I decided that this was the year of change for me. I was unhealthy and broke at the beginning of the year so I decided to focus on my finances. I feel I got that under control at this point and so I’ve been focusing on studying nutrition. What I found when I started digging in and reading the actual scientific studies will probably come as no shock to anyone on this forum…but it was very eye-opening for me. After realizing that the high fat/low carb diet is what virtually every piece of evidence I could find was pointing me to I decided to find a diet that followed this path. This inevitably led me to keto and, thus, you fine people. I don’t so much care about a “diet” per se but having a set of guidelines to fall into definitely helps with what is going to be a very big life style change for me. One of the main reasons why I decided I liked Keto was the IF bits that seemed to be intrinsic to the lifestyle. I’ve been practicing IF…well…intermittently…for a few years and have long known the health benefits of it. So I feel like keto is just a good fit for me. At this point I’ve read several keto specific books, been reading as much as possible in this forum, and just googling anything I have questions on, but I still have a couple of newb questions. I’m very involved in the local beer scene where I live and have a few events where I know I’m going to want to drink copious amounts of carbs over the next few weeks. Because of this I’ve decided to make those my farewell weeks and start Keto on or about the 29th, so I’m really just trying to be as prepared as possible before that time comes. My questions are:
Since I’m not new to IF, is it recommended to just fast for a few days to help get into ketosis?
How important is it to actually test glucose/ketone levels? The science nerd in me wants to check every hour and come up with lots of graphs and charts and 8X10 color glossy photographs, but the tightwad in me says that keto strips are friggin expensive and that would be really dumb.
Since I’ll be quitting diet sodas and sweet-and-low sweetened tea I was considering just stopping caffeine all together. But I haven’t really seen anything about that…does caffeine help/hurt in any way?
Is there anything that’s a “must read” or “must watch” that would help?
I get the n=1 ideals and whole-heartedly agree with that way of operating, but there have to be some good guidelines that seem to work better in general…right? Thanks in advance for any answers.
