Hopes

So I've been researching the Keto diet pretty heavily over the past several days, including three new additions to my cookbook library.

I really like the one called "The Keto Diet" by Leanne Vogel.  The first half of the book is filled with information about the diet, how to do it, what everything means, tips on how to succeed, troubleshooting tips, getting started, maintaining changing the plan to suit your specific needs, meal plans, snack ideas, and more.  There is so much information in the first part of that book, it is going to take me a while to internalize all the information in there.  I love the layout, here is a shot from inside the book.

She introduces the classic Keto plan which is 75% fat, 20% protein and 5% carbs.  (That is percentage of your daily calorie intake.)  And then she introduces several variations of the keto diet that you could try if classic Keto isn't jiving with you.  One is increasing the percentage of protein in your diet and decreasing your fat percentage by the same amount.  She also introduces a "carb up" plan where you eat more carbs once, twice, three times, or even every evening.  She gives you ideas of where to start and then how to change it to your needs and includes a questionnaire if you really have no clue where to start. 

I know that when I did Whole 30 I never really felt quite right.  I never hit the "Tiger Blood" they were talking about and I'm not sure if that's because I wasn't in full Ketosis since I was eating potatoes every day and a lot of high carb vegetables like squash and jicama (root vegetables seem to have the most carbs).  In many ways the two plans are very similar, and in many ways they are quite different.  I think I will do a post on the differences between the two plans just because I've done Whole 30 and Keto is similar in nature.  However Keto is not so stringent on the rules.  There are lots of variations and interpretations.  You can find the really gung ho people who only eat organic, grass fed goodness and don't eat dairy or use sweeteners, and you can find people who love dairy and use it every day like in the book "The complete Ketogenic diet for beginners" by Amy Ramos.  It's the smallest of the three books I bought on Amazon and contrary to it's title, there isn't much information about the diet in the beginning and it gets to the recipes pretty quickly.  It does provide a two week meal plan, but the information at the beginning is very simple.  Just a quick explanation of what the diet is, how it works, and what your ratios should be.  Many of the recipes contain dairy I can't eat such as cream cheese, but I have a pretty good idea how to swap out ingredients by this point, especially in these type of recipes where the ingredients are basic whole foods and non complex.  Maybe I will include more about that in another blog post. 

I haven't gotten to the third book yet "Quick and easy Ketogenic cooking" by Maria Emmerich but a quick glance through it yields promising results.  I bought these books because they were the best sellers on Amazon.  You know how you can search for something and one of the first results always has the orange bar that says "Best Sellar"  Yeah, so apparently that works on me.  And then when you click an item and right below the preview it says "frequently bought together"..... yeah that's how I ended up with three books instead of one.  But I think it gives me more information and better variety.  It's hard shopping on Amazon when you can't look inside the book.  Based on the titles I probably would have bought the smallest book and ended up with no information because the title is very misleading "The complete ketogenic diet for beginners".  Not that it doesn't have good recipes, it's just not really you know... the complete ketogenic diet for beginners.

So anyway, that is where I am right now and I think I will be starting near the end of the week.  I'm shooting for Thursday or Friday and I want to write more about the information I learn through the books that include more detail.  If you have any requests for more about a certain topic please leave me a comment! 

And I think I will leave with some of my hopes about what to get out of this diet.


Here are some things that Keto promises that I am really hoping to get out of doing the plan:

1. Weight loss (naturally)- Being obese again has not been good for my mental or my physical state and I so badly want to get down to where I was before my miscarriage and even beyond that, to my goal weight I never was able to reach.

2. Fasting becomes easy- Being Mormon, we are taught to fast for two meals the first Sunday of every month.  I've never been able to do this (probably because I'm a carb burner and suffer from all the withdrawal symptoms carb burners face when trying to go without food).  It's always bothered me that I couldn't follow this, and while it doesn't affect my membership in the church or what I can do in the church, it always bothered me since fasting is talked about in the scriptures many many times as a way to increase spirituality and one's connection with God. 

3. The lifestyle gets easier- I talked about this on my last post.  If this is in fact true, that would be amazing.

4. More Energy- I would love to have the energy to play more with my kids.  I've wanted that for years and it's one of the big reasons why I haven't just given up yet.  I don't want life to pass me by, I want to be able to experience life, not waste away on the couch every day because I'm too tired to do anything.

5. Mental clarity- That will help with learning languages, and with just life in general.