dear Two Keto Dudes
How I came to your podcast is worth telling you both!
50 year old male, in Australia, recently lost 25kg in about 2 months. Not diabetic, no other issues, other than being 50, fat, with a torn cartilage in a knee. By way of disclosure, I’m a chemical engineer by training, but have not worked in this field. Like you two, unafraid of some technical detail.
And oh, I came down with Ross River Virus (May 2018), which is a uniquely Australian mosquito born virus, which is absolutely debilitating. It attacks all your small joints, and you basically can’t walk, and even rolling over in bed is difficult. Kangaroos are the host animal, and risk factors increased about 10 fold by lots of camping and outback travel.
A visit to a doctor, and the most motivating phrase you can hear from a doctor “there is nothing you can do”.
Was told, lasts about 4-6 weeks, and only 1 in 10 have long term effects. Holy crap, this is going to be awful.
Well lets see about that!
Online research led me to exploring restricting carbs as part of the treatment of the virus (among other things, including simple stuff such as hot baths, olive leaf extract - I just tried all of them).
But, onto carbs, I just went for eating low starch veggies, cutting out drinking and sugars, and in a week I’d lost nearly 5kg.
I still felt bad, tired, sore and sick, but was slightly aware of low carb diets (did Atkins for a week in 2004), and was aware I would go through some kind of keto ‘flu.
I already felt like hell, might as well go through this as well. My knee surgeon had recommended losing 15kg, and I’m a third they way there, lets go.
Anyway, decided to go optifast (very low calorie diet), as recommended by my knee doc. But only mentioned in passing.
2 weeks in, I’ve lost 8kg, have recovered fully from virus, and am back at work.
Bloody hell, what went on here. So I kept going.
Fast forward 2 months, and I’m down 25 kg (83kg from 108kg), and am feeling great.
A ski trip earlier in July, here I am on 800 calories per day, and skiing for 7 hours, and feeling better than I have for 15 years.
WTF is going on.
On the ski trip, quite a few people are, bloody hell, this can’t be healthy, you can’t do this, you are doing to die soon etc.
A dietician on the trip piped up, said don’t worry, you are in ketosis, and this is great. Do see a doctor and get a blood test etc, but well done. You should probably think about transitioning to a keto diet, rather than a calorie limited diet (and mostly carbs) such as usually recommended.
This dietician has been kicked out of the dieticians association of Australia, for indicating that dieticians have got it wrong. Bless her.
Anyway, here I am, at 83kg, and about 5 kg to go, and I’m listing to your podcasts on my weekly 5 hrs of flying, and am fascinated by what I have learned about my body, and also by that lack of understanding by mainstream dieticians, and further fascinated by how wrong so many seem to have recommendations and treatment of obesity in our modern world.
Keep it up you two, inspiring. I’d love to hear about others transitioning from something like optifast.