Rebecca 's blog

The TL DR version? Before keto, I was fat, tired, and sick. Now I’m not.

I’ve been on a ketogenic diet for a bit over two years. I needed to lose 40 lbs or so, and did just that, leveling off after the first year. Recently, I’ve gained back about 10 lbs of “thesis belly”…got sloppy, now working on getting that back off.

I’ve been very pleased with the improvements in my health and energy. I don’t get the mid-afternoon sleepies or the pre-dinner crankies - I just crank along at a stable energy level. When we’re late for a meal, and my companions are freaking out because they’re STARVING, I’m just like…sure, it would be nice to get a meal in today, but tomorrow’s fine too. (I generally eat twice a day, but have been known to roll up to the Brazilian steakhouse after not eating for a couple days. Try THAT on Weight Watchers.)

And yes, my cholesterol panel is beautiful. I wish they had beauty pageants for cholesterol; I’d kick some carb-muncher butt.

I do find it necessary to supplement electrolytes; I take a mix of lite and regular salt as needed, generally once or twice per day, and also magnesium pills. If you skip this step, you will feel perpetually hungover. It’s amazing how stupid and sluggish I get when under-salted, and how quickly a glass of salt water perks me right back up.

It’s also been my experience that I can drink alcohol on keto, and I can also effortlessly lose or maintain weight without counting calories…but I cannot do both at once. If I drink, I either count calories or get fatter. In general, I hate counting calories more than I like booze; YMMV.

The food hasn’t really been a problem for me. I cannot eat every delicious food in the world, but I can eat my fill of a very large subset of delicious things. Most of the time, carbs are cheap filler. Want pizza or burgers? Eat the good stuff, leave the bread. Want curry? Grab a spoon and put it in your mouth. Want nachos? Pile the toppings onto lettuce instead of corn chips, IMO it’s even better. Etc. Yeah, I can’t eat that cake, but I’m probably full.

For practicality, I often eat something super-fatty in the morning, like Keto Chow (which I make with a cup of heavy cream per serving). Then I can pretty much do whatever in the evenings, where I am probably eating with non-keto people. It’s not hard to track down a hunk of protein and some veggies