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Knowing the story, some background seems necessary, I suppose. My sport habits are as follows: I don't do much sports nowadays, like 3 times, 4 at most, per week. A "time" is a workout with weights for up to 30-35 minutes or some cardio like Muay Thai for around 40 – 45 minutes. I'm kind of careful with food intake in the sense that I know how many calories I should eat to maintain my mass, it's about 2000, more or less. Yet I didn't care to tweak the macro nutrients ratio because losing body fat is not my main concern, I just aimed at keeping the mass around 73 – 73 kgs. Also I tried to do some intermediate fasting – I usually start eating around 1 pm and I eat till 9 pm, something like that.
However, the last 20 days or so were kind of weird for me. I felt a sharp decline in my energy levels, I had to wake up with an alarm, quite unusual for me. My mood wasn't exactly worse, but some things seemed harder than before. I didn't know the exact reason but I didn't feel like training at all – a day was like this: I woke up, did stuff at home, saw my kid and then I was looking for any excuse to not touch the weights there. Then I'd go to work around 12 pm, do my job when I have patients and customers and I'd just wait for the time to eat my carb rich food. Around 7 pm I'd go home and loathe the weights again. The thought of me going to the gym was not as repulsive but still I came up with excuses like "It's too hot," or "There's a bunch of people there, I'm too exhausted to talk to them." So the logical thing happened and in a week I started disliking myself for becoming such a sloth. I usually just chide myself in my thoughts and it's enough to get me to a workout, but this time it didn't work as well, days passed and I didn't improve.
I started examining my habits for a possible reason – is it something to do with my work? No, it's going better than ever, I don't even know why, but anyway, it's not that. Is it my daughter? No, she's just fine, smiling, cheerful, obedient and easy going. What could it be? I was feeling something's not quite right, yet I couldn't pinpoint it. I didn't feel sick, I had no trauma. I even started deliberating to check my testosterone levels cause I'm old now, 37 years, I know it's supposed to be dropping. Before that, I thought, let's just change the diet, seems like the simplest thing to do. What should I eat? I researched this and that and I decided. Let me try the keto diet. Alright, but I don't feel like eating a bunch of meat, some from time to time is fine, but not extensively. Good thing that there are alternatives. I'll stick to dairy, eggs, maybe some powder protein even though it's not food, but a drink and I feel empty after it, some soy, peanuts and fruits. Not the sweet ones, mostly tomatoes and cucumbers. Alright, let's try this, see how it goes.
So I'm four or five days into this keto fasting now. I haven't checked my mass and it's largely irrelevant cause I still eat the same amount of calories. But let me tell you - it's astonishing, it feels rather unreal. First day was just "Meh, it's kind of the same, maybe slightly better, but nothing exceptional." Two days had passed, I went to bed the previous night as usual, around 12:30, 1 am. Next morning I woke up around 7 am all by myself, brimming with energy, I thought I'd burst. It didn't cross my mind it should be food related though. But squats, dead lift, shoulder press – you name it, I wanted to do it all again. The gym? Yeah, let's go! How about a light jog? Sure! I have no explanation, it's surreal, After the workout I started thinking "Why is this? What did you change?" Then the thought hit me "It's gotta be the food, nothing else is changed, it's the only explanation!" I never would've thought such a profound difference in my energy levels is possible by just tweaking the kind of food I'm eating. It really is astounding.
So that's the first thing I'd advise people to change in their habits – give keto a try. I'm not saying it's the absolute best for everybody, but it's worth a try. At least for a week, I'd say, try it for seven days. It just might be the change you need. As for me, I know I'll stick to it, it feels amazing!
 
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With a lot of things it helps to do them intermittently. If you stop drinking coffee for a month (or longer) you will be able to have effect from it once you restart. I think the same can apply with nutritional diet. Let your metabolism mix it up from time to time, keep it sharp.
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I tried Keto once or twice, but couldn't stick with it for more than a day or two.
Mind posting some details of what you've been eating? I might give it a shot again.
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On July 30 2021 08:57 Just_a_Moth wrote:
Mind posting some details of what you've been eating? I might give it a shot again.
Yes, sure.
Yesterday I started eating around 1 pm; tomato, cucumber and olive oil salad, salted. Also mozzarella cheese 125 grams, but not the yellow one, the white soft kind that is in brine. I also ate 200 grams cottage cheese with it. Couple of hours later maybe like 30 grams of peanuts. Around 6 pm the same meal as the previous one. For dinner I had some chicken, didn't measure it, but I'd say like 200 grams cooked, with green vegetables and more tomato/cucumber salad with olive oil. Finished all that with more cottage cheese.
For today I'm planning pretty much the same thing, except I'll substitute the dinner chicken with 3 or 4 whole eggs.
Now that I typed that, I can plainly see it's not the typical keto where like 70% of the calories are from fat, mine looks more like 60% or so, but still I think it's doing its job and I feel fresh and motivated and ready to do my stuff.
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How much (poly)saccharides would you assume you're consuming daily?
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Can't be above 40 grams since I'm adding stevia powder to coffee and I drink just plain tap water, nothing with sugar. I'm not monitoring carbs strictly, I know peanuts had like 20 grams per 100 grams, but I rarely eat more than 50 grams. Just protein intake seems quite high now, I should lower than and eat more fatty food, I think.
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Diets are somewhat strange in that change can be relative rather than absolute. That said, I think you could call your diet low carb but not remotely keto.
Intermittent fasting can cause the release of adrenaline. Considering the rapid onset of your improvement, I wouldn't be surprised if this was what was happening. Or maybe your exclusion diet or just the overall reduction/improvement in your food sources has made for better health.
You probably realize that the peanuts and stevia are not strictly keto, so I won't harp on that. I will warn you something that is not common knowledge, though, that you should avoid eating pure protein.
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On July 31 2021 06:40 Jerubaal wrote:
I will warn you something that is not common knowledge, though, that you should avoid eating pure protein.
Please, would you be so kind and elaborate on that? Food is a matter of no small significance and every bit of knowledge is useful.
As it is now, I'm unconsciously mixing protein food with other things like tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, some lettuce like plants. But I'd like to know why pure protein should be avoided.
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I think the bro sciencey explanation is that if you have carbs or fat in your meal, your body will use those, but if you don't it will make do with the protein. The thing is that it's pretty hard to find pure protein naturally. It IS well established, though, that whey protein will cause huge insulin spikes.
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I see, thank you. Well, I'll just add a few ml of some tahini to whey protein powder and fool my body this way so that no insulin spikes occur.
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That's fine, but from what I've read, I really doubt you'll even be sniffing ketosis.
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Well, I had to sample my urine to know if I'm in a state of ketosis. Turned out there are slightly elevated levels so all in all, I'm ok.
If nothing else this entire process is so fun for me and I get to know my body better. It feels like it's way overdue, yet I'm glad I'm doing it. 
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On July 30 2021 08:57 Just_a_Moth wrote:
I tried Keto once or twice, but couldn't stick with it for more than a day or two.
Mind posting some details of what you've been eating? I might give it a shot again.
If you're trying a proper keto diet (not just low carb, but actually getting your body into proper ketosis), it takes some time to adjust to it for most people. It's quite common to spend a week or two feeling quite low and miserable when transitioning, so if you want to give it a 'proper' shot, bear with it for a while before you give up.
That said, I'm not a huge fan of keto diets myself. It works for some people, no denying that, but ain't my thing.
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On August 09 2021 23:07 Salazarz wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2021 08:57 Just_a_Moth wrote:
I tried Keto once or twice, but couldn't stick with it for more than a day or two.
Mind posting some details of what you've been eating? I might give it a shot again. If you're trying a proper keto diet (not just low carb, but actually getting your body into proper ketosis), it takes some time to adjust to it for most people. It's quite common to spend a week or two feeling quite low and miserable when transitioning, so if you want to give it a 'proper' shot, bear with it for a while before you give up. That said, I'm not a huge fan of keto diets myself. It works for some people, no denying that, but ain't my thing.
Mind sharing what is your thing?
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EPT
