An effective diet plan is one that provides your body with the required nutrients while also aiding in weight loss. Keto diet or ketogenic diet helps you lose weight, burn fat while also ensuring your body gets the nutrients it needs. (ALSO READ What is the Ketogenic diet and how it helps you lose weight) But how does Keto Diet really work? 23-year-old Keith Sequeira tried it out and saw results in the first ten days itself. Here’s how he did it:
How Keto Diet helped this 23-year-old dude lose weight
Keith Sequeira was a diehard foodie before he got on the Keto Diet. Having learned about the Keto diet from his elder brother, Craig, a professional bodybuilder and personal trainer, Keith began his weight-loss journey from mid-June this year. He expected to achieve results within a month but experienced a change in his body within just ten days itself. Before trying out the Keto Diet, Keith had gone down the tried and tested ways of losing weight. Like everyone else, he hit the gym. And while this did show some improvement, his diet — carbs heavy, primarily — would bring all his workout to nought. The workout that really helped him lose weight was dancing. “I attended a dance class for two years. The 90-minute class with as much time before it to warm up helped me a great deal. Over the course of two years, I lost a lot of fat and greatly improved my overall fitness, the benefits of which I enjoy even now,” he says. But then Keith Sequeira quit dancing. “For two years I led a sedentary life so I ended up gaining a lot of weight. In two weeks I lost most of it, simply by following the Keto Diet.
The Keto Diet uses fats as its primary source of energy, whereas the body prefers carbs as its energy source and uses fats as a fuel only during starvation. The diet relies on training your body to use fat instead of carbs and reduce your carb intake to an almost negligible amount. At the same time, you increase your body fat consumption until it comprises around 60 per cent of your meal. Keith says, “This fools your body into thinking it’s in starvation mode even though you have eaten well, and it starts to burn fat.”
How does Keto diet help in weight loss?
- Your appetite considerably reduces and you find yourself less hungry than usual. According to Keith, “This is because half of the hunger you feel is because your body has run out of sugar and is craving more. So the hunger you experience on a regular diet is actual hunger plus sugar cravings.”
- You tend to get irritable in the initial stage of the diet. “This is because your body is craving sugar that it is used to getting from carbs. Think of it as a sort of withdrawal symptom. Eventually, it goes away and you start looking at sweets and desserts differently.”
- You put the nutritional value of meals ahead of everything else. Including the taste of the food.
- Your body begins to lose fat. Since your body is burning fat for fuel as opposed to carbs. “This fat loss will plateau at a certain stage, however,” Keith warns.
- You build more stamina. Keith explains, “This is because fat is a more stable source of fuel. Carbs boost your blood sugar and then insulin comes in and takes it all away. Your energy boost lasts as long as it takes your insulin to clear away the excess sugar. This is why you feel sleepy after eating a lot of rice.”
How important is it to exercise if you are on a Keto Diet?
Working out is as important for fat loss as an effective diet. Your fat loss will plateau eventually because your body needs to find equilibrium between your diet and maintaining its current state of fitness. Working out builds muscles and the larger your muscles are, the more potential they have to store energy (sugar) within them and with larger muscles, you could eat more sugar without worrying about it getting converted to and stored as fat. Keith’s advice, “If you want to enjoy all those cakes and sweets, invest in building up your muscles now so that when you do indulge, you can worry less about gaining weight.”
“For me, being fit is more important than looking fit. I didn’t have a goal like losing x kilos or shedding y inches. I began the keto diet with some scepticism. But the expectation of fat loss that I had – however undefined – was outdone by the diet. I must have lost roughly around 4 kg within the initial ten days of beginning the diet. I’ve also lost inches. At my fattest I was 34 inches, now I’m 28/30 inches.”
What did Keith’s Keto Diet consist of that helped him lose weight?
Breakfast (6 am): 3 egg omelettes fried in butter/coconut oil, with a generous helping of melted cheese sometimes a side of bacon.
Lunch (2 pm): A meat source, preferably fried. If not, then I’d add butter or ghee to the gravy. Vegetables were mostly green leafy vegetables or cauliflower. Or cucumbers. I stopped eating rice and restricted my rotis to three a day initially before abolishing that too altogether. It’s better to reduce your carb intake gradually instead of all of a sudden; you run the risk of becoming very irritable and directing all that bad energy at those around you.
Dinner (11 pm): Similar to lunch. It was generally lunch leftovers.
“The keto diet is much easier if you can eat meat and eggs. Vegetarian sources of protein restrict you to pretty much paneer and tofu. Because of my work, I sometimes didn’t get time to eat lunch. So I’d make up for that with a heavier breakfast and/or dinner.” His water intake is very high, because of excessive sweating when exerted. On the other hand, he keeps his salt intake low.
When asked about his cheat days, he says, “That’s the one big thing in keto. There are no cheat days. At least not for the first 2 months. In fact, in the first one month, you should avoid fruits too, because of its sugar content. Your body takes time to properly adjust to the new diet. A cheat day means retraining your body from scratch all over again and undoing all the hard work you’ve put in until then. However, when your body has adjusted, and by the time you’ve been at it for a few months, you know the difference between sugar-craving and real hunger.”
As for his sugar cravings, he says, “Knowing something is limited makes you savour it all the more while it lasts. I enjoy cake more now than ever before because there isn’t an infinite supply of cake. There’s just that one slice that I allow myself and that’s it.”
Keith explains how each week of the Keto diet has been for him:
Week 1: Initially when I started, it was tough because I really love chocolate and cake and fruits. I didn’t cheat though.
Week 2: It was strange because I know I’ve eaten and my stomach feels full, but there is this sense that I must eat more. This is the difference between hunger and sugar craving. I am able to understand what it was now.
Week 3: I accidentally ate dal. I thought dal was a protein source but it turns out it has a lot of carbs and I ate 3 big bowls. In spite of that, I felt ridiculously hungry because my body was thrown out of ketosis. It was such an intense hunger that I had no space in my head to think. All I knew was that this vacuum in my stomach needed to be filled. I became very conscious of the nutritional content of my food after this.
Week 4: From the fourth week onwards I’ve mostly been on ketosis. I have broken out of it to eat cake or a sweet now and then but my experience of consuming desserts is different. It still tastes nice to me now but they don’t control my life anymore. I can walk away from them without regret and once I’ve broken out of ketosis I have the discipline and experience to get my body back on it. I eat fruits when I’m hungry. The body absorbs nutrients from fruits better when you’re hungry. And I eat my meals giving sufficient amount of intervals in between.
Also Read: How to Lose Weight in a Week
Nutritionists’ advice before going on the Keto diet:
- Don’t try to enter ketosis all at once. Do it gradually.
- Be dedicated. There are no cheat days until you have fully been on ketosis for a while and even then cheating means you will go off ketosis. You need the willpower to be able to make that switch back to ketosis after each time you cheat.
- You must first trust yourself to have the discipline to go back before you cheat.
- Don’t expect people to take special care for your meals. You are responsible for your own diet, do not be an inconvenient guest. Carry your own food if you must.
- Beware of hidden carbs. You may order a chicken curry, but that curry may contain potatoes, which is rich in carbs.
- Your body doesn’t differentiate between fruits and ice cream: Sugar is sugar. So binge-eating fruits in the name of health is misguided.
- Your body has a mechanism by which it can make its own sugar from proteins and fats through a process called gluconeogenesis.
Now Read: Best Weight Loss Diet Food
Side effects of the Keto diet that you should be aware of:
While it is important to exercise while on the diet, Keith advises, “Be sure to increase your food intake to adjust for the physical activity. It is a mistake I made which made me look malnourished. Two weeks after beginning to work out while still on diet, I realised that the quantity of food that had been sufficient before was now insufficient. My body was always feeling weak. So after having increased my food intake (still on keto), my body recovered.”
What does Keith’s diet comprise now?
“I don’t stick to the keto diet as strictly as I used to. But I do maintain a low carb diet. Keto is a low carb diet but low carb diet isn’t necessarily Keto. A low carb diet is only keto if the carb intake is negligible. Staying on a low carb diet makes it easier to go into ketosis as it takes less time for the body to consume all the stored sugars and move on to burning the fat. So this way I can have the best of both worlds provided I take care to work out properly and eat in moderation.”
“I’m now particular about what I eat. I have completely stopped eating rice and have also limited my fried food intake. When I go out, I order mixed-grain rotis, that too limited or instead just go for a chicken salad.”
“However, my priority now isn’t weight loss. I would love to be able to enjoy sweets and pastry. But I want to do that without having to worry about gaining weight. So I want to build my muscles up to a point where I can easily eat a slice of cake or an ice cream now and then without worrying. It is an investment.”
Keith’s advice to you if you wish to go on the Keto diet, “The diet is very encouraging to those who want to lose fat. The results are fast. It is perfectly fine to eat carbs once you have fully transitioned into ketosis. Tasty food isn’t necessarily nourishing and nourishing food doesn’t always taste nice. So indulge your taste buds every now and then, that’s what life is for.”
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