Starting Keto: When in Doubt, Eat Something!

Starting on the Keto * Low-Carb way of life means unlearning a lot of things we have all learned from advocates of the low-calorie, low-fat, Hunger Games diet (LCLFHG.) On low-calorie, there are no such things as allowed calories that you would be better off and a more virtuous dieter if you did not consume in full. That 350 calorie meal you are allowed— wouldn’t you be a better, thinner person if you didn’t finish it? And hunger was a sign that you were a good dieter and not a failure of a fat person.

Keto, ever since the days of Robert Atkins’ first book, has been different. There are ‘free foods’ on Atkins/lowcarb that you will actually want to eat— like bacon, steaks and pork chops. All of those items are zero carb. Atkins also encouraged people to not do things like skip breakfast. And even though I, like many in modern Keto, regularly do Intermittent Fasting, I would not encourage those new to Keto * Low-Carb to start off with skipping meals. That’s low-calorie thinking— the only good calorie is the one you don’t eat. But we don’t count calories on Keto. 

On Keto, we don’t start our Intermittent Fasting until we are already in ketosis. Ketosis is a state in which your body is fueled by fat-burning, not sugar-burning. To get into nutritional ketosis, you need to drop your high-carbohydrate diet and start on low-carb, doing two weeks of what we call ‘Induction—‘ a stricter level of low-carb. Once you are in ketosis, you don’t feel hunger, or at least you don’t feel it often. Many people, once in ketosis, skip meals without planning to do fasting because they are too busy doing things will all that new energy they get from going into ketosis. This leads to doing fasting on purpose, to help lose a bit of weight and to save time from doing that three-meals-a-day home-cooking grind. 

In Dr. Atkins’ first book, he tells case histories of some of his patients who were quite big eaters. Some ate as much as 4000 calories a day, all of low-carb allowed foods, and they still lost weight. In other books Atkins warns to eat when hungry but not to eat until you feel stuffed. Which is a good rule— eating until stuffed makes you feel uncomfortable. You can always eat more food a little later, when you no longer feel stuffed. 

Dr. Atkins encourages us to be ‘shockingly unafraid of fat.’ Yes, fat is not an evil substance that makes you fat and shortens your life. A scientific study in 1957 by Kekwick and Pawan showed that a 1000 calorie diet high in fat let people lose weight, while a 1000 calorie diet high in carbohydrates did not produce weight loss. And with a high-fat, moderate-protein, you don’t even need to count those darn calories. Just eat something (lowcarb.)