Healthy Bellies, Healthy bodies
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then the road to health is paved with misleading and counterintuitive information. Until April of this year I’ve never been one to study food in terms of purpose— for texture and taste, sure— but never in terms of what food was supposed to be doing for me.
Trouble came— as it had my whole life regarding food. The problem was that food wasn’t doing anything FOR me, my eating created a system of things food was doing TO me. Sugar addiction, binging on snack foods, my “exception” eating had become my rule eating. I was eating 80/20, only the the “80” part was DQ blizzards and pasta.
I never even considered grain-free and sugar-free living an option. After all, everything I ate was breaded, served on top of pasta, or was bean juice containing added white chocolate sauce. I truly thought changing my diet was impossible.
I set a small goal. Just make it to my July vacation, which was 3 months, without breaking 25g of carbs per day. I convinced myself I could live on chicken wings and blue cheese. I would plan all my meals to be my favorite low carb things: like hot dogs, chicken with Alfredo, and whatever I could stomach and trick myself into eating— hold the bread.
Little did I know, I would find out what food was really supposed to be doing for me— yes FOR ME. Once my body began to run on ketones for energy successfully— which for me was about 3 weeks in— I noticed my sleeping improved greatly. That was the first sign my body was changing.
The first 3 months on ketones for energy, I read 5 books, 4 being non fiction, and overall felt like I could get way more done in a day. I was working out an average of only 1.5 days per week. I lost my first 20ish pounds doing little to no exercise.
The ketogenic lifestyle has continued to be miraculous for me. When I tried to reintroduce gluten (derived from wheat) I was immediately ill. I had finally started honoring what would make MY body function well— I could not go back, even just occasionally.
Currently, I am the lowest weight of my adult life. At 17/18 I weighed an average of 175lbs with that yo-yoing up to 200-210 often. When I would restrict calories and obsess over what I could and couldn’t eat— I’d get thinner. As soon as I stopped monitoring, I’d blow back up.
I am happy to report that I have never tracked calories literally ever, If I wanted a full pound of wings, that’s what I ate. If I wanted to eat keto pizza all day for two days straight— that’s exactly what I did,
I like to eat, I always have. Humans are supposed to enjoy eating— it’s literally how our bodies function. I used to believe that my body required all of this special care and force to NOT eat so I could be a healthy weight— turns out all it needed was to not be fed empty foods that cause inflammation.
So conventional diets may be good for some people, or maybe they don’t wear their body’s irritation in a spare tire around their middle— but the path to health for me has been finding a way out of long term glycolysis and into ketosis!
Trouble came— as it had my whole life regarding food. The problem was that food wasn’t doing anything FOR me, my eating created a system of things food was doing TO me. Sugar addiction, binging on snack foods, my “exception” eating had become my rule eating. I was eating 80/20, only the the “80” part was DQ blizzards and pasta.
I never even considered grain-free and sugar-free living an option. After all, everything I ate was breaded, served on top of pasta, or was bean juice containing added white chocolate sauce. I truly thought changing my diet was impossible.
I set a small goal. Just make it to my July vacation, which was 3 months, without breaking 25g of carbs per day. I convinced myself I could live on chicken wings and blue cheese. I would plan all my meals to be my favorite low carb things: like hot dogs, chicken with Alfredo, and whatever I could stomach and trick myself into eating— hold the bread.
Little did I know, I would find out what food was really supposed to be doing for me— yes FOR ME. Once my body began to run on ketones for energy successfully— which for me was about 3 weeks in— I noticed my sleeping improved greatly. That was the first sign my body was changing.
The first 3 months on ketones for energy, I read 5 books, 4 being non fiction, and overall felt like I could get way more done in a day. I was working out an average of only 1.5 days per week. I lost my first 20ish pounds doing little to no exercise.
The ketogenic lifestyle has continued to be miraculous for me. When I tried to reintroduce gluten (derived from wheat) I was immediately ill. I had finally started honoring what would make MY body function well— I could not go back, even just occasionally.
Currently, I am the lowest weight of my adult life. At 17/18 I weighed an average of 175lbs with that yo-yoing up to 200-210 often. When I would restrict calories and obsess over what I could and couldn’t eat— I’d get thinner. As soon as I stopped monitoring, I’d blow back up.
I am happy to report that I have never tracked calories literally ever, If I wanted a full pound of wings, that’s what I ate. If I wanted to eat keto pizza all day for two days straight— that’s exactly what I did,
I like to eat, I always have. Humans are supposed to enjoy eating— it’s literally how our bodies function. I used to believe that my body required all of this special care and force to NOT eat so I could be a healthy weight— turns out all it needed was to not be fed empty foods that cause inflammation.
So conventional diets may be good for some people, or maybe they don’t wear their body’s irritation in a spare tire around their middle— but the path to health for me has been finding a way out of long term glycolysis and into ketosis!