Arts Fest, and Friends Who Stopped Listening
July 2017 — day 32
I started keto on June 13. By the middle of July I wasn't totally sure what day it was. I guessed it was the 14th, which put me somewhere around 32 or 33 days in (video DoSUgIr2rNo). That's about how organized I was.
The weekend I was worried about
Arts fest weekend. Friends over, a party, drinks.
I logged everything in MyFitnessPal like I'd been doing all month, and the drinks alone came to about 500 calories. Not a light night. And I still didn't get anywhere near 2,000 calories for the day. For my size, the app had me at 2,700 (video DoSUgIr2rNo).
I wasn't forcing it. I just wasn't that hungry lately.
And it wasn't a one-day fluke. Most days that month I was coming in somewhere between 1,000 and 1,400 calories under, and I was eating everything I wanted (video DoSUgIr2rNo). The only thing I was actually watching was carbs.
How I had it set up
This matters, so here it is. I set MyFitnessPal to maintain my weight, not lose it. Then I set the macros and the only number I really paid attention to was the carb count. Month one, carbs only (video DoSUgIr2rNo).
The reason: I kept seeing people in the forums set their app to lose two pounds a week. That's a thousand-calorie hole every day, forced on you by an app, on top of a brand new way of eating. Then they show up in the forums saying they're still hungry on day one. Don't do that to yourself.
Cut the carbs and let the hunger thing sort itself out. If the deficit is real, it shows up on its own. On arts fest weekend it showed up with a drink in its hand.
One other small thing from that stretch. If you don't like the taste of plain water, a flavored drink is fine. I'm not a huge fan of loading up on artificial sweeteners, and sugar alcohols have their own issues. But I'd had a Monster energy drink with sugar alcohols in it since starting keto, and some of that stuff makes you feel normal and good again (video DoSUgIr2rNo).
The part nobody warns you about
So the diet part was going great. The social part had a different problem: me.
I talk about keto too much. I knew it then. My friends didn't want to hear about keto anymore. My mom was glad I was looking after my health, and she was also done hearing about keto. My girlfriend loved how I looked. She loved that I was losing weight and taking care of my body. She was also done hearing about keto (video DoSUgIr2rNo).
That's the funny thing. Everybody liked the results. Nobody wanted the play-by-play. Nobody wants to hear what you had for breakfast or what your blood sugar was this morning. They only want to hear about the weight loss.
Where I put it instead
So I did two things.
First, I kept making these videos. Honestly, I'd started them to practice. I had a business-consulting project coming that meant talking on camera, and I needed the reps: getting used to talking, remembering to make eye contact with the camera. Talking about keto gave me something to practice on while I figured out this new way of eating (video DoSUgIr2rNo).
Second, I told anyone watching that if nobody in their life wanted to hear about their keto anymore, they could send it to me. DM me. I don't sell anything. I'm not a personal trainer.
What I offered was the thing I do with business clients: accountability. And there's no magic in it. I don't have secret ideas. I ask what you want to get done this week. Next week I ask how it went, and why. That's it. If you tell me Monday you just want to hit your carbs, and the next Monday you didn't, we talk about why. Things don't happen sometimes. Usually there's a reason you can explain to yourself once somebody asks (video DoSUgIr2rNo).
I wasn't billing anybody for it. I just think people's journeys are interesting. What worked, what didn't, how they got here, how the people around them react.
The lesson for me was simple. I had a lot of enthusiasm and I was pointing it at people who never asked for it. So I pointed it at people who did.
What I'd tell you now
The arts fest numbers are what happened to me, and I still set people up the same way: carbs first, don't force a calorie cut in month one. A few weeks later I put it in one line: a calorie deficit matters, calorie restriction isn't something I'd advise (video 8Jk5ShSUpFY). The research backs up the boring explanation, too. In a metabolic-ward study, 17 men switched to a ketogenic diet at the same calories, and their energy expenditure went up by about 57 kcal a day (Hall et al., 2016). That's not a magic burn. My deficit came from eating less because I wasn't hungry. And in a 12-month trial of 609 adults, a healthy low-fat diet and a healthy low-carb diet lost about the same weight (Gardner et al., 2018). So keto worked for me because it was the version I could stick to. Drinks still count, by the way (alcohol on keto). And if you take medication for diabetes or blood pressure, talk to your doctor before you cut carbs hard, because the doses can need changing (why doses change).
More on this: energy balance on keto, setting up MyFitnessPal, sugar alcohols, and the video this story comes from, DoSUgIr2rNo.
Earlier: Potatoes in a Shared Fridge · Later: Gassing Out Against Younger Fighters