I have heard from many of you and your interest in my diet. Some of you have told me about your own experiences with ketogenic or similar diets. I have been asked what specifically I'm doing in terms of the types of foods I'm eating and not eating. If you don't already know, there are many versions of ketogenic diets and some other diets that are quite similar such as carnivore and paleo diets. This post will provide a bit more insights into what I am currently doing...which of course is subject to change because I don't have it all figured out.
At first, I tried to keep my total net carbohydrates at or below 10 grams. I define Net Carbs as total carbohydrates in a food minus the fiber in that food. For example, a small fresh tomato might have 3.5g total carbohydrates and 1.1g of total fiber. This results in about 2.4g of net carbs for that tomato. When I started out on this diet, 4 small tomatoes would have almost maxed out my total net carb allowance for a day. That is if I ate nothing else.
Now some of you, familiar with keto and net carbs, might be wondering why I didn’t subtract sugar alcohols from total carbs. The reason is simple, I don’t consume them and I don’t believe they’re healthy. I don’t consume Erythritol, Xylitol, Allulose, Maltitol, Sorbitol, or any others. I also don’t consume artificial sweeteners such as SweetNLow (saccharine), or Equal (aspartame), or Splenda (sucralose). If a sweetener is needed, which it rarely is in my diet, I will use either pure monk fruit or stevia.
There are numerous reasons for my choice, including:
gastrointestinal issues with many of these alternative sweeteners,
negative effects to gut biome (bacteria in intestines),
many contain carbs which I'm trying to avoid,
some affect blood sugar and/or insulin, and
the artificial ones have some nasty health concerns. I will let you do your own research. Here is a tip though. Just because a website is a medical site does not mean what is written there is not opinion. Often, articles written on WebMD or similar medical/health sites are based on very limited or outdated data. They often espouse and promote traditional or outdated health advice. Newer and higher quality research has often not been taken into account. This is usually not done to trick anyone but rather the author is going by what they know and what they’ve learned in the past
Obviously, we don’t eat many sweets nor any “sugar free” items from the store. There are, however, a bunch of foods that work perfectly in our diet and don’t need these sweeteners. These are mostly meats, seafood, eggs, some dairy products (butter, heavy cream, cream cheese, and certain cheeses), oils, animal fat, and very select fruits and vegetables.
This list might seem small at first but if you exclude highly processed foods, there isn’t much that is missing: starchy veggies (tubers), fruits (other than berries), and grains/legumes4. It is quite shocking the percentage of our diets are made up of things like potato and grains and processed boxed foods.
Here is an example of my lunch yesterday: I sautéed some sliced beef bacon which came from our local butcher, some pickled jalapeños, diced garlic, Italian hot peppers, and some grass-fed butter. Once that was in good shape with flavors all mixing, I cracked 2 pasture-raised chicken eggs on top and covered the pan. I let them cook until the yolk was just beginning to firm up. Then I removed the lid and sprinkled some mozzarella cheese on top along with salt and pepper. I like my egg yolks runny. It was super delicious, high in fat, low in carbs, and a decent amount of protein. Perfect ketogenic meal. It took maybe 10 minutes from start to finish...probably less.
One question I get is why restrict your protein if you’re already restricting carbs. The reason is that the human body is amazingly adept at converting protein, whether it is the protein you ingest or the protein in your muscles, into glucose (sugar). However, f you limit how much you ingest the body will gradually move toward ketosis which is using fat for energy.
The weight loss experienced on keto diets is primarily due to calorie restriction due to decreased hunger. Once in a ketogenic state, the body will not have strong hunger. It is quite amazing. Plenty of energy, feeling good, but no hunger.
If you have more questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
-Jeremy
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