It's the new year, let's talk about nutrition and health!
In the last 2.5 months I've gone down the nutrition rabbit hole looking for a solution for my increased lethargy in an increasingly stressful work environment. I was consuming 4000-5000 calories a day from stress eating. Granted, I work out and ride skis so I only gained about 10lbs over a month, but it was any food that I could get my hands on. While I can't stop the work stress, I've found my nutrition and exercise has helped my mindset a ton, enter the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting.
I stumbled upon the ketogenic diet and managed to adopt it within a few weeks. Just so happens I love the healthy, high fat food. I started at 143lbs last month after reigning in my insatiable hunger, dropped to 134.5 over 2 weeks and have leveled up to 137.5 this last week from all the Holiday food festivities and sitting around the house being sick.
But that was the trial run to see if the keto/intermittent fasting lifestyle was achievable for my 10-14 hour work days. It totally is doable, and even preferable. I kick started the new year with a 72 hour fast which helps the body get into deeper ketosis faster. Why keto and intermittent fasting? Healthy body, healthy mind.
Google and various books can explain keto in more detail for you, but it is basically a high fat - low carb (20g a day and under) diet that boosts energy, works with insulin resistance (the common hangry low blood sugar, prediabetes and diabetes high blood sugar), promotes weight loss, appetite control and most importantly for ski/sports uses - increased physical and mental stamina. That is also why I've adopted intermittent fasting; mostly to control the voice in my head that tells me "ah, 1000 more calories won't matter, just work harder at the gym".
All that is doing is training bad habits, and if I want to achieve the results I want during this 2018 ski season and beyond I needed to find something that attached those issues on multiple levels. It has pulled my mindset out of the garbage and I continue to look for opportunities to learn. Nutrition is a fascinating thing and my performance on the track and in the gym is controlled more my my diet than all the hours I spend working out and cycling. Ketosis on a cellular level is truly amazing compared to how the body metabolizes glucose with the 'average American diet' these days.
Anyone here on the keto diet or interested in adopting the lifestyle? I mean c'mon...bacon and eggs are a staple!
