It’s the beginning of the year and many are looking to get started on the Keto Diet. With all the success stories out there including all the benefits, I don’t blame them. Last year, I joined the bandwagon. After what I felt like a million attempts at losing weight for 9 years I finally found something that worked. Now I have to tell you the truth, I was very skeptical that a diet that included cheese and butter was going to work but I can tell you now after only 6 months that I am about 10 pounds away from my goal weight. This is after losing about 50! So here is How I Started The Keto Diet…
Correct Keto Diet Information
The biggest challenge in starting the Keto Diet for me was finding the correct Keto diet information. You see there is only one real way of doing the Keto diet. To correctly do the diet you must understand what ketosis is.
Ketosis is a state your body is in. It is not a Diet.
To be in ketosis as understood in this article from the diet doctor:
Ketosis is a natural state for the body when it is almost completely fueled by fat. This is normal during fasting, or when on a strict low-carb diet, also called a keto diet.
Ketosis has many potential benefits – related to rapid weight loss, health or performance.
So what does this mean? How do we know we are in a Ketosis state?
Well the easiest way to know if you are in ketosis is to check your blood for ketones. You can do this at home with a ketone blood monitor like this one, or with ketone pee strips like these. Since I don’t like to be poked with needles, I bought the pee strips. I also learned that it does not matter what color you are in, if you are in, your in. Meaning you are in ketosis. There is an optimal level though, you can refer to the box to match it up with yours. If the pee strip is too dark you might need to up your fluid intake.
Here are some other ways of finding out if you are in ketosis.
- Bad breath
- Weight loss
- Decreased hunger
- Increased focus and energy
- Short-term fatigue
- Insomnia
How I started the Keto Diet
Okay so I did my research, I found out that the ketogenic diet has been around for years to treat drug-resistant epilepsy, especially in children. I have found out that it is safe when done properly and I have also decided what approach I want to take on the diet. My approach is weight loss. Whatever it takes to lose weight the quickest and healthiest possible.
Now you may be wondering what I mean by this… weight loss, I thought that was the goal? Well, that is where dirty, strict, and lazy keto comes in. What is the difference? Well, that is where you decide if you are going to do Keto the healthy Doctor recommended way, no corn, no wheat, no sugar, etc., or you are going to take the “if it fits your macros” stance.
For more information on Dirty vs Clean Keto I found this article explaining it to perfection!
Okay so basically clean Keto for me.
What I eat on the Keto Diet
When I officially got started my husband joined me. He has never done a diet in his life but he told me that if it included cheese and bacon it was doable. Done. I went online and found this list of acceptable keto foods and went shopping. When I got home, I realized that I had a bunch of food but no real recipes to make so I went onto Instagram and Facebook to look for help. I found so many people out there sharing recipes back and forth that I thought wow, this is going to be easy. The only problem was that when I started making these recipes, I realized that what some people called Keto was not on my “doctor approved” list. This is where I would decide if it was worth eating, and I started to calculate the Macros on my own to get correct numbers.
Keto Recipes
Here are a few of my favorite Instagram Accounts that I follow to get recipes:
You can also find some of my favorite recipes on my pinterest keto board.
Now on to the most important part of the Keto Diet…
Tracking the weight loss
Here is what is important. Tracking. If you do not track, you will not succeed. You need to plan and execute correctly to work. If it is not working you have written everything down to look back at and see why it is not working. on the Keto diet I have noticed that many times I was not losing weight but I was losing inches! So I cannot stress the importance that tracking is.
I started using the Carb Manager App to keep track of my macros. That was first. I did this for about 3 weeks until the carbs in everything became second nature to me. After that, I would not look everything up but I would keep track of everything in a keto planner that I made for myself and now am making it available for you to use.
I kept track of everything. I did not want to fail. I did not want to ask myself again after the millionth diet what I did wrong. I kept myself accountable. I write EVERYTHING down!
I learned how fasting takes your Keto Diet to the next level, and I planned them out.
I stocked my Pantry with Keto acceptable foods and made a list of all of my favorite Keto recipes.
Most importantly, I planned out all my meals for the week.
And now you can do it too! Get your Instant Download.
