About 7 weeks ago, I started doing keto. That's short for the ketogenic diet.
It's a high-fat, low-carb diet. It means you stop eating refined sugar, grains, and starches. Out with the french fries, candy, pizza, and such, which isn't surprising, and also with most fruit, which did surprise me.
In with meat. Lots of meat. And cheese, and eggs, and oh my bacon, so much bacon. And lots of veggies, just they have to be the right kind of veggies. So broccoli and cauliflower are good, but you gotta not go crazy on the carrots or tomatoes, because they're high in carbs.
I know, I know. It sounds sort of, well, bat-shit crazy.
It's not though. It's no fad either. The diet's been around for over 30 years, has some good hard science behind it, too. I've read up on it some. Basically, you're doing a sort of body hack, that puts your body into ketosis, making it use fat for fuel, instead of carbohydrates.
It reminds me of this scene from the Woody Allen movie Sleeper where Woody Allen's character, a health food restaurant owner named Miles Monroe, is brought out of suspended animation in the distant future.
Dr. Melik: Well, he's fully recovered, except for a few minor kinks.
Dr. Agon: Has he asked for anything special?
Dr. Melik: Yes, this morning for breakfast. He requested something called wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk.
Dr. Agon: [ laughs ] Oh, yes. Those were the charmed substances...That some years ago Were felt to contain life-preserving properties.
Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies? Or hot fudge?
Dr. Agon: Those were thought to be unhealthy, precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
Dr. Melik: Incredible.
While I'm not eating hot fudge and cream pies, I sure do eat a lot of steak. And it's working. I'm down somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty pounds so far.
Plus, I'm coming to understand some of the subtleties. This morning, I kind of made up a recipe, for a strawberry breakfast smoothie. (1/4 cup of heavy cream, 5 whole hulled strawberries, 2 packets truvia, about a half cup of ice, and add in water to reduce thickening.)
It was delightful.
Some of the nice folks in the various online keto communities I frequent don't call keto a diet, but refer to it as a Way of Eating. (With the very unfortunate acronym WOE.)
That's ironic because I mostly am having no woe whatsoever.
It feels great not just to be losing weight, but to feel like I understand not just what to do, but why and how.