On fasting and low carb
I used to often tell myself that I needed food for energy. Due to my career and the multiple things that I needed to juggle on a daily basis, I needed to keep on eating, I needed that morning sugary coffee to get me to my appointment that was a 45 minute commute away, I needed that nice carb laden lunch in order for me to have enough energy to get me through the day.
As is obvious, as we grow older, our metabolism changes and the way we used to eat may make us fat — and that’s exactly what happened to me. All that sugar, all those carbs, all those late night cravings enhanced my waist line. I knew I needed to do something, needed to work out more. Needed to eat better.
But I was always hungry. It was a cycle of being good for a day or two and falling back into the trap.
My doctor told me the tried and true way of eating clean and exercising. Still didn’t quite work on me. I kept wondering how “everyone” else seems to lose weight but I had so much difficulty. Randomly, my brother recommended the ketogenic diet. I wasn’t very much a big fan of eating all those fats and meats at first, but I figured to give it a try because it seemed to work for him.
And it worked for me too, I lost 7 lbs the first week, not much the second week, and steadily lost a lot of weight the next 8 weeks or so. I started off at 220lb and ended at about 190lb. It was great, but I did pay for it. I got gout. Something that I never had before, turns out eating all that red meat for 10 weeks and then celebrating with alcohol coming off the diet wasn’t a great idea.
That all started in March 2020 and these days, I’ve skewed more to a low-carb + intermittent fasting approach and it is much easier on my own body, and easier to explain to my friends. Mind you, I say that I’m on “keto”, since I didn’t want to get into this long winded explanation of wanting to stay under 50–75g of carbs a day rather than follow a strict ketogenic diet. Seems to be working so far.