My Story: How I Lost 77 Pounds
My story begins many years ago. I started my health improvement and weight loss journey in 2008 after a series of health scares forced me to look at my bad diet and non-existent exercise habits. My blood pressure and fasting blood sugar were both elevated, and I started having issues with blurred vision and pain in my feet. That really scared me, as my mother had been diabetic before she died at the age of 63, and I did not want to end up dying young and in pain as she had. So I started paying attention to how I felt after I ate. Armed with my observations, I began to change my diet. At first, I cut out the obvious processed junk foods, and started choosing real foods instead. Out went the boxed and canned stuff, and I started eating fresh meats and vegetables instead. Although my diet was much lower in carbs at this point, and I had removed many of the problematic foods, I still got my chocolate fix in every week, and I was eating bread or corn chips occasionally. Legionella Testing Lab - High Quality Lab Results CDC ELITE & NYSDOH ELAP Certified - Fast Results North America Lab Locations legionellatesting.com Six months into these changes, I felt so much better, I decided to write a website and share the information I had learned about what constituted real food and the difference it can make in your health. I called the website Healthy Eating Politics, since what I had learned about “healthy eating” was the direct opposite of what the federal government and mainstream medicine was saying. I discovered that the low fat, whole grain, high carb diet being pushed by the USDA was making people sick, and that cholesterol and saturated fat were NOT evil foods. The lie that cholesterol and saturated fat cause heart disease was doing a lot of damage to the average America Continue reading >>
Here's Exactly How I Lost 50 Pounds Doing The Keto Diet
Of all the places to seek life-changing nutrition advice, I never thought the barber shop would be where I found it. But one day last January, after a couple years of saying to myself, "today's the day I make a change," my barber schooled me on something called keto. Normally, I take things he says with a grain of salt unless they're about hair or owning a business, but this guy could literally be on the cover of Men's Health. He's 6 feet tall, conventionally attractive, and his arms are about five pull-ups away from tearing through his t-shirt. If anyone else had implied that I was looking rough, I would've walked out in a fit of rage, but I decided to hear him out. I should clarify that I was out of shape, but my case wasn't that severe. I hadn't exercised in a few years and basically ate whatever I wanted and however much of it, but I was only about 30 to 40 pounds overweight. My barber went on to explain that this diet, paired with an appropriate exercise routine, allowed him to completely transform his body in less than a year, and all he ate was fatty foods. Once he showed me his "before" picture, I was sold. It was time to actually make a change. Short for ketogenic, keto is a high-fat, moderate protein, low-carb diet that forces your metabolism into what's called a state of ketosis. There's a much more scientific explanation to that, but it basically means that instead of burning carbohydrates (mainly glucose, or sugars), your body switches to burning fat as a primary source for energy. Keto isn't necessarily about counting calories, though the basic idea of eating less in order to lose weight still applies. This is more of a calculated way to rewire your metabolism so that it burns fat more efficiently over time, using very specific levels of each macronutrient Continue reading >>
How To Exercise On A Keto Diet
Following several requests from my readers, I will be sharing my thoughts on exercise and nutrition that is specific to those of who stay physically active and follow a keto diet. In this post, I'll try to cover the basic facts and myths about training on a ketogenic diet. This post will not cover details of exercise nutrition (e.g. whether to eat carbs before or after exercise which is not as straightforward as you may think), essential supplements, specific types of training or my personal exercise routine. These topics are covered in this post: Keto Diet Nutrition & Exercise: Carbs - and many more will follow in my future posts. So let's start with some basics of training on a keto diet. The "Exercise More and Eat Less" Dogma When you ask people what is the purpose of exercise, the most common answers are: to lose weight (body fat) to get fit and stay healthy to look and feel good to build muscles and strength When your goal is fat loss, the most common mistake is to go on a calorie restricted diet and add more exercise, usually prolonged cardio, in an effort to lose weight. When this approach fails, most people simply decrease their calorie intake and take on even more exercise. By doing so, most become physically and mentally exhausted with no real weight loss. The more they stick to this approach, the more like they will overexercise and/ or overeat, putting an increasing amount of stress on their body. The side effects of that are accelerating the ageing process of their cells and increasing the level of chronic inflammation. This approach is simply not sustainable and can harm your body. Years before I started following a low-carb approach, I used to spend hours exercising every week. In fact, I used to go to gym almost every day for an hour or more, usually doi Continue reading >>
Is The Ketogenic Diet Right For You? Nutritionists Weigh In
You may be hearing a lot about the ketogenic diet as a way to slim down while noshing on butter and heavy cream. This way of eating is suddenly hot among venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, who believe it will help them live longer and healthier, CNBC reports. Some praise the high-fat/ultra low-carb plan for helping them to lose weight and have energy all day long. Other advocates say it finally helped them to get control of their body. How does it work and could it help you? We asked Bonnie Taub-Dix, a registered dietitian nutritionist and author of “Read It Before You Eat It”; and Keri Glassman, nutritionist, registered dietitian and TODAY Tastemaker. To start with, both said they would never advise the ketogenic diet for weight loss. “Cutting out carbs is usually an invitation to overeat them at another point,” Taub-Dix said. “For a diet where you’re looking to lose weight, look good and feel good… I would not recommend a diet like this.” “For safe and effective weight loss, the carb reduction is too extreme,” Glassman added. RELATED: Read inspiring stories of ordinary people slimming down in TODAY's My Weight-Loss Journey Here’s what you need to know: What is the ketogenic diet? It’s a diet fine-tuned in the 1920s to help treat epilepsy. It does help to control seizures in some children, but it’s not recommended for adults “mostly because the restricted food choices make it hard to follow,” the Epilepsy Foundation says. The diet has just recently begun to be touted as a weight loss plan, Glassman noted. She described it as eating “mostly fat with a teeny bit of protein and carbs.” How does it work? Your body normally relies on carbohydrates for energy. It breaks them down into glucose, which is your main source of fuel. If that� Continue reading >>
Do You Need To Exercise On Keto Diet?
It is often said that one of the best things about following a ketogenic diet for weight loss is that you don’t have to adopt an exercise regime to lose weight. Many people don’t like the idea of working out, or think they don’t have time, and this makes the ketogenic diet appealing to them. But is it true? Constant Fat Burning Through Ketosis In essence, yes, you can lose weight, and at quite a good rate, without adding additional exercise to your daily routine. This is for two reasons inherent to the way the ketogenic diet works, which are different to the way a traditional low fat diet works: Firstly, when you are on a ketogenic diet, your body is in a state called ketosis where it is burning fat you eat and your own body fat for energy. Energy of course, isn’t just used up by exercise and conscious activity, but by everything you do. Even when your sleeping, your body needs fuel to keep itself going. Because all of this fuel is coming from fat, you don’t need to exercise to burn it off and lose weight. Secondly, because a ketogenic diet curbs your appetite, even though you don’t count calories you are likely to be eating a low calorie diet naturally. This means that your calorie use every day is likely to exceed your calorie intake, even without burning through extra calories by exercising. So, this is good news for people who are too unfit to exercise safely, or who can’t exercise because of injury or disability. It is also good news for people who just don’t want to exercise, however, don’t rule it out just on that basis… Why You Should Still Work Out if You Can If you are able to work out, from a physical perspective (everybody can make time, so being too busy is no excuse!) then you will find it has an even greater impact on the speed and eff Continue reading >>
How To Exercise When You’re In Ketosis
Since going keto means greatly reducing carbs, and since carbs are the body’s primary source of fuel, you might be wondering what your options are when it comes to how to exercise while in ketosis. The good news is that while there are some things to keep in mind, exercise is totally possible on the ketogenic diet and even has some big benefits health- and energy-wise. These are important to know when wading through any misconceptions around low-carb eating and working out. Exercising in Ketosis First, let’s note that the traditional view of weight loss—simply eating less and exercising longer, often with long bouts of cardio—is outdated and unsustainable. In order to see real results when it comes to losing weight and getting leaner, what you eat really matters. A great place to start is checking out a guide on sourcing meat, dairy, and seafood. Therefore, paying attention to the quality of your ketogenic diet itself, and maintaining a steady state of ketosis, is the most important first step you can take. To see if you are actually in a metabolic state of ketosis, testing your ketone levels is vitally important. However, exercise also has many benefits for your health. It’s good for the heart, builds muscle to keep you lean and toned, and strengths the bones. Thankfully, exercise can completely fit into your routine while eating for ketosis. You just need to keep in mind a few simple considerations: Type of Exercise Nutritional needs vary depending on the type of exercise performed. Workouts styles are typically divided into four types: aerobic, anaerobic, flexibility, and stability. Aerobic exercise, also known as cardio exercise, is anything that lasts over three minutes. Lower intensity, steady-state cardio is fat burning, making it very friendly for the Continue reading >>
Not Losing Weight On A Low-carb Ketogenic Diet? Don’t Give Up And Read Further
The ketogenic diet is not only known to be one of the most effective weight loss tools, but has proven to have many health benefits. Ketosis is a state at which your body produces ketones in the liver, shifting the body's metabolism away from glucose and towards fat utilization. Unless you can check your blood ketones, using Ketostix is an easy way to detect urinary ketones. It's not the most accurate method, but may be good enough to find out whether you are in ketosis. In some cases, weight loss may be difficult even on a low-carb ketogenic diet and there may be a few possible reasons for weight stalling, which I have listed in this post. If you want to know more about the ketogenic diet and how it can help you lose weight, have a look at my Practical Guide to Keto Diet which is freely available on my website also as PDF. 3 free diet plans to help you kickstart your diet, lose weight and get healthy Recipes, giveaways and exclusive deals delivered directly to your inbox A chance to win the KetoDiet app every week Top Reasons You Are Not Losing Weight on a Keto Diet 1. Carbs are Too High Your carbohydrate intake may be too high. Try to decrease your daily carbs limit. Also try to include coconut oil in your diet. Coconut oil consists of MCTs (Medium chain triglycerides), which are easily digestible, less likely to be stored by your body and are used for immediate energy. MCTs are converted in the liver into ketones, which helps you enter ketosis. If you want to know more about carbs, check out this post. For more about ketones, have a look at this post. 2. Protein is Too High or Too Low Your protein intake may be too high/ low. Protein is the most sating macronutrient and you should include high-quality animal protein in your diet. If you don't eat enough protein, you Continue reading >>
