I am nowhere near qualified enough to put a headline like “The best diet plan for keto” or “the only keto guide you will ever need”.
I’ll just stick to telling you about the keto plan that I use and that works for me.
Mostly keto is what I’ve come to explain it as.
As in…
Random Person: “how did you lose so much weight”
Me: “well its been mostly keto and intermittent fasting with some working out.”
Or also me: “my diet is mostly keto, I come off of it every now and again but about 80-90% of the time I eat no to very low carbs.”
Its become habit, so much so that its originally what I wanted to call this site. But it was already taken and would have cost $500.
… I’m not that keto.
But over time I found that’s what has worked best for me.
*This next section im going to skim over a lot of information that will be best discussed in more detail in later posts. If you are new to and don’t fully understand what something is, I do apologize in advance. Please stick with me.
I remember there was a time after I became fat adapted, I was ready to fully commit. I was getting comfortable with the lifestyle and finding more and more recipes that I found were great.
I was still focused on getting in a lot of fat, and keeping not only net carbs low, but total carbs extremely low.
I didn’t fully accept the fact that dietary fiber didn’t really count as carbs.
When I measured, my ketone levels were at 4.7. Real quick, for anyone using a ketone blood level reader, a good range is between .5 and 2.
Above 3.5 is usually reserved for therapeutic and clinical use. When you hear people talk about how ketogenic diets are used to help treat people with epilepsy and diabetes, this is the range they are looking for.
Don’t get me wrong, I felt great. And such high numbers were motivating me to keep going that strong.
So why did I stop?
Well it was October and I was going tailgating at a football game one week, and to the Dominican Republic for a wedding the next.
At that point I hadn’t drank any alcohol in 3 months (that’s usually the first thing I cut out when I’m looking to lose weight).
I wasn’t going to go and watch everyone else drink, so I looked up the best alcohol for a keto diet. I have to say this revolution in hard seltzers couldn’t have come at a better time. (shout out Truly).
If you’re wondering, your best bet is straight clear liquor. My personal choice is Vodka Soda’s with a lime and a lemon. If flavored sparkling water is available, that’s much better.
The funny thing about alcohol is that you start off with all the self control in the world, then start to lose that resolve. Not sure if anyone knows that…
The point is I start with bunless burgers and ended up with chicken fingers and fries.
And since I already came off of it one weekend, I decided I’m on vacation, its my cousins wedding, I’m going to enjoy it. Just be cautious to not overdue it and find a happy medium.
Coming back home and scared to see my results I waited a couple days before testing again. And my levels were around 1.5.
That’s the first time I realized keto wasn’t a prison sentence. You can come in and out of it, pick your spots here and there of when you want to eat carbs and indulge.
Its important to note that this is only possible once you have done the hard work up front and have become keto adapted. If you are starting out, I hate to say it but you should make up in your mind to commit for about 3 weeks.
I didn’t want to say 21 days, its overused whenever someone says it takes 21 days to make a new habit. Unfortunately its true here.
It can take 4 days to a couple of weeks to start producing ketones.
After that you will want to keep at it for a little longer. Since you aren’t fully adapted yet, it will take just as long to start producing ketones again.
That’s when I officially lifted the ban on alcohol, and decided that it was okay to have some of the things that were still on my mind from time to time.
It was at this point where I started experimenting more for myself, and veered away from the generic advice of the people talking about keto.
Instead of focusing on as little carbs as humanly possible, I wanted to find out what were my upper limits. How many carbs could I have and still stay in ketosis.
I found that my tolerance is a bit on the high side at 10-15%, not the 5% that is typically described. According to my calculator, at 1800 calories a day, that’s somewhere around 40-70g of carbohydrates.
I also wanted to stop adding extra fat to every meal. To stop with the MCT oil, having avocado with every meal, and drizzling olive oil or cheese on everything.
And what did I find? That my numbers were consistently hitting .8 to 1.6. Which is a great range to be in.
Most people talking about keto repeat the same stats, restricting carbs to 5%, and getting about 75% percent of your calories from fat. Then the other 20% coming from protein.
Through trial and error, the macro range that worked for me was about 60% from fat, 25-30% from protein, and 10-15% carbs. To me, that can make a huge difference.
Now that that’s over, lets talk about how this can help you. Finding out the range that works for and your own tolerance to carbs. You can design your diet to that.
And remember that diets should not be looked at in the micro. Think about what the past 3 days looked like, and what do you have planned in the coming 3 days to decide what you should be eating.
Did you just come back from (enter city here) and have too many (enter food here). Well you might want to take it easy today.
Or what about this coming weekend, is the plan to just chill out and watch some movies. Then maybe you can be a little more lax today.
What if an all day hike is in your near future. Then why not, have that cheat meal knowing you probably won’t eat all that much throughout the day.
Just make sure to stay balanced, and don’t forget to go off script sometimes.
This leads me to the two strategies I use interchangeably.
Either extreme keto in my meal prep for the week, then have a cheat day at the end.
Or, have some kind of carb that I wouldn’t usually have with one of my meals each day. It can be some toast with breakfast or a sweet potato with dinner.
Just make sure to read the nutrition info, some things have way more carbs than you might think.
Now we both know I’m fairly new to talking about keto to more than my pretty small circle. Am I closer to the rule or to the exception.
I do believe that this will work for most people once you find the number that work for you.
As mentioned before, this won’t work for therapeutic purposes, the 3.0 and above levels. But for the rest of us it should work fine with some tweaking.
I leave you with this. The purpose of the site is to learn how to do keto for long term weight loss and maintenance. Forget the people who say this isn’t sustainable.
I’ve been there, I didn’t lose 75 pounds in a month. It took a year, and weight loss is never linear. There were some months I lost 20, others I gained 5.
There was one weekend I gained 10 pounds in 3 days…
Life happens. See what works for you. Are you still seeing the results you want? How do you feel after a cheat, was it worth it or can you barely function.
Check in with yourself often and take notes. Soon you’ll be rambling on and on about how you do keto too.
