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Started keto diet yesterday - anyone done it?

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In general I'm pretty disciplined so eating a certain way has never been really that difficult to me. The only time it's "difficult" is if I'm out and about and not at home where I can eat my normal food.
 
There are some meal-replacement shakes out there (think Soylent). I can post some details if you are interested. I rely on those when traveling (just made up 4 for this weekend for a quick trip).
 
purbeast0 said:
In general I'm pretty disciplined so eating a certain way has never been really that difficult to me. The only time it's "difficult" is if I'm out and about and not at home where I can eat my normal food.
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Clearly you have an abundance of self-discipline, but you did mention a sweet tooth. I wondered if you too might find as I did that there is a physiological component to that sweet tooth, and that avoidance becomes much easier the more it is maintained.
 
crashtech said:
For me, regular intake of refined carbs is what causes cravings; it's a vicious circle or positive feedback loop that can be difficult to escape, and easy to fall back into.
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That's it here too. Those and also cheese. I learned in coaching that cheese will fire up the same cravings loop as the refined carbs/sugars. It can be equally as addicting. This is a bummer because I do love my cheese. Oh wait..................
 
@skyking , that seems strange to me, cheese does not do that to me at all. On the contrary, it keeps me feeling full for a long time, and will make me feel vaguely nauseated if I overindulge.
 
Like anything else there are differences in individuals. I can binge on a loaf of tillamook. What's an ounce of cheese, right? Not too bad, but the second and third ounce later.........
I have a cheese strategy going forward. I got a wedge of really sharp and flavorful romano from costco, and will treat myself to some grated cheese on my cauliflower or broccoli. A knife will not touch cheese in this house, at least not for a while.
 
I hate pure Keto. It is too restrictive which results in diet boredom. I rarely meet people who can do it long term. They might do it for a few months only return to their former diet.

I think the simplest method is to up protein intake from where you are at (unless it is high already) increase fats in general and lower, but not eliminate carbs. Carbs are not evil, but processed carbs might be, if eaten on their own. Still, processed carbs in moderation mixed with fats and protein are acceptable and typically don't cause ravenous hunger.

Example: Eating bread alone will cause you to want more and more of it, easily eating more than your body needs. Processed carbs do this when they are laced with sugar or have no protein and fat mixed with them.

Example 2: Having buns on your burger is totally fine, as the protein and and fat mixed with the burgers won't typically cause you to be ravenously hungry after. The carbs are processed slower.

Both examples are processed carbs, but it is how you combine them that determines your body's response to them.

Of course, before someone says "Everyone is different!" Indeed, everyone IS different. But we are more alike than we are different.

If you do any type of endurance exercise, you typically want carbs in your diet. Although there are a few people who can somehow maintain their athleticism on keto, it seems to be rare. If it works, great, but most of the time it doesn't. If you just sit around, lift weights a few times a week and no cardio, keto works great. There is very little need for dietary carbohydrates in that situation as the body will create what it needs via glucose-neogenesis.
 
Yesterday when I weighed myself I was down to 200.4. That's the lowest weight I have been in a long time. The thing is I haven't really lost much strength at all. The only notiecable lift that I am doing lighter on right now is my incline barbell bench press. I was doing 225lbs 7-8 times before starting this. Now I can do it like 4-5. But this also came at a time after I changed up my workout a little bit and took it easy one week because my shoulder was tweaked.

Other than that, pretty much everything has stayed the same as far as how much weight I can put up. Maybe stuff is a tad harder now for some exercises, but overall it's pretty much stayed the same. I've gone down a full belt loop and am starting to see more cuts again in my stomach. I think I'm only going to continue to do this until my vacation in 2 weeks and will see if I stick with it when I get back.

My cravings are pretty much fully gone at this point though. I haven't had any solid cheat days, although I did have a mini cheesecake last weekend that my buddies wife made. It was super sweet but good too. Then on Valentines Day I had a desert too. But other than that I have pretty much stuck under 40-50g a day of NET carbs.
 
Nice to hear that it's working for you! One of the things that stuck me when doing LCHF is how incredibly sweet dessert-type things taste once you've been away from them for a while.

I haven't had any significant trouble complying with a low-carb diet and it's been nearly a year, though I'll admit it's tough do pure keto all the time, and I don't really try to do that all the time.
 
Here is my 3-month keto experience before I got married in a nutshell:

The awesome - I lost a few pounds and toned up quite well. Had tons of energy and mental focus all the time. Salt had no effect on me, and neither did caffeine. My hair and skin became much softer due to the higher oil intake. My extreme sensitivity to loud sounds went away actually, which was an absolute blessing to me (I can now listen to music again). Cravings for anything sugar, which are already pretty low to me, disappeared. You just don't crave carbs. Overall it was amazing.

The not so awesome - The diet requires a lot of preparation. Keto flu was vicious, albeit short lived. There's also an intestinal flora change that occurs in the first few days which will make your stomach feel upset at the beginning, but it goes away. I love beer and you just can't have that while on keto. Carb based diets have significantly higher variety and availability in fiber. I really, really had to purpose eating high fiber keto-friendly foods like avocado regularly, and as much as I love avocado, it can get old. And, uhh, I'll say it again, but no beer. 🙁

I did go back to my lean meat, fruit, and vegetable heavy diet, but I consider the experience to be really cool. It's a very, very effective diet that works, and it limits your ability to eat fast food and other junk. It creates an extremely stable blood sugar environment for your body, and it will work wonders for various different health conditions that affect the brain and pancreas.
 
I'm in it 12 weeks now, and it's getting old. I give it 4 more, tops.
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For a little inspiration take a quick look at the blog of Tommy Runesson out of Sweden. He’s been low carb since 2009. He posts a photo of his daily meal and occasionally talks about his progress. Lost more than 50% of his original body weight.

http://www.eatlowcarbhighfat.com/
 
So after almost 6 weeks with not many cheat days at all, here's my before/after pics. I went from around 210 or so down to 200 this past Monday when I weighed myself. I didn't lose any weight from the previous Monday to this past Monday either. I would think I'm maybe a pound slimmer or so now than Monday just becaus I've been fairly strict this past week.

week 1 - http://i.imgur.com/wX3mrS9.jpg
week ~6 - http://i.imgur.com/Ji3PmvK.jpg

So that's about 10lbs dropped on me. I'd still like to see if I could maybe get down to like 195-190 with minimal size loss to see if more cuts show, but since I'm going on vacation next week I'm going to be off keto for the whole week. But maybe when I get back I'll give it another go, it's pretty interesting to try these types of diets though and see how they change.

I definitely FEEL a lot slimmer and while you can't see a crazy shredded 6 pack, I can really feel it under a really light layer of fat. I also notice that I can see the fingers in my lats a lot more now too, and the fat loss directly under my pecs actually makes my chest look bigger than when I weighed more (in the pics) but I've definitely lost size and a little bit of strength in my chest too.
 
That's the deal with ketogenic, you have to protein load and still, your metabolism will try to eat muscle. I've dropped about 10 pounds of skeletal muscle mass over the last 3 months, according to the "in body" testing machine. I have no doubt that some of it was just idling along not doing much, but it is something to consider. Lots of folks seem to make the mistake of eating too much fat on ketogenic diets.
 
skyking said:
That's the deal with ketogenic, you have to protein load and still, your metabolism will try to eat muscle. I've dropped about 10 pounds of skeletal muscle mass over the last 3 months, according to the "in body" testing machine. I have no doubt that some of it was just idling along not doing much, but it is something to consider. Lots of folks seem to make the mistake of eating too much fat on ketogenic diets.
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This doesn't jive with my knowledge of LCHF or keto diets at all, especially head-to-head against other types of diets. If people are experiencing excessive muscle wasting on LCHF, it's because they are too restrictive on calories, have a medication issue, an underlying metabolic problem, or some sort of insult to the body's muscle tissue.
 
The only real strength loss I noticed was when lifting the heavier weights, and stuff just felt "harder" but that could also be because just having less carbs.

Like before I started I could do 225lbs on incline barbell press like 6-8 times. Now I can only do it like 4 times. And when I do 205lbs 8x it feels harder than before for sure.

Squats went down slightly, but not by much. Like instead of doing 295 8x easily I will do it like 6x. But I'm also watching out and being careful about my lower back because I've always had issues and I just take it easy sometimes.

Shoulders my dumbell presses stayed about the same, maybe I dropped 1 rep on my 2nd set when I do 85lbs 6 times. I would struggle on the 6th or only get 5 now. But even the 8 reps of 80lbs I usually did were noticeably harder to do than before.

And then I got things like pullups which I usually warm up doing 3 sets of 8 free hanging ones when I do back, and now they feel EASIER to do, which makes sense in a way since it's 10lbs less on each rep.

So those are the types of strength losses I have been experiencing. Nothing major at all and that's pretty minimal considering I lost at least 10lbs.
 
4 weeks is not long enough to fully adapt, there are very few quality studies on the performance of fully adapted individuals.
 
The 6 week anecdotal evidence by the OP supports the studies I posted. I'm not sure what you are on about. I'm actually doing a keto diet, the OP is too. he noticed strength differences, I did too.
 
I didn't notice as much strength loss as I have in the past when losing weight. I'd consider it very minimal compared to what I've experienced before. But I mean, if I'm losing weight, I expect to lose some strength. Just like when I gain weight, I gain strength.
 
skyking said:
The 6 week anecdotal evidence by the OP supports the studies I posted. I'm not sure what you are on about. I'm actually doing a keto diet, the OP is too. he noticed strength differences, I did too.
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I don't have much motivation to have a disagreement with you, but if you really aren't sure what I'm on about, it's simply that the duration of most studies is simply too short for subjects to fully adapt to the ketogenic diet, and that anecdotal evidence, while convincing to each of us personally, does not evidence make. Add to that usually poor compliance to an actual LCHF regimen, a generally poor understanding of the health effects of the various fatty acids, and the wide use of unhealthy fats in prepared foods, the result is that there are few take-home results that can be accepted as gospel.
 
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