Keto Diet: What, How, and My Experience With Weight Loss

March 21, 2022 by Sharon

Healthy Life = Happy Life

Working out and eating healthy should be a lifestyle change you make because you want to be happier and healthier, not because you desperately want to look like what other people expect. A healthy lifestyle can and should make you feel happy and energized, not stressed because you’re not losing what you thought you should in a certain amount of time.

There are many diets that guarantee a change and promise you a perfect body. The ketogenic diet is my personal favorite because, although weight loss is a high priority with this diet, it is not the only benefit. There are so many health benefits to this low-carb ketogenic diet, including: reduces or eliminates insulin requirements for type II diabetes, reduces inflammation, and decreases the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, and Alzheimer’s disease. These conditions or diseases don’t automatically go away because of keto, I want to make that clear. However, keto can certainly help.

Enough with all these facts about disease, let’s get into the fun stuff:how keto works, if it actually does work in promoting weight loss, and some tips and recipes for people having a hard time.

How Keto Works:

In a nutshell, our body's main source of energy is from carbs. I don’t want to bore you with the process of the breakdown of carbs and release of energy, but that’s basically how it works. Keto is a diet that restricts carbs which causes the body to switch from glucose (carb) to fat metabolism as a primary source of energy production. When the body sees that there is no carb reserve, but an increased fat reserve, it’ll switch to the use of ketone bodies from fat metabolism, a metabolic state where the body prefers to utilize fat as its primary fuel source (cue the weight loss goals).

In summary, when there’s no carbs for the body to use as an energy source, it uses your fat instead. This is a really condensed explanation because I didn’t want to bore you, but I will link an article that goes into more detail for science losers like me who are into this kind of stuff.

My Experience With Keto:

My personal experience with keto surprised me at first. You can skip the next two paragraphs if you don’t care, I will completely understand and will not at all be offended… Anyway, for the few, really few, of you that want to know my life story, I will indulge you with the details. I started keto for the first time about a year ago and was amazed with the results. I had a friend do it with me, and she was the health freak of the duo so I kindly let her send me detailed meal plans so I wouldn’t starve and pass out… or die. Anyway, because I was spoon fed a meal plan, it was much easier for me to follow the diet. I ended up losing 15-20 pounds in about 3 months or so. For the first couple weeks, I shed pretty quickly. Eventually, my body got the gist of the horror I was putting it through by not feeding it bagels, and the weight loss stabilized to around 2 pounds per week. This all sounds like rainbows and sunshine, but I won’t lie to you, it was hard. The first two weeks I was going through a sugar withdrawal, something they call “keto flu”. I was tired and irritable, even more than I usually am, and I had to muster up the willpower of a god not to shove my face in a box of donuts. Don’t let that discourage you though, after I got through that period of the diet, I felt energized and light and my craving went away. This diet might not be for everyone, but I can tell you first hand - it works. After my three month keto experience, I saw that I lost weight and I went to town with all things bread, pasta, and potato, which is why that was my FIRST time doing keto.

I’m currently in round two and it’s a little harder. This time, I have to do the diet myself which means looking up my own recipes and making my own meal plans. I also plan to slowly wean myself off of keto and back to eating carbs so I don’t gain the weight back, like the first time.

I don’t want any of you to go through the tedious research and boring meal planning, so I’ve decided to give you a plan that includes three meals for seven days. All this for only 700 dollars… just kidding it’s included in the next blog, I wouldn’t do that to my Temple Tape fam.

Before I give you food and meal suggestions, I just want to say that I am not a nutritionist, dietitian, or medical professional (yet). I’m just giving you suggestions that worked for me and will hopefully work for you too. So… no lawsuits if these don’t work.

Let’s start with foods that you can’teat, you’ll cry a bit, then we’ll move on to what you caneat.

Ideally, you want to eat less than 50 grams of NET carbs per day, I try to do 20 grams. You can calculate the net carbs by taking thetotal carbohydrates andsubtractingboth thegrams of fiber and the sugar alcohols. The remaining amount is the total net carb count. In the image example I provided, the net carbs = 10 - (5) = 5g net carbs. In this situation, there are no sugar alcohols, so there’s nothing to subtract. If the sugar alcohol was 2g the total net carbs would be 3g.

To help you better understand what this means, I’ll give you some foods you should NOT eat, and their carb counts:

One bagel - around 48 grams of total carbs
One slice of pizza - around 36 grams of total carbs
One cup of rice - around 45 grams of total carbs
One bowl of pasta - around 43 grams of total carbs
One role of sushi - around 65 grams of total carbs
One bottle of Snapple or Cola - around 40 grams of total carbs

The keto diet is dependent on fat consumption, but the longer you stick to the diet, the less fat you need to eat. However, you still want to make sure you include a fair amount in your diet. Otherwise, you are only consuming protein and very low carbs, which is not healthy and can kick you out of Ketosis because your body will start using protein as your source of energy. Because keto is so focused on the fat food group, it might not be healthy to stay on the diet for a long time. It’s always a good idea to ask your doctor if you can do this diet and the amount of time you should stay on it, especially if you have underlying conditions like high cholesterol.

Here's a list of foods you should and should NOT eat on Keto. I like the page @myplatebodyandmind that I found on pintrest and this is her list, you can check out her page too. You can refer to her list, but don't make it your Keto bible. I always check the nutritional lable for carb count and if there isn't one (like if I want to eat a banana but don't know if it's "allowed"), I look it up on Google. Just set your net carb limit, try not to go over it, and your set! You can even get Keto Urinal strips from a drug store (I got mine from Walgreens) and test yourself to see if you're in ketosis.

Good Luck!

Again, I’m not a nutritionist but I have done a lot of research on this topic. If you have ANY questions, feel free to email me at sharon@templetape.com and I’ll get back to you as quickly as possible. I’m always available for my Temple Tape fam <3

Accreditation:

Sharon Roubin is a nursing student at Long Island University. She is currently in an additional program studying to become a Medical Assistant. She plans to complete her nursing studies and continue the journey to become a Nurse Practitioner and, one day, hopefully open up her own practice. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas for future blog posts, please email sharon@templetape.com