The Fastest way lost weight and kept it off

Getting Started on The Ketogenic Diet

(My interpretation of it)

This diet was something I stumbled onto while doing some research on diets for dropping weight. This was something I had been struggling with for years. After spending so much time trying different trends and shakes I felt like I finally found something that would stick with me. To me this is one the easiest diets to adapt to and actually maintain for longevity. While it was hard at first getting adjusted and learning how and what to eat, I ended up finding I enjoyed it and liked the way I felt when eating this way. Even after hitting my goal weight, I ended up staying on Keto for another 5 years. It changed my lifestyle and educated me on the goods and bads of food. This is something you have to remember when doing this type of diet/change. Before you start you need to realize, you will really need to commit for at least 60 days for your body to truly adjust to the new lifestyle.

Let's call it a 60 day challenge.

So what the heck is a Ketogenic diet?

In short, it is where you cut out the "carbs" from you normal eating and replace it with eating fats.

If I eat fat, won't I get fat?

That is what I used to think, but there is a science to it that makes sense. I'm not going to really get into much detail to start but I'll explain later.

So how do I start? What do I eat?

Starting any type of diet or change can be a shock. Sometimes people over do it and only eat salads or skinless baked chicken and broccoli everyday until they burn out or just get tired of the hassle and return to their normal eating habits. Overall, people tend to overcomplicate things and add more to the basics and it just gets overwhelming.
What I did different this time around was just focus on one thing and one thing only to get started. Once I was able to get the hang of it and felt a good flow of what I was doing on a daily basis I was able to get a little more detailed on my specific diet.
So to start you off, I'm breaking down the 60 days into sections to help ease the transition starting with what I hear it called commonly as “Lazy Keto.”

Here we go:

Things you need/should do:

FIRST THINGS FIRST: TAKE A PICTURE OF YOURSELF AND GET A STARTING WEIGHT.
Bathroom Selfie or whatever, something you can refer back to in about a month.

Write down everything you eat. EVERYTHING! The biggest issue I have with people that I help out is that they overlook a lot of things when it comes to what they eat. (Example: Someone will get a lettuce wrap burger. They will write down the lettuce, burger and cheese but totally forget to write down any sauce (ketchup, mayo, mustard, etc)… which may in fact have hidden carbs!)

Buy a Multi-Vitamin - Since you have taken probably 40% of your usual foods out of your diet we want to make up a catch up on any deficiencies of vitamins in our diet - I get mine from GNC nothing special.

Start Taking Magnesium pills - This is good for your heart and good for softening stool to keep your plumbing working the way it should. I get mine from Costco.. again nothing special

Don't waste money on anything that tests or helps you get into Ketosis - There are strips that test your urine for ketones and pills that claim they will help you get into ketosis faster. Save your money.

The First Week:

Eat "anything" and as much you want as long as you DON'T PASS 20 Grams of NET CARBS
I know it sounds odd but this is adjustment phase and it’s actually harder than it sounds. As you look through your foods and start planning out meals, you will find that most likely a majority of those quick and easy to eat meals have a ton of carbohydrates in them. The first week is pretty much searching for food you can actually eat!
So how do we figure out what can we eat? We have to look at the nutrition value of each item we will eat.

All you care about at this point is the total NET CARB COUNT.

Here is how you calculate your NET CARB COUNT

Our bodies don't absorb fiber, so carbs from fiber don't count towards your TOTAL NET CARBS. So you subtract Dietary Fiber from your Total Carbohydrate and that gives you your TOTAL NET CARBS.
As you see in the example, I just ate 14 grams (Per Serving).. which means I have 6 grams left for the rest of the day. You have to make sure that you keep your Serving sizes in check. A lot of food companies try to trick you into thinking that things are low carb by making the serving sizes really small (Example. 1 Dorito chip is .5 net carbs, some people may think that is 1 Bag and eat the whole thing thinking it’s only .5 net carbs but they just probably ate 50g grams of carbs…. PSA, no you cannot eat doritos!)

This week is about discovering what kind of food you can eat. It's a lot of checking this and checking that and realizing how much sugar a lot of things have in it. Especially the things that are the easiest to eat.

If you have a smart phone, you can download "My Fitness Pal" and use it to look up food nutrition values. There are a ton of other apps, but I haven't used them all to recommend. If you don't have a smart phone, then you gotta use a computer to look up the nutrition. I also use the app to keep my food diary in there. NOTE* I don't use the my fitness pal goal/nutrition calculator because it's more calorie/low fat orientated so your numbers will be off (but hey, it’s free)

P.S.A. - My fitness pal and other apps use data that is submitted to them by users. Sometimes that data is not always put in correctly. Sometimes the carbs are off or the serving sizes are wrong. For the most part it is ok but check it from time to time.
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/

Try to stay off the scale. I know it's really tempting to jump on from time to time, but don't focus on weight just yet. Get a starting weight and then try to hold off for at least a week and half.

To help you get started this is what I eat (This is really general)
**Breakfast **
1 tablespoon of coconut oil (any oil is fine) to cook on
6 Eggs (Regular eggs - mixed into an omellete)
10 Strips of bacon (I buy the precooked one and they come in sheets of 10 so I use the whole sheet)
2 Slices of American Cheese on top
Lunch
Some form of Meat (Fish, Beef or Chicken)
Broccoli or Cauliflower w/ cheese or butter
Dinner
Sometimes the same as lunch (because I couldn't finish it)
or
Protein shake (Almond milk, spinach, protein powder, 1 teaspoon of coffee, 1 teaspoon of peanut butter, 1 tablespoon of chia seeds)

2nd-3rd Week - Possibly HELL WEEK

You have made it through the first week and you are getting a hang of what you can eat and can't eat. Probably missing carbs a lot by now. This is normal, we have been eating carbs our whole life and we just took it away. You will need to adjust.
So you may be noticing that you have been having to pee alot more than usual, possibly feeling weaker and maybe a slight headache or a light headed feeling. This is what they call the “Keto Flu.”
What is a happening to your body is you are getting your body to enter Ketosis
Our bodies use carbohydrates and our insulin to create Glycogen (sugar) in our body. This is our bodies prefered source of energy for all physical activity. Since we are no longer eating carbs, we are not refueling the tank they way our bodies are used to so we will feel the effects of this change. Your body will find a way to get a new source of energy go into a mode called Ketosis. Being in Ketosis, your body will create ketones to generate energy. It will generate energy using the body’s fat reserves and the fats that you eat (This is what we want).

Getting through the Keto Flu:

This is the make or break moment of this diet for most people that want to try keto. No need to sugar coat it. It sucks! Sometimes it lasts a few days and sometimes it last for a week and a half. It is different for everybody but eventually you get through it.
A Few Tips to get through this:

1. Drink Tons of water - Like I mentioned before, you will notice that you will pee a lot more than usual. Part of it is that carbs/glycogen hold a good amount of water in the body and since you don’t have it in your body, the water doesn’t need to stay and passes through you. Hence, you will need to drink more water.
2. Eat salty foods - Salts help retain water in the body and also helps with the low electrolytes in your body due to the water passing through our more than usual. (I like using chicken broth or pork rinds - both very salty)
3. Just EAT - Eating lots of fats actually makes your feel fuller than usual. It’s an odd feeling of having a food headache but not really wanting to eat what is in front of you.
   (Side note - Guys! Your muscle mass will drop noticeably because there will be no more glycogen flowing through your muscles so you will get "skinnier").

4th Week and on

Now that your body has adapted and is in "Ketosis" it's time to get more into the nitty gritty of how this diet really works. When I first started, I was eating a ton of meat and some veggies. While this is technically ok to lose weight, this is more like the "Atkins" diet. Over a long period of time, this type of eating is not good for you. The High protein intake makes your body more acidic to break it all down and the excess amount of protein not used actually gets converted into Glucose / Glycogen kicking you out of ketosis (or worse kidney stones)! Also, my fiber was lacking and the pipes were clogging up.
The focus of this diet is to eat more fat than anything. The proper formula is 65% Fat , 30% Protein, 5% carbs in your meals. Fat gives your meals it's flavor and it gives you the feeling of fullness. I'm not the kind of person that is going to sit there for every meal and calculate the weight of each piece of meat to make sure that I have the right percentages. I just keep in mind that I need to eat that fat.

When I fry up a steak or 5, I make sure to put in a good amount of butter to give it flavor and add a lot of fat into the mix. When I steam up my vegetables, I drain them and add some butter or coconut oil to melt within. Then when I serve my veggies, I add a slice of cheese on top (even more fat). See where I'm getting at? I noticed overtime, the more fat I ate the less I actually ate because I felt so full. Also in parallel, I was eating fewer calories because I was eating less. (*Important - I have found that BACON is the perfect balance of FAT 65% and Protein 35% meal... and it's delicious).

After 60 days have completed, go ahead and get on that scale 1 more time and take you last picture of the 60 day challenge. Put that first picture and the one you just took side by side and just realized that you did this in only 2 months... imagine what you can do in a year?
After your 60 days, you should feel pretty comfortable with keto, seeing some serious results and your understanding for food should be a lot broader. If you choose to continue with the diet, then it’s time to get a little more serious about your numbers (macros). Just worrying about the 20 grams of net carbs may not be enough now. You have to make sure your calories are within range of your goals.

I found this site to be pretty good overall:
https://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/
(i’m not affiliated with them)

So why didn’t you tell me to do the calculator in the first place!!??
Like I said in the beginning of this post. When you make major changes to the way eat adding in too many factors to worry about makes the whole process a lot harder. You are missing your old foods and having withdrawals and now you have to calculate this, measure that….etc. It just gets so overwhelming when you start that most people don’t make it passed the first 2 weeks. I’ve learned this from experience… The easier it is the better the chance people will succeed with the change.

So that’s it. This is what I did to get started and fine tuned as I went but continued to keep going through the adjustments. There are tons of details and things I discovered myself going through this but this will get you results and off to a great start (besides, you don't’ want to read a whole book to get the basics).

The Hard Parts:

Finding things to eat:
The most frustrating part of this diet is when you first start almost everything that is easy to eat on the fly has a ton of carbs and half of the fast food out there is less than filling without the carbs. Plus it's expensive! I found myself cooking for myself way more to the point where I was cooking everyday. I then created a system where I would spend a good chunk of my Sunday preparing my meals for the next few days so all I had to do was warm them up. Find your way and do what works for you. This is a hard adjustment, but if you really want it... you find a way. I WILL PUT A LIST OF FOODS ON ANOTHER POST

Family and Friends are experts:

When people notice you losing weight and ask what are you doing and you try to explain it to them... everybody suddenly becomes a nutrition expert. How you shouldn't do that and it's unhealthy, yet have no scientific proof to back it up. In short, I don't take financial advice from broke people and I sure don't take nutrition advice from out of shape people. When people ask what I'm doing, I just answer that I have stopped eating sugar and starches... you know... like what your doctor recommends. This is a proven diet and it is a healthy lifestyle. Originally this is an epileptic diet, people with epilepsy HAVE to eat this way to control the spasms. There have been actual scientific studies of people eating this way their whole life perfectly healthy. This is what sold me on the diet to begin with.

Wanting to cheat / Cheat days:

You are going to miss eating all those delicious carbs. Maybe somebody in the house cooks instead of you and "a little carbs isn't going to hurt." Maybe you are at a birthday party and all they have is carbs... what do you do? Let me explain what I learned about how our body works... I could be wrong but it makes sense to me:
When we eat sugars/starches, our body creates insulin to turns those sugars to glycogen. When we have an insulin spike it sends a signal to our bodies says "stop using fat for energy... we have GLYCOGEN!!" Glycogen is our bodies preferred source of energy and you have to get rid of ALL of it to begin to start burning the fat. This is why some athletes "carb up" before a race or any big athletic event or even lift. You body holds so many grams within your muscles and your liver. The rest becomes fat and the fat that was with the carbs still gets added to that fat. It is said, in order to use all the Glycogen in your body with athleticism only, you have do something equivalent to running a marathon. Most people don't run marathons daily, but people do work out.... so it will take you a few days to use up all that glycogen.... meanwhile all that fat you have been eating is being stored in your body. So let's say you do a cheat day on Saturday, you don't work out on Sunday... get back to the gym on Monday and do a decent workout, then you go back tuesday and do a mega workout... probably by wednesday you should have depleted all that glycogen and you are back into ketosis burning fat. That leaves Thursday and Friday in ketosis... and then you cheat again on Saturday? It only gives you 3 days of fat burning and 4 days of burning glycogen because you wanted a cheat day? You will still lose weight, but at a much slower process. Everybody is different and have different priorities... you decide if that meal/s is worth it. I cheat from time to time, I don't have epilepsy so I like to enjoy a meal from time to time. Sometimes once a month or like every 2 weeks... depends if I need to hit a weight goal or not. If I'm cutting... no cheating at all. (There are also modifications to the Ketogenic diet, TKD and CKD but let’s get through Keto first)

Losing Weight Vs. Being Healthy

With this diet you can lose weight with the craziest stuff. You could literally eat Pork Rinds for breakfast, lunch and dinner and still lose a ton of weight (yes you can eat Pork Rinds!)... but it is just not the healthiest choice. Losing weight and being healthy don't always go hand in hand (check the lemonade diet). I like to follow the guidelines of the Paleo Diet (Basically, if it didn't exist in the caveman days you don't eat it, the meats were grass fed (not corn) and nothing was milled), but it gets really expensive and somewhat becomes a hassle to follow strictly... so again, I just use it as a guideline. It is to good to be aware of what is going into your body though. Just doing 5 minutes of research on random things here and there has opened my eyes to all the craziness they try to get away with in our food. This is a slow evolution for me, I like eating certain types of food and it's hard to break away but I find myself consciously trying to eat it less and less. (Example: Using Mayonnaise for fat, when I could use Avocados. Both have tons of fat but the avocado has healthier fats... some things just taste better with mayo though.)

Standard Diet rules still apply

Exercise, eating fewer calories and a lot of other diet rules still apply to this diet as well (for maximum weight lost in the shortest amount of time).

• You want to eat your biggest meal in the morning and your smallest meal at least 4 hours before your go to sleep to really maximize your metabolism. But let's get real here, just trying to eat breakfast and get to work on time can be a mission on it's own and going to sleep hungry because I'm going to sleep in 30 minutes just isn't going to happen. If you are hungry, eat! Listen to your body. Again, I try to follow the rules but sometimes you just can't. If you make the rules impossible to follow, you will quit. Do your best.

• Exercise for 20 minutes at least 3 times a week. Easier said than done for some people. In my experience, if I'm not doing a group activity I just don't exercise. If I'm not working out, I'm pigging out!. I try to workout at home and I lose my drive about 2 weeks in... probably the same drop rate of every runner that you see running around your neighborhood after New Years Eve. Find something you like that physically challenges you but that is also fun for you to do, if it becomes a hassle you will quit. You want some muscle definition or when you lose the weight you will look "droopy." Remember, muscle burns the most fat!!

When you get stuck/plateau

You've been losing weight at a consistent basis and then after a a few weeks you notice you haven't dropped any more pounds. This is normal. That's why I say you gotta stay of the scale and check every so often and take pictures!!! Especially if you start exercising while doing the diet, your muscle gains may sometimes outweigh your fat loss. But for example purposes, let's say you have been on the diet for 6 months and you have been stuck at the same weight and it looks like you haven't slimmed down any either.
There are a few things you can do:

Caffeine: I don't usually drink any caffeinated drinks (I just drink water), but when I get stuck I drink green tea (hot) or some coffee (with Stevia and Heavy Cream - less than 1g of carbs per serving). The caffeine and heat get your heart rate up and gets me sweating. It's like a mini-workout while eating.

Cayenne Pepper: I add this to my hot wing sauce to make even spicier (nose running greatness). Again, it makes me really hot and I start sweating just by eating it. This stuff has alot of natural fat burning properties to it. It is one of the main ingredients of the lemonade diet because of that.

Fast for a day: There we days when I had a little more extra fat on my body that I would sometimes forget to eat. I would be so deep in ketosis fat burning mode, that my body was just feeding of the reserves on my body. I would get so caught up in the day and get home and realize I didn't eat but I truly wasn't hungry. I would never force myself to voluntarily not eat, but sometimes your body has what is needs and doesn't send the signals to say... Hey! Feed me! It has happened to me two/three times in the year and it hasn't happened lately, so don't think this is something that I did often. I strongly follow the rule of, if I'm hungry...eat!!

Fat Fast: I've never done this so I don't know how effective it is, but I've seen it suggested a few times. It's kinda a fast but you are eating pure fats with minimal protein. Things like heavy creavy, sugar free whipping cream and I've even seen people just eat Fat Bombs (so many different recipes on google)

The Atkins/Low Carb diet foods

When I took out the carbs, I really missed them. I wanted Chocolate, rice, potatoes... bread to make a freaking sandwich. You start looking at these "Low Carb" options. Gluten free, 0 Carb formula, shirataki Noodles, etc.... they all taste like crap to me. And to top it off, they are expensive as hell. So you are paying more money to eat food that taste like junk, I pass. If it helps you get through the rough missing carbs stages, go for it it. You gotta ask yourself how can some of these products be "sugar free."
I've found that there are a few alternatives to sugar - high fructose corn syrup, aspstarme, saccharin, sucralose and sugar alcohols.
Pretty much, they all kill you. Most of these things have been linked to cancer but still use them. Use it sparingly if you need to. You have probably been eating it in other foods anyways, but it's just good to be aware of what you willingly put in your body. I myself use stevia every once in a while to sweeten something up.
The reason I really bring this stuff up is because some people can be really sensitive in staying in Ketosis while digesting this stuff. You may read some labels and have it advertise as "0 carbs" then turn it around to see the nutrition facts and see 15 grams sugar alcohols. There is claim that you don't really absorb most of those sugar alcohols but some people have reported that they get knocked out of ketosis by consuming these type of products. I just stay safe and try to stay away from it. To each their own.

How do I know I'm in Ketosis

This is the burning question for anybody just starting. It's different for everybody. You could buy Ketone Pee sticks that measure the ketones that you pee out. It's not the best measure because it's testing the excess ketones in the body. I would say don't go crazy over it and don't waste any money that measures if you are in ketosis or not. I'm more concerned when my insulin spikes (when I eat sugar/pass the 20grams). I guess I've been in ketosis for a while now that I can actually feel when my sugar levels increase. I get a slight headache, a burst of energy and then I get really sleepy (sugar crash I believe). Just keep the carbs under 20 and your body will eventually hit ketosis. You just have to be patient.

What happens when the diet is over

So you hit your goal weight/size and decided that this diet/lifestyle is just not for you. If you start eating carbs again, will you gain all that weight back?
This is a yes and no answer.
When you introduce carbs back into your normal diet, you will gain your water-weight back immediately. You body will go back to holding as much water as it used to and glycogen will be your main source of energy again. You will probably feel a bit bloated for a day or so. So if the number of pounds/size really matter to you, you want to overshoot your weight loss by about 6-8 pounds (roughly what you lost the first week or so on the diet). That way when you balance back, you will be at your goal weight.
If you continue to eat like you did before the diet, you will gain the weight back but I've learned that once people kind of understand how food affects them they don't tend to make the same mistakes. Besides, you worked so hard to get where you got and hit that goal, why would you go and ruin it. I've gone without eating high sugars for a while now and I gotta say that things I used to love taste different now. I had a mental picture of how things tasted and then when I actually ate it, it didn't taste as good as I remembered. Maybe because I'm used to not eating as much sugar and the sugar overdose makes it taste funny to me.. I don't know... but I do know Ice Cream still tastes awesome so that's a weakness I gotta control.

What I Do in my daily life

I’m always on the go and my work schedule does not allow me to sit in an office so taking a lunch is not always an option. What I found myself doing was eating a really large breakfast (6 Eggs and 10 strips of bacon cooked with coconut oil and add some cheese) and then not eating until I came home in the for a super late lunch. I was so full through the day that even when I when people offered donuts, bagels or whatever, it was fairly easy to turn it down. My lunch would then be a some type of protein (red meat or chicken) with some broccoli or cauliflower and then for dinner a protein shake. Rinse and repeat. In a sense it is boring but I didn’t have to calculate every meal I was eating. I already had it saved in my app as usual breakfast, usual lunch and usual dinner. I wasn’t sitting and measuring everything I was eating and I knew what I was going to eat. Knowing what I was going to eat was also a key factor in turning down bad foods throughout the day.
Going to family events or being social, sometimes I would just eat before I go and be full. When the tasty things passed by me, it wasn’t as bad. For the most part there are always options for low carb. Worst case… a salad.

What Foods you can Eat

I will post this on another page because it is a long list

So this is it. It may seem kinda overwhelming at first but once you get the hang of it it all starts to make sense. You eat healthier, you feel better, you even look better, I think it's a win-win. I've helped quite a few people that I know personally get through the struggles of not just losing the weight but keeping it off. It really makes me happy that people learn that there are other ways to lose weight other than starving yourself and still be social while doing it. If you made it through this whole post, I hope this helps you get started on a journey of learning about yourself and what you are eating and how to hit your goals!

Good luck!!!
~billyjitsu~