The Joy of Eating vs. The Joy of Living

#21

Chuck, I think you have nailed it. “Eat the best quality food, nothing processed.” After almost 15 years of doing some form of keto or low carb (95% of the time), I truly believe what you have stated. My only real concerns now are my leptin and ghrelin hormones. There is no problem with leptin, but I still virtually never get hungry, or at least I do not recognize it yet.

(Edith) #22

I don’t get hungry the same way I used to. Now I find if I can’t stop thinking about food, it is time to eat. I don’t get headachy or shaky when hungry like I did pre-keto.

(KM) #23

“Hangry” is rarely if ever a thing any more. If I do find myself feeling that way, it’s usually emotional stress. I must distract myself and eat now, because otherwise I’m going to kick you in the shins. :rofl:

(Geoffrey) #24

I once heard that the way we feel hungry now as being a Keto Hunger.
For me it boils down to I no longer have those gnawing, just gotta eat right now or I’ll starve to death hunger pangs.
My Keto Hunger is just an empty feeling that is easy to ignore and just carry on with what I’m doing until I’m able to eat again.
For me it’s a freedom from food addiction.

(Lauren G) #25

I really needed that reminder…what a great share! Thank you :slight_smile:

(icky) #26

Hmm… so I’ve been thinking about where my “meh” attitude comes from…

I was watching this today: https://www.pbs.org/video/the-truth-about-fat-xnqm4i/

Which was super interesting. It sounded like really up to date, legit science to me (well, as far as I could tell). I learned quite a few things I never knew.

Anyway, one thing it made me realise is that I’ve been TOFI all my life, so I’ve never had any issues at all re weight and hence never gave any thought to weightloss or dieting in my entire life. (Now that I’ve hit peri-menopause, that’s changed for the first time in my life.)

But yeah, I think a whole life time of being able to eat literally “whatever I want” and “how ever much I want” and never having any (apparent) health issues, never counting a single calorie, being able to truly enjoy food… I guess that’s “spoiled” me in a way…

I think if I’d had decades of weight issues and struggled massively with diets and the shame/ guilt stuff that seems to accompany it for many people, then probably Keto (eating as much yummy, fatty food as I want) would probably seem like the holy grail that I’d been looking for all my life.

Instead, at peri-menopause, I’ve got all that hormonal crap going on, suddenly gained weight for the first time in my life and got insulin resistance (which is the hidden downside of that TOFI-eat-what-you-want lifestyle).

So instead of Keto feeling like this massive relief, it just feels like an annoying, restrictive, un-fun thing I’m doing because I’m choosing to be sensible and to avoid Diabetes T2.

I’m never going to be a fan of it. It’s not the food groups that I really enjoy, at all. And even the Keto foods that I do enjoy - by eating them too often, I’m even getting sick of those. Plus when a food is something I “should” eat or am “supposed to” eat, that takes a bit of fun out of it, right there.

I’m very happy for all of you who are having the time of your life with Keto - super glad you’ve found something that works so well for you - that’s brilliant.

I think it’s okay tho, that some of us also struggle with Keto tho and do it for the health benefits but are not hugely enthusiastic about the actual food/ meals.

(icky) #27

Keto has the unfortunate status of being “the most annoying, boring and restrictive diet I’ve ever tried” … because it’s the only diet I’ve ever tried… :woman_facepalming:

I may eventually go back to this…

Who knows?

Maybe I’ll set myself a goal of Keto for 2 years to fully reverse the insulin resistance and then see if I can go back to a low carb wholefood diet. It’s probably what I’d be happiest with.

But maybe I’ll see that carb addiction is too much like alcohol or drug addiction and my only real choice is in basically abstaining.

I guess I’ll see.

(Marianne) #28

I’m with you. I find I really enjoy what we can eat and don’t tire of it. To me, nothing is more delicious than rich food - meat, eggs, bacon, cheese, butter, cream, some mayo, etc. If I have something lean like chicken or some cuts of pork, I love that I can throw together a cheese sauce and enjoy it with that. I look forward to eating every day.

(Chuck) #29

I did strick keto for about a month, and found it too strick and too stressful for my digestive system. I went to a less strick version of keto for just about a year and actually lost below my goal but not to my doctors likes. This last Thanksgiving I relaxed and allowed myself to eat real carbs and lesser fat and protein, I also relaxed my strick fasting routine, and stopped counting calories too. I just started listening to my body’s needs, well I have gained about 10 pounds and I am back to what I weighed for my Navy service years, but my body measurements have actually improved even more. My skin is so much less dry, I don’t have any baggy skin. My jeans still fit the way they did when I was 10 pounds less. I sleep like a baby, I am off all prescription drugs. I am naturally fasting 15 to 18 hours each day. I am actually snacking less, I am not ever hungry, my allergies are much less than before, I have great energy levels and I no longer have brain fog. I have learned not to eat just because it is meal time or someone suggests to go eat. Some think it is rude but I can set with others that are eating without even desiring to eat. Normally I will drink water or unsweetened tea.
But if I give into eating some, dessert, bread, anything with wheat or table sugar I have to detox myself again to get back on my now normal routine.

(Geoffrey) #30

Well if you find the keto diet restrictive and boring I suggest you stay away from mine…carnivore. You must not have much of an imagination if you can’t find enough variety on keto with all of the choices available to you. I’m carnivore and have absolutely no problem finding plenty of variety in this elimination diet.
It really sounds to me that you are just overwhelmed by your carb cravings and just don’t want to give them up.
If you go back to eating a carb heavy diet at least keep it restricted to whole vegetables and stay away from highly processed foods and sugar. At least that would be better then going back to eating all of the junk out there.
Good luck with your choices.

(Robin) #31

I agree…. Just reduce your carbs. Start there. Stop dessert. Or snacking on junk food, or whatever. You’ll still see a difference and feel better. No reason to go full blast if it means you’ll fail. Little steps. Small changes. Baby steps.
Find your sweet spot that is do-able and sustainable and still enjoyable. Then take it from there.

#32

For some reason, I wasn’t around for days so I react now…

It works well for me for a while, that’s why I find carnivore(-ish. I do need my tiny extras here and there) easier than mere keto… But after some time, I just can’t and don’t even want to resist. So I have this on/off style. It’s very nice emotionally/mentally as I always can eat whatever I really want. My worst days are the carbiest ones but they get better as time passes. I can’t force this.

:smiley: It reminds me of me when I ate fried vegs with raw vegs. Now I eat meat with (different) meat and sometimes put boiled eggs into my scrambled eggs… Why not? It’s good.

I didn’t have that before keto. I got a strong, sudden hunger that was impossible to ignore even just for a minute. It wasn’t always THAT bad but too often, it was memorable, probably won’t forget what it was like, ever. If I was lucky, I just got a quickly progressive strong hunger but not a nothing to STARVING previous one.
Shaky, weak, defocused without hunger, I only got that regularly way after fat-adaptation (I had it before only if I really underate but that nearly never happened). Normally my hunger is working but as time passes, I lose it more and more often. But my body still need fuel and it tells me.

I don’t think I ever was hangry.

I have different hungers. I LOVE the soft cute “oh just saying you should eat in the next few hours” type, I needed a long time for it to develop… My old fat adapted hunger is soft - but insistent. It used to grow, now it usually stays cute but it wears me down, it’s not HARD to resist for 1 more hours but I feel I am hungry so I need to be busy to fully ignore.
My SO is great at ignoring hunger (he is never hangry but I never knew anyone who noticeably was, that’s why it’s so foreign to me, I just heard about it) and he always ate high-carb and most probably always will. But it fits him and he does it right so it’s quite okay. But many of us really can use the changes we get from fat adaptation and very low-carb… Keto wasn’t enough for me, still too much plant carbs to interfere.

While I liked my keto food but found it too restrictive, when I dropped most of my plants, it’s immediately got less boring and it was quite close to vegetarian carnivore at that point, very limited… (For just a very short term, sure, it is not sustainable but STILL. Normally I easilly get bored during one meal!)
So there are some strange things sometimes.
Then I added meat and I must say that was a huge game changer :smiley: But dropping the plant carbs mattered very much too. They made my food more boring even with much greater variety because they raised my NEED for variety. So a more limited diet can be less boring sometimes :slight_smile:

I understand where you come from but if someone strongly desires something outside of a diet, no matter how huge variety it has (okay, keto allows everything but the carby things only in minuscule amount and it may not be satisfying), it can feel stifling. And sometimes we miss textures and it takes a lot time to have that on keto. I made many recipes as I had to, normal keto items just didn’t work.

Carnivore has huge variety indeed if we don’t do a stricter version :slight_smile: I eat MANY different kinds of dairy, eggs in various forms (I have several great desserts, they use dairy too), various cuts of various animals… Even without seafood, even without much money, there is a quite nice variety and I need it. If I can add a tiny bit of plant matter, it gets even better. If I add more, it gets worse and I start to find it too restrictive and boring… I couldn’t do normal keto now unless I mostly eat carnivore with a small amount of carbier food, usually using high-carb dishes as well. But I go back to carni very soon. Or go higher-carb but that triggers going back to carni even quicker…

Now that I write these, I feel sooo lucky. But it’s not always this easy. It is right now. ZERO temptation and boredom, I so enjoy these times :smiley: I probably still don’t lose any fat or get energetic but it’s still nice.

Of course, some people don’t need less carbs when finding keto boring (especially if they dislike the food). They need more. Low-carb can be an ideal final diet. It was a good period on my journey too, I just had to go lower. But we are all different as I often say.
There is so very much low-carb food that couldn’t fit one’s keto. Especially with low carb limits. And while 45g net carbs while liking carni food is extremely indulgent (that’s me and my keto days… I can eat nearly anything I am willing to eat to begin with) but 20g total when one doesn’t even like most keto ingredients? Would be impossible to me and sounds hellish.

If I couldn’t do keto, I would try to eat as many carbs as my body still find fine - but would make them count. I wouldn’t waste most of them on very little high-carb food when lower-carb (but not low enough for keto) options are just as acceptable. It may need a long time to figure out, I have been perfecting my keto bread since ages, okay, carnivore slowed it down quite significantly… Stopped eating bread was the easier thing ever but that was when my SO stopped eating gluten for years. Now that I bake bread every week and sometimes get bored of my food, it’s different. Anyway, I love bread now (didn’t really on high-carb but I got better at baking and it’s very exotic now and it has a unique texture. I don’t usually like high-carb bread though, I like eggy, protein rich breads. maybe I always did but no one made them for me as a kid. I didn’t even like sandwiches because they had too much boring bread). I don’t need it often though.

Oh bread is actually where even I have this not-so-much dilemma where my desires and eating joys can be in conflict with my health and wellbeing goals. While I usually strongly prefer my healthy food, bread is a special exception when I am in the mood. So this is a very rare case where I actually should say no. But I never practiced that so I just lose every time when the temptation is properly strong. But it’s not enjoyable enough because of stupid non-satiating, non-satisfying carbs. Okay sometimes it’s nice. So I choose the third option as no way I just don’t eat bread but no way I suffer the consequences… So I make a quite great keto bread. My last ones were pretty good and very low-carb. Someone like me must improve the inevitable off days.
If I just want a sandwich, I have my perfect carnivore bread replacement since ages. But if I want a proper bread with proper bread texture, that is a challenge is I want it super low-carb. Not impossible though.
So some of us use extra work and struggle over sacrificing any joy or desire. At least when it’s possible. A bread is a bread even without flour if you ask me (tricky and I need gluten but that is fine for me) but you can’t get out the sugar from a fruit… I successfully lowered the needed amount of my fruit though, already on keto when I had 1-3g carbs for my daily fruits (usually banana and/or raspberry, they fit the quota the easiest). So there are various ways to make things better. My methods are mostly to handle the lack or very low amount of certain desirable items, I could do little if I disliked my food. I only can eat food I like. I don’t use ingredients I dislike, it couldn’t work. We can pair up bland things with tasty ones, even our tastes can change a bit but I don’t think there is much hope for a very enjoyable diet if one just don’t like the staples but likes many of the off-limit ingredients. It’s super unfair if one’s health needs the not liked ones. I would try to balance things out as much as possible. Not everyone needs to be in ketosis. Not everyone needs only 20g carbs for ketosis and definitely not 20g total. We may want something carby but it’s possible that a way lower-carb version is nearly or just as good (sometimes it’s even better :wink: )… We can change, a lot… Even if it won’t be ideal, maybe a good compromise can happen?

Good luck, @sugar-addict! I as a hedonist who never really denied food from themselves (not even bread with honey on a day where I originally wanted to do carnivore… so I mean it…), considers enjoyment of food important and dislikes even compromises… I really feel sorry for your situation. It’s not fair! You should enjoy your food. You care about your health, you make efforts, you deserve to enjoy it! Not just a better health and state of mind but the food too, at least to a bigger extent than now. I wish you will find your sweet spot!