Veto the keto (Week 16)

"The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook."

I think Julia Child may have been promoting the keto diet without even knowing it. For those of you who haven't jumped on the keto bandwagon (yes, both of you!) it's the no-carb diet that sends you in search of a nirvana state called ketosis. Once you're in it, the pounds come dripping off. You get to heavy up on the meat and the high-fat high-protein foods like avocados and eggs. Seems delicious, right? Well, here was my experience over 7 days of being on it.

Fat-head pizza

So, the maybe-not-so-surprising news is that the keto diet works. Val and I were very strict about following the no-carb program and I went into ketosis early in the week. I know it was mostly "water weight" but it sure felt good to see those winter pounds just blow off my body. By the end of the week (yup, in just seven days!) I had lost a full 7 pounds, down from 184 to 177. But all is not joy.

First, we think keto is pretty expensive. We bought a lot of meat over the week, and we made some specialty meals like the keto-rific Fat-head pizza. How do you make pizza crust with no bread? An egg, cream cheese, mozza and a bunch of super-pricey almond flour. It was not cheap.

Over the week, we also treated ourselves to high fat delights like chicken drumsticks (turns out, Panko crumbs are a keto-friendly way to make a crispy coating). I started every morning with sliced avocados and a boiled egg. I pounded back lots of salty Landjaeger sausage. We had bun-free hamburgers twice, and a chicken caesar salad with no croutons. Probably the nicest meal of the week was Val's baked salmon in a butter-parsely-garlic sauce. Overall, it was all very tasty and I think I'll be a regular avocado and egg diner at breakfast from now on. Our grocery bill was off the charts, though. 

6 pounds in 6 days!

You might know me as a fairly active guy. I really wanted to know what this diet would do to that, so I ran, swam and biked all week. Each time I went out, there was just no energy and I felt like I was flogging a mule and hoping it could still win the Kentucky Derby. My keto pals assure me this passes in time as your body gets more accustomed to what you're asking it to do while your in a ketonic state. I'm not so sure.

The grand experiment came at the very end of the week. Despite having "dead legs" and feeling sorta light-headed and weird all week long, I decided to run the Times Colonist 10k without an ounce of carbs in me. To a lot of sports people, this is extremely foolhardy. I used to instruct marathon clinics and the first thing I would always say to the class was to get off any low-carb diet they might be on. So I was deliberately ignoring my own advice. But how bad could it be? It was only 10k!

It was was worse than bad. I felt okay for exactly 3 kilometres and then began to slide off the rails. There was simply no gas in the tank and I was basically a bucket of yuck for the rest of the run. Dizziness. Heart palpitations. I saw Val at the 8k mark and just stood with her for a minute while I provided my assessment of the keto diet in none-too-friendly terms. 

I met my work chums after the race and we all went to a bar for breakfast. And that's when I officially went off the keto diet. It started with a Guinness that I destroyed in very short order, followed by a plate of crispy potatoes and a breakfast burger. In a bun, of course!

NEXT WEEK: Planting an herb garden!