I hope all of you had a great Memorial Day weekend! I’ve been getting some questions about what type of diet I’m on for the #COfitnessjournal 5 week challenge. The answer is – low carb. Here’s what I’m doing…
I went into my favorite fitness management app, Myfitnesspal, and created an account. The site asks you some very simple questions to help you determine what your caloric and nutritional intake should be. From there, I went into settings and cut my suggested carb intake in half. I felt that this starting off point would be a good way for me to step back into a ketogenic diet instead of jumping into keto cold turkey.
Low carb vs keto, what’s the difference?
Now I’m not a nutritionist or dietician, but I think the main difference between the 2 diets is the amount of carbs. With a ketogenic diet you would need to have an intake of >50-30g of carbs daily (sometimes even less depending on your body). With low carb, it can be higher than that. My carb intake is set to 75g of carbs/day which was half of Myfitnesspal’s suggested allowance for my body type and activity level.
As time goes on I intend to slowly lower that number as my weight loss progresses. So far it is working for me compared to when I tried to start the ketogenic diet suddenly. I was extremely lethargic and had really bad headaches for almost 10 days before my body started to regulate itself. It was a crazy realization for me, how carbs (especially bad carbs like processed sugars) are like a drug for your body. The moment you decide to quit, your body fights back and makes you think you want it.
I know for some people it’s extremely annoying to have to log in your food constantly. But if you’re really serious about your goal it’s a must. At least in the beginning. It doesn’t matter what diet you’re on, the best way to understand the way food works with your diet, body, workouts, etc is to log in your food. You’d be surprised what kind of nutritional value each ingredient in your food has. Who knew that kale had carbs in it?! Log in your food for 5 weeks, and see what a big difference it makes!
Personally, I love to write things down. I’m not always good at staying on top of my technology to do lists, calendar, fitness apps, etc. So the best way for me is to write things down and go into my phone later or in the middle of the day. That’s why I created the #COfitnessjournal.
xoxo,
Kissa
