Getting Started On Keto

I often get asked about how I got started on Keto. So I thought I would shed some light on what I did. 

Obviously, the very first thing I did was research the hell out of it. I had always been told, and preached myself, that carbs were a necessary way of life. And 'all things in moderation'. After completing a whole 30 round, I still felt like crap. I had taken a quiz that led me to thinking that carbs were an issue for my body. I wrote about that HERE.

I started researching Keto and the more I looked into it, the more convinced I was that this was going to be a Godsend for me. I'm not even going lie, I was terrified to start. I was a total carb junkie. I ate carbs, and lots of them, with every single meal. And probably between each meal, too. I told my mama about my plans to start keto and explained it to her. She looked at me like I was crazy and said "good luck". Just a few hours later she came to me and said "I'm in. Let's give it a try." I started the next day and she started the day after I did. We did so incredibly well on it and while I had to temporarily put keto on hold after 8 months after getting pregnant with our newest peanut, (Morning sickness and food aversions threw me WAY off) my mom continued to rock it. She's now half the size she was before and i'm SO proud of her! My brother also started about a month before Easter and when he came over for Easter dinner, HE was half the size he had been, too!! It was so crazy to see him like that! My oldest son is currently doing it too, to prepare for college wrestling season, and so is his friend. YES!!

I jumped in head first and cut my carbs, most often only eating between 5 and 15 NET carbs a day. I also drank chicken broth with a bit of Kerry gold butter melted in it once a day for the first week or so to help keep the carb flu at bay. And it worked cuz both my mom and I never got the carb flu. *whew!*

What I *didn't* do: I didn't stress myself out about it. It is such a drastic change for most people, so if you need to start out with baby steps, then do that! Start one day by removing all the crap carbs and sugary stuff from your house. Get rid of your bad oils (canola, corn, veggie, soy... etc these are HORRIBLE!). The next day, make it your goal to eat 50 net carbs or less. A day (or two or three) after that, bump it down to 20 or less net carbs.

Anyways... There is an overwhelming amount of information out there about keto. Lots of it is garbage. There's a ton of MISinformation out there about it, too. There are so many doctors and nutritionists out there that simply haven't been properly educated on keto so they look down their noses at it. They shake their heads and talk about how necessary carbs are... yeah yeah yeah.

Pinterest is your friend... and also not your friend. There is an abundance of keto recipes on pinterest. However, NOT all of them are actually keto! Some are created by people that want the blog traffic keto recipes will bring, but aren't very knowledgable about what keto actually is. So be sure to check out the ingredients in each recipe before getting all excited. 

With the crazy amount of info out there, I give you two important things: 1) different people keto in different ways. Some of us eat "dirty keto", which is basically allowing foods that have iffy ingredients but still fit within your macros. Some eat "clean keto", which is NOT allowing foods with those ingredients. Some allow certain artificial sugars, (I do) some don't. Do what YOU feel comfortable with.

The second thing is a website I found during my months of research while doing keto. Ruled me is hands down THE BEST site out there, in my opinion. And they have a truly fantastic guide on starting keto. You can scroll and scroll and scroll some more and it just tells you EVERYTHING you need to know. I can't recommend it enough! You can find that guide HERE. They even have a keto calculator (there are so many out there and this is the only one I truly trust. I've had the best results using theirs.)

The most important thing to keep in mind while doing keto is to think of it this way: your carbs are your LIMIT. Your protein in your GOAL. And your fat is your LEVER. 

What does this mean? It means that each day, be sure to stay at or below your carb allowance, try to hit your protein goal without going over it, and if you are still hungry, eat some more fats. If you are stalling after a while, cut back on your fats.

 If you have a lot of excess fat in your body, I recommend NOT eating all of your fats each day. Why? Because you want your body to target the fat stores inside of your body. If you are eating too much fat, your body will burn that fat first, before moving onto burning your stored fats. 

Another thing that I feel VERY strongly about: you do NOT need to buy ketone supplements. Once Keto started gaining popularity, the vultures started coming out of the woodwork. "Hey! I have this coffee/preworkout/tea that has ketones in it. You can get into ketosis in hours instead of weeks!!" HELL NO. Why would I buy something that my body makes FOR FREE?!? Don't let them talk you into that crap. Seriously, you don't need it. Your body knows what to do. It's in our DNA!

Keto has been the best thing I've done for myself and I have no doubt that my mom and brother (and so many countless others out there) would say the same thing. If you need meal inspiration, scroll through my blog here and keep an eye on my What I Ate Wednesday posts. Also, if you're on Instagram, you can find me there as @keto_glam. There are so many wonderful people in the Instagram Keto Community!

Also, I highly recommend checking out both Dr Berg and Dr Barry on YouTube. They really know their keto shit and have so many helpful videos! (Also check out Nurse Cindy's keto "whoosh" video.)

I hope that this post has helped you in some way. Don't forget, if nothing else, please be sure to check out the ruled me keto guide I linked above. It's seriously amazing and tells you everything you need to know. And remember, take it easy on yourself! There is a bit of a learning curve with keto, but once you are a few days into it, you'll find your groove!

Love and light!
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