Keto or Traditional Diet?
This has been something I’ve struggled with for the past several weeks. I’ve flip flopped back and forth on what to do at least 4 times now, and I’m at a point where I need to pick a plan and run with it.
For the longest time, I absolutely hated the idea of keto. I genuinely felt that carbs should be a major staple of your diet, and even more so if you’re an athlete. However, I admit that the more I researched keto, the more value I found in it.
For about 2 months starting in March, I went “keto.” I wasn’t perfect- I likely had too much protein, not enough fat and 1 too many cheat meals throughout the process. I would venture to say that it was really a low carb high fat diet. With that said though, I managed to drop nearly 20 pounds in the process.
A few benefits I noticed during my keto-ish diet:
Consistent Energy. I think this was the most valuable aspect of keto for me. I certainly didn’t have the highs and lows of a traditional carb heavy diet. The afternoon fog was completely gone, and I felt better rested in the mornings. I imagine my sleep cycle was significantly improved, which likely helped my overall energy levels.
Satiety: I wasn’t hungry. I’ve done intermittent fasting for a while now (recently taken a step back from it – more on that later) and I noticed that on Keto, holding out until 12, 1 or even 2pm was no challenge at all. Rarely did I feel massive food cravings early in the morning, and when I did finally eat in the afternoon, it only took a small fatty meal and I would feel completely satisfied. This was incredibly helpful for me as with traditional dieting, I rarely feel full and must fight myself to not overeat. I didn’t experience this with Keto.
Aerobics: Now, to be fair, they could be a few factors here. I noticed a few weeks in that my jiu jitsu sessions drastically improved, and I felt like I could roll much longer than I could previously. It’s hard to credit this purely to keto though, as I had lost nearly 20 pounds and was more consistent with my training – thus developing better cardio and controlling my energy/breathing during my sessions. However, I felt good, we’ll chalk it up to keto!
With these factors in mind, there were a few cons that made me question if keto was right for me:
Strength: Gone. Just simply gone. Weights that I used as a warmup became my working sets. I struggled hard when trying to do progressive overloading and it felt like my strength was declining week after week. Now, I don’t want to fully blame keto because I had improved my aerobic capabilities as well as maintained a caloric deficit – which typically prevents any significant strength gains for seasoned athletes. I will say though, the moment I introduced carbs back into my diet… my strength came back very quickly. So yeah, I take it back, it was keto.
Options: Probably the most annoying part of keto was the food selection. I know that I can get creative, and try a thousand different recipes, but like most people, I’m a creature of habit. With a traditional diet, I could cycle different types of proteins, fats and carbs. Oh, you want some oatmeal? Get it! How about sweet potato? Crush it! Fruit? Of-fracking-course! On keto my food options seriously felt like it was bacon, eggs and butter. Or meat and butter. Or just butter. I don’t know, it was tough.
Mentality: This is a direct effect from the options I mentioned. When I know that I can’t have something, I typically only want that thing. Now, after a few weeks, those types of cravings subsided- but they were still there… lingering. This made it hard on me because I knew that I couldn’t have cheat foods like I could on a traditional diet. Normally, if I wanted ice cream, donuts or pizza (did I say or? I meant and. Definitely and.) I could factor the calories and macros to make it work. With keto though, if I ate these foods, it would knock me out of keto and set me back a week. This was something that never really went away through my experiment and made things hard on me.
I’m struggling to choose the best path, and I think it’s because my goals are unclear. Perhaps trying to do too many things at one time, and that is what makes it so difficult to choose. I’d like to build strength and power, but I also want to lose weight and increase my cardio. I hate feeling hungry and getting crappy sleep, but I love ice cream. I hope you can see my dilemma.
After putting my thoughts out there, I think I need to solidify my short-term and long-term goals before making a choice. This will improve my perspective to allow me to choose which path to travel for the foreseeable future. I have an idea of which route I want to go, but I’ll sleep on it before finalizing my decision.
Have you tried keto? What was your experience like? Let me know, I’d love to hear it.