Keto | Two Week Update

Y’all, I have lost 11.2 pounds in 14 days. ELEVEN FRIGGIN’ POUNDS.

If you don’t follow me on Instagram, let me explain. Mr. San Diego and I started the Keto Diet along with Intermittent Fasting two weeks ago (September 30th to be exact). At the end of these two weeks, I have lost a grand total of 11.2 pounds and I am blown away by the results! It has been the most fascinating, complex, difficult, and impressive “diet” I have ever been on and I wanted to share all the things I have learned and experienced so far!

To make this post a little more organized, I’m breaking it out into a few groups. I know there is a lot here but I have SO MUCH to share! I’m not going to explain the details of Keto here or offer any recipes, but I will share my journey, resources, and important takeaways!

You can use the links below to jump to them if you have any questions about a specific section:

| Starting Out

It seems like everywhere you go, someone is talking about the Keto Diet. It’s constantly on social media and the news, and it feels like the main topic around the water cooler in the office. I normally don’t care for the “fad” diets because, frankly, I’ve always hated dieting - but the basis for Keto fascinated me. A diet that lets you eat steaks and cheese and wings and all sorts of other no-no items? It took me seeing a friend’s incredible results to make the effort to find out more, and boy did I find out A LOT.

Not All just bun-less Bacon Cheeseburgers

Turns out, there is a good way to do this diet and there is a lazy/wrong way. This isn’t all about eating bun-less bacon cheeseburgers all day.  It can be really overwhelming figuring out what is good and what is bad, but I am a firm believer that you need to understand as much as you can before you take on a major lifestyle change. Yes, lifestyle - not diet. Keto feels WAY more like a lifestyle than it does a diet. In order to do it right, you need to get educated. Luckily for us, there is a world of information to help you figure out how to do it properly. Within this post are some of the books and other media that I found incredibly informative and really helped me to understand how to succeed. If you’re planning on doing this yourself, I cannot stress enough the importance of educating yourself.

Good Food, Not Just Easy Food

One of the biggest things that I’ve learned about is the importance of QUALITY food. That means meats and dairy that are grass-fed, antibiotic free, and hormone free. Produce that is organic whenever possible. Oils that are not rancid, refined, or hydrogenated. Not everyone takes this approach, but I did, and I believe it is 100% worth doing. As with anything, you will learn a lot as you go, and sometimes you will read/learn contradictory information…but the basic principle that I personally believe is the most important is to eat “clean” and “whole”. No weird processed replacements, no highly treated and injected meats – just whole, simple, clean foods.

I had made the decision that I didn’t just want to lose weight, I also want to be healthy - and for me, that means making the effort to eat “clean”.

Prepare to Be Overwhelmed. it is not easy.

The night before we started the diet, I had a mini meltdown. I thought I was prepared because I read two books cover-to-cover, watched a bunch of videos on YouTube, obsessively researched all the new information I learned about, and set up a meal plan for the week. When it was time to start shopping and cooking, I was over my head in a big way. Never had I embarked on a diet that was so incredibly restrictive and required reading the labels of every single damn thing I picked up. Shopping was always easy for me because carbs and fruits were always available in abundance! Now I had to find the right kind of meat, the right kind of carbs, the right kind of veggies. After spending hours in the kitchen making meals for the week, I realized that half of it was absolutely disgusting! I almost broke down in tears. All that work and I wasn’t even going to be able to eat it!

Total Habit Overhaul

Breaking the habits that have been so ingrained in me for my entire life was hard. Everything that I thought I knew about health and diets have been debunked. Not eating the foods that I love hasn’t been easy. I am only two weeks into this and I find myself daydreaming about tortillas, freshly baked bread, and all the yummy Halloween treats I had originally intended to bake and blog about. I am someone who loves baking, damnit! I ate tons of fruit every day and loved granola - but I was also working out A LOT for these past few months and hadn’t seen the results I expected to see after five months of killing myself in the gym. This journey has been exhausting but now that I’ve completed the first two weeks, I feel like I’ve embarked on something life changing.

| Intermittent Fasting

Based on what I’ve read, Intermittent Fasting and Keto go together like peanut butter and jelly (sigh, jelly). Instead of starting with one diet approach and slowly adding a second, I decided to take on fasting and Keto at the same time. I’m insane, I know, but I wanted to reap the benefits that I kept reading about - weight loss, lowering LDLs, and cellular repair to lower inflammation.

However, the biggest reason I chose to start Intermittent Fasting was because of autophagy. Instead of trying to explain how cool it is and what it is, I’m just going to share some links that helped me:

As someone who is a self-proclaimed HANGRY BEAST when I go a few hours without eating, this part of the journey terrified me. Honestly, it was hard at first. REAL HARD. Was I unpleasant to be around? Yes. Did I think I was going to die or go to prison? Yes. I didn’t make it to sixteen hours for the first two days, but after the third day…it started to get easier. After one week, it was EASY PEASY! Two weeks in and I sometimes forget that I can start eating!

16/8 - What That Means

You will find that people will refer to their fast in a fraction. Mr. San Diego and I are both doing a 16/8 fast, which means that we are fasting for 16 hours and our “feeding window” is 8 hours. I stop eating every day at 6pm and start eating at 10am the next day.

fasting and coffee

One of the biggest concerns that I had and everyone else seems to have is regarding coffee and fasting. Can I drink coffee? Will coffee break my fast? What are Keto friendly creamers? According to this Healthline article, black coffee will not break your fast. Some people say that you can have up to 50 calories (sugar free) and still not break your fast. To be honest, I haven’t found anything that lists absolute evidence for or against this. Therefore, I made the choice to find a super low calorie, dairy-free, sugar-free creamer to replace my beloved Hazelnut Coffee Mate that is loaded with a bunch of things that are terrible, apparently.

  • My Favorite: Califia Farms Dairy-Free Better Half Unsweetened Coconut Cream & Almond Milk. I’ve found it at Target and other grocery stores. This creamer doesn’t have any of the bad stuff and only has 10 calories per tablespoon. It took a couple of days to get over the loss of the sugar bomb that was my previous creamer, but now that I’ve been using this for two weeks, I find that I enjoy it! Well, I enjoy it more than the other five creamers that I’ve tried.

| Books, Media, Products

Mr. San Diego always says that I never “Half-Ass” anything. I’m either All-Ass or No-Ass. If I commit, I’m in it to win it - otherwise, I can’t be bothered. That is exactly the approach I decided to take when we decided to start the Keto Diet and add Intermittent Fasting. I became obsessed with learning as much as I could about it. Books, YouTube, Instagram - they consumed my life. I had so many questions about this crazy diet that didn’t make any sense to me, and I was determined to know everything and even more determined to succeed. After three weeks of research and two weeks on the diet, here are the things that I highly recommend:

Books

  1. Keto: The Complete Guide to Success on The Ketogenic Diet by Craig and Maria Emmerich | Amazon

    I cannot recommend this book enough. I devoured this book in a little under 24 hours. My copy is covered in flags, highlights, and notes. It is a mini-text book in understanding what Keto is, why it works, how to make it work, what to do, and everything else. It was the perfect starter book and feels like my “bible” when I need to go back and reference something. I highly, highly recommend!

  2. Keto Answers: Simplifying Everything You Need to Know about the World's Most Confusing Diet | Amazon

    Another great book! After reading the first book on this list, I was able to get a better understanding about all the questions I may have needed a little more clarity on!

  3. Lies My Doctor Told Me Second Edition: Medical Myths That Can Harm Your Health by Dr. Ken Berry | Amazon

    This book is a popular one but not necessarily one that I liked. It was a little too aggressive for me, but had some valuable pieces that I felt made it worth a look.

YouTube Pages

Instagram Pages

| Keto Tips for Survival

Being prepared and educated is, without a doubt, the number one tip to success. Read the books, watch the videos, and follow the tips and recommendations from the pros! Mr. San Diego emptied our fridge and pantry of all non-Keto friendly items, we planned what we were going to eat in advance to make it easier to meal-prep, and we didn’t buy anything that could possibly tempt us into cheating.

Track + meet Your Macros

Second most important tip for success is to TRACK YOUR MACROS. You need to keep your daily carbohydrate intake to under 20g (although there is a lot of arguments about net/total, so I go with net). Make the effort to track how many carbs, proteins, and fats you’re eating every day and do your best to meet them daily. Not getting enough protein or fat, or going over your daily calorie limit, will slow your progress and possibly cause other problems like hair loss! Getting too many calories or too much protein is a problem too!

My friend Raci recommended the Carb Manager app and it has been a saving grace! It is the perfect app for calculating what your macros should be and keeping track of them daily. It even has an option to scan items to easily enter them in! I synced mine to my FitBit app and it updates my macros based on any changes to my weight. You can download it for free, or buy the upgrade to access the recipes and other features!

Weigh/measure Your Food

Buy yourself a kitchen scale and weigh all your food to make sure you’re accurately measuring your macros. I use it for every single meal and add post-its to my meal-prep containers to list exactly how much of every item I have. Having a scale is KEY! We bought ours at Target and it’s now our most used item in the kitchen! We also have a super handy shot-glass-like measuring cup that is great for measuring our small amounts of liquid without making a mess. I use it to measure out my creamer and oils! It’s super handy!

get a smart body scale

Do you know your BMI? I didn’t and it’s an important factor is measuring your macros. Yes, there are ways to determine it but I wanted an easier way to figure it out and track it. Instead, I bought a smart scale that I keep in the bathroom that measures my BMI for me! It has an app called FitIndex that connects easily to the scale via Bluetooth, and that apps syncs with my FitBit app! Seeing how much weight I’ve lost has kept me happy and motivated, and I love the extra data I get from this scale compared to a basic one that just gives you your weight! Is this necessary? Not really. Do I love it? Yes!

Measure Your Ketones

Apparently you can test whether you’re in ketosis or not by peeing on a small plastic strip! I wasn’t sure if this would be a waste of money, but making sure that you’re in ketosis is key to knowing whether you’re doing the diet right. There are tons of companies that sell pee-strips, blood monitors, and breath testers - but I’ve only tried this one brand and I see nothing wrong with it.

get your electrolytes

You are going to pee a lot when you first cut out all those carbs and sugars, and with that comes the loss of a lot of important minerals like sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium. When you are deficient in those, you will feel like shit. Blunt, but true. They refer to this as the “Keto Flu”, and it was absolute agony. Don’t suffer like I did. I wrote a whole section about this below.

Take Your Vitamins

I don’t often see people recommending this, but I find it valuable. I take a Multi-Vitamin, Probiotic, Vitamin D, and B-Complex every single day. Mr. San Diego had not been taking daily vitamins and he had significantly more digestive issues than I did. If I had to recommend just one, take a probiotic!

Find an Accountability Friend

Having someone do the diet with you or check in on your progress is so helpful! I got lucky and have both! Knowing that you have someone besides yourself that you don’t want to disappoint is a technique that worked for me and I think would work for most!

| Keto Flu

For the first few days of the diet, I was hit with the Keto Flu HARD. My body ached, my head had so much pressure that my ears were popping all day long, I was exhausted, I was really hungry, and I was incredibly unhappy. No matter what I did, I was still miserable. Four days in and I was ready to throw in the white flag. No amount of electrolytes were helping and it felt like I was going through drug withdrawals. Luckily, I started experiencing relief on Day 5. It took several more days for the headaches to go away entirely, but they had at least lessened after the fifth day.

Mr. San Diego was lucky and experienced only a few hours of aches. What an ass.

What is the Keto Flu?

Essentially, it’s a bunch of flu-like symptoms you can experience when starting your Keto journey. They included headaches, body shakes, all over aches, light-headedness, weakness, digestive distress, fatigue, and intense HANGER. Some don’t experience it at all, others (such as myself) feel like they’re going to die.

How to Avoid Keto Flu

Everyone recommends staying hydrated, salting everything, drinking loads of electrolytes, and drinking bone broth. Additionally, you should not overly exert yourself, make sure you get plenty of sleep, and make sure you meet your fat and protein goals every single day.

However, I drank lots of water with lots of electrolytes, got plenty of sleep, met all my goals – and I still died. Your body is going to start detoxing from all the sugar and carbs, and if you have been a person who tends to have high amounts of sugar in your diet…well…buckle-up Buttercup, you’re in for a ride.

Products That Help

  1. Perfect Keto Electrolyte Supplement (pills) | amazon.com

  2. Hi Lyte Rapid Hydration Electrolyte Supplement (liquid) | amazon.com

| Two Week Update

If you just read that lovely little section about the Keto Flu, you will know that I had a very, very hard time during the first week of this diet. Part of why I did not give up is because I was determined to see this through, I expected it to happen, and I decided that I never wanted to feel that way again so I might as well get it over with and be done. Although it was incredibly difficult for my carb and sugar loving body, I am SO SO GLAD that I kept with it!

The Really Good

Aside from the 11.2 pounds that I have lost, I’ve noticed significant improvements in how I feel! My “2pm crashes” at the office are gone and I have way more energy in the evenings after work. My brain fog is significantly less and my skin is looking A LOT clearer! All I really expected was to lose a little weight, but I’m stoked that I just feel all around better! Even though the first week was torture and all I wanted was to swim in a sea of sweet bread, the end of the second week was absolutely fantastic! My sugar and carb cravings are mostly gone or manageable, and I don’t struggle much with not eating during my fast!

The Weird and Bad

One of the things that I did NOT expect to happen was the arrival of my menstrual cycle an entire seven days early! The one thing that I did expect was the digestive changes - which was understandable. Everything else that has been negative was all experienced in the first week to ten days and was due to cravings, detoxing, and the damned Keto Flu. I was also really, really tired for a while and I had a few days where I went to bed when the sun was still up.

the verdict

I’m in it to win it! I’m excited to keep going and excited to see how far I can go! I’ll be posting updates as I go along, and will share some of my favorite recipes in future posts! If you don’t already, follow me on Instagram at @karina_discovers. I’ve been posting weekly updates and will continue to do so!

Are any of you also doing the Keto diet or about to start? Let me know in the comments how it’s going or ask any questions you may have! You can send me a DM on Instagram as well!

 wish me luck! xoxo

  • Note: Links contain Amazon Affiliate Links.

Lifestyle, Keto/Low CarbKarina DiscoversKeto, Intermittent Fasting, Keto Flu, Keto Update1 Comment