According to National Today, today is All or Nothing day. All or Nothing day is designed to get you to take risks. It’s about giving your all to something you’ve had as a goal. You have to get your mind set around going for it. This is the only way you will succeed. When I thought about this, I realized that keto is a good example of this. You have to go all keto. There is no “kind of” keto. You have to dedicate yourself to this lifestyle and stick with it in order to succeed.
Why Do You Have to Go All Keto?
Keto is a way of eating that changes the way your body burns energy. Most of us in 2022 burn carbs as energy. Healthy foods high in carbs include fruits, vegetables, and grains. Unhealthy carbs include things like baked goods and candy (i.e. sugar). With keto, your body uses fat as energy. This includes things like meats, cheeses, cream, and nuts.
Foods often contain carbs, fats, and proteins. These are your macronutrients. The trick with keto is to eat more fats than the proteins and carbs. Your carbs should be kept to around 5% of the foods you eat, or about 20 grams of carbs a day. Fats should make up about 75% of the foods you eat, and proteins make up the last 20%.
Once your body switches over to burning fat as fuel, this is called ketosis. If you don’t continue to eat this way, your body will go back into burning carbs as fuel, and you will be kicked out of ketosis. So, if you want to go keto, you have to stay keto. If you switch back and forth, you will not get all the benefits of burning fat as energy.
Why Go All Keto?
There are many benefits to being in ketosis, in my opinion. The benefit most people focus on is weight loss. Bill and I lost over 200 pounds in under a year of being keto. This obviously has tons of health benefits, but it also has personal benefits. We feel better, we are no longer scared to try new things, and we have tons of energy to do those new things.
Finding Your Motivation
If you decide you want to go keto, you have to be motivated. We have a section in our workbook about finding your motivation. Because you have to be all in with keto, this is an important part of being successful. Often, people will just say that the motivation is to lose weight. Let’s face it, many of us have said it before and failed miserably. It may be enough to get us started, but it’s not enough to keep going and being consistent.
You need a motivation that will provide you with the strength to say no to the piece of sugary birthday cake. For us, it was Bill’s health. He had to go keto or his life would be cut short due to heart damage. And yet, our addiction to carbs was so strong, we grieved the way we used to eat. We actually mourned the crap we were used to eating. It was not an easy transition. If our motivation was just to lose weight, we would have been sunk before we started. But where it was his health, we went all in.
Dig Deep for Motivation
Look at why you want to lose weight. Is it a specific health concern, or is it so you can walk to the store or easily visit someone special? One of our other motivations was that we wanted to travel, and that was difficult when we couldn’t fit in the seatbelts on an airplane. I love rollercoasters, and I couldn’t fit on some of them. I’d have to try to seat out front of the ride, in front of everyone.
Once you start losing the weight, and you start getting the benefits of consistent energy (rather than the peaks and valleys you feel on carbs), it becomes easier to stay committed to going all in with keto. We have gotten into riding motorcycles – something we never would have done before losing weight. Those fun things you get to do and have the energy to do will keep you moving forward on keto.
Final Thoughts Of Going All Keto
People say that keto is difficult because it is all or nothing. It’s not a diet – it’s a way of life. That being said, once you get the hang of it, you won’t want to go back. To us, keto is eating good food, being able to do the things you couldn’t do before, and having the energy to do those things. It’s not easy, but we think it’s worth the effort to go all in!
Wendy
