After an initial honeymoon of smooth weight loss on Paleo, which was macro agnostic (meaning, didn’t care about the macro nutrient ratios), I decided to experiment with the ketogenic diet. Purely out of scientific curiosity.
There already was considerable overlap between my version of the paleo diet and the keto diet. Unintentionally, my consumption of carbohydrates was very low to begin with, which probably explains the speed with which I lost weight. Most of my initial diet was mainly non starchy vegetables and meat thrice a day. It was only occasionally that I was consuming fruits and starchy vegetables. This consumption of carbohydrates wasn’t particularly matched to my exercise or activity pattern, but I was still getting good progress.
Keto, technically, doesn’t care about the source of food. All you need to restrict is the amount of carbohydrates. I didn’t bother to count carbs or calories this time around either. I just avoided starchy vegetables and fruits completely in addition to making sure that my food sources were still paleo style. Weight loss was further accelerated, but I found it a little too restrictive., because I liked fruits and starchy veggies too much to give them up completely.
Soon enough, I figured out that timing carb intake would ensure the same rapid fat loss that characterised keto, without actually going full keto.
Carb intake was limited to immediately post workout, which was still around 4 sessions a week. 3 sessions of strength training, lasting half an hour each, and one super long session of cardio, on Sundays, but this was very low intensity.
I continued to use carb cycling in this manner of back loading, post workouts. And also started using Keto, to break through plateaus that I would encounter while on low carb paleo. And go back to low carb paleo when I regained momentum. I advise my patients to do the same depending on their requirements and metabolic health.
Using Keto made me much more resistant to cravings and helped in appetite suppression. I realised that I could go for long periods without food without any significant drop in mental or physical performance, without even experiencing much hunger. And that led to my discovering my ability for fasting.
I wasted several years before finally using that secret weapon to make things easier to maintain my weight loss.
Finally two years ago, started seriously experimenting with intermittent fasting/time restricted eating. Made things so much easier. Will describe that in detail in the next part and wind up about the diets I used to attain and further maintain that weight loss.