10 Things No One Tells You About Keto
Welcome! If you’re here that means you’ve taken your first step towards jump starting your health and wellness journey. I will caution you though, and here is my disclaimer for some of you: if you are looking for a temporary diet to help you lose weight then this is not the diet for you. The ketogenic diet is rightfully named because it is not a diet, it is rather a diet change, a shift into understanding your body and the foods you must eat in order to feel, be, and look healthy.
Now that I’ve been honest, let’s be honest about the ketogenic diet. While it has amazing benefits, there are some trade-offs that don’t make it entirely glamorous but this is due to your body adjusting and working differently than it’s used to. After reading these 10 things, if you still want to pursue the ketogenic diet, then awesome! You are fearless!
#1 Bathroom Business
Yup, let’s get the dirty business out of the way. We all do it, it’s natural and part of life. We all poop and we all urinate, and when on the ketogenic diet, it will be more frequent as well.
Everyone’s body reacts different to diets, but constipation or diarrhea are common. Normally, humans consume most of their calories in carbohydrates which fuel them throughout the day. Keto is quite literally the opposite. Your fat intake will be revved up but your carb intake is dramatically lowered. The fiber you enjoyed with oatmeal, starches, and breads, has been taken away. This can result in constipation. The remedy for this is to drink water all day. Keep yourself hydrated. Another remedy is to find a good fiber supplement like psyllium husk or a fiber pill to help solidify waste and pass it easier. The other side of the coin is diarrhea from a shift to a high-fat diet. Fiber supplements and water intake will help this too. Listen to you body though, and adjust your macronutrients to suit how your body feels. You will begin to notice the times you go to the bathroom and it will become like clockwork. Urinating will be more frequent as well with the increase in water. It should be very pale yellow if not clear. It may smell also, this is from your body producing ketones. This is the goal. If your urine is dark yellow or brown, drink more water.
#2 Keto Flu
Your body likes homeostasis, and resists change. When this change occurs, everyone’s body can react in a different way. I have yet to experience this keto flu, but I was always prepared for it. Someone who eats fairly clean, with the occasional sweet treat, or carbohydrate rich meal here and there, may not be affected heavily by a shift to a ketogenic diet. However, an overweight individual, whose meals comprise of fast food, packaged meals, sodas, and higher carbohydrates, will more than likely experience the keto flu. It is not pleasant, from what I hear, and involves nausea, dizziness, headaches, fatigue, and sugar cravings. Most of these are simply from you depriving your body from the foods it had grown accustomed to. Remember, your body is a living organism, and while you are part of your body, they are not one and the same. The consciousness that controls your emotions and daily routines is separate from the living tissue that has been fueled with the wrong fats, the wrong carbs, and the wrong quantities.
If you wish to avoid a keto flu (no guarantee), then I would suggest slowly building up to a strict ketogenic lifestyle. Giving up one thing at a time will help your body slowly adapt and learn what is healthy and what is not. Instead of high sugar soda drinks, drink tea and water in abundance. You may experience caffeine withdrawals, but that is temporary. Then incorporate more healthy vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, Brussels sprouts and so forth. Small changes will help you avoid the keto flu. However, if you’re like me, then perhaps cutting everything cold turkey might be beneficial to you. I was fully prepared to experience the awful feelings, to show me just how much this lifestyle I had chosen had wrecked my body. Thankfully it didn’t happen, and I hope it doesn’t for you either.
#3 Stinky Breath
There may be a new reason to carry a pack of mints with you, or begin to brush more than 2–3 times a day. When your body enters ketosis, ketones are produced and often people will claim a metallic taste in their mouth. Sometimes the smell will be sweet or taste of fruit. The body will begin breaking down fatty acids to convert into ketones, and some of these are are acetone which has a distinct smell of nail polish remover. If you smell this, there’s a good chance your body is in ketosis, but this is not a definite indicator.
The fact of the matter here is the same as it is with everything else on any diet, this will affect others differently. Some might never experience this keto breath, while others experience it for a few weeks. Because your body is an organism, it will adapt to your new lifestyle, meaning your keto breath will disappear.
If you experience keto breath, there are some remedies to help you avoid alienating friends and family.
1. The first thing, which you should be doing anyway, is drinking water. Now, there is no rule of thumb for how much water you should be drinking because everyone’s body is different, so just trust your body and how it feels. I typically will drink half my body weight in ounces, so this will change as the weight comes off or when weight is gained.
2. Eat less protein. Yes, while protein is important, it is only second to fat on the ketogenic lifestyle. When you eat protein, the body breaks down the protein strands and ammonia is a byproduct of this process which has a terrible odor. Lowering your protein intake will help alleviate this odor. Remember, when you decrease your protein intake, you must increase your fat intake since your carbohydrates will remain at or around 20–25 grams.
3. Brush your teeth! Your parents were right. You must practice good hygiene daily in order to prevent odor on any diet, and keto is no exception. Bacteria grows when the mouth is not regularly cleaned and maintained, so keto breath can be avoided by brushing and flossing regularly. You can also pop some mints, but make sure these are sugar-free because mints can contain sneaky amounts of sugar that can affect your progress.
#4 Money Savings
Cha-Ching. Yes, you will save money. When you look at fad diets, or diets that teach a temporary solution will help you lose weight, you will see there are costs, whether monthly, or products you must purchase in order to see any type of weight loss. This can be in the form of ‘miracle pills’, or powders that you have to consume in order to kickstart your weight loss, or even a mentor that has the perfect plan that you ‘must’ subscribe to in order to achieve your results. All of this is prevalent in our culture, but not necessary. The idea of the ketogenic diet is to teach someone to eat fresh, whole foods, which are far cheaper than anyone realizes. The problem with our current culture is that, yes, you can go to your local fast food chain and get a hot meal for under $10, which doesn’t break the bank, however, that’s one meal, and it is usually not healthy, whether it’s a burger, fries, and a soda, or a sub sandwich and a potato chips. While this $10 or less charge is glamorous, it is only 1 meal in a day and it’s wrecking your body, not to mention that you probably still buy groceries at the store in addition to the fast food you’re eating.
When you begin the ketogenic diet, you will spend a bit more money right away stocking your fridge with new condiments, ingredients, and fresh vegetables and proteins, and perhaps some seasonings to help your cuisines taste delicious. Beyond this, however, you will spend less on food because you won’t be spending money regularly on fast food, and you will be eating less than you previously were. Typically, humans eat more calories than they burn, which is how someone gains weight, and spends more money than they should on food. Additionally, someone might complain about having to purchase organic foods. While organic foods are more expensive, they are not necessary to be successful in the ketogenic diet. Grass fed butters are not needed either, but they do taste better for sure.
The bottom line is this, you will see that you will spend less on food because you are now only purchasing groceries, instead of fast food and groceries, and when you eat less calories, your need to frequently go to the store will decrease as well.
#5 Alcohol
Don’t freak out. Yes, you can still have alcohol. It should be minimal though. When it ketosis, your liver produces ketones which target fat. However, when you consume alcohol, your live shifts its focus from the fat to burn off the alcohol in your body, which slows your body’s natural inclination to burn fat. Avoiding alcohol should be the goal altogether, but if you are to drink, choose low carb beers, keto wine, or hard alcohol that has no sugar and low carbohydrate content as well. Additionally, you may find that your hangovers are magnified, so you may want to avoid alcohol entirely for a while.
#6 Exercise
Exercise is the staple of most workout and health programs. The ketogenic diet is also no exception. When your body burns calories, you must consume more calories. Each week, when your body burns 3500 more calories than consumed, that results in a loss of 1 pound of fat. Exercise will help this process, but your success will depend on the type of exercise. Aerobic exercise, which is any type of exercise, typically cardio, that promotes the body to continue to use ketones instead of glycogen, which is a stored sugar that targets carbohydrates for energy. Be careful though, HIIT, or high intensity interval training is high energy and can easily shift your body into using glycogen stores, regardless if your carbohydrate intake is low or not, which means it shifts your body away from burning fat. Athletes who train using HIIT or CrossFit generally do not limit their carbohydrate intake because they need this macronutrient to boost their performance and increase their speed, strength, and stamina. If they partake in keto, they will do it in their off season.
In addition to doing lower intensity cardio, individuals who are on the ketogenic diet should practice strength training in some form. Building muscle is the best way to lose fat on the ketogenic diet as well. Some of you might think that having more muscle bulks you up and makes you weigh more. This is quite simply further from the truth. It is difficult to bulk up unless you’re gorging yourself with protein and carbohydrates to fuel your body from these intense workouts. This is not what I’m saying you should do. That is only for individuals who want to enter into competitions. Think of it this way, muscle requires energy to be maintained, even when your body is at rest. Your body currently targets fat for energy. The more dense muscle you have, the more energy your body consumes, even at rest, which are your fat stores. Still not convinced? A man weighing 200 pounds with 150 pounds of lean muscle will burn more fat than a man who is 300 pounds with 120 pounds of lean muscle, it’s just simple science. The goal is for your body to be a fat burning machine, even when at rest. The idea that muscle weighs more than fat is just ridiculous and laughable. 100 pounds of fat weighs the same as 100 pounds of muscle. What you really mean is that muscle is more dense, meaning it takes up less space in your body, which makes you look good. In conclusion, lower intensity cardio workouts and strength training will help your body burn fat.
#7 Reactions and Comments
Be prepared for heads to turn. Now, you might think this is a great thing, especially if you’ve been overweight for quite some time, and now people are going to start noticing. When I hit the 30 pound mark, my coworkers began to tell me that I was beginning to look skinny, but that was in comparison to my 235 pound frame two months prior. It was fine at first, and definitely a confidence booster, but it began to become annoying with how many people started to comment on my weight loss. The ketogenic diet is widely misunderstood and those that commented on my diet choice chose to throw in their two cents as well, telling me to check my cholesterol levels at the end and my blood pressure due to a high fat diet. This misconception is that fat and cholesterol are the same. They are not. Cholesterol is affected by certain fats, but just as there are good fats and bad fats, there are good kinds of cholesterols and bad kinds of cholesterols. This information is out there, and I suggest you research it because not everyone can begin the ketogenic diet. If you are prone to high cholesterol, then perhaps another diet might be more suitable.
Anyway, good fats in your body, the saturated, monounsaturated, or polyunsaturated fats replace the carbohydrates in your body. Think of these fats as the oil in your car. You need them for your body to function properly. These fats raise the good cholesterol in your body and lower the bad ones so your body can operate like a well-oiled Ferrari instead of a broken down car that has been barely maintained in 30 years.
The fact of the matter for this #7 reason is that you must learn to just nod your head, let it roll off you, and move on because most people who discuss keto with you have no idea what they’re talking about unfortunately and when you realize that, it won’t bother you. The reactions will be stark at first, but also fade away after time when you begin to get closer to your goal and then maintain it after that. Just know, your journey is different than someone else’s and one diet is not universal for all people.
#8 Think Like a Chef
The days of ordering pizza, wings, burgers, and going out to eat a lot are done, for the most part. In order to be successful, you must learn how to cook. Now, you do not need to become a culinarily trained chef like Gordon Ramsey, but you should be able to take raw ingredients and create home cooked dishes that follow your macronutrient ratios for keto. Can you make all the foods listed above keto friendly? You bet! Wings, pizza, burgers, etc., can all be made keto. Have fun with searching recipes online and tweaking them to be keto. There are even prepackaged items like pizzas that have been minimally processed and low in carbs that will aid you in your keto journey. Don’t be fooled though by the packaging, check the labels, and more importantly, check the ingredients. The best thing you can do if you’re not used to spending a lot of time in the kitchen, is to cook in bulk and package the food in your refrigerator to take to work or even reheat on your days off. There are plenty of great recipes that taste great as leftovers, and there are plenty of recipes for protein shakes that incorporate fats so you can have a quick meal on the go. We will have an entire article covering foods at a later time, but for now, just be prepared to spend some time learning food, and having an appreciation for cooking. You will feel extremely satisfied knowing where your food comes from when you prepare and cook it yourself.
#9 Calories Are King
This is the part of any diet that people find daunting, and that is counting calories and ensuring all their foods fit within their macronutrient ratios. Don’t fear! This will become easier with practice. Remember, when you first started to drive a car, it was scary but you learned it, and now you’re a master of it. If you picked up a musical instrument for the first time, you were not good at first, but you practiced. This, like anything else in your life, takes practice, and you may even get to a point that you know exactly how much you should eat based on your prior knowledge and practice counting calories and doing your research of foods.
First of all, macronutrients are important. The general rule of thumb for the ketogenic diet is to get around 75% of your calories from fats, 20% from proteins, and 5% from carbohydrates. This will fluctuate day to day, but you should try to stay around these numbers as much as you can. A helpful app that I use is the MyFitnessPal app, which is free. There is a paid version too but the free one works fine. Realistically, you will not be perfect the first few days. You may get close to these numbers, but it’s going to be trial and error and your body will let you know that you’re eating too much protein, or carbs, or not enough fats, maybe too much fats. You will then adjust and find the balance that works for you.
Secondly, and most importantly, you WILL NOT lose weight if you are eating more calories than you burn. There are many equations and formulas out there that can determine how many calories you burn in a day based on your age, height, gender, weight, and activity level. These are just approximations, but should be factored in to how many calories you eat. For example, I typically burn anywhere from 2,300–3,000 calories depending on my activity levels. Because this is an approximation, I wear a fitness tracker most days, which gives me a pretty accurate calorie count. Again, these trackers are approximations, but they maximize your ability to track your calories burn so you can accurately plan how many calories you should be eating that day. IT WILL change depending on your activity levels. On a day where I burn 2,300 calories, I may only eat around 1,800, which is a 500 calorie deficit that I burned. If I do this 6 more times that week, I will effectively lose 1 pound of fat. If I burn 3,000 calories that day, I can eat up to 2,500 calories and still burn more calories than I consume. You should always stay within a 500–1000 calories deficit each day and should never go below the recommended value, which depends on age, weight, and gender. Calories are king, and are the only way you will lose weight each week.
#10 Diet vs. Lifestyle
When I started this, the goal was to simply win a contest at work, our own Biggest Loser competition. I had already done keto and knew its benefits but I never really considered it long term. If this is your mindset, then this is not the diet for you. The word diet gets a bad rap because when people hear diet, they think of a temporary time period of eating healthy and working out until you reach your goal, and then fall back into old habits of unhealthy eating and a sedentary lifestyle. This is not the same as your diet. Your diet is your food choices. Someone who chooses to eat processed fast food and soda on a regular basis has a poor diet. Someone who chooses to eat fresh produce and whole, unprocessed foods, has a clean diet. A temporary, fad diet is different from someone’s diet. The ketogenic diet must be viewed as a lifestyle choice and not a fad diet because like any diet, when you change it, your body will change to adapt to whatever diet you’re feeding it. This critical thinking requires some deep delving into your own psyche on why you want to lose weight. Do you want to lose weight to look hotter to attract a partner? Do you want to lose weight to show off your body? Do you want to lose weight to be happier? If these are the reasons then turn back now. These are not reasons to become healthier. If you aren’t happy now, then losing weight won’t be happy. You must learn to be happy with who you are as a person. You might be unhappy with how you look or how your clothes fit, but that shouldn’t make you internally and permanently unhappy. On the other hand, if you are willing to put your body through a dramatic change to feel better, feel healthier, and potentially live longer, then you are ready to make a lifestyle change. Is the ketogenic diet the only path to becoming healthy? Absolutely not. Is it easy? Absolutely not. Does it require as much time and attention to detail as other diets and healthy eating? Absolutely. The difference is, is that your body will naturally target fat throughout your body and actively shrink them because of the foods you eat. If you’re ready for a change, and ready to see results literally melt off your body, then you’ve taken the first steps to a healthier you.
Disclaimer: Please consult your doctor or physician when actively entering into any new diet or exercise routine. This diet might not be beneficial for some people as every body reacts differently.
