My Mostly Comedic Journey to Ketosis
I fucking hate avocados.
I mean, I didn’t before this. But things have changed. It all started a few weeks ago…
“I’m thinking of trying the Keto diet,” I said to my wife, Lauren.
“What did you watch on Netflix?”
“How did you know? I saw this great documentary.”
“You realize you do this every few months. First it was juice cleanses, then it was intermittent fasting…”
“Don’t forget about plant-based,” I pointed out.
“That one didn’t last long.”
Unlike previous diets for weight loss, this one would be motivated by different circumstances. I was looking for something to help me out of my recent dip in mental health. On Thanksgiving, I ate particularly poorly and consumed way too much sugar. Sugar has often been what stimulates my anxiety. It’s like a faucet turns on and I can’t turn it off. I’ve spent the last three months trying to do everything in my power to stop the cycle of waking up each morning with crippling anxiety.
Well, if sugar stimulated my anxiety, maybe a lack of sugar, or any carbs for that matter, would suppress it. It was worth a shot. At the very least, it would provide a distraction and possibly some much needed comedy in my life.
So I went food shopping and bought all the essentials.
I began to unpack my groceries at home:
“What can you eat?” Lauren asked.
“It’s Atkins times a thousand. You’re only allowed to eat things with as much fat as possible. Butter, red meat, bacon, cheese…”
“Oh, I get it. You do everything you can to have a heart attack and then your anxiety goes away because you’re dead.”
“Exactly.”
Day 1
I’m supposed to eat 150 grams of fat a day, less protein and less than 50 grams of carbs.
That seems doable. 50 grams is a lot. (Looks at label on orange juice and realizes if I drink two glasses, I must starve like Gandhi the rest of the day.)
Breakfast – Four hard-boiled eggs.
My seven-year-old daughter, Liz, looks up from her Lucky Charms.
“Daddy, you want a bite?”
“No, honey. You enjoy the marshmallows.” Enjoy your childhood. Because there’s no more marshmallows when you’re a grownup.
Snack – Enough pecans to make a squirrel jealous.1
Lunch – Three avocados mashed with celery sticks. This was the meal that moved avocados into the hate column forever. I briefly consider swallowing the giant pit as a cry for help.
Snack – Walnuts. Walnuts are weird. They smell weird. They taste weird. I have a distinct childhood memory of a great-uncle using a metal device to crack the shell of the walnuts, and half-joking that I should give him my pinky finger next. You never see those walnut crackers anymore. There must have been an incident.
Dinner – Two dead zebras. Fine, steak and a green vegetable.
Dessert – Full fat unsweetened yogurt with berries.
Day 2
“How are you feeling?” Lauren asks.
“I feel ketosis coming on.”
“Are you lying?”
“Totally.”
“How’s your anxiety?”
“Much worse, actually.”
Ketosis is the process which is supposed to start after a few days, in which your body stops using carbs as energy, and instead uses your body’s fat as fuel. Apparently, your body releases ketones to facilitate this glorious reaction.
When you have anxiety (or depression), really all you want is to find something to break the cycle. Meditation helps sometimes. Exercise can work. But for me at least, those are temporary bandaids over a gunshot wound. If I’m lucky they can carry me for a few hours. Either way, everything resets itself the next morning.
I take medicine, but those have a tendency to crap out on me after a while. And they’re more helpful for depression than anxiety. For anxiety, there’s really just Xanax, which does work, especially on Halloween when I can dress up as a zombie.
Breakfast – Three eggs with so much swiss cheese, a mouse would be jealous. 2
Snack – Many almonds (I’m running out of nut types).
Lunch – Salad with grilled chicken, oil and vinegar. Lauren’s number one talent (that I can tell you about…I kid, we’re married, I would have no idea if she has any talent in that department) is that she has convinced herself that salad tastes good. She puts it on pizza. She eats it alone. She eats it for any meal. It’s quite amazing. She’s lying of course.
Snack – Something called Lupini Beans, which are the only acceptable beans to eat on Keto. I’m not really sure how to properly explain Lupini Beans, only that you can live a very long and fulfilling life without knowing that Lupini Beans exist.
“Matt, how many nuts can you name?” I ask my five-year-old son.
“Peanuts, almonds…”
“Walnuts,” Liz interrupts.
“Brazil nuts,” Lauren says.
“I feel like you need to have a private plane to eat Brazil nuts,” I say.
“I have no idea what that means.”
Dinner – Three avocados mashed, cayenne pepper and cauliflower instead of celery this time – because I’m a rebel.
Dessert – Keto cups. Keto has their own line of foods now. Of course, it makes me not trust the process since I now believe it’s just a marketing ploy to make money.
Keto cups are like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, with the minor difference that they taste like shit.
Day 3
I woke up this morning feeling slightly different. Better? I’m starving yet bloated at the same time. My body feels so strange that I don’t have much room for anxiety. Does this count as success? I have no idea, but I’m going to give it one more day.
Breakfast – Cereal with no net carbs. What are net carbs you ask? They are the amount of carbs in something after you subtract the fiber. Is anything in the world with no net carbs edible? Well, this cereal literally tastes like cardboard.
“Daddy, why is your cereal so weird-looking?” Liz asks with a mouth full of French toast.
“Did Mommy ever tell you that you’re adopted?”
Snack – Macadamia nuts. My only prior experience with macadamia nuts is that the contestants on the gameshow Supermarket Sweep used to always grab them along with giant blocks of ham because they were so expensive.
I go to the gym because that supposedly stimulates ketosis. I find an elliptical machine with the least amount of germs visibly on it. Minutes in, I’m exhausted and my mouth is dry, a clear sign that I have achieve ketosis. Or I’m just out of shape and dehydrated.
Lunch – Tuna and a lot of swiss cheese.3
Snack – Hazelnuts. I’m on fire with these nuts. I have nothing to add about hazelnuts, though, so I’d like to continue my earlier discussion of walnuts crackers. That uncle who wanted to cut my finger off, maybe that’s a source of some of my anxiety. It’s scary to be a kid with an adult threatening to cut your finger off. I need to discuss this in therapy. Maybe I’ll have a breakthrough.
Dinner – Cobb salad with blue cheese, avocado and a lot of bacon.
Dessert – Beef jerky. I swear three months ago I was eating a plant-based diet.
Epilogue
There’s this App that I log my meals into. It counts your net carbs, and gives you the fat/protein/carbs ratio (75: 15: 10 ideally). Of course, the only way to achieve this ratio is to inject guacamole intravenously.
I’ve been on keto for a week at the time of this writing. Days 4-7 were a bit more modified. Yet, I kind of think keto has been good for me. Really what I need more than anything is structure in my life so I don’t get caught in my own head. Work provides that sometimes. Other times, I need something to think about – planning my meals and having goals is essential for my mental health.
As for the science, without standing on a soap box, sugar is simply the cigarettes of today. It’s poison. Except it is everywhere and is in everything, especially when you have kids. I need to stay away from it as much as I can, and Keto, or whatever modified version of it I continue with, will allow me to keep it at a distance.
That doesn’t mean I need to eat avocados. Anything but avocados really at this point. If you see me, please try not to wear green. It’s reached that point.
