The Machine is important. You only get one body and that’s it. If you mess it up too much, you’re toast and the only choices you will have from that point on will come in the form of prescriptions. That’s not what I want for any of anyone I care about.
Throughout the Focus 8 Program I will be talking about the concept of “Tools”. For any of you who have done any hands on manual labor, you know having the right tool makes all the difference in getting the job done. The right “tool” can accelerate you to your goals.
You see, as a software engineer I just don’t spend a lot of time moving around. It’s very easy for me to sit in one spot coding for 12 hours. In fact, it’s a necessity sometimes. Rise and Grind! Unfortunately, coding doesn’t burn that many calories and my daily routines of going to the gym/doing martial arts just keep me at par. I knew I could do better though. I want Beast Mode not average Joe. I just had to get the right tool.
Enter the “Ketogenic Diet”. There is a lot of information on the web about it but I want to give you my first hand experience with it.
In a nutshell, the diet is basically high fat, medium protein, and very low carbs. When I say low carbs I mean less than 40 grams/day which is basically nothing. A single bagel has between 50 and 60 carbs alone. Let that sink in. I’m not going into what you should eat, there are others out there who have spent a ton of time going into the specifics so I suggest doing some searches and leveraging their knowledge.
What I will tell you is that it works really well. Just so you know, I’m an endomorph so loosing weight is really hard for me and gaining it is easy. I dropped 15 pounds from 205 to 190 in around 18 days. Another benefit I found was that I did not loose much strength during the weight loss. In the past cardio would burn my muscle and fat equally. That can be discouraging to say the least. You feel like a deflated ballon. What’s the point in being thin and super weak?
Turns out the Ketogenic Diet or “Keto” as people say tricks the body into choosing to burning fat instead of muscle. You will still burn some muscle but not nearly as much when you’re in Ketosis.
Downsides you may ask? Not many… it takes around 3 days for the Diet to kick in and during that time you may feel a bit lethargic/fuzzy but after that, you should actually feel pretty good. Workout wise you will loose some explosive energy just because of the way your body has to harness energy from fat instead of carbs. It takes longer.
As with all diets calorie intake is key and I recommend apps like “MyFitnessPal” to track your meals. You will still gain weight if you eat more calories than you burn… even on Keto.
That’s it. I’m not saying this is what you need to do or that it’s the only way. Everyone is different. However, I am giving you a tool to help take care of that “Machine” you call your body. Ultimately, it’s your choice but remember… who wants to be average?
Stay Focused,
Dax