Difference between revisions of "The Ketogenic Diet: How I Lost 170lbs in 14 Months"

Latest revision as of 06:49, 18 July 2017

Author: Jeffan Caliarthan, July 2017

I have always been fat.

It's never been, "Oh, no, you're not fat! You're just a little big." with a pat on the arm and a kind smile. No, I've always been fat and there's no use denying it. I'm the one that you see coming onto an airplane and you think to yourself, "Oh, god, I really hope I'm not next to him." You see me sit down in a chair and in your head, you're wondering how that chair is supporting me. If I get on an elevator, you look at me and wonder if my weight puts us over the weight limit and the elevator will break down.

And you know what? That's totally okay. Whatever you happen to be wondering about me or happen to be thinking, I can guarantee you that I am thinking the exact same thing, and probably ten other thoughts to go along with it. It's the mentality that comes with growing up larger than everyone else and not being able to hide it.

In April of 2016, I weighed 533 pounds. As far as I know, this is my all-time highest weight. I may have been a few pounds heavier than that at some point, but when you have to go to the doctor's office and use their industrial scale to know how much you weigh, it's a bit hard to get an accurate measurement on a regular basis.

As of the writing of this article, I weigh 361 pounds, which is a loss of 172 pounds.

I suppose this is the point where I mention all of the hard work that I've done, how difficult this journey has been for me, and how proud of myself I am. And I could say those things, and it'd be partially true, but not entirely. While this process has been trying at times, it's a lot easier than I thought it would be. I thought that losing weight and becoming healthier would involve me going to the gym five days a week, getting a trainer who yells at me, and not eating anything at all. And I loved eating. I thought it was going to be hard work, and I could never summon the willpower to do all of those things at once - there was no way it was ever going to happen. And so, I resigned myself to just being fat forever.

In January of 2016, two of my friends started the Ketogenic Diet ("Keto") in an effort to lose weight. I had never heard of it before - around then, the huge diet fads going around were the Paleo Diet (where you eat like a caveman), and occasionally doing the Whole 30 thing. They told me a little bit about it, and I wished them luck, because I wasn't really at the point in my life where I was ready to make a change with my weight. Four months later, they had each lost a considerable amount of weight through dieting alone, and they said that it wasn't difficult for them. Obviously, I was dubious, but this is around the same time that I had reached my all-time highest weight, and I was getting a little desperate.

I believe that everyone who struggles with weight has A Moment. A moment where you realize that you can't keep living this way, and that if you do, you're going to die soon. Now, when you're in the throes of depression or have a lot of stuff going on in your life, you can't really bring yourself to care about that, which is totally understandable. However, when the stars align and Mercury is in retrograde and your great-aunt is visiting from St. Louis (or something, I don't think it necessarily has to be that complicated), everything comes together and you manage to find some willpower that you didn't know that you had in you.

To break it down, the Ketogenic Diet can be described as a high fat, medium protein, and very low carbohydrate diet. Here's a run-down of some of the terms I'll be using throughout this article:

Macros, referring to macronutrients

Macros refer to fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. Calories are determined by their macronutrients; if you tell me the how much fat, protein, and carbs something has, I can tell you exactly how many calories it has.

Net Carbs

When you read a food label (yes, you do need to at least glance at food labels on this diet), you'll always see something like, "Total Carbohydrates" with a number next to it. However, "Total" doesn't equal "Net". For the purposes of ketogenic dieting, you focus on "Net Carbs", which is the total number of carbs in something, minus the grams contributed by dietary fiber and sugar alcohols, which are processed differently in your system, and therefore do not affect your ketone level.

Ketones & Ketosis

Ketones are produced by the liver when you starve your body of carbs, forcing your body into a state of ketosis (which is how the diet gets its name).

Now, I know that it may seem complicated at first, but I promise you that it's really, really easy to get going on this. Armed with this information, let's dive into what the Ketogenic Diet is!

I'm sure you've always heard that fat is okay in moderation, protein keeps you full, and carbs give you energy. For the normal person, this is true. However, we flip everything on its head when you do this diet. You want to get your body into a state of Ketosis, so your body utilizes fat instead of carbohydrates for energy. You do this by ingesting less than 20g of net carbs in a 24-hour period. For reference, a standard slice of white bread has 15g of net carbs - as you'll soon discover on this diet, everything has carbs.

Now, don't run away quite yet. I know it's a little scary hearing how many carbs are in the things that you love to eat. It is difficult to get started, don't get me wrong, but once you get the hang of it, everything becomes so much easier.

When I started this diet, all I focused on was keeping the amount of carbs I ate below 20g a day. Doing just this for the first three months, I lost 75lbs. However, after that, I started plateauing - I kept doing the same things, but no weight was coming off. To combat this, I introduced a macro calculator into my life.

Essentially, a macro calculator takes information like your your height, weight, and activity level, as well as your desired goal weight and how quickly you want to get there, and gives you the number of macros you need to accomplish this. This is where the food scale comes in (I know, I wasn't thrilled and I'm still not thrilled about weighing everything I eat). Once you have your macros, there are a bunch of apps out there that you can use to track your intake throughout the day.

My recommended Keto Calculator: https://www.ruled.me/keto-calculator/

After I started closely monitoring my macros, I started losing weight again. It was difficult to do this, because you're weighing out 28g of peanuts and then eating them and still wanting more. That's where the willpower comes in. You're not necessarily starving yourself, because you still eat a lot, and you can still feel full, but you definitely can't snack all the time.

Some general Keto tips:

Avoid "Sugar Free" candies especially chocolate.

The main ingredient in most "sugar free" candy is malitol, which does a fantastic job of replicating the taste of actual sugar, so it tastes great. The only problem is 30 minutes later when everything in your body has turned to liquid and you're sitting on a toilet for two hours. It's not worth it, kids. There is chocolate out there that you can have - look for brands like Lily's Chocolate, which is sweetened with stevia and tastes amazing.

Google Is Your Friend!

You can literally just type "How many carbs are in carrots" and you'll find out. I have no qualms about doing this when shopping at the grocery store.

View carbs as an allergy.

This helped me more than I can really explain. I'm not someone that has a food allergy, but I view carbs as something that I'm allergic to. Essentially, if I ingest carbs, the reaction I have is gaining weight, and I don't want that.

Have cheat days.

Girl, I can go hard on cheat days. However, if you're like me, it's like opening flood gates. I can't just have a doughnut or a slice of pizza. No, I'm eating a dozen doughnuts and eating an entire pizza. Having cheat days is fine - they're good for your sanity and let's face it, pizza and doughnuts are awesome. You just can't cheat too often! On this diet, eating a large amount of carbs (above 20g) kicks you out of ketosis, so you'll go back to eating those carbs. It'll take your body about 2-3 days of low carb to get back into ketosis, and then another 3-4 days after that to burn off the weight you gained from eating that pizza and those doughnuts. Remember that if you have a cheat day, you're gonna be working for a week to get back to where you were.

Question: What about my cholesterol and my heart?

Isn't eating all that meat and cheese bad for you? Personally, I've never had any issues with heart disease or high cholesterol or anything else. I was relatively lucky in that regard - I was just fat, with very few of the complications that come with it. This diet has not had any impact on my cholesterol or anything like that.

Right now, I'm in the middle of my journey on Keto. I have only been focusing on the dieting aspect, and haven't introduced anything else into my life to help lose weight. The first 170 pounds came off with very little effort on my part - yes, there was a great amount of willpower involved, but it wasn't that difficult because I was seeing results that I never thought would be possible.

The next step for me is to introduce exercise into my life. I've recently purchased a Fitbit and I love it, and I'm trying to reach my step goals for the day, because I think that's a solid way of introducing some kind of exercise into my life without putting in too much effort. Eventually I'm going to start hitting the gym and actually doing exercises, which I know I'm probably going to hate, but I really enjoy seeing who I am beneath all of this excess fat, and I want to be the person I've always wanted to be.

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to contact me. I've already spoken with several members about this diet and my journey, and I'm happy to talk to anyone who's interested!

(As a note, I am not a doctor, nor am I any kind of health care professional. All of the information presented in this article is based on opinion and some light research on my part. While I have had very positive results on this diet, not everyone has the same reaction. You should definitely consult your doctor before attempting any kind of lifestyle change.)