Keto made easy

Twenty Points Down

2017-07-31

July 2017 — about 28 days in

The story

I didn't start keto mainly for the scale. I started because my fasting blood glucose was reading high, higher than was normal for me, and the reading I did pointed me at low-carb, high-fat eating (video 9Hk0jRb_9Es). The longer version of why is in A Fifty Percent Chance.

So about four weeks in I went live on Facebook one morning and gave my friends an update. Some of them were trying keto too, and the rest just wanted to know how my weird diet was going. I called it a Keto Update, and it was the first one (video 9Hk0jRb_9Es).

Here's what I reported.

My fasting glucose used to come in at times in the 130s, or the mid-120s. Lately it had been 105, 108, 103, and one morning 97. Almost 20 points down on a fasted reading, which was the whole reason I was doing this. I wanted to keep going until I could get normal readings, which I put at 60 to 100. I was getting under 100 now and then, but rarely (video 9Hk0jRb_9Es). Not there. Close.

The scale was down about 12 pounds since I started, and I said straight out that a lot of that was going to be water (video 9Hk0jRb_9Es). Early keto weight loss is mostly water. I didn't want anybody watching to think I'd melted 12 pounds of fat in a month.

Then the part people don't put in their before-and-after posts. The adaptation, the thing everyone calls keto flu, is when your body switches from running on carbs to running on fat, and it isn't fun. You can get energy crashes, bad sleep, sweats, cramps. I didn't get cramps. I did get the sleep going sideways, and I did feel the energy crashes. But by the time I made that video I was through it. Running on fat didn't bother me anymore. I wasn't really hungry in the mornings or at night (video 9Hk0jRb_9Es).

And that was the surprise. I'd never been on a diet before where I didn't feel hungry and out of control all the time. Most days I was coming in 800 or 1,000 calories under what I was allowed, and not because I was white-knuckling it. I just didn't feel like making food. The day before that video I'd come in 750 calories short of my goal, felt full, and that's with polishing off a whole bag of pork rinds (video 9Hk0jRb_9Es). Not exactly a diet food, but there it is.

I still missed things. Potato chips. Bananas, which are delicious; not having bananas is no fun. Those felt like the cravings you get for something you like, not real hunger (video 9Hk0jRb_9Es).

That live got about 1,700 views. For a guy talking to his friends from his house, that was a lot, and the comments were kind, so the next day I went live again and worked through a pile of beginner questions from the group (video xyEZL0HuejI). That's more or less how this whole thing started.

What I took from that first month: it isn't about the scale. It's about getting through the rough patch, getting your hunger back under control, and watching the number you actually care about. For me that was a fasting glucose reading.

What I'd tell you now

The first month is mostly about getting through it, and I'd still say that (your first month, week by week; fat adaptation; water weight). The literature backs the direction of what I saw without promising it to anyone: the American Diabetes Association's 2019 consensus report says reducing total carbohydrate has the most evidence for improving blood glucose, and lists low-carb as one of several workable patterns (Evert et al., 2019). In a non-randomised trial of people with type 2 diabetes (262 in the ketogenic intervention, 87 on usual care), the intervention group's HbA1c went from 7.6% to 6.3%, with less diabetes medication (Hallberg et al., 2018). That's a trial, not a promise, and my numbers were a meter on my own counter. The important caution: if you take insulin or other diabetes drugs, or blood pressure medication, talk to your doctor before you cut carbs, because doses may need to change fast (medications and keto; how to talk to your doctor).

Watch the originals: Keto Update 1 and the beginner-questions follow-up.

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