You asked. Here’s my answer. First meal of the day is now, 1pm. Bacon cheeseburger with pickles, mayo, and grilled mushrooms in a lettuce wrap. 53g fat, 2g carbs, 44g protein, 665 calories.
At about 3pm I ate 5 squares of a Dark Chocolate Almond Lily bar (nutr) and an Atkins Endulge Caramel Chocolate Square.
I walked on the elliptical machine, raising my heart rate only moderately (128 bpm) for 40 minutes. I tried doing interval training on the treadmill—walking then running then walking then running—but I didn’t have the energy to last more than 30 minutes. Or maybe it’s just hard to do interval training whilst watching a movie on your iphone. I’m far more motivated to run when there’s a kickass playlist motivating me.
At 8pm my stomach started to growl. I ate a wedge of double cream cheese and 8 squares of a truffle cheese. I didn’t measure, just ate until I was satisfied (read: until I finished it all).
NEW DAY:
(fasted 13.5 hours, slept 10 hours) 11:30 AM: Black tea. 2 Texan Smoked Sausage “Rings.” It’s snowing. It’s Saturday. I’m still in my sequin slippers and floral pajamas. Tonight we’re going to a catered birthday party in Greenwich, CT. It’s now 12:15 PM. I will fast for the next 6 hours until we arrive at the party.
(fasted 13.5 hours, slept 10 hours) 11:30 AM: Black tea. 2 Texan Smoked Sausage “Rings.” It’s snowing. It’s Saturday. I’m still in my sequin slippers and floral pajamas. Tonight we’re going to a catered birthday party in Greenwich, CT. It’s now 12:15 PM. I will fast for the next 6 hours until we arrive at the party.
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It’s great that you’ve been able to stick with this and clearly seems like a manageable lifestyle. I find it inspiring. So real question – what about when you’re not following the diet? Do you have cheat meals or entire cheat days? How often? Do you follow if you’re on vacation, holidays, etc.?
Any diet works as long as you can stick to it. I have been doing this since last January. At the beginning the scale did not move. Three weeks I think it took for the scale to MOVE not just teeter totter where it had been. A lot of people start this and give it a week then gain and freak out and stop. It takes 3 days to get your body into a state of ketosis, but your bod needs a chance to burn fat! It needs some time without glucose to burn, so it can kick into getting its energy from fat instead of sugar. With an abundance of fat coming in it says, hey now! I don’t have to hold onto the fat in these cells. Let’s use that. So in the beginning I didn’t do cheat days for probably the first 2 months, to see if the diet even worked! Now, let’s talk cheat days…
CHEAT DAYS: There are all out holiday cheat days I throw myself into. July 4th I ate sausage and meat and fat all day and for dinner at a function. But oh, sweet dessert. I told no one to judge, then I returned from the dessert buffet with a hot fudge sundae, key lime pie, cheesecake, and a nut brownie and maybe apple pie. I ate as much as I wanted. Key is the next day, no leftovers, carbs under 20g. I am also smart enough NOT to get on a scale after a cheat day. Besides, you didn’t gain 5lbs of fat from that day. The scale is showing you FOOD, so I don’t weigh myself until 3 days later. And shockingly I never gain weight! Still lose.
MORE ON CHEAT DAYS: I went to town on Thanksgiving and of course Christmas, I made them cheat days as I did for July 4. While in Japan for 16 days I was totally off from Keto, ate whatever I was given, but you walk a lot on vacation. I didn’t gain. Maybe lost too.
HOW ABOUT ONCE YOUR BODY IS KETO-ADAPTED? Once your body is used to using fat instead of glucose as primary energy source, I think you can get away with weekly cheat days. My weekly cheat days consist of drinking martinis and eating dessert or corn pudding or lasagna. But it is less of a DAY and more of an obscene meal. Ooh like when we go to Cheesecake Factory I get a martini and fries and mayo and I still ate my burger no bun and sampled desserts.
ALCOHOL: it’s converted into acetone in your body so the liver and your body have to deal with metabolizing that, which means it cannot burn fat as it deals with this first. If you want to be a fat burning machine you should avoid alcohol. But it won’t throw you out of ketosis.
OKAY BUT I will say this. On Christmas I went overboard and had my delicious spanakopita and lasagna and tons of appetizers and tons of cookies and then pecan pie and wine. The next day I felt like a beaten down shit emoji. It wasn’t worth it going that overboard.
I cheat weekly with a drink or two and a dessert and shrimp Parmesan and vodka sauce and…
Hope that answered your question.
This is fascinating to me. If I ate a breakfast like that I feel like I’d be on the toilet for half the day and feel like a lump of lead. Does eating like this really make you feel energetic? And how’s your poop? :-)
I would love to lose a little weight and feel healthier but this looks so extreme. Are you also exercising? It feels OK to eat like this and also work out?
I don’t do this every day, and I did work out afterward. Ideally, I would’ve worked out on an empty stomach, then gone and eaten this meal. The best time to workout is the AM before you eat. I didn’t eat anything else all day except cheese at night when my stomach growled. And six squares of a Lily bar. Poo is fine. My next post is going to be about avoiding food in the morning.
Thanks for all this Stephanie. I’m trying to do 2 things – lose some weight and also eliminate the inflammatory foods from my diet – Grains, sugar, alcohol, legumes, dairy. And I’m trying some intermittent fasting. It’s supposed to be very good at resetting the immune system. My immune system is always out of whack, but this fall it’s been even worse – i was sick every month. I take immune suppressing drugs, so I need every advantage I can get. You’ve given me great incentive – as always.
Thanks Leigh, and good for you for taking control, rather than ignoring the issue and hoping it will just magically work itself out. I don’t know enough about our immune system, only that healthy gut flora seems to be the solution for everything these days. Fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, and Kombucha.
I know you are still doing it, but what happens when you go out of ketosis/off the diet completely?
I go out of ketosis once a week (on cheat days). I plan to eat like this as long as possible. If you wanted to stop and do what? Still lose weight on a different diet? Or maintain? I would say what I said earlier. Any diet works as long as you follow it. Like I went off it completely for 16 days in Japan (eating noodles, rice, escargot in puff pastry etc) and I was fine. I walked. I gained no weight.
Do you count total carbs or net carbs?