My keto diet has killed my appetite and hunger dead

I have been eating according to the keto diet for eight days, according to /r/keto on reddit.  After a little more than a week, my appetite has really been suppressed and it's taken a lot less keto-friendly food to sate my hunger.

I'm not at all like by buddy Mark Harrison who needs to be reminded to eat at all every couple days when he starts to get headaches and become irritable. All his friends know the panacea to his distress is food: "Mark, have you tried eating today?" No, I'm the antithesis of guys like that.  Me, more like: feed me Seymour!

It's really weird. Not only that but with just ~530 calories in once meal with 75% fat, 20% protein, and 5% carbs, I've started feeling over-stuffed, like that feeling you get after a real Thanksgiving stuffing. 

It's real.

I have also heard things like, "man, I was so sick and tired of stuffing down sausage and bacon" from people back in the day on Atkins.

And I'm not the only one.  "What works for me may not work for you, but what I did was not worry about calories until I hit Ketosis," 

Mrdirtyvegas shared with me, "Once I hit Ketosis I'm able to eat 1600kcal a day and not feel hungry between breakfast, lunch and dinner. Previously if I only ate 1600kcal a day, I would feel like I was starving. I was putting back about 2500-3000kcal before keto."

Testify!

Maybe the keto diet is the food/nutrition version of making the bad teen you caught smoking cigarettes smoke the whole pack, the entire carton: that'll show you, piggy!

Now I understand why a ketogenic diet  and intermittent fasting (IF) go hand-in-hand. I have a fridge filled with bacon and spinach and slow-cooked beef and mayo and blue cheese dressing and cheddar cheese and even alfredo sauce and dozens of organic eggs and it kind of makes me feel sick to think of eating them.

I think the ketogenic diet is sort of nutritional judo: yes, it may very well teach your metabolism to get its energy from stored and consumed fat instead of from carbs and sugars but it also triggers even the most stubborn "I'm full, I'm satiated" triggers even from those of us, like me, who are happy to graze all day like a cow. 

Before I go on, the most important thing to overdo on the ketogenic diet is water consumption. Drink way more water than you consume anything else. Do you want to get gout or gallstones or any harm to come to your liver or kidneys? No! So, be sure to keep drinking more water than you really want. Consider gulping water when you're in the shower (why not!). Don't drink tea of coffee like water as they're diuretics. You can have them, but water--not juices or diet sodas or sports drinks--is your one and only friend.

I was going to really commit to keto but I wasn't feeling like any sort of IF--or even proper fasting--would actually be viable, but now, I think that I could probably only eat from around 7AM until around 3PM in the afternoon. It's called the 16:8 diet and can be moved around anywhere: noon until 8PM, etc.  For me, getting an early breakfast (7:30AM) and then a late lunch (2PM) can work really well for me and my lifestyle. 

I am tired of being fat. I have heard amazing things in the past about the Atkins diet and now about the Keto diet. It's Atkins on steroids.  According to Wikipedia, "the ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that . . . forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates." I first discovered it on Reddit, /r/keto. 

As I lurked, folks from all over were getting amazing results. Dropping weight and eating as much as they needed to feel sated, satiated, satisfied, full. Upon further inspection, this completely counter-intuitive, suicidal way of eating seemed to solve a lot of health issues, bringing the dedicated into line with their cholesterol, their blood pressure, their insulin and sugar spikes, and their personal energy.

I then jumped into The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting by Jimmy Moore, Dr. Jason Fung;  The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss by Dr. Jason Fung; Keto Clarity: Your Definitive Guide to the Benefits of a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet by Eric C. Westman MD, Jimmy Moore; and The Complete Ketogenic Diet for Beginners: Your Essential Guide to Living the Keto Lifestyle by Amy Ramos. 

My ex-girlfriend swears by keto. I don't know how she does it as a vegetarian. The macros for keto are 5% carbs, 20% protein, and 75% fat. That's a lot of fat and so little carbs for a vegetarian life unless that life is 33% eggs, 33% butter, and 33% olive oil. But, for others, there's a lot of animal fat built into the diet. According to envelopepusher, "I buy KerryGold salted butter and eat it plain, or melt it in some beef broth." This is how most folks in ketosis are eating if they're eating keto. 

Here's an example of a recipe that Apecks suggested I use to dilute all the protein in chicken thighs--and this is typical of a keto hack, "I would maybe try taking the thighs, slitting them in half, stuffing them with a mozz/cream cheese/gouda mix, then closing them up and wrapping them in bacon. Or you could separate the skin some and stuff the cheese in between the meat and skin. Make a sort of chicken thigh bacon cordon bleu. That's just me though." In short, "Add bacon. And butter. And cheese." That's a lot of fat.

Not only have I embarked on a diet that limits my carbohydrate consumption to only 5% but I have embarked on a diet that also limits the amount of protein. It's a diet in which I must dilute all the carbs and proteins in my diet so that, by the end of the day, I've diluted them down to only 5% and 20% respectively. The rest is fat. I've gotten some pretty great advice from reddit, however.

When I made a dozen slow-cooked skin-on chicken thighs in my crock-pot, I was pretty pleased with myself. When I went to input them into My Fitness Pal, there was very little fat even with the skin in comparison to the bomb of pure protein they contained. 

Earth_echo suggested that I "brown some sausage and throw some in there with the chicken to dilute the protein. Chicken has 10 g protein per ounce and sausage has 4 g of protein per ounce. Chicken is one of the highest protein meats you could eat, which is why you'll often see bodybuilders eating tons of it."

And Otto-Didact added, "Alfredo is your friend. Reduce the amount of chicken, take up the difference with Alfredo. That'll balance it right up."

According to szorg, "Protein is a goal, fat is a lever - you only need to eat fat to satiety. Also... butter it. Oil it. Fatten it up."

This keto diet really spins my head around. I guess I have passed the first test: can I make it a week? Yes. Have I died yet or had a stroke or a heart attack? Not yet. Am I in ketosis? I don't know.

I don't have the test. But I am going to continue on it through the holidays and maybe until my birthday in March.  One this it's done is made me sober (I don't have a problem at all stopping drinking, but I hadn't wanted to) so I don't drink anything but lots of water, some black coffee, a little whole milk, and maybe some original almond milk. That's it for beverages. 

I try to eat as many fresh vegetables as I can without killing my carbs for the day. So many people on reddit have said that thinks like romaine, brussel sprouts, asparagus (which I am having tonight) and spinach are just dandy in any quantity because they're good for you, have fiber and vitamins, and because "nobody's complained of getting fat from eating too many vegetables."

Oh, and I guess I've completely given up fruits as well. In addition, of course to breads, cakes, candies, ice creams, and other processed goodies.

At the end of this long article, I must say that naming all the things I've given up and even all the good foods I am eating have not made me hungry.

The meals I have had for breakfast and lunch today are still keeping me full and sated at 14:46PM today. 

It's working. I hope I don't die before I've reduced enough body weight to get me out of the health danger zone for obesity. This is a dangerous game!

Final note: keep on walking, keep on squatting, keep on taking the stairs, keep on swinging that kettlebell, keep on doing pushups and situps. Keep on lifting weights and rowing that Concept2 indoor rower.

Keep on with the stairmaster and the morning runs around your neightborhood. Keep playing tennis and basketball and join your softball league or kickball league at work or at school.

Keeping active might not technically be as important as diet for losing weight but fitness and heart health are. Use it or lose it!