Week 1
When I decided to embark on a keto diet, I knew that there would be a long road ahead of me However it did get a lot easier as I continued with the diet. The first week I took it slow. I didn’t have the proper foods in place, nor the knowledge of how to make keto friendly food to go all out at first. I simply decided to start to try to cut all carbs from my diet. That means I ate no bread, oats, or and cereal that I normally would eat from my diet. I began to notice a few things right off the bat. I noticed that I didn’t feel as bloated and full after every meal and I felt like I had slightly more kick in my step as well. Usually when I would eat a meal full of carbs I would come back an hour later craving more food but with this diet, my hunger subsided. Of course I always had the urge to eat sweets but these cravings subsided as I stuck with the diet. To curve these cravings I would just eat a piece of fruit. After about a week of cutting out all breads and sugars I had lost about 3 pounds. However, I have done plenty of research on the diet and from what I understand, most of this weight loss is from water. I am only guessing but I would say that maybe a half a pound of this weight loss was from fat. As far as side effects went, I really didn’t have too many. At first I was super tired all the time-probably because my body was getting used to adjusting to functioning without carbs. Soon after that though I felt completely fine. Week 2 In the second week of my keto diet journey I had a better idea of what I was doing. I had bought all the food I would need to do the keto diet the right way. All my body weight calorie calculations were done out and I was prepared to take the second week by storm. I made sure that I didn’t eat out at all as I was doing whatever it took to succeed with this diet. This week I decided to start exercising a bit more. I began walking a few miles a day but to my surprise, I wasn’t really that much hungrier after exercise. This was sort of a shocker to me. I continued on avoiding the sweets that I would normally eat. In fact I threw pretty much all of the junk in the kitchen. As I had though I did gain some of the weight back that I had lost in the first week but I am guessing that most of that weight is just water weight anyway. At this point I was slowly easing into ketosis. I had gotten to the point where I was experiencing some of the side effects that I read about that can come with ketosis. For instance I was starting to feel a sort of metallic taste in my mouth on and off. My energy levels were a little bit low but I kept on pushing on. Weeks 3, 4, and 5 Weeks three, four and five had their ups and downs. I finally got to the point where I achieved full ketosis. At this stage in the game I was pretty much just eating vegetables and meats without really any dairy and only some nuts and seeds here and there. My favorite meal probably was fried eggs. I absolutely love fried eggs over any other type of eggs. I could eat fried eggs for three meals a day and still never get sick of it. As far as meats went, I prepared a bunch of chicken for myself. I usually would grill up some chicken breast or I would oven cook it. However chicken is not all that high in fat at all so I had to switch things up a bit. I started eating more fatty meats such as steak and pork. Keeping a balance is important though. You don’t want to eat too much red meat because too much red meat is not great for the body over the long run. As far as vegetables I ate plenty of leafy greens and avocado. Man I love avocados. I ate one pretty much every morning and never got sick of it. At this stage in the game I was grooving. Before I reached ketosis I went through a phase where I was sort of in a keto diet funk. My energy was drained but it wasn’t super unbearable. I was just sort of tired. I began to exercise a bit more than normal at this stage of the game. I started to go for runs regularly and I even started to experiment with strength training. After one month the weight loss was even more than I expected. I lost a whopping 4 pounds in the first month which was a pleasant surprise for me. To be honest I was expecting to lose more like one or two pounds so four pounds was quite a shocker. Of course I think it is important that I pace myself here and don’t raise my expectations too much. After all this should be a marathon rather than just a sprint. Simply trying drop as much weight in as possible over the course of two months isn't healthy. In addition, whenever you lose a ton of weight quickly it can be just as easy to put back on since your body hasn’t adjusted yet to the sudden change. My goal is to lose 6 pounds over the next two months. Given that I lost four pounds in the first month, I don’t think that losing 6 pounds over the course of two more months will be that difficult to achieve. In fact, I think that if I stay on pace I might be able to lose more than that. However, as I said before, this is a process. I am not trying to lose weight as fast as possible. My overall goal is to simply to be comfortable in my own skin. |