24 Days Since Transitioning Off Keto

It’s been 24 days since I began transitioning off a Keto Diet.

I was expecting to gain about 2kg back of water weight. And I my plan was to transition slowly over 2 weeks, until finally on week 3 I was eating carbs at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

How I’m Going

So, how am I going?

Well, I no longer consider that I’m transitioning off keto. I’m off keto.

I didn’t stick strictly to the plan of one week of carbs for breakfast, then adding carbs to lunch for the following week, and then adding carbs to dinner for the third. I remember a point in that second week where I thought something like, “I feel like I’m ready to come off Keto now”. I had introduced a variety of different foods, and I could feel my guts were tolerating them.

My Weight

In terms of my weight:

• The day before I started my Transition of Keto, on 9th December 2018, I weighed 74.7kg.
• On 25th December 2018, I weighed 73.5kg.
• Today, 2nd January 2019, I weigh 73.9kg.

Interestingly, while I expected to gain a couple of kilograms when I began transitioning, instead I lost about a kilogram!

Eating Carbs

I’m trying to focus on eating mainly low GI carbs. So that’s things like sweet potato, oats and brown rice. I’ve also been eating pumpkin, which when I’ve just Googled, has a moderate GI rating – I thought it was low GI.

If I feel like I’ve had too many carbs, then I try to cut or cut down on carbs for the next meal. And my ideal is that I don’t want to be eating lots of carbs at night – I’d prefer to have them during the day when I need the energy.

Overeating

I’ve over-eaten a few times over this holiday period. And New Years Eve was another. Both days I ate until I was stuffed. I stayed away from bread, but I ate plenty of meat, veggies, chocolate, candy canes, pavlova, christmas pudding…

I’m really conscious of what I eat now. Not that that necessarily stops me overeating or eating too much chocolate.

I haven’t stuck to my one-latte-a-day plan, and I’ve had a few sugar binges.

There’s a little bit of fear and guilt attached to overeating and binging on sugary food, because I don’t want to undo my hard work and gain back the fat I’ve lost. In saying this, I can come from the perspective that I know how to do a Keto Diet now, so if I gain a bit of fat and want to lose it, I know how to do it now.

I don’t want to live my life being in fear too much of the time about what I eat. I want to enjoy life and the food I eat. And maybe I need to accept and embrace my ebbs and flows around an ideal way of eating. Perhaps, like with other ideals, they are just that – ideals. And being an human, I’m not always going to be travelling at that ideal point, but I can aim for it.

I think it’s best I learn to accept that I’ll be falling short of that ideal, for whatever reason, some of the time. I just don’t want that some of the time to become a lot of the time. That’s where part of my fear lies.

Exercise

I’ve been continuing to go to gym, although my gym’s been closed for a total of 4 days over this 2 week Christmas break, with quite a few of the other days’ opening times altered, which has been frustrating.

Between my work schedule and the gym being closed / the opening hours being altered, I haven’t always been able to get to the gym when I’ve wanted. My membership runs out on 20th January, so I’ll be transferring to a more local 24 hour gym at that stage.

I’ve been getting to the gym 2-3 days a week over the last 3 weeks, and I’ve also been surfing. So if I surf instead of go to the gym sometimes, I’m okay with that. I guess what I try to think about is that I need to be exercising in some form, and while I want to maintain my gym routine, I can reconcile doing another form of exercise instead. And when the surf’s up and I’m able to take advantage of it, it’s worth it for me. I can reconcile that. And a couple of times I’ve been to the gym and and then surfed straight afterwards.

While I don’t love going to the gym, I’ve really enjoyed getting and feeling stronger.

I’ve hurt my supraspinatus rotator cuff a few times over the years. One of these times more recently, a few months ago, I went to the physio and she advised me to make sure I strengthened my back, not just my chest, so that it wouldn’t pull everything out, and potentially hurt my rotator cuff again.

I listened to that. While I used to hate doing back exercises (I much preferred chest), I’ve learnt to love working my back. I started off being able to do 1 or 2 pull-ups on my first full-body-weight set a few months ago, to now being able to do 10. Losing weight would have helped this, but there’s an increase in strength involved too. I can feel my back now, and I can pull myself over the bar.

When I do a chest day at the gym, I thrown in some lower-weight, higher-rep sets of cable rows on the rowing machine in a super-set, to reinforce balancing out my upper body.

I also enjoy feeling strong in my core. I’m doing some fit-ball, kettle bell and medicine ball exercises regularly during my gym routine which really help. When I do my warm-up jog on the treadmill at the start of my gym routine, I flex and engage my abdominal muscles while I jog. When I surf, I really notice the difference of how stable I am, how much stronger my core is.

I’ve found that, even though they’re hard work, I really enjoy the coordination challenge, and the results that some of the more natural movements with kettlebells, medicine balls, rowing machine, rope machine, pull-ups and the viper are giving me. I think I’d like to do more of these type of exercises moving forward.

Feeling strong and fit makes me feel better in my everyday life.

I feel so much better about myself. Feeling strong and fit is part of this. But honestly, a lot of this is aesthetic. I feel sexier. It’s nice to have put in work and to have achieved a goal, which was to lose my belly.

I feel more confident, and have a desire to work on my body more – to get more muscle, strength and overall fitness. And I’m considering joining the local volleyball competitions this year, for a bit of team sport. They’re held locally at my gym. I’ve never been into team sports, but I see them as a really valuable addition to people’s lives, and I want to explore that.

Stay tuned. More to come…