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Keto?
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If you’re looking for healthier living in general, I’ve recently discovered the Diabetes Food Hub on the American Diabetes website, which isn’t just for people with diabetes. They have a ton of scrumptious recipes for food and low carb snacks that are great for energy and other things, which follows a 1/4 carb, 1/4 protein and 1/2 vegetable plate, if you divide it in half and then divide one of those halves into halves.
And, more importantly, you can still have those devil may care desserts now and a gain while also eating healthier in general.
https://www.diabetesfoodhub.org/all-recipes.html
Otherwise, when my husband was alive we did a version of Keto and Atkins together because we found the restrictions of each to be too much and we did pretty well. However, I’d much rather subscribe to the plate preference above because you’re not so much limited in what you eat, but how you eat.
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Nutrition and food systems are some of my special interests! I’m pro keto even as someone who struggles to maintain a ‘keto diet’ for more than a few months at a time for a variety of reasons.
Feel free to dm me or add me on discord (ScaredyFloof#0324). Anyone, honestly! I love having an excuse to talk about it.
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I have friends who are on keto. It works the same way as just about any other diet plan does; that is, it works when you do it.
That’s basically it. It’s fine, and one of the many different ways to approach nutrition depending on your goals. It’s not the only way; intermittent fasting, counting macros (which is what I do), paleo… they are all protocols aimed to control your intake of calories and essential nutrients.
The key is whether you can do it in the long term. There is no plan, no matter how great, that will work for everyone. Likewise even a great plan is really not going to help if a person can’t follow it.
Furthermore no eating plan will do much in the short term (meaning if it’s only followed for a few weeks at a time). And this has often outside of our control; for example if a protocol would have you eat specific foods every 3 hours but you are working on the road with no access to a microwave or oven for 8 hours a day then it’s not for you, whether it’s great or not.
In short: If you feel this would work for you @RightMeow then go for it! If not then look for something that’s more suited to your schedule, lifestyle, social obligations, goals etc.
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For a long time my husband did a very restricted keto. Green leafy veggies and meet almost exclusively. He did AMAZING on it (lost almost 80-100 lbs) and kept off the weight for almost a decade now.
The pandemic really cratered things, so he is now trying to find a new normal.
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I did keto for a year and it kept me from gaining weight at least.
This is easier said than done when you’re largely sedentary.
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While I appreciate that it will be challenging to do, I can highly recommend getting in touch with a dietitian or other qualified foodiologist who can help guide you through the ups and downs of any diet plan.
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I can personally recommend a low carb diet. While it’s not strict keto, it works and so long as you aren’t addicted to bread and pasta (like I am) it’s not too difficult to stay with. It not only works for weight loss but blood chemistry across the board as well.
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@RightMeow I did keto with one primary goal in mind: break my addiction to sugar. The amount of soda I had been drinking beforehand would almost certainly have led to diabetes on its own by now; by getting out of the habit, I managed to at least make the transition away from that.
But it definitely played havoc on my body in a way that really didn’t feel healthy. Yes, I was eating a lot of greens and such, but the sheer level of gross I felt even when I got used to keto was a very clear sign from my body that it wasn’t healthy for me. I moved back to a more normal diet and it went away.
Everyone’s going to be different, but I can at least say that for the goal of breaking sugar addidction, it did the trick and did it well.
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@Selira I also think this is super important.
Every person is different. You should make changes to your nutritional habits in concert with a doctor/qualified person who can help you figure out what is and isn’t working for YOUR body. Your age, sex, ethnicity, other medical issues, activity levels, and just plain personal preferences and needs all matter, and what works for one person just flat out might not work for you. Some people need higher levels of nutrients they can’t get on one diet in the quantities that are helpful for them.
I honestly feel we do a disservice to people by having the concept of “diets” as a thing you fit yourself into, rather than having a nutritional plan than is designed around what you need and what makes you feel the healthiest and happiest.
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I think one thing that sometimes people don’t think about is being sure to monitor for/be mindful that a very restrictive/rules oriented eating plan (especially if it’s one that does have impressive impact on measurements that are accessible) can trigger disordered eating if one is predisposed to it.
I jumped into keto because I was seeing the scale creep up after a significant loss I’d kept off for awhile, and it triggered a major relapse and tailspin I have yet to recover from (i had started to pull out of it when covid hit and then, well, I guess other survival issues took precedence and honestly I’m not really sure that I will recover again at this point). I don’t blame keto for this at all. ANYTHING that gave pretty addictive feedback and caused shifts in how my body felt would have done the same, to be honest.
And maybe it’s a little different now since it’s more mainstream and not quite so isolating? You don’t /have/ to do high fat. But as other have suggested, so important that you have a supportive nutritionist on your “team”. Sometimes health insurance will pay for that consultation when they won’t pay for non surgical “weight loss” anything else.
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If you’re very overweight or obese, short-term keto (~6 months) can help you lose weight. You might be someone who’s not responsive to it, or who doesn’t have a good experience: lots of those people exist, and what works for someone really well might not work for someone else at all.
Don’t take someone else’s anecdotal data with an n=1 (anecdata!) as gospel. Try it, weigh yourself once a week and take your measurements once a week and see if it’s working for you, and if the keto flu isn’t too much.
If it works, keep at it until you’re about 5-10 lbs BEYOND whatever your goal weight is, if you have one, or 1-2% BF if that’s your more relevant goal. Then cycle off of it.
My personal experience trying keto as an athlete in sports was really bad, but it was more of an experiment than with a particular goal. What I described above works for most of the people that the keto diet works for.
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Keto is great if it’s for you. It’s not for everyone. Keto works largely because you eat less than you burn, like every diet. It works for me but it also helps my bipolar meds work better, fixes hormone issues, stuff like that. It also makes it harder to eat and you get tired of the food. I can easily grab a handful of cookies without thinking but cheese cubes and some nuts? Meh. I get tired of it so I’ll skip snacking which means I’m not actually hungry.
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I lost about thirty pounds doing keto once I locked myself and really committed to doing it. However, I found myself fixating on counting how many carbs I was intaking to a degree that one day I sort of sat back and went “oh wow, this feels like maybe it’s not healthy”.
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Every body is different, so what works for some might not for others.
That said!
I don’t know if what I was doing was actually Keto or not… it sounds pretty close, but was called… Slow Carb, I think?
Basically, it was 0 carbs for 6 days a week, so you do end up in a state of Ketosis, but so long as you dont eat carbs, you can eat however much you want, so you’re not going to be in starvation mode. Probably.
Anyway, on the 7th day you are free to just fuckin’ destroy yourself. Drink a whole keg, if you want, your body can only process so many of the carbs before you’re back on 0 intake.
It’s a pretty big yo-yo of weight loss, but you always end up losing more over the 6 days than you put back on during the 7th. I lost 50 lbs over the one month I was able to keep at it, but haven’t been able to do it consistently since. ALAS.
