Good day everyone. Just as the title suggests I’m fairly new to Keto, however I’ve tried it before but I’m not sure that I did it correctly , so I count me as being new. I’ve done a lot of research prior to starting so I have a fairly decent knowledge level. Just a little about myself and my previous and current lifestyle. I’m a weight lifter for the last 30 t years and have done everything from bodybuilding to Olympic style weight lifting and Kettlebells. I’ve been a trainer for years. I’ve also did most type of dieting to meet my goals for that type of training I was doing. I’m also a firm believer in trying something before you criticize it or praise it. So this is my attempt at giving keto an honest try. If it works great, if not well I guess that’s great too just so I can be honest about what I say about it. I’ve been doing Keto now for about 2 weeks and I’m looking forward to getting information and constructive criticism (I have a thick skin so I’m not easily offended, lol). Thanks to everyone in advance
New to Keto again
Welcome to the forum.
I’m curious what you are hoping to get from following this way of eating? Weight loss? Improved health?
Also, what have you noticed from your first two weeks?
Thank you for your response. I’m looking at maybe dropping some weight and to see how this may affect my cholesterol. I’m currently on cholesterol meds (thanks to my father high cholesterol is a family gift…specifically for the male members ), so I want to see what kind of affect this has, especially on my LDL. So far it seems to be going well although I can’t tell if I’ve lost any fat (just by appearance) but that doesn’t mean I haven’t . I feel well and haven’t really experienced any “keto flu”. My diet seems to be spot on. I would venture to guess that I average well below 50g of carbs, closer to 20-30g. My fat sources come from butter, olive oil, nuts, full fat proteins, …heres my meals today, which is fairly typical:
Breakfast: 3 egg with cheese/spinach omelette cooked in butter. 3 piece bacon…bulletproof coffee with scoop if collegen (dr recommended for arthritic joints…has on 2 impact carbs)
Lunch: Beef cooked in olive oil stir fry with riced broccoli, also with olive oil
Snack: avocado with 1/2 scoop protein ( 1 scoop has 4 cards, 2 fiber), 1/2 spoon of peanut butter ( natural no sugar), 11 raspberries (1 cup has about 8 impact carbs, so I’m well below that)
Dinner: 5 oz chicken thighs with guacamole and spinach cooked in olive oil
Snack (if hungry) probably the same as afternoon snack, or similar
Welcome. I’m hoping @marklifestyle will chime in here, he’s a serious body builder/weight lifter and have good insights for you.
Well, if @robintemplin says Beetlejuice, up I come. Welcome aboard.
60 year old bodybuilder who has gone through various health issues. So up to age 25 alcoholic with poor body health. Then with sobriety came resistance training and marathons, then came spinal degeneration, 7 herniated disks, the worst at L5-S1 10 x 10 x 12 mm into my sciatica. I was pronounced permanently disabled and a very BAD oxy addiction…legally prescribed 300 mg daily and I know I hit 2G a day at times. Here is me during those times, 2014:
Father died of heart disease at 57, he was the longest living male of his siblings. The girls all died in their 60s. All my parents and grandparents had T2D.
Ok, so there is a rough picture of what the medical profession will tell you is a recipe for cholesterol control and medication. ■■■■ that. First off, more than likely,LDL is not an issue ESPECIALLY if you are Pattern A LDL, large fluffy tumbleweeds collecting garbage in the bloodstream and transporting it to be disposed of. Lp(a) might be more problematic, don’t believe that either without knowing your Vitamin C, Lysine and Proline levels as well as your propensity to clot your blood……but I digress. Well maybe watch this latest debate from COSCI in Vegas which I attended and particpated in loosely.
Of course I no longer have anything more than minor disk bulging, repaired that with 5-10 day fast of water and coffee only. Reversed the blockage in my heart by 8.2% I would blow your mind with what I can do with LP(a)_ bu I am soo nt o conduct an experiment on about 20 folks to prove my hypothesis correct…anyway…oh, the osteoporosis? -T1.9 to a +T1.8, so fixed that too. Keto is sooooo bad for you, if you profit from pharmaceuaticals that is.
Eat like Vince Gironda, the Iron Guru who trained many of the most famous bodybuilders. To get a D-bol effect eat 36 eggs a day…lol. He once called Arnie fat. See, Vince of Vinnie’s gym had read [Steffanson] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson) back in the 40s and understood fat was our friend as well as protein. He couldn’t get past the weakness felt by many on the fourth day so he advocated eating carbs every fourth day….had he pushed through it with electrolytes like magnesium and potassium he would have discovered like Phinney and Volek did that it takes a while for a body to adapt to a ketogenic lifestyle. The body will output ketones immediately but to use them efficiently takes time. These days after 8 years I am hardly ever in a “ketogenic state” as my BHB (beta-hydroxybutyrate, a type of ketone) is .3-.5 mmol. Yet I have been pursuing a very low body fat percentage this past 12 months and have successfully dropped it via Dexascan from 22-19-15.3 to? Likely 13.9 according to the calipers and my pants.
I train 2-3 hours a day. I DO NOT EVER count calories, that’s useless. I eat 75% of my diet as fat, about 20% as protein and 5% as carbs. I eat mostly NY Strip, Ribeye, pork belly and copious amounts of heavy cream.
The first few weeks and @PaulL is really good at explaining this, the body is accoustomed to holding three water molecules to one glycogen. As the body flushes the glycogen as it turns to ketosis it also dumps a ■■■■-ton of water and with it the kidneys also flush out tons of electrolytes trying to main homeostasis. Ooops. Keto flu. SO, take those electrolytes. Switch over to low weight high reps as you transition. Not only will it make the transition easier it will bump up your routine.
BTW I had rotator cuff surgery by William Raash, Chief Surgeon of the Brewers and Bucks, He was really surprised I could lift with a completely torn labrum and shreaded bicep tendon long head and then to heal in half the time…ketones are lean ltissue sparring. to point this out in a lifting chart
I will be glad to answer any questions in specific as long as it is on the forum so everyone can benefit. There are some really good threads on here about weight lifting, especially
We recommend that most newbies don’t check their blood lipid levels until they’ve been keto for at least 6 months, especially if you are dropping a lot of weight. Once you get fat adapted, those numbers settle down. When you do test your lipid levels, what will be most important is your triglyceride to HDL ratio, not your LDL cholesterol levels. You will want to aim for an HDL / Triglyceride ratio < 2.0
Yep. And for @JDzube that ratio was created, best of my knowledge, by Prof. Ben Bikman. who runs an excellent metabolic forum weekly on YouTube. He suggested this lipid ratio was a “poor man’s” insulin sensitivity test. One can read about it in 'Why We Ge Sick".
Love this! Too many people give it an incomplete try and then act like they know it well enough to bash it. I know people that couldn’t make it past 3-4 weeks and think that they saw enough to properly judge. It’s not that kind of a diet.
I’d would encourage you to withhold any criticism or praise until after you have been on it for at least 6 months without cheating or falling off of it. Do it clean and true and for a long enough time if you ever want to be able to advise others. It can take up to 6 months to fully realize all the benefits. Additionally, a lot of cholesterol results aren’t trustworthy sooner than that.
Welcome! 
You may be interested in knowing that before keto was really a thing, Frank Zane used it. He would cut his carbs to about 50 gr in his cutting phase before competing. That would have put him into ketosis, and trimmed fat off. I had awesome results my first year of doing keto(4 mo), and believe I gained about 10 pounds of muscle while losing fat. I got up to 15 chinups and 15 pullups - a feat I haven’t replicated since. Interestingly some of the strongest men in the world cannot do that.(they’re hard when you weigh 350 Lb).
Yes sir. Standard practice when bodybuilders, figure competitors, etc. are in cutting phase they normally enter a type of ketosis. I’ve been a trainer for years and have done the cutting in my youth (when went through my bodybuilding phase) and still have friends that compete…it’s just not a lifestyle like keto is, so you really never hit that full blown keto and it’s only done for a short while, then it’s back to bulking phase.
Again, it was because of the plateau they hit on the fourth day. Vinnie could never understand that there was an adaptation phase, which I linked you to in my response. John Grimek, Bill Pearl all ate high fat and high protein and only ate no fat 6 weeks prior to contest. The idea of low fat was considered, as it should be, dangerous.
My personal records are this.
You can see I added the first two years about 33 pounds of lean mass at the age of 53-55. There are plenty of conversations about this in these forums, some pretty infamous debates baout whether I could have done better without extensive fasting resulting in my nickname “outlier”.
All BF measures are by Dexascan, the gold standard. To repair my disks, as I said I fasted 5-10 days every 4-6 weeks for 18 months to induce high levels of cellular repair known as autophagy. At one point autophagy was called autolysis as it was thought to enzymic repair. The things one learns studying fasting sociteties of the last 300 years.
As I also said earlier, bone density is as improtant or more improtant than muscle mass. To this effectyou can see in the chart I prepared that since prior to 2004 I was in a state of decline and no medications or treatments worked. In those days I lifted but was more inclined to marathons, running those at 193 pounds and 13% BF.
Yes sir, my 30+ years as a trainer/coach and my time as a competitive Bodybuilder I have studied the greats ( I also have a Bachelor of Science degree Applied Exercise Science). Currently I’m working with a client right now in her cutting phase for her Figure show in a few weeks. A few years ago I changed my personal exercise regime to more of a “functional” type work ( not a term I would normally use). I incorporate the 5 basic human movements as well as training for the “tactical” athlete (I’m retired military and my job was in the tactics area). That would be incorporating Olympic style lifts and kettlebells, among other tools
My main reason for keto and trying it full blown is to understand how it works on my body and if it’s something that I can pass on to others, it’s a very good tool in my toolbox…
I’m not posting this to brag about my accomplishments (not much to brag about, lol) but just so people here can understand me a little better.i should have posted this from the start.
I honestly appreciate your inputs very much and want to tap into yours and others knowledge on keto to make me better! Looking forward to more info!
The place to start is here :Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance. 
There is mor ecurrent understanding but this is the bedrock of athletic performance. These guys are considered the Godfathers of Keto (current manifestation).
Of course, earlier you mentined the cholesterol and such. That gets this group excited, physique challenges? Not so much.
There used to be some excellent FB pages, The Ketogenic Athlete and Lean Gains. Perhaps Checkout https://ketosavage.com/ …not my favorite resource ( mainly due to politics & religion, not science) Sikes and occaisionally Danny Vega have some really good insight into champion physiques and keto