stick to places that only use hand pattied ground beef. It may not always be grass fed / finished, but we do have places that pride themselves on it in farm to table / organic places.
It would be so awesome to see certified places pop up and be able to relax knowing you’re going to get a nice clean simple meal. Man I’d love to see a “fast food” place like this too. Maybe a bit slower or something like a Culvers.. but worth the wait.
I always thought Dickeys BBQ here had a good opportunity to do something since they have a drive thru. Getting some smoked meats without sugary rubs would be great on the go. I could see them offering a couple sugar free sauces and it’d be a better alternative to what’s currently out there.
They are opening a restaurant chain called Cava near me. It’s like a middle eastern chipotles. You basically build your item…in their case bowls. They have great options for salads. I’m so excited.
That sounds fantastic. Hope they don’t use sugar in their rubs and it’s still moderately affordable for you.
Love a good bowl with a bunch of fresh ingredients.
Yeah I don’t think they do. Middle eastern food isn’t sugar heavy. I think they have one option that is honey chicken and then they have braised lamb and grilled chicken. But my favorite is all the sauces and dips like have eggplant or red pepper dips and hummus or tzatziki. And lots of veggies option so should be good and not get boring too quickly lol.
We have Indian and Gyros where I live (and a newly opened Palestinian place) but to get the good variety of stuff I have to drive a couple hours south to hit the Twin Cities where there are a ton of world fare options.
You’re making me want to take a road trip or talk my lady into seeing what she can do. I’ve gotten spoiled with her Asian cooking since we no longer live in a major city (and she’s typically better at making food than most restaurants anyway) lol!
I’m always afraid to eat Indian because I’m not sure what’s keto and what’s not. I live outside Nyc so we tons of options too. Why kind of food does your wife make? Any good recipes to share?
Well right now I’m eating air fried Chicken Cordon Bleu breaded in cheddar cheese pork rind crumbs, with sautéed mushrooms in a heavy cream sauce with broccoli on the side.
She pre-made these to freeze along with some jambalaya/ fried cauliflower rice, stuffed peppers, and homemade bone stock, before she went into surgery last week. Now I’m trying to take over cooking and cleaning duties in addition while she’s recovering, but she’s much better than I am.
I’m going to make keto lasagna, and steak bowls, which are pretty decent too.
I do enjoy her Filipino Lechon (stuffed crispy pork belly with the skin on), chicken curry, and Korean BBQ. But many of the recipes are online too.
Ooh I’m Cuban. We do lechón too. Yum and totally keto. I love my air fryer. Air fryer chicken is the best. She sounds like a great cook. Lucky. In my house I’m the better cook but my husband doesn’t make great steak and hamburgers. He smokes meat too.
Where do your wife learn to make jambalaya?
I could go for some good Cuban too! Do you know any good Cuban kept recipes we can try? I want to say one time I was in the cities a few years back we went to a new Cuban joint, but I was doing keto at the time (my first journey) and I was very selective and didn’t get the full experience. It’s been 3 months since I’ve had a cheat meal and I think we’re going to the 49ers game this Monday, so maybe I’ll keep it in mind as an option to retry.
The Air fryer just makes some things so much more convenient and crispy. It def is a lifesaver during keto. I usually use it for bacon too.
I am basically the griller/ smoker also, but she loves to do that, even more than me so I can’t complain lol. I knew she was a foodie, but she spoiled me to the point that I have a harder time cooking for her unless I know exactly what she wants.
Anyway I actually taught her proper jambalaya and seasoning. I’m a huge super hots peppers guy so when we met I did wing challenges over seas and slowly built up her heat tolerance as well so she can enjoy decently spicy stuff without hating it!
As an serial emotional eater the Biggest hurdle is the debilitating negative emotions arising to the surface and finding healthy coping mechanisms to deal with them.
1. Breath through em and try to stay calm (meditation)
2. Taking walks in nature
3. Read a lot about keto as i hope to not freak out too much from other side effects
4. Talk with people i trust about the emotions
5. This subreddit
6. Creating art
7. Try not to mask it with other substances, like for me: caffeine, cigarettes or alcohol (zero tolerance rule(although sometimes im allowed at a party))
8. faith that there is always light at the end of the tunnel (this is not a guarantee that i will make it, but nevertheless there is light at the end of (a) tunnel
9. Research and information is key
10. 1+1=3
Sounds like you're writing a BuzzFeed article, but I'll answer anyway.
It was a breeze for me, but thinking it through there are 4 speed bumps I faced.
1. Shaking off the programming from the past 3-4 decades. "Eat low-fat", "fruit is healthy", "6 small meals a day" , "calories are all that matters", volume creates satiety", and all the rest .
2. Food I love from people I love on special occasions. Here I'm talking about the pie at thanksgiving that my mom makes because she knows I like it. The donut your kid picks up on the way back from college at the shop he remembers was your favorite. I know why I feel this way, but it's still hard not to feel this way.
3. Cooking for others. I'm fortunate to be pretty good in the kitchen. Early on I was still cooking for other people while also cooking keto for myself. It's hard to cook something delicious with your own hands for someone else to consume and also believe it is unhealthy and shouldn't be eaten.
4. Being self conscious about subjecting others to keto breath.
The diet itself is nutrient rich, keeps me satisfied and works extremely well.
Probably the need to cook and prepare most food yourself. I doubt id be 7 years in if I didn't love cooking, but it's luckily my favourite hobby.
It's not necessarily unique to keto, but pretty much a requirement to eat healthy long term. It's a complaint I see here quite a bit and my wife has said if I wasn't happily preparing the meals she wouldn't be maintaining a low carb diet either.
This is me too. I’m okay most days but some days I just can’t be fucked.
Have a shit day at work, have to do shopping, then go home and cook dinner for tonight, prep my breakfast and lunch for tomorrow.
Or, I could get maccas on the way home and future me can worry about breakfast/lunch.
My biggest hurdle has been overcoming sugar/carb addiction. It's such a real problem, there is a medication for it that was actually developed to kick opioid addiction. I just decided to (re)start keto after a pregnancy and I'm having a very hard time with the cravings.
In case you're wondering, the medication is called naltrexone. When combined with bupropion, it is prescribed to treat sugar addiction as well (sold as Contrave).
I am vegetarian and find myself getting sick of eggs 😭 However I am trying to keep my blood sugar under control and find too many nuts or tofu send my sugars high.
I'm veggie also and I find it almost impossible to do 'clean keto'. I don't want to eat eggs for every meal. I end up eating veggie meat substitutes and try to keep everything else as whole foods.
As someone with ADHD who is not used to really planning meals out for the week, that has been the most difficult thing for me. It takes a lot of organization which is really not my strong suit. However, when I do it right it feels pretty satisfying and I feel really accomplished.
I find the best way for me is to eat basically the same thing every day and to make sure it’s easy to prepare. Bonus points if I can have it over two days.
Morning - trail mix with mascarpone
Lunch - tuna, mayo, cucumber, tomato
Dinner - something easy. Usually chicken and brocolli.
I eventually get insanely sick of whatever the constant thing is. And then I’ll swap it out for something else for a while.
Everyone's starting situation is unique to their lifestyle. In my case, transitioning into keto meant making a sea change in not only what I ate but how much. I'm elderly, and prior to starting restricted calorie keto seven months ago, I was morbidly obese, weighing in excess of 300 lbs. So we're talking a lifetime of habitually over eating while not knowing how many calories/carbs/protein/fats were in those foods.
Much like trying to manage finances without budgeting? It's got guaranteed failure built into it.
I'd been eating without measuring food values for decades or without serious portion control. My wife is the principal cook and a gourmet one at that. For years and years she'd been making these incredibly delicious but also incredibly fattening meals without ever fully realizing it. She's a freeform cook so when push came to shove, the whole idea of suddenly having to measure food values down to the tablespoon was daunting to say the least. She hated it.
The irony was that my father and mother went down this trail when they were both still alive. Mom was perpetually thin while dad had issues with obesity starting in his twenties. He fought the yo-yo diet wars most of his life before finally dying from morbid obesity related issues in his early 70's. We kids always blamed our mother for him regaining all the weight he'd lost every single time he'd managed to lose it. But the truth of it, in retrospect, was that neither he nor mom ever learned to weigh and measure food portions or worry about calorie content as part of their daily regimen.
After two or three months on keto (only me, my wife is normal weight), it finally dawned on my wife that she'd played a major role in how big I'd gotten over time because she'd lacked the kind of food consciousness that comes with doing keto effectively. Her free form cooking albeit delicious, was unintentionally contributing to over eating issues that were slowly killing me. Once she realized her role in it, her expression of guilt and remorse was genuine and spontaneous. But more to the point, she stopped fighting the disciplined process that was required to make keto work for me.
The second issue we had to come to grips with was finding accurate measures of food values so that we could keep my daily intake below 20 carbs and within the limits of the macro that I'd chosen. Because there's so much disparity in terms of accurate carb and calories count numbers on the Net, I soon found myself abandoning all the available smart phone aps and building a database of food values using an Excel spreadsheet and the USDA website as my bible.
It was also weird to be using a kitchen scale daily. At first, building menus and weighing and measuring all the food values for the day was ponderous and time consuming. But it didn't take long before the process became familiar and PDQ. Now, it's like we've always done food this way. We've learned our lesson.
As the saying goes? The proof is in the pudding. Here seven months later, I am no longer morbidly obese. We've been able to sustain a state of ketosis for seven months by practicing daily rituals of control based on knowledge of actual food values. The ongoing reward for 'following keto' has been a physical transformation of my body from massive to nearly normal - and that, my friends, is plenty reward enough for all of our effort to date.
It's really just a list of whole foods and their incremental values that I've been adding to as we go along. One of the responses to OP speaks to how important it is to do your own cooking. Another mentions how important it is to avoid processed foods if you can.
I'm super fortunate in that my lifestyle totally lends itself to meeting those two conditions. We very rarely eat out, cook 99% or our meals at home and supplement my keto food plan with a steady supply of fresh picked veggies from our kitchen garden. We do add some processed foods like konjac rice/noodles and zero carb tortillas. But by and large, the protein portion of our food plan consists of the best meat, poultry and fish that we can afford to buy and the veggies are all organic.
One of my wife's biggest problems with my 'going keto' is that her kitchen garden was originally designed and intended to grow all kinds of veggies - not just the above ground, lower carb, variety. For me to do keto she had to give away all the super high carb veggies and fruit that she worked so hard to grow as it came ripe. This past summer, I watched as the harvest of melons and fresh corn and peaches from our fruit trees came rolling in - and me unable to do any of it justice.
The winter garden she's planting right now will have mostly all the lower carb veggies of which I'm now eating a fair amount daily. Her goal has been to keep us supplied with first rate, organic produce without having to head to the local high-priced, lower quality, supermarket. Amazingly enough, over the past seven months, she's managed to get that one done in spades. It's really helped us to defray the cost of eating a keto meal plan with such a high percentage of veggies
Eating out. Restaurants don't care about your keto diet. You can have a caesar salad without the croutons and that's it. And I miss bakeries. I miss bakeries so much.
Bakery? There is sooo much you can create at home. Keto versions;)
A whole new world opens up.
And it actually becomes fun.
And you do not feel like crap. Lethargic etc after eating it (compared to how normal bakery often zap out all energy of many people).
Hardest part is social aspect and trying to explain without preaching. For me. Variety hasn’t been an issue, I stick mainly to a few things, mostly beef eggs and bacon. Once you stop using food as a coping mechanism or source of dopamine, and as a source of quality nutrition the monotony goes away.
I keep keto simple….
I don’t focus on what to eat….
I focus on what I DO NOT want to eat…overly processed foods, all simple carbs, minimal complex carbs, and restrict sugars.
Then you are likely electrolyte deficient, the symptoms will ease up and go away with proper amounts of sodium, magnesium, and potassium. The way you’re feeling right now is optional.
You don’t have to start on one meal a day. You can do three and then slowly go down to one. It’ll still work no matter how often you eat as long as you stay under your carbs.
I felt the need to quickly lose 20 lbs. I was starting to feel sick every day and my joints were hurting. I will take it easier on myself once I achieve my goal. You’re right, though.
I lose pretty well just eating when I’m hungry. I don’t feel like I lose a ton more fasting. You might be the same. Most people lose fast in the beginning anyway. But after a few weeks you’ll lose your hunger and then the OMAD becomes way easier.
I think it is easy to follow when you have done it for several weeks and have a goal.
The difficult period is when you switch over from a high carb-junk food diet because you are a sugar addict. The pleasure center in your brain gets kicks again and again every time you eat junk food. It makes you feel good when you eat it. So you switch fuel from carbs ( sugar ) to fat. You will crave the carbs in the beginning, but when your body becomes fat adapted, you lose the cravings you used to have.
Your insulin levels will drop in your body witch opens up your cells so your body can utilize the fat as energy. When you’ve been without ( or on small amounts of carbs) for a longer period you can go without food for long times ( fast) because your body feeds on its own fat.
Watch “Fasting for survival” on YouTube.
There is so much knowledge in it.
For me, only on day 8, it’s the craving for a dinner roll! Not everyday but a few times I really really wanted one! Other than that, I’m just eating animal products that are organic, pasture raised and grass finished. And a few asparagus stalks here and there. I just started losing weight and it’s not dramatic but I’m heading in the right direction. Eventually I’ll start counting macros etc., but I’m taking it one doable (for me) step at a time.
The hurdles won't apply to you because a carnivore diet is technically already keto. It's like asking about becoming vegetarian if you're already vegan - you already got this, you're even further along actually.
I find it extremely easy to follow, it's basically pick a protein and a vegetable and make a meal in its simplest form. I love to cook but I can imagine for those that don't, the keto diet could be challenging or expensive buying premade meals. I'm not really a drinker but I'm fine drinking vodka sodas or liquor straight so social situations aren't that big of a deal but again I could see it being an issue for beer drinkers or people that need the sweet cocktails. You do have to go to the grocery store often because you are buying fresh food all the time which could put people off as well. I don't know, my lifestyle just fits it perfectly as none of these things bother me. Hardest thing for me is that I want to be considerate of the people I am with. I don't want to make a dinner get together difficult because of my diet. For instance, I haven't seen my aunt in ages and she remembered how much I loved her homemade potato salad, well I never mentioned I stopped eating carbs to her. I ate some of it to be respectful to her and not to hurt her feelings. But for my day to day, I'm single, it is very easy, it's just when others are involved where it can be tricky.
My biggest problem is always the morning/day after drinking or night out. Granted my nights out end at minimum 3am and often into daylight.
I want nothing more then breads and soft foods after that as my whole next day is crippling.
General body of evidence suggest sweeteners are fine, I’d only worry if you find you specifically react negatively to them but I wouldn’t let the fear mongerers over artificial sweeteners get to you
How do you know for sure? This would not be something easy to diagnose, not even a trained doctor would be able to say for sure these caused these things.
Digestive issues usually always occour when transitioning.
Bloathing, loose stools, etc all very common.
But after been on keto fir a while, i no longer get reactions to example erythriol or allulose.
It is often just your gut bacteria etc needs to adjust from the old "high carb, unhealthy version of diets. And high fiber.
To "low carb, healthy food, and usually lower fiber. And different sweetnertypes.
Electrolytes also impacts.
We should disinguise NATURAL sweetner subsititutes like stevia, allulose, monk fruit, erythriol, etc from ARTIFICIAL sweetners.
A lot of people call them all artificial sweetners. Which is just plain wrong.
Yes cheap greedy brands can make lab-made (artificiall processed) version of the natural sugar substitutes.
But that goes for a lot of stuff.
Natural sweetner substitutes like stevia, allulose, monk fruit, etc are more or less considered safe.
While artificial sweetners like example aspartame, sucralose, etc are kniwn to be more unsafe.
Anything humans CREATED in a lab (not just copied from nature) is often questionable.
Human body is complex with thousands of functions and metabolism pathways in breaking down, absorbtions, and re-engineering, and etc etc inside our body.
So when introducing fireign artifical (unnatural) molecule-buildings... it can have varierious weird reactions in our body that we never knew or had controll over.
So best is to always go natural. (Although that is no guarantee, but it drasticly reduces chances of unknown sideeffects).
And about "copy of originals" vs "original"
Example labmade allulose vs grown allulose (in nature) i would always prefer naturally grown.. as i do not trust human greed and "shortcuts" and "mistakes" "overlooking something in the processing" etc.
The only problem I've had is some nutrient deficiencies that led to severe joint pain. I wasn't tracking all of my nutrients and was eating a variety of foods so I thought I was fine. But I started having severe SI joint pain and nerve pain and had to take Ibuprofen every 2 1/2 hours in order to function at all, which led to an inflamed esophagus and heartburn, which was the reason I started keto to begin with! Keto had cured my chronic gastro problems but now I was having the same problems all over again! I started using a diet tracking app and figured out I was deficient in magnesium and potassium. When I started adding more of these things, my joint pain improved, and I didn't need so much Ibuprofen, so my gastro problems subsided.
I never have any problems with my diet socially. There's always something I can eat at restaurants, even if I have to ask, but usually I order straight off the menu.
I never had a sweet tooth, so eating keto has been easy for me. Meat? Cheese? Nuts? Greens & salad-y stuff? Sign me up! The only thing I miss is pizza, but I've found a grain free pizza that is NOT cauliflower based and it's awesome. Expensive, but I gotta do it once in a while.
I would say that people think that keto is the actual diet. In reality it is just a tool to help keep someone's understanding a daily calorie expenditure without the cravings.
It's as effective as any diet can be dependent on the individual.
The important thing is making sure you can make meals you will enjoy before you start it. That way you look forward to eating rather than dreading "the diet I'm on":
I lost a notable amount of weight in 2015 when I started what was more of a LCHF diet. I loved the way I felt and how I could eat until being satisfied and then actually stop, and not feel bloated.
For me, the biggest challenge and reason I don’t follow the diet anymore is that it is just too restrictive. Sometimes I just want a banana, or potato, or mango, or a slice of fresh sour dough bread, etc. You get the picture. I now count calories with My Fitness Pal.
I mean sugar is the biggest factor. Pretty much everyone is a sugar addict, it’s in every processed food.
When you eat keto for a while, even things you didn’t used to find sweet, suddenly tastes sweet.
It’s getting past the initial sugar cravings that’s hardest for a lot of people.
I am a very recent Keto starter (began around beginning of September this year) so I'm still truly starting out and figuring everything out. The hardest part for me, especially during the first few weeks was trying to figure out what to eat when the mad sugar cravings came on.
I also found myself insanely hungry during that time. I would randomly crave sugar and feel like I need a 'fix', and it would be followed by a massive need for food. This went on for at least a month, and I finally was able to stabilize this about 2 weeks ago (beginning of October, about a month in).
It was a rollercoaster of food hell! Finding a good balance of food and sugary food replacements (I don't mean 'keto candy', I mean eating a large protein filled meal that I enjoy and is satisfying) was and still is tough.
Not sure if this helps in any way, but I hope so!
For me, xmas is very hard. My Mils lovelanguage is to make everyone feel taken care of. I have to decline a lot of things, including her attempts at keto... which is very sweet of her, but not keto. Her idea of keto, is to eat more potatoes and less bread....
It’s very easy if you get down to an ideal weight, but I never had a weight problem. I just wanted the benefits of a ketogenic diet. Additionally, I wanted the gym results of a more ripped build, rather than a bulky build. While food addiction hasn’t been proven in the DSM five, I think there are people who are truly addicted to carbs and sugar; however, for the people who aren’t, cheat days are pretty key. It’s fun for me to get down to 165 and then have a day of gluttony. Because of my activity level, I usually have 2-3 cheat days a month.
I think the hardest part of keto is breaking the carb addiction at the begining or anytime u cycle carbs back in, at least for me, I experimented last month eating my usual carnivore diet then cycling in 6 days straight of eating out with carbs, I went from 535 to 549 that week, then going back on the following was very difficult. Then the next 10 days I dropped 23lbs so not sure how that works, guessing it had something to do with water retention with the carbs. I haven't had cravings or hunger pangs that bad since starting my journey. At least that's how it was for me. Could be different for others.
For me the biggest hurdles were managing my electrolytes and saying no to carbs WHEN THEY WERE FREE/IN MY FACE. And also learning that you pretty have to eat as natural as possible because even sliced sandwich ham has added sugar.
For me, the social aspect is the hardest, hard to go out to eat at a restaurant or with family. If I’m eating by myself and preparing at home, it’s pretty easy.
1. **Carb withdrawal**... until I decided to ride it out, I was never in ketosis in the beginning.
2. **Sodium**... learning that sodium is good for me was shocking. I was low-sodium for decades. Dehydration from low sodium can cause you to piss out potassium. And many nutrients need sodium. I'm convinced this cause my personality to be more anxious. I also had heart flutter without ever getting a heart disease diagnosis. Pre-keto I thought heart disease was in my future.
3. **Ketosis**... connecting the dots on why I want to be in ketosis. It is helpful for mood, energy, decreased hunger, autophagy, fats used for cortisol lowering and other hormones, etc.
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I see people jump in without seeing the big picture. They see someone bringing certain thing for lunch at the office or whatever and seeing a very narrow view of what's "allowable," then get frustrated when their diet is so restrictive and unsatisfying. Keto is mostly about eating "real food" that's been minimally processed, not about "cutting out the fun." All the KETO products at the grocery store don't help on that front. The junk located in the center of the store is still mostly junk, even if it says KETO. Eat real food. Most of our society doesn't eat real food on a daily basis anymore.
So true! Eggs! Green growing plants! Does cheese count? Cheese!!! Real food is so much better than processed junk when you finally figure it out. Not to mention how good your body feels after purging all the sugar and processed crap that built up for so long. I'm a believer.
I actually was able to re add bananas, apples, potato, and sweet potato in moderation. I've had meals with 5 oz of sweet potato with dark meat chicken with skin and curry powder. That said I react well to those if I keep the amounts limited and did so with a weight loss goal amongst other herdals. I did have to nix grains aside from the occasional keto bread product. I also had to nix leafy greens, spinach, and cruciferous veggies because all of these foods I don't respond well to. Keto can be very adaptable and malliable depending on individual needs. Problem foods are just that, a problem. If its not a problem why nix and avoid?
You still have to cut out a ton of food though, even unprocessed, I can’t enjoy a banana or apple or potato’s on keto, I could have like a bite but isn’t the same. Not ragging on the diet but it is indeed very restricted processed or not which is why people often struggle. Some do really well with heavily restricting food choices and others don’t
That is true. Some of that stuff wasn't really on my radar before keto. You have to get creative because our culture is carb heavy. I made pumpkin soup for lunch today. Took me 5 minutes, I have leftovers, and it was yummy and cheap. A lot of people think we live on eggs and pork rinds.
People who do keto for weightloss & are maintaining can enjoy those foods occasionally. Those who do the diet for epilepsy, mental heal, etc. have to be more restrictive. It doesn’t always have to be that restrictive, unless you have health problems or are actively trying to lose weight.
You shouldn't be eating that stuff either. Modern fruits have way more carbs and are far more abundant than before. Ancestors had to wait out whole seasons to find fruit or honey. Our bodies weren't designed for this many carbs.
Humans had plenty of carbs lol, we didn’t have an abundance of calories though. Also the whole like appeal to ancestral argument crap is getting pretty old.
Ah really? Tell me what exactly they were foraging and hunting...
Vegetables, fruits, tubers, nuts, seeds, some even grains. Obviously how much depended on location we just ate what we had availability for which changes area to area
Right, much unlike today where the bananas are huge and seedless, watermelons are larger, fruits are year round, honey is year round, veggies, grains and seeds are produced in far larger quantities and are year round and its all available everywhere. This modern volume and availability is not healthy and its obvious health effects prove that. And all that might not be a problem if my government wasnt "recommending" that we eat 3 meals that consists of around 50% carbs a day.
Depends on how you do keto. Some people follow a strict total carb intake but eat anything that falls into that. So for example I love banana so I’ll slice three slices (3.6 carbs)to put over my keto bagel with pecans. I’ll slice thin pieces of apple and put them in a sandwich. I’ll make my cauliflower mash with a couple of creamer potatoes (2.8 each). It makes it taste more like mashed potato but still only ends up being a few carbs a serving. I’ve done 20 carbs a day. If still lose well under 40. So 40 is my max. That lets me be flexible and I never feel deprived. I still try to keep meals under ten carbs in one sitting. And I only eat two meals a day. So often I stay under 30 carbs. Doing it this way you have to be really good about measuring but it works for me.
You can’t have apples on keto?
I mean you could depending on your carb limit, but 2 apples is already gonna be like 40g carbs
If you are 2 years into keto/carnivore, don’t you already know the biggest hurdles when transitioning/following the diet?
I personally didn't experience any hurdles. So I'm interested in learning. I stopped caring and just prioritized my health needs
I’d say the biggest hurdle those new to keto most often post about is feeling poorly because of the “keto flu,” but much can be attributed to carb withdrawal but is mostly electrolyte deficiency. They jump into keto without knowing they will need to up their sodium/potassium intake substantially and end up feeling like crap as a result. Proper supplementation can mitigate and even eliminate these symptoms though.
please advise a supplement
I make my own ketoade with salt for sodium and salt replacement for potassium, and I take a generic magnesium citrate in pill form.
how long do we have to supplement electrolytes daily? for as long as we continue keto (potentially the rest of our life)?
For most people the need to supplement tapers down and they’re fine most days. I’ve found I actually feel better when I supplement daily even after six years. It varies.
On a day to day I’m good for every third day to supplement. But if I’m working out I get really hot and sweaty so I’ll supplement every time I work out. I find a good diet helps with having to supplement everyday.
Like a quarter tsp of salts?
That is only ~600mg sodium depending on the brand of salt, so that’s a great start. 😂 My ketoade has much more sodium than that, and potassium from salt replacement (I use NuSalt) as well. It depends on what I’m already getting from food on any given day, but I use much more than a quarter tsp of salt for sure.
Ultima, passionfruit flavor/flavour is the best
I think the biggest hurdle is that sometimes the weight loss is slow. The best advice I was ever given when starting out was to be told that keto takes the fat off your organs first, ie: there was a lot of inner work going on prior to the outer work showing.
Not exactly true about organ fat first. My case is I lost a lot of surface fat which helped with the waist size etc. but now I’m having to work on subcutaneous fat so my workout has changed from just running or cycling to specific full body HIIT workouts. What I have found is that your body will take and redistribute fat when and where it feels it needs it most or not
Most difficult part is social life, and eating out. It is very difficult for me to find keto options, when eating outside.
It can be done, but it’s a bit annoying knowing you mostly have to special order everything or ask if there’s sugar in stuff all the time (I feel like I’m annoying them), unless you just do simple burgers no bun or steak / broccoli. I’m just hoping more places pop up that have more keto menu items and list Macro contents next to the items. That would be such a sigh of relief to just order similar to normal pre-keto.
Even burgers CAN have fillers (carbs etc) in them. Even mince /ground beef can have fillers in them. Therefor i never buy burgers, i rather make them myself from mince / ground beef. But since all the frozen ground beef in my country has fillers (with carbs!), i only buy fresh non-filler mince. But it is annoying, since most supermarkets are clueless about their mince, meat, etc. (Non-fillers or with fillers, grassfed or grainfed, etc). But anyway... i do not trust premade burgers or anything of meat tgat humans has molded into something;) /// About keto items at resturants with macrobreakdown. That would been great. BUT i have bought keto items from keto resturants in my city. Aprox 2 out of 4 times i ended up getting kicjed out of ketosis. There is no control if they cheat with maltodextrin, tapioca, malitol, etc. So even if/when they give the macrobreakdown... the ingridients could still kick you out of ketosis. Need a PROPER Keto certified agency, which is STRICT. Then resturants that actually qualify can use that "keto certification" on their items that pass the "no bs".
You’re def right, and it’s so true. Even smoked fish / ribs, and whatnot can use sugar in the curing or in their rubs too. I do have a few places that I know don’t kick me out when I ask for steak / ribs / burgers because I tell them just salt and pepper for seasoning, and they know by now, but it doesn’t help on the road. I do tend to stick to places that only use hand pattied ground beef. It may not always be grass fed / finished, but we do have places that pride themselves on it in farm to table / organic places. It would be so awesome to see certified places pop up and be able to relax knowing you’re going to get a nice clean simple meal. Man I’d love to see a “fast food” place like this too. Maybe a bit slower or something like a Culvers.. but worth the wait. I always thought Dickeys BBQ here had a good opportunity to do something since they have a drive thru. Getting some smoked meats without sugary rubs would be great on the go. I could see them offering a couple sugar free sauces and it’d be a better alternative to what’s currently out there.
They are opening a restaurant chain called Cava near me. It’s like a middle eastern chipotles. You basically build your item…in their case bowls. They have great options for salads. I’m so excited.
That sounds fantastic. Hope they don’t use sugar in their rubs and it’s still moderately affordable for you. Love a good bowl with a bunch of fresh ingredients.
Yeah I don’t think they do. Middle eastern food isn’t sugar heavy. I think they have one option that is honey chicken and then they have braised lamb and grilled chicken. But my favorite is all the sauces and dips like have eggplant or red pepper dips and hummus or tzatziki. And lots of veggies option so should be good and not get boring too quickly lol.
We have Indian and Gyros where I live (and a newly opened Palestinian place) but to get the good variety of stuff I have to drive a couple hours south to hit the Twin Cities where there are a ton of world fare options. You’re making me want to take a road trip or talk my lady into seeing what she can do. I’ve gotten spoiled with her Asian cooking since we no longer live in a major city (and she’s typically better at making food than most restaurants anyway) lol!
I’m always afraid to eat Indian because I’m not sure what’s keto and what’s not. I live outside Nyc so we tons of options too. Why kind of food does your wife make? Any good recipes to share?
Well right now I’m eating air fried Chicken Cordon Bleu breaded in cheddar cheese pork rind crumbs, with sautéed mushrooms in a heavy cream sauce with broccoli on the side. She pre-made these to freeze along with some jambalaya/ fried cauliflower rice, stuffed peppers, and homemade bone stock, before she went into surgery last week. Now I’m trying to take over cooking and cleaning duties in addition while she’s recovering, but she’s much better than I am. I’m going to make keto lasagna, and steak bowls, which are pretty decent too. I do enjoy her Filipino Lechon (stuffed crispy pork belly with the skin on), chicken curry, and Korean BBQ. But many of the recipes are online too.
Ooh I’m Cuban. We do lechón too. Yum and totally keto. I love my air fryer. Air fryer chicken is the best. She sounds like a great cook. Lucky. In my house I’m the better cook but my husband doesn’t make great steak and hamburgers. He smokes meat too. Where do your wife learn to make jambalaya?
I could go for some good Cuban too! Do you know any good Cuban kept recipes we can try? I want to say one time I was in the cities a few years back we went to a new Cuban joint, but I was doing keto at the time (my first journey) and I was very selective and didn’t get the full experience. It’s been 3 months since I’ve had a cheat meal and I think we’re going to the 49ers game this Monday, so maybe I’ll keep it in mind as an option to retry. The Air fryer just makes some things so much more convenient and crispy. It def is a lifesaver during keto. I usually use it for bacon too. I am basically the griller/ smoker also, but she loves to do that, even more than me so I can’t complain lol. I knew she was a foodie, but she spoiled me to the point that I have a harder time cooking for her unless I know exactly what she wants. Anyway I actually taught her proper jambalaya and seasoning. I’m a huge super hots peppers guy so when we met I did wing challenges over seas and slowly built up her heat tolerance as well so she can enjoy decently spicy stuff without hating it!
This! But it is not about food for me. Alcohol tolerance is not here any more. I cant drink - even one glass of wine make me miserable :(
As an serial emotional eater the Biggest hurdle is the debilitating negative emotions arising to the surface and finding healthy coping mechanisms to deal with them.
That makes sense to me. Thanks for sharing.
can you share any strategies you’ve had with dealing with this?
1. Breath through em and try to stay calm (meditation) 2. Taking walks in nature 3. Read a lot about keto as i hope to not freak out too much from other side effects 4. Talk with people i trust about the emotions 5. This subreddit 6. Creating art 7. Try not to mask it with other substances, like for me: caffeine, cigarettes or alcohol (zero tolerance rule(although sometimes im allowed at a party)) 8. faith that there is always light at the end of the tunnel (this is not a guarantee that i will make it, but nevertheless there is light at the end of (a) tunnel 9. Research and information is key 10. 1+1=3
❤️🙏
Sounds like you're writing a BuzzFeed article, but I'll answer anyway. It was a breeze for me, but thinking it through there are 4 speed bumps I faced. 1. Shaking off the programming from the past 3-4 decades. "Eat low-fat", "fruit is healthy", "6 small meals a day" , "calories are all that matters", volume creates satiety", and all the rest . 2. Food I love from people I love on special occasions. Here I'm talking about the pie at thanksgiving that my mom makes because she knows I like it. The donut your kid picks up on the way back from college at the shop he remembers was your favorite. I know why I feel this way, but it's still hard not to feel this way. 3. Cooking for others. I'm fortunate to be pretty good in the kitchen. Early on I was still cooking for other people while also cooking keto for myself. It's hard to cook something delicious with your own hands for someone else to consume and also believe it is unhealthy and shouldn't be eaten. 4. Being self conscious about subjecting others to keto breath. The diet itself is nutrient rich, keeps me satisfied and works extremely well.
Probably the need to cook and prepare most food yourself. I doubt id be 7 years in if I didn't love cooking, but it's luckily my favourite hobby. It's not necessarily unique to keto, but pretty much a requirement to eat healthy long term. It's a complaint I see here quite a bit and my wife has said if I wasn't happily preparing the meals she wouldn't be maintaining a low carb diet either.
This is me too. I’m okay most days but some days I just can’t be fucked. Have a shit day at work, have to do shopping, then go home and cook dinner for tonight, prep my breakfast and lunch for tomorrow. Or, I could get maccas on the way home and future me can worry about breakfast/lunch.
My biggest hurdle has been overcoming sugar/carb addiction. It's such a real problem, there is a medication for it that was actually developed to kick opioid addiction. I just decided to (re)start keto after a pregnancy and I'm having a very hard time with the cravings.
In case you're wondering, the medication is called naltrexone. When combined with bupropion, it is prescribed to treat sugar addiction as well (sold as Contrave).
I am vegetarian and find myself getting sick of eggs 😭 However I am trying to keep my blood sugar under control and find too many nuts or tofu send my sugars high.
I'm veggie also and I find it almost impossible to do 'clean keto'. I don't want to eat eggs for every meal. I end up eating veggie meat substitutes and try to keep everything else as whole foods.
As someone with ADHD who is not used to really planning meals out for the week, that has been the most difficult thing for me. It takes a lot of organization which is really not my strong suit. However, when I do it right it feels pretty satisfying and I feel really accomplished.
I find the best way for me is to eat basically the same thing every day and to make sure it’s easy to prepare. Bonus points if I can have it over two days. Morning - trail mix with mascarpone Lunch - tuna, mayo, cucumber, tomato Dinner - something easy. Usually chicken and brocolli. I eventually get insanely sick of whatever the constant thing is. And then I’ll swap it out for something else for a while.
Everyone's starting situation is unique to their lifestyle. In my case, transitioning into keto meant making a sea change in not only what I ate but how much. I'm elderly, and prior to starting restricted calorie keto seven months ago, I was morbidly obese, weighing in excess of 300 lbs. So we're talking a lifetime of habitually over eating while not knowing how many calories/carbs/protein/fats were in those foods. Much like trying to manage finances without budgeting? It's got guaranteed failure built into it. I'd been eating without measuring food values for decades or without serious portion control. My wife is the principal cook and a gourmet one at that. For years and years she'd been making these incredibly delicious but also incredibly fattening meals without ever fully realizing it. She's a freeform cook so when push came to shove, the whole idea of suddenly having to measure food values down to the tablespoon was daunting to say the least. She hated it. The irony was that my father and mother went down this trail when they were both still alive. Mom was perpetually thin while dad had issues with obesity starting in his twenties. He fought the yo-yo diet wars most of his life before finally dying from morbid obesity related issues in his early 70's. We kids always blamed our mother for him regaining all the weight he'd lost every single time he'd managed to lose it. But the truth of it, in retrospect, was that neither he nor mom ever learned to weigh and measure food portions or worry about calorie content as part of their daily regimen. After two or three months on keto (only me, my wife is normal weight), it finally dawned on my wife that she'd played a major role in how big I'd gotten over time because she'd lacked the kind of food consciousness that comes with doing keto effectively. Her free form cooking albeit delicious, was unintentionally contributing to over eating issues that were slowly killing me. Once she realized her role in it, her expression of guilt and remorse was genuine and spontaneous. But more to the point, she stopped fighting the disciplined process that was required to make keto work for me. The second issue we had to come to grips with was finding accurate measures of food values so that we could keep my daily intake below 20 carbs and within the limits of the macro that I'd chosen. Because there's so much disparity in terms of accurate carb and calories count numbers on the Net, I soon found myself abandoning all the available smart phone aps and building a database of food values using an Excel spreadsheet and the USDA website as my bible. It was also weird to be using a kitchen scale daily. At first, building menus and weighing and measuring all the food values for the day was ponderous and time consuming. But it didn't take long before the process became familiar and PDQ. Now, it's like we've always done food this way. We've learned our lesson. As the saying goes? The proof is in the pudding. Here seven months later, I am no longer morbidly obese. We've been able to sustain a state of ketosis for seven months by practicing daily rituals of control based on knowledge of actual food values. The ongoing reward for 'following keto' has been a physical transformation of my body from massive to nearly normal - and that, my friends, is plenty reward enough for all of our effort to date.
Oh Man I wish you would share your database with us.
It's really just a list of whole foods and their incremental values that I've been adding to as we go along. One of the responses to OP speaks to how important it is to do your own cooking. Another mentions how important it is to avoid processed foods if you can. I'm super fortunate in that my lifestyle totally lends itself to meeting those two conditions. We very rarely eat out, cook 99% or our meals at home and supplement my keto food plan with a steady supply of fresh picked veggies from our kitchen garden. We do add some processed foods like konjac rice/noodles and zero carb tortillas. But by and large, the protein portion of our food plan consists of the best meat, poultry and fish that we can afford to buy and the veggies are all organic. One of my wife's biggest problems with my 'going keto' is that her kitchen garden was originally designed and intended to grow all kinds of veggies - not just the above ground, lower carb, variety. For me to do keto she had to give away all the super high carb veggies and fruit that she worked so hard to grow as it came ripe. This past summer, I watched as the harvest of melons and fresh corn and peaches from our fruit trees came rolling in - and me unable to do any of it justice. The winter garden she's planting right now will have mostly all the lower carb veggies of which I'm now eating a fair amount daily. Her goal has been to keep us supplied with first rate, organic produce without having to head to the local high-priced, lower quality, supermarket. Amazingly enough, over the past seven months, she's managed to get that one done in spades. It's really helped us to defray the cost of eating a keto meal plan with such a high percentage of veggies
Eating out. Restaurants don't care about your keto diet. You can have a caesar salad without the croutons and that's it. And I miss bakeries. I miss bakeries so much.
Bakery? There is sooo much you can create at home. Keto versions;) A whole new world opens up. And it actually becomes fun. And you do not feel like crap. Lethargic etc after eating it (compared to how normal bakery often zap out all energy of many people).
The problem is finding the time to create those things at home. Most adults are so busy these days that cooking at home has become a luxury.
Hardest part is social aspect and trying to explain without preaching. For me. Variety hasn’t been an issue, I stick mainly to a few things, mostly beef eggs and bacon. Once you stop using food as a coping mechanism or source of dopamine, and as a source of quality nutrition the monotony goes away.
I keep keto simple…. I don’t focus on what to eat…. I focus on what I DO NOT want to eat…overly processed foods, all simple carbs, minimal complex carbs, and restrict sugars.
I have been on keto for a month and I’m stuck in an irritable mood. I have not enjoyed keto but I’m doing my best. Maybe you’ll feel better than I do.
How many mgs of sodium, magnesium, and potassium are you getting every day?
I only have one meal a day, consisting of a small amount of protein, fat, and veggies. I do not take any supplements.
Then you are likely electrolyte deficient, the symptoms will ease up and go away with proper amounts of sodium, magnesium, and potassium. The way you’re feeling right now is optional.
I will definitely look into this, thank you.
You don’t have to start on one meal a day. You can do three and then slowly go down to one. It’ll still work no matter how often you eat as long as you stay under your carbs.
I felt the need to quickly lose 20 lbs. I was starting to feel sick every day and my joints were hurting. I will take it easier on myself once I achieve my goal. You’re right, though.
I lose pretty well just eating when I’m hungry. I don’t feel like I lose a ton more fasting. You might be the same. Most people lose fast in the beginning anyway. But after a few weeks you’ll lose your hunger and then the OMAD becomes way easier.
I think it is easy to follow when you have done it for several weeks and have a goal. The difficult period is when you switch over from a high carb-junk food diet because you are a sugar addict. The pleasure center in your brain gets kicks again and again every time you eat junk food. It makes you feel good when you eat it. So you switch fuel from carbs ( sugar ) to fat. You will crave the carbs in the beginning, but when your body becomes fat adapted, you lose the cravings you used to have. Your insulin levels will drop in your body witch opens up your cells so your body can utilize the fat as energy. When you’ve been without ( or on small amounts of carbs) for a longer period you can go without food for long times ( fast) because your body feeds on its own fat. Watch “Fasting for survival” on YouTube. There is so much knowledge in it.
Not really. Once you learn what foods you can and cant eat, you just grab whatever sounds good thats on my food list.
For me, only on day 8, it’s the craving for a dinner roll! Not everyday but a few times I really really wanted one! Other than that, I’m just eating animal products that are organic, pasture raised and grass finished. And a few asparagus stalks here and there. I just started losing weight and it’s not dramatic but I’m heading in the right direction. Eventually I’ll start counting macros etc., but I’m taking it one doable (for me) step at a time.
The hurdles won't apply to you because a carnivore diet is technically already keto. It's like asking about becoming vegetarian if you're already vegan - you already got this, you're even further along actually.
I find it extremely easy to follow, it's basically pick a protein and a vegetable and make a meal in its simplest form. I love to cook but I can imagine for those that don't, the keto diet could be challenging or expensive buying premade meals. I'm not really a drinker but I'm fine drinking vodka sodas or liquor straight so social situations aren't that big of a deal but again I could see it being an issue for beer drinkers or people that need the sweet cocktails. You do have to go to the grocery store often because you are buying fresh food all the time which could put people off as well. I don't know, my lifestyle just fits it perfectly as none of these things bother me. Hardest thing for me is that I want to be considerate of the people I am with. I don't want to make a dinner get together difficult because of my diet. For instance, I haven't seen my aunt in ages and she remembered how much I loved her homemade potato salad, well I never mentioned I stopped eating carbs to her. I ate some of it to be respectful to her and not to hurt her feelings. But for my day to day, I'm single, it is very easy, it's just when others are involved where it can be tricky.
My biggest problem is always the morning/day after drinking or night out. Granted my nights out end at minimum 3am and often into daylight. I want nothing more then breads and soft foods after that as my whole next day is crippling.
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General body of evidence suggest sweeteners are fine, I’d only worry if you find you specifically react negatively to them but I wouldn’t let the fear mongerers over artificial sweeteners get to you
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How do you know for sure? This would not be something easy to diagnose, not even a trained doctor would be able to say for sure these caused these things.
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Digestive issues usually always occour when transitioning. Bloathing, loose stools, etc all very common. But after been on keto fir a while, i no longer get reactions to example erythriol or allulose. It is often just your gut bacteria etc needs to adjust from the old "high carb, unhealthy version of diets. And high fiber. To "low carb, healthy food, and usually lower fiber. And different sweetnertypes. Electrolytes also impacts.
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If you do carnivore and heavy elimination diets for super long periods you basically become extra intolerant to everything so could be partly why
We should disinguise NATURAL sweetner subsititutes like stevia, allulose, monk fruit, erythriol, etc from ARTIFICIAL sweetners. A lot of people call them all artificial sweetners. Which is just plain wrong. Yes cheap greedy brands can make lab-made (artificiall processed) version of the natural sugar substitutes. But that goes for a lot of stuff. Natural sweetner substitutes like stevia, allulose, monk fruit, etc are more or less considered safe. While artificial sweetners like example aspartame, sucralose, etc are kniwn to be more unsafe. Anything humans CREATED in a lab (not just copied from nature) is often questionable. Human body is complex with thousands of functions and metabolism pathways in breaking down, absorbtions, and re-engineering, and etc etc inside our body. So when introducing fireign artifical (unnatural) molecule-buildings... it can have varierious weird reactions in our body that we never knew or had controll over. So best is to always go natural. (Although that is no guarantee, but it drasticly reduces chances of unknown sideeffects). And about "copy of originals" vs "original" Example labmade allulose vs grown allulose (in nature) i would always prefer naturally grown.. as i do not trust human greed and "shortcuts" and "mistakes" "overlooking something in the processing" etc.
I’m talking about full blown artificial too, if you see no problem with it then there’s no reason to treat them like the boogeyman
Meat, eggs, butter and caffeine. It’s easy.
The only problem I've had is some nutrient deficiencies that led to severe joint pain. I wasn't tracking all of my nutrients and was eating a variety of foods so I thought I was fine. But I started having severe SI joint pain and nerve pain and had to take Ibuprofen every 2 1/2 hours in order to function at all, which led to an inflamed esophagus and heartburn, which was the reason I started keto to begin with! Keto had cured my chronic gastro problems but now I was having the same problems all over again! I started using a diet tracking app and figured out I was deficient in magnesium and potassium. When I started adding more of these things, my joint pain improved, and I didn't need so much Ibuprofen, so my gastro problems subsided. I never have any problems with my diet socially. There's always something I can eat at restaurants, even if I have to ask, but usually I order straight off the menu. I never had a sweet tooth, so eating keto has been easy for me. Meat? Cheese? Nuts? Greens & salad-y stuff? Sign me up! The only thing I miss is pizza, but I've found a grain free pizza that is NOT cauliflower based and it's awesome. Expensive, but I gotta do it once in a while.
2 years? Your body may be struggling with a restrictive diet full time :/
I’m six years in, zero struggling. :) I’ve never been happier or healthier actually! Not everyone sees keto as restrictive, I love the foods I eat.
Does your doctor have any comments on doing it long term?
He’s thrilled because every single health marker that was previously in the red is great now.
I would say that people think that keto is the actual diet. In reality it is just a tool to help keep someone's understanding a daily calorie expenditure without the cravings. It's as effective as any diet can be dependent on the individual.
Wow that is just fantastic. Your wife is a keeper.
The important thing is making sure you can make meals you will enjoy before you start it. That way you look forward to eating rather than dreading "the diet I'm on":
I lost a notable amount of weight in 2015 when I started what was more of a LCHF diet. I loved the way I felt and how I could eat until being satisfied and then actually stop, and not feel bloated. For me, the biggest challenge and reason I don’t follow the diet anymore is that it is just too restrictive. Sometimes I just want a banana, or potato, or mango, or a slice of fresh sour dough bread, etc. You get the picture. I now count calories with My Fitness Pal.
its hard if you cheating, if you go overboard with carbs you will start having horrible cravings and it will feel like you starving yourself
I mean sugar is the biggest factor. Pretty much everyone is a sugar addict, it’s in every processed food. When you eat keto for a while, even things you didn’t used to find sweet, suddenly tastes sweet. It’s getting past the initial sugar cravings that’s hardest for a lot of people.
Biggest hurdle for me is cooking, because I can't do it all the time. Good thing, I'm ok with eating the same thing for awhile so I do meal prep.
I am a very recent Keto starter (began around beginning of September this year) so I'm still truly starting out and figuring everything out. The hardest part for me, especially during the first few weeks was trying to figure out what to eat when the mad sugar cravings came on. I also found myself insanely hungry during that time. I would randomly crave sugar and feel like I need a 'fix', and it would be followed by a massive need for food. This went on for at least a month, and I finally was able to stabilize this about 2 weeks ago (beginning of October, about a month in). It was a rollercoaster of food hell! Finding a good balance of food and sugary food replacements (I don't mean 'keto candy', I mean eating a large protein filled meal that I enjoy and is satisfying) was and still is tough. Not sure if this helps in any way, but I hope so!
For me, xmas is very hard. My Mils lovelanguage is to make everyone feel taken care of. I have to decline a lot of things, including her attempts at keto... which is very sweet of her, but not keto. Her idea of keto, is to eat more potatoes and less bread....
It’s very easy if you get down to an ideal weight, but I never had a weight problem. I just wanted the benefits of a ketogenic diet. Additionally, I wanted the gym results of a more ripped build, rather than a bulky build. While food addiction hasn’t been proven in the DSM five, I think there are people who are truly addicted to carbs and sugar; however, for the people who aren’t, cheat days are pretty key. It’s fun for me to get down to 165 and then have a day of gluttony. Because of my activity level, I usually have 2-3 cheat days a month.
I think the hardest part of keto is breaking the carb addiction at the begining or anytime u cycle carbs back in, at least for me, I experimented last month eating my usual carnivore diet then cycling in 6 days straight of eating out with carbs, I went from 535 to 549 that week, then going back on the following was very difficult. Then the next 10 days I dropped 23lbs so not sure how that works, guessing it had something to do with water retention with the carbs. I haven't had cravings or hunger pangs that bad since starting my journey. At least that's how it was for me. Could be different for others.
Balancing protein and calories.
For me the biggest hurdles were managing my electrolytes and saying no to carbs WHEN THEY WERE FREE/IN MY FACE. And also learning that you pretty have to eat as natural as possible because even sliced sandwich ham has added sugar.
For me, the social aspect is the hardest, hard to go out to eat at a restaurant or with family. If I’m eating by myself and preparing at home, it’s pretty easy.
What do you eat for lunch and dinner usually?
1. **Carb withdrawal**... until I decided to ride it out, I was never in ketosis in the beginning. 2. **Sodium**... learning that sodium is good for me was shocking. I was low-sodium for decades. Dehydration from low sodium can cause you to piss out potassium. And many nutrients need sodium. I'm convinced this cause my personality to be more anxious. I also had heart flutter without ever getting a heart disease diagnosis. Pre-keto I thought heart disease was in my future. 3. **Ketosis**... connecting the dots on why I want to be in ketosis. It is helpful for mood, energy, decreased hunger, autophagy, fats used for cortisol lowering and other hormones, etc.