raskolAU's keto diet log

[raskolAU]

Hi all,

i've been lurking here a bit recently, slowly reading through some of the keto related threads as i'm now three days in to a fresh diet using the keto methodology. anyway i'm doing this to help keep track for myself as i forget stuff easily lol and also this is for others that may be keto dieting or interested in it to glean ideas from me and share information.

feel free to skip the next two paragraph for a tl;dr version of this log, it's just some personal background that turned out quite long.

i'm almost thirty and have been lifting on and off since feb 2013, i've made definite strength gains and my body has changed for the better, though i'm still quite chubby at my current 90 kg, down from 93 last week, presumably water weight dropped when i started the diet on monday. in the past my weight and obviously body fat has fluctuated from around 100kg when i was in high school, i leaned out to about 80 kg in year 12 (long walks, eventually jogs, every night and some simple routines of pushups and situps) and stayed like that after i joined the workforce and left home, lots of hard work and too poor to afford excess junk helped a lot. after i settled down and my son was born i did some further studies and gained weight from sitting so much and eating fast food that was convenient. i went through that cycle a couple of times, work = lose weight, study = gain weight, the last straw was when i almost got up to 100kg again on the summer holidays of 2012/2013, four weeks paid leave, air con, computer games, carb-ful food. enough was enough, i started doing what i used to do, long walks and bodyweight exercises. in feb2013 a friend opened a small gym and i got involved, i was clueless at first and a bit shy to ask the other guys, so i did what i always do, researched on the net, noticed some things that made sense and started lifting, 5x5 to be specific, i used a program by Elliot Hulse for about 6 weeks and was happy with the outcome, i then did the 'stronglifts 5x5' for a while simply because the app is convenient to use and it was similiar to what i was doing anyway.

during that time my main diet concern was getting enough protein, i started tracking my diet focusing on that primarily and to a lesser extent keeping the portion size of other food in check, i noticed straight away that i had been eating way too much, i brought it down to more reasonable levels and i've been hovering around 85kg since then, i believe that i lost fat and gained muscle simultaneously and that is when i pretty much stopped worrying about the scale, i was more interested in how much i could lift and changing how the weight was distributed on my body. i've had ups and downs over the last 9 months, moving house, exhausting long travel to work (good outcome was i listened to the audiobook: good calorie bad calorie, among many other audio books), becoming unemployed, kid starts new school bla bla i know excuses excuses, i've been lifting but inconsistently, though have made minor gains in strength and physique, though the last month or so i've gotten a bit to friendly with my old nemesis, the sweet sweet carb. time for a change.

END tl;dr


Anyway i was hoping to start sunday but was out with the family so monday was the big day. my last meal as a 93 kg sweet tooth was a slice of sticky date cake with ice cream (shared with my family), a large homestyle lamington and an iced chocolate on sunday night, i can taste it all now lol, then before bed a few large glasses of water.

21/4/2014 Monday

i woke up fasting, no water or food nothing until about 6 pm that evening. so only two meals that day. earlier in the day i did some gardening for a friend and then went shopping for healthy keto friendly food and also picked up some ketostix. picked up a few bargains too, couple bags of baby kale marked down to 50cents but still looking fresh!

dinner: P 56 F 28 C 3 (Protein, Fat, Carb)
rotisserie chicken breast, generous serve of broccoli and cauliflower, tbsp of seedy mustard, and a pretty generous drizzle of olive oil over my veg, which soaked through and i ended up dipping my chicken in it haha.

supper: P 13 F 25 C 2
organic vintage cheddar 50grams, olives 30 grams, pickled dill cucumbers 70 grams.

this was somewhat of an experiment as i haven't had cheese in ages and i have fond childhood memories of cheese and gherkins on biscuits as a snack, i added olives because i like them and they are fatty and savoury so go with the before, and i had no biscuits for obvious reasons. the serving wasn't very big either because i was frankly still feeling the previous meal.

22/4/2014 Tuesday

I knew my first full day on this plan would give me a headache and possibly other things, i had a half hour or so nap around 1 or 2 and felt good after. i started a new training program with my lifting buddy (a variation of Wendler's 5/3/1). so i read up on pre and post workout carbs, and everything kind of fell into place, since i was starting a new strength training program and hadn't lifted for almost a week before that i decided that i would take some sweet carbs PWO. i tested mid arvo on a ketostick and got a little bit of pink so i felt i was on the right track. i took the missus out to her favourite thai place and had a dish that possibly pushed the carb limits due to the peanut sauce, but since i was training an hour or so after i figured it wouldn't hurt too much so didn't bother asking about how much sugar vs oil they do or do not put in it.

Meal 1: P 31 F 38 C 3
5 eggs, 60 gram kale, tbsp mustard. i made like a frittata type dish, letting it slow fry in a tsp of ghee, i forgot to count the ghee when i did the macro of this meal, anyway its a good fat! i also seasoned it with himalayan rock salt, black pepper and turmeric, then spread the mustard across it. i was well satisfied until around midday.

Meal 2: P 21 F 50 C 9
100 grams (approx.) mixed nuts, i was on the road and had a jar of nuts with me, including walnuts, macadamias, almonds, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, cashews and pistachio. i had only a couple each of the latter two as i've read they are more carby than others.

Meal 3: P 12 F 50 C 16
2 small avocados, small cup of whole milk (raw organic), rose water, tbsp full fat greek yoghurt on top.
Avocado cocktail, ooh yeah, i love these, though i would normally put honey and more milk to make it easier to drink with a straw, anyway it was good and filled me well until dinner time. my daughter always helps me drink them, i also didn't consider that when i tallied the macros. no need to critique me for overcarbing on this one, i know about milk and its sugars, before i used to drink over a litre a day sometimes 2, so this is me in transition :-)

Meal 4: P 25 F 33 C 40
chicken and vegetable satay stir fry.
i estimated the macros for this by breaking down the primary ingredients to chicken, veg, peanut sauce, then used the aus diet diary app standard macros for those food types.

Meal 5: P 29 F 3 C 30
PWO, and this was my last meal as we trained late that day, i added a little oat bran to it.
scoop of Whey, 10g oat bran, 30g malt extract (because i love the flavour, was out of honey, and not really keen on stuff like dextrose), i mixed it with water and a dash of milk to make it look more milky hehe


23/4/2014 wednesday

Meal 1: P 31 F 38 C 3
5 eggs, 60 gram kale, tbsp mustard. so awesome i had to have it again today, once again forgot to include the tsp of ghee.

Meal 2: P 19 F 36 C 2
organic vintage cheddar 75grams, olives 40 grams, pickled dill cucumbers 70 grams.
same as the other day, delicious and easy to prep, i increased the portions this time.

Meal 3: P 80 F 28 C 9
grilled chicken breast, garden salad w/ some avacado, balsamic vinaigrette dressing.
trying out a local restaurant for lunch with the missus, after studying the menu i felt that this was the meal for me, i was a little worried about the dressing but after trying, it seemed quite oily and not too sweet other than in a balsamic vinegar way, so hopefully all good, i was generous with the macro just in case. also didn't consider subtracting the fibre from the salad.

Meal 4: P 17 F 44 C 15
100g coconut cream, 13g dessicated coconut, 10g raw cacao powder, 1/2 scoop whey, a pinch of stevia, 40g cream on top.
this is a fatty low carb choc pudding treat i whipped together in a pinch, it was delicious. i use the herbal stevia, its a green powder and has a bitter aftertaste so use a tiny bit and add to taste in tiny amounts. in hindsight i wish i whipped the cream, would've made it just that extra bit special. anyway all good, it saw me satiated from about 1830 or 1700 when i made it until now (11pm). fyi note that whilst the carb is somewhat high, i haven't subtracted the fibre content which is quite a bit from the coconut.

Meal 5: P 21 F 47 C 5
late night hunger buster, as i type this i'm munching:
50grams organic hemp seeds, 20 grams macadamia nuts, 15 grams pumpkin seeds. once again i haven't subtracted the fibre from the hemp seeds.


Well that's a wrap for my first three days on a keto eating plan, most things from home i can weigh and measure precisely, however when eating out there is some guessing and estimation involved, which i generally guess on the side of caution so hopefully all good. anyway i must be doing alright, i did the ketostick today and it came up well pink positive, 1.5 mdl(?) so i'm hopefully well on my way to optimal ketosis!

atm i'm experimenting a lot as you all can see, i have a lot more meal ideas up my sleeve including but not limited rosemary marinated barbecued lamb chops drizzled in olive oil, beef stewed in butter miripoix stock, soft boiled eggs (mmn how i love a runny yolk), brussel sprouts (awesome when steamed right), 100g block of full fat fetta cheese with spinach (easy one to take to work/school or pick up from any supermarket if i'm out and about), organic %100 peanut butter (avoiding for the first fortnight), more full fat 'sweet treats', and if i can get one, i'll stew a wallaby, or at least parts of it haha, in my missus' slow cooker ;-)

btw i use the australian diet diary app, its really nifty and has a barcode scanner that has almost everything from the supermarket on its database (double check the info is right though, a few times i've found mistakes), as well as all types of typical fresh foods and fast food things.

any detailed constructive critique, suggestions etc are most welcome.

[raskolAU]

Hi all, I've neglected this log as I've been busy and also mostly out of ketosis. After these initial posts I was in ketosis for about a week then dropped out accidentally (damn that delicious thai restaurant) and then got busy and stayed out.

About a month ago I got back in for a solid two weeks, i was working on a farm and despite up to around 100grams of carbs (even the odd choc biscuit or half a bar) I stayed in ketosis, obviously I put that down to the fact in was engaged in manual work.

I guess I should mention at this point that I've been fasting everyday the last 2 weeks due to Ramadan, here in south oz that means 12 hours no food or water, and 12 hours overnight to balance the macros and hydrate. I reckon this helps to get into ketosis as you get exhausted in the day due to glycogen depletion.

When I travelled home from the farm I was out again for about 8 days, initially eating all the junk I came across (every night) and then winding it back to cleaner carbs before this Sunday just passed where I cut out the carb completely and focused in getting the fat macro up, however on Monday evening I had some questionable dish that may have stalled me getting back in.

It's now Wednesday arvo here in oz and I've tested positive for on the stix, I reckon I got in yesterday afternoon though, it'd been a long day at TAFE (tech college?) and I had a sudden burst of energy in the afternoon so did a session of barbell squats, a movement I greatly missed when I was on the farm where I had only pairs of 5 and 10 kg dumbells (11 and 22 lbs). Since I mentioned training I'm thinking of doing starting strength or stronglifts for this two months, I prefer ss but I don't have a coach for the power clean.

I'll update this log regularly as I intend to stay in ketosis for the next two months (even after I finish Ramadan) with the exception of a break on the first day after Ramadan which is a festival called Eid, I will use as it as a carb up, since it's simply to hard to avoid sweets on that day lol

[workingthedream]

awesome! in :-)

macros look good mate, maybe in future could put daily summary of macros as well as calories for the day? would save us adding each meal up lol.

yea got a mate doing ramadan as well. makes workouts a little tougher. But its almost like you are adding a component of IF into your keto regime.

Good luck!

[raskolAU]

It does effect the training a bit, anyone fasting should change there routine for the month, focus on maintaining strength and form for the big lifts, and not worry about long gruelling sessions with dozens of isolation movements, plenty of time for that after.

Last night when I broke fast I had a meal of mostly protein, some fat and more carbs than I was comfortable with, however, as it was a home cooked meal consisting of several very delicious dishes, it's hard to calculate the macros, I have this problem quite a bit. To make matters worse, when I trained later, I delayed my post workout shake for almost an hour, it was about 30g protein and 40g carb, an hour later I had a big mostly fatty meal with fibre and protein to hopefully balance out.

I was concerned, so did the stix and found no traces so I'm guessing I dropped our of ketosis due to the combination of events. I tasted again this morning and got a trace result, then again around mid day and got an even higher result, so hopefully a minor setback I'll be able to learn from!

Macros for yesterday 18 July:
Cals 2600 protein 141 fat 166 carbs 115 (note that I haven't deducted 40g carb from post workout and 40 go approx of fibre)

Macros for today 19th July:
Cals 2300 protein 104 fat 164 carbs 97 (including 30g post workout and once again I had some guess carbs at fast break time, also I didn't deduct the fibre from broccoli, green beans and salad).

[raskolAU]

I'm guilty of not keeping logs very well lol.

Overall I've been sticking to keto though have had a few carb ups despite intending to do skd for two months solid. I met a doctor recently who is familiar with keto and lchf so I've got some blood work on the way and hopefully I'll no longer get blank stares about keto related health questions.

My lifting has improved somewhat PB's yesterday for deadlift and press, though I've stalled in squats so in going to front squat for a while to strengthen the legs as I tend to turn my back squats into good mornings, and my bench just sucks.

Anyway I've found that the keto recipes section is a gold mine of yummy things, I'm about 18 pages down now and still find plenty of gems that keep me tractoring along.

[raskolAU]

Mostly I'm ckd these days, sometimes my refeeds tend to go longer than they should lol but I seem to get into keto 12-18 hours after a last carb meal, well at Keats that's when I start getting ketones on the stix.

Have developed a few quick and easy meals/treats and also identified a few local restaurants with some keto friendly meals so I have no trouble with taking my dear wife on dates haha

I'm making strength gains atm, I put it down to periodised training AND upping my cals to around 3000 (mmmn more cream) from my maintenance of around 2500, weight is static and goes up and down a couple kilos with refeeds so presumably water weight, not that weight has really been my goal, I want to get strong and culture my physique.

[raskolAU]

Bloodwork summary after 3 months of mostly ckd (couple weeks old now but anyway):

Cholesterol good.

Triglycerides, down from .5 to .3 (can't remember the unit of measurement but the doc said it was a very good sign).

T at the high end of normal, fock yeah that feels good to hear, now where is my spunky wife hehehe.

If anyone has a particular query about the results just ask i'm more than happy to share.