Let’s jump right in. Why am I keto curious? I’m newly retired and I have a spare tire of at least twenty pounds. I can no longer run or jog without severe knee pain which makes big calorie burn sessions more challenging without large investments of time.
The extra size and weight make me uncomfortable. Compared with my age group, it’s not so bad. But my internal need say it’s too much. I’ve been carrying this extra weight since 2011 of course with periodic fluctuations. For a period of time after quitting alcohol and all those extra calories, I lost weight, but progressively I’ve inched back up.
I took a few baby steps in preparation. Trying to remove junk from my diet. Like using Stevia sweeteners for my morning coffee. Or curbing my pizza intake to half a pizza, rather than a whole pizza. But, without removing things altogether, I was still consuming breads, cakes, and sweets along with suffering from severe cravings for them.
I wasn’t successful at dropping the terrible twenty pounds. In fact, for nearly a year, I was stuck at a fixed weight that I could never get to swing more than a few pounds and can easily be attributed to water weight.
In the meantime, I did some reading and looking around. Keto style diets seemed to be the oldest and most validated actual diet programs out there. Apparently the principle of ketogenic dieting has been around since 1921 and been utilized to great success for diabetics and athletes.
There are other programs out there with a successful track record. But this one seemed to personally be the best fit for me.
My original source information came from Tim Ferriss “4 Hour Work Week” and “4 Hour Body”. (By the way, NONE of my links in this article are affiliated with me in any way. I receive no compensation directly or indirectly). His principles are simple and ultimately is a variation on the practice of a ketogenic diet that he terms the slow carb diet. Satieting carb cravings with the use of allowable carbs.
Next was a few small keto magazines from the grocery store checkout. Which were far more about recipes rather than day to day principles and practice.
Ultimately, my best source came from YouTube. His name is Tom Delauer. I like his channel because it is filled with years of videos beyond what any book covers and clearly he knows more than the superficial common information. And if you see him, you can tell he knows his stuff. He is bulk, buff and can talk circles around nutritional and diet subjects. Some of his explanations can go very deep in the tech talk.
Here it is early May. Wish me luck.
21 Buzzards 