I'm a redditor... I'll admit that I spend far too much time on
reddit than I really should. Precious hours of potential productivity wasted scrolling through posts.
Well, 'wasted' might not be the right word.
Reddit, as of today, has been the reason I've lost 5.2kgs since the 1st of April.
I was scrolling through the front page of usual and kept seeing weightloss stories and motivational achievements. Inside I was thinking "NOT YOU TOO REDDIT??!?! WHY ARE YOU JUDGING ME?!?!?" but, as it turns out, there are a lot of people like me with mostly sedentary lifestyles who enjoy stress eating that sit around on reddit all day.
WHODATHUNKIT
In these posts I kept seeing "Thanks Keto" or "Thanks r/keto for showing me the way" and I kept thinking it was some kind of weird cult. With the amount of weight these people were losing I was sure it was some kind of eating disorder support group. I decided to check it out.
r/keto is not, as it turns out, an eating disorder support group. In fact, although doctors and nutritionalists may be a bit behind on the info, it's actually a very healthy and beneficial way of losing weight.
Keto stands for Ketogenic refering to the state of ketosis. Ketosis is the process where your body produces ketones from your liver. This shifts the body's metabolism away from glucose (sugar) towards using fat for energy.
Getting into a state of ketosis only takes under 24 hours of less than 20grams of carbohydrate intake. Go low carb for a day and you should be already in ketosis. From there it's about conquering the keto-flu (flu like symptoms as you adjust to the new way of processing food; although not everyone goes through this), then making your way to being neurologically keto-adapted in 3-4 weeks before become fully adapted at 2-6 months.
I am currently over the flu and moving into getting more energy and feeling satisfied all the time. Everything going smoothly, I should be getting more and more energy over the next few weeks. I'm still pretty tired at the moment though to be honest. Soon the weightloss, currently averaging 200g a day should start slowing down too.
I've been spreading word of me on this diet for accountability. My goal currently is to stay on it at least until I leave Japan in four months time. Depending on how I'm doing then I'll probably keep going to my goal weight.
It has been surprisingly easy though. I've kept under my calories (tracking on MyFitnessPal app) and managed to keep my carbs under 20g. Although in the beginning I gave myself some leniency and made it 50g it has naturally come down to the point where I barely make 10g in a day. Incredible.
For me, a person who would have a pack of chips every day after work and on stressful days would order pizza and far too many sides, not having these things for 2 weeks and really not thinking about them all too much is a massive feat. Especially the chips.
Sometimes I'll think about them and have cravings but they're just mental cravings I'll need to keep at bay. I'm never really hungry anymore. In fact, on the weekend, I missed lunch and didn't eat during an all nighter but physically it didn't really make any difference. The slow burning of fat is keeping me satisfied and keeping my energy up.
This post is getting long but I just wanted to talk about why I didn't start this earlier.
There were things like "I live in Japan - everything is about rice" and "I'm happy being fat" but that's not entirely true. I was not happy being fat, and being on the diet in Japan is not really that hard provided you put the effort in.
It made me realise that all these thoughts were just excuses. I was scared to conform, I was scared to change, I was scared about the effects of doing a diet. But the thing that changed it for me was thinking "I'm already tired, and sick, and in danger of doing permanent damage to myself. What more damage could this do?"
And so, today I am tired, and not entirely functional but I am 5.2kgs lighter than two weeks ago and more positive and daring for it.
Slip ups will happen but as the community says:
