'I Tried The Ketogenic Diet For Weight Loss—Here's What Happened'

Spoiler alert: Amy Sowder saw serious results.

I hate diets—especially rigid ones that cut out entire food groups and require tracking numbers.

Restrictive diets don't seem realistic to me in the long term, and I've heard of so many people gaining the weight back when the diet is over—sometimes even more weight. I don’t like denying myself. It makes me want that banned food so much more. I believe in subtle, moderate lifestyle changes that add up over time and become the new normal.

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

That philosophy hasn't worked. My weight has slowly crept up about 15 pounds since I met my boyfriend six years ago and moved in with him three years ago. (It’s not his fault. Really.) That weight gain isn’t as obvious on my 5’11” frame as it is for other women, but I can’t fit into my fancy Joe jeans comfortably. I haven’t worn them in at least two years. The same goes for my pencil skirts and form-fitting dresses.

Plus, my time away from those strength-training classes at the gym has meant muscle loss, so the weight I do have is fat, not muscle. I can see the difference in my body’s composition, especially in my arms. I still run about three times a week, but cardio can do only so much. I feel bloated, I’m exhausted all the time, I have mood swings, and my skin gets acne and eczema.

All that is reason enough to make a lifestyle change, but there’s motivation more important than the way I look, and even feel: I am a sugar addict who needs an intervention.

In May 2016, my doctor told me to cut down on my daily dessert intake. My blood sugar levels weren’t pre-diabetic yet, but they would be if I kept up my sugar habit, he said. Try having a bowl of ice cream once a week instead of once a day, he suggested. “Ha!” I thought with (unhealthy) skepticism. “Easy for you to say.” My typical day included two or more sweet treats—plus four kinds of fruit—a day.

But ultimately, what my doctor said scared me into taking some drastic sugar-reduction action.

So, I turned to this crazy keto diet as a way to kick-start my sugar-less, carb-less life. It’s a ridiculously strict low-carb, high-fat diet. For two weeks, I tried to eat only 20 to 30 carbohydrates a day to get my body to reach ketosis. This is the state when your body switches from burning carbohydrates to burning fat for energy.

This diet isn’t for everyone, says Samantha Rigoli, R.D. She’s also a nutrition consultant with a master’s in public health, a yoga instructor, and the founder of Healthy to the Core NYC, where she provides individual counseling and leads nutrition-focused seminars, wellness talks, and cooking demonstrations.

“People will lose weight, but I rarely see it kept off. It’s hard to maintain,” Rigoli says. Uh-oh.

On top of that, she predicted the diet might make me extra-cranky, too. That's because I'd be cutting out both complex carbohydrates (whole grains, potatoes, beans, fruits, and even some vegetables) and simple carbs (the kind found in soda, candy, and my beloved gelato). And complex carbs make you feel good, she says, but not in a sugar-high kind of way. They create more serotonin in the brain, one of those happy chemicals we love, and without those slight lifts, keto dieters often feel irritable.

So naturally, the weekend before I started the keto diet, I scarfed down as much dessert as I could get my paws on, plus all sorts of bread, pizza, baked goods, and pasta. I made an apple-pear crumble with a brown sugar, whole-wheat flour, and oats topping, and paired it with vanilla bean gelato. When I ate out, I got the fries, ordered the soda, and ate the bread that came to the table before our salads. (I still had salad! Don’t judge.)

I was initially going to do this diet for two weeks, but I’ve been keeping it up because—spoiler alert—it’s been working. Here’s what I learned in the following 19 days, along with photos of the delicious meals I ate along the way:


AMY SOWDER

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE RATIOS

I’ll admit, I’d never heard of this diet until recently, despite being passionate about food and fitness all my life. It has similarities to paleo, Whole30, and that now-vintage diet called Atkins. I read a bunch of different websites like Keto Connect, but used Diet Doctor the most.

On the site, Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt, M.D., explains the keto diet for beginners pretty well. When your body switches to burning fat (the fat you consume that day as well as your body’s existing fat) for its primary fuel source, that’s when you hit ketosis and the magic happens. The key is the ratios. You’re supposed to get at least 70 percent of your calories from fat, 15 to 25 percent from protein, and 10 percent from carbohydrates. A moderate amount of carbs per day is fewer than 50 grams. For better, faster results, drop that to 20 grams or fewer. You’re supposed to avoid all grains, legumes, pulses, root vegetables, fruit except berries and of course, sugar. Like I said, it’s pretty freakin’ extreme.


AMY SOWDER

COUNTING MACROS DOESN'T HAVE TO BE HARD

I’m really not into counting macronutrients like carbs, protein, and fats. It takes work and math. Ugh. Yes, it’s just addition. But this Keto Diet Tracker app saved me. It has pretty much every brand of store-bought and restaurant food in there, plus basic ingredients and dishes that you cook at home. I’m a food snob who hardly ever goes to chain restaurants, so I had to punch in the basic meals or ingredients after I ate at local-only indies. You type it in, and then the amount you ate, and it will add up your macronutrients in this little wheel graph, showing your percentages as you go each day. That helped me realize in the first few days that I needed to eat more fat and less protein.

Amy Sowden

EATING THAT MUCH FAT WAS ACTUALLY HARD

It’s hard to eat more fat. I never thought I’d say that. Based on my goals, my app suggested I eat 189 grams of fat per day! True, the health world has switched from vilifying fat to making sugar the bad guy, but still, I’m programmed to go for chicken breast and 1 percent Greek yogurt whenever I can. Now I was eating as much delicious full-fat cheese and cream as I could.

It wasn’t easy to get all that fat into my daily diet, surprisingly. This is a really high-fat diet. But they advise you to look for healthy fats. I tried to eat fattier meats, but grass-fed, organic versions as advised. I did so-so on that. I drank unsweetened vanilla almond milk instead of whole milk though, because the former has zero carbs, if not that much fat. I tried to liberally douse my food with olive oil and butter, and eat avocados and nuts daily.

Amy Sowden

PREPARATION WAS KEY

Carbs are convenient. Eating the keto way is not.

The only way to succeed on this diet is to prepare. I had to go grocery shopping the Sunday night before I started, and I bought a ton of eggs, whole-milk ricotta, hard and semi-soft cheeses, almond milk, green leafy vegetables, broccoli, zucchini, chorizo, and some andouille sausage. I read a lot of recipes on Diet Doctor, as well as Grass Fed Girl, which is a terrific food blog for paleo and keto followers.

(Learn how bone broth can help you lose weight with Women's Health's Bone Broth Diet.)

AMY SOWDER

BREAKFAST WAS TOUGH

One of the biggest hurdles—well, besides the no-dessert thing and practically no carbs—was breakfast. I usually have oatmeal with yogurt, flaxseed meal, nuts and fruit, in all sorts of combinations. It’s microwaveable, quick, filling, and healthy—I thought.

Rigoli told me my regular breakfast was a mistake, especially for someone with constant sugar cravings. “When you start your day with sweet, you tend to end your day with sweet. Oats are good, but not every day. Maybe quinoa instead of oats,” Rigoli says. “I wouldn’t even start off with fruit in your day. Definitely [eat] a fat and protein in the morning. Savory breakfast helps in controlling your blood sugar.”

I didn't want to fry an egg each and every day. I’m more of a soft-scrambled kind of gal, and that takes more time and patience. I don’t have that, especially when my coffee hasn’t kicked in yet.

On Sunday night, I had to make a giant egg casserole so that I could quickly grab a square every morning. I like variety, so when I realized I wasn’t eating enough fat, I’d alternate melting different cheeses on top or mashing on some avocado. This ruled.me recipe requires a ton of ricotta, heavy cream, a dozen eggs, ham, and spinach. I used chorizo instead because I think it’s more fun. I also used collard greens because I bought a frozen box of that instead of spinach by accident. This casserole rules. When I just couldn’t take another day in a row of the same casserole, I also did cottage cheese or yogurt once in a while, with cinnamon, nuts, flaxseed meal, and unsweetened coconut flakes.

Amy Sowden

THE SIDE EFFECTS WERE REAL

There are a lot of warnings about possible side effects as your body transitions during ketosis sometime between day three and day seven. The most common side effects are constipation, flu-like symptoms in the first few days, reduced physical performance, and bad breath that smells like nail polish remover. What?! I tested my breath on my cat (he ran away), my boyfriend (he didn’t) and decided to buy mouthwash just in case.

I felt exhausted in the mornings, but that’s not unusual. I never feel rested unless I get eight-plus hours, which is hard to do when I typically to bed after midnight or 1 a.m. As far as physical performance, my first run on day two and my second run on day four both felt normal. My third run did not. Day five might’ve been my flu day. I felt so run-down. I figured it was because I ran 12 miles the day before, but in hindsight, it might’ve been a ketosis side effect. Then my run on day nine was the kicker. I had no energy. I felt winded and my heart was beating rapidly, even when I was running at snail pace.

Luckily, runs since then have been fine. I think my body has adjusted.

I’ve had no stomach problems, probably because I’m eating a lot of fiber from all the leafy greens and other vegetables. My sleep is great, especially when I started going to bed a little earlier. What fun is it to stay up late when there’s no ice cream?

AMY SOWDER

THE HOLIDAYS WERE A SERIOUS BUMMER

Fall and winter holidays were a struggle. Halloween sucked. I went to my supper club’s Halloween-themed dinner, and it turned out that the meal was vegetarian. I normally would've loved this kind of dinner. Gargantuan roasted carrots stood in for steak. But I’m not supposed to eat carrots because they’re a root vegetable, which are especially carb-heavy. I couldn’t eat the lentils or couscous either. Grumbling inside, I had a small carrot with tons of parsley and some butternut squash, drizzled with tahini—a lot of tahini. And then came dessert. Oh, dessert! My cousin-in-law made an amazing-(looking) cake plus chewy, rich chocolate chip cookies decorated with ganache spiders. I watched in utter agony as my boyfriend took bite after bite. Finally, I could take the deprivation no more. I snuck over to the cookie tray and ripped off one corner of a cookie. It. Was. Amazing.

In retrospect, I should have brought back-up food from home. I’ve read that tip for staying on track. Then on Halloween night two days later, I bought a big bag of candy I’m not into, Airheads, to give to trick-or-treaters. Unfortunately, the candy is chewy like taffy, which I like. I succumbed, eating two mini bars, which was about 20 carbs—two-thirds of my allotted daily intake. (Face-palm). The next day, I had to donate the leftover candy because I cannot be trusted.

AMY SOWDER

EATING OUT WASN'T AS BAD AS I THOUGHT

It’s actually pretty simple. Just swap the burger bun for lettuce, the fries for salad, and potatoes for extra vegetables. Say yes to cheese and butter and no to bread. Order the salad with meat and cheese on top. Eating out wasn’t that bad. Okay, maybe that’s a tiny lie. Watching my boyfriend and friends eat the carbs wasn’t fun. But watching my scale each morning did become fun as it dropped, little by little.

Amy Sowden

SUBSTITUTES HELPED

I’m a fan of having almost what I want, rather than having nothing. Enter substitutes. Zucchini noodles—or “zoodles” if you wanna be that person—were a savior. A simple, cone-shaped little spiralizer, available for less than $8 on Amazon, can turn cheap zucchini into a pasta base. And I kept leftover noodles for quick meals later, which is key. Cauliflower rice is another substitute that’s so popular, they sell it already riced at Trader Joe’s. I meant to do that, plus cauliflower “mashed potatoes,” but never got around to it. One thing I did do was make a substitute pizza crust that was so unlike crust that the keto recipe blog, The Big Man’s World, calls it a "pizza base" instead. It was kind of icky. But I put pizza toppings on it anyway. Something is better than nothing.

Like many night owls, I love to snack after dinnertime. It’s usually when I want my edible reward for making it through the whole day without imploding. The treat is always something sweet, preferably cold, creamy, and sweet ... like gelato. Before the keto diet, when I was trying hard not to eat sugar, I’d have yogurt or cottage cheese topped with berries or an apple and nut butter. Not with this keto diet though. I either was so full from my fatty day that the cravings were almost nonexistent, or I had several slices of pungent, sharp cheese and nuts with herbal tea. That 90-percent did the trick. Really. I think this fat thing actually does make you feel more satisfied.

AMY SOWDER

THE RESULTS WERE...AWESOME

I lost nine pounds within two weeks!!! That’s much more than I hoped for, and may be a bit more than is healthy, but whatever. It’s success enough to inspire me to keep doing this agonizing diet. I heard it gets less agonizing. Some observations: My rings are looser. My stomach looks less round and bloated. I still can’t fit into my fancy jeans, but maybe that will change with more time. My skin hasn’t improved. I suspect red meat and dairy contribute to that. And most importantly, my sugar cravings are way, way down—not gone, but better. That's a huge win.

Article source: https://www.womenshealthmag.com/weight-loss/ketogenic-diet-results/slide/10