Keto, again

After a break of roughly 5 years, we are back on the Keto diet train. Its just as effective and rewarding as I recall.

If its so rewarding and effective, then why are we back here again? Opposed to well, still being there.

In short, its because eating according to the keto diet is genuinely a lifestyle change and not an eating plan. Eating and food are a fundamental social glue for all cultures. The keto diet, in my view of course, challenges this cultural aspect as much as it challenges the mind around what food to eat and when to eat.

This culture shift is expressed in two main ways; the re-evaluation of what you eat, and then when to eat.

Done well, eating according to a Keto diet will mean the sacrificing of carb-high foods resulting in a change of your menu, and a greater interval between the meals you do eat. In other words, you will change what you eat, and you will eat less often. This poses two major challenges; changing what you do when you are in social contexts (which often revolve around various kinds of feeding) and then how you manage your thinking around eating, now that your body doesn’t need input (what do you do in lunch time for example?).

Like most of life, we have all become obsessed with being data-driven. Our sleep, food purchases and travel movements are all voluntarily being measured and monitored. The good news is, this also applies to living a Keto lifestyle, now its possible to monitor your sugar (glucose) and ketones in your blood at home with ease, at a relatively low cost. The benefit? Real-time indications of whether you are actually succeeding at your Keto diet – you have low blood sugar and sufficient levels of ketones in your blood. The result, motivation! You can see the result of you hard work; by that I mean the effort you are taking to make the right food and drink consumption decisions every day.

Why all the fuss? Truthfully, there are push and pull factors. Firstly losing some unneeded body weight was in order, and secondly the challenge of committing to change something fundamental to day-to-day living.

When we first heard about the Keto diet through the back-channel YouTube recordings of Prof. Tim Noakes, it was a largely wild and crazy idea that was shocking all who heard it. As you can expect, it was (and still is) largely contested. Now a few years later, adopting a Keto lifestyle is so much easier because of the pervasiveness of fundamental food sources, and also, the encouraging study and education of people like Dr Boz, who has made our Keto re-adoption dramatically easier than a few years ago.

An added benefit to changing our eating habit, feeling better and losing weight as been the focus we can put on the quality of the meals we do eat. In other words, we eating fewer meals, and so are able to use better ingredients. This not only makes us look forward to these meals more, but also helps us do our bit towards eating from sustainable producers, supporting farmers who are trying to make a difference, and generally just looking after our earth more by buying less plastic. Win win win.