My Keto Journey: the Reasoning and Prep Work

Why Keto?

Keto is, breaking it down to super basics, a high fat diet. It’s not just fatty junk food; it’s good quality fats. None of this trans fat or hydrogenated oil nonsense. Think good fats like olive oil, olives, coconut oil, cheese, beef, avocados, eggs, bacon, etc.

High fat, low carbs. Keto is NOT no carbs. The only source of energy or brain can use is glucose, which it gets from carbs. But! We’re looking at complex carbs – veggies!

The point of keto is to basically force your body to use fat for fuel in a process called ketosis. This is not DKA for any diabetics. This diet originally started to help with epilepsy. See, the no fat diets are bad because our brain uses good fat to build and maintain protective sheaths around our neurons. So keto diet, the high fat diet, was used to try to help the brain by protecting the neurons from misfiring. From there, researchers discovered it has benefits for other conditions like cardiovascular conditions.

You might be thinking, “Wait a minute. High fat diets can’t be good for the heart. Fat blocks arteries. Cholesterol. Lipids.”

Don’t glitch. Trans fat, hydrogenated oils, are bad for your body. Yes. Saturated fats, however, are not. Obviously, you don’t want to sit there and eat beef tallow by the spoonful, but your body needs the natural fats to function properly. For the heart, the keto diet, when done correctly, can help you lose weight, which may be good for your heart, and can help with the lining of the smooth vessels. My mum did keto for awhile to help with vasospasms, and it definitely did help!

So why am I doing it? I don’t have epilepsy nor do I have vasospasms. I don’t even want to lose a ton of weight.

I have thyroid issues –> high leptin, high cortisol. I can feel when they start to get out of whack again which basically means my diet has sucked.

Remember: diet = what you make a habit of eating, good or bad.

(Click HERE for the first of my 4 part series on that 4 letter word.)

I was crashing after eating, like literally within 15min would be ready to take a nap regardless of time of day, which is not a good sign!

So I combed through my cookbooks, specifically for autoimmune recipes, and previous meal plans – Mediterranean inspired and Paleo are typically what I lean toward normally – but without or with very, very little fish. None of them looked good. And if food does not look or sound good to me, that’s when I slip and order pizza or just cook random comfort food that is not necessarily providing my body the nutrients it needs. Then I saw a few high fat recipes. And looked at more. And those all sounded fantastic, like I was getting hungry looking at them.

But before I got out my calendar template to start meal planning, I looked at my grocery budget. Keto is not low-grocery budget friendly! The cheeses and meats and oils tend to be some of the pricier items in the store, especially if you’re going for the good quality. My life has been stabilizing/coming together a bit better these days, so I decided I could have a keto diet for a month and then reassess.

I made a 2 week menu, made a shopping list based off that menu, flinched a little at the estimated total, and cleaned out my fridge and pantry.

Now, I am NOT a fan of throwing away good ingredients. I clean out my fridge pretty frequently, looking for expired or yuck ingredients. My pantry, not as often as I should. I did not throw away my Kodiak pancake mix. It’s just not going to be used for a month. I did not throw away the brown sugar or the different flours, just made sure they’re in airtight Tupperware to keep them safe.

Then I went grocery shopping. And flinched again when the total came up, but I had bought the staples. Any additional groceries bought throughout the month would just be normal grocery bills.

So that’s the reasoning and prep work to set myself up for successful. The next part will be a review of Week 1!

Resources:

• “Why Did Saturated Fat Get a Bad Rep?” by Mark Hyman, MD.
  Dr. Hyman was actually a CCF doctor when he published big research on functional medicine vs traditional allopathic (commonly called western) medicine. I was on nightshift as an EMT and even at night, the buzz that research created in the halls of CCF main… The CCF functional medicine department is now one of the most in-demand at the CCF. I also had the pleasure of attending one of his lectures local to me and learned a lot!
• “A Functional Approach to the Keto Diet with Mark Hyman, MD” from the Cleveland Clinic (CCF) website. This is a podcast with a transcript, so you can listen or read.
• “Who Should Eat Keto and Why?” a Mark Hyman podcast with no transcript.

I realize my three resources here are all the same person which is generally not considered good research. But I’m not writing a research article or essay. I have used other sources in the past, but for this, I want to direct you to Dr. Hyman. For starters, he is not an influencer or bro-science or fad writer. He is a medical doctor who doesn’t have his allopathic protocol blinders on. He treats the body as a whole, not just bandaid solutions for symptoms. And the Cleveland Clinic is one of the biggest research hospitals in the world (I haven’t seen their t-shirts in awhile, so I don’t know their current ranking). While I believe his personal practice grew to the point he is no longer with the CCF, I think he still has some ties to them, and I know they still have the functional medicine center he started.

• Tupperware: looking for legit Tupperware with a lifetime warranty? My mum just happens to be a Tupperware lady and can help you out! Tupperware helps organize my pantry and fridge and freezer, and it’s BPA free, following European guidelines for food safety! Tupperware also has oven safe products which are my absolute favorite, right up there with the water bottles!

These canisters are my favorite for my flours and sugars, but you also cannot go wrong with Modular Mates…although I’m eyeing the Ultra Clear sets…