Personal Trainer, Pete's, experience with KETO - by Pete Tulumba
Recently, post corndog eating contest (which I came in 2nd to), I looked at myself, both inside and out, and decided I needed a change. I felt soft, low energy, and my mental capacity didn’t seem to be where it should. I thought to myself, it’s time to change up your diet, and get a hormone reset. Hormones play a big role in how your body acts. Specifically cortisol. Cortisol is the anti hormone. Too much cortisol will mess with how your body holds on to fat, how your brain functions, how you sleep, and your overall mood. Keto claims to reset your hormone balances and get your levels back in a normal routine.
My biggest concern on keto, though was that I did NOT want to lose weight. I wanted to keep as much muscle as I could, lose as much fat as I could, but not look super skinny. Now when I say lose weight, I don’t mean just on a scale, I mean looks-wise as well. When I lose weight, I see it in my face and my arms, and it really freaks me out. I wanted to look cut up, not skinny. Another concern, which is the general population's concern, is that eating fat will make me fat. Eating 80% of my calories in fat freaked me the hell out! I trusted the process and began to feel and see change within a week. I woke up everyday on the right side of the bed, peppy, never groggy, and ready to work (and at 4:30am that is no easy feat). My abs started to return, my body fat dropped a few percentage points, but I started to feel like I was losing too much weight and began looking really skinny. I was trapped in this quarry of “should I keep going, look skinny, but feel mentally great? Or go back to carbs, look fuller, and sometimes wear my crabby pants?”
One of the toughest things about doing keto (correctly) is the fact that it is tough to have a social life. No drinking, food is basic and needs to be modified when you go out, and I pretty much ate the same thing everyday in order to remain in ketosis; eggs and bulletproof coffee in the morning, brazil nuts, fat bombs, coconut milk/fat infested protein shakes, steak and veggies, and repeat. Granted, it was delicious, but got boring after a while.
Would I do it again? Absolutely. Is it the end all be all? Absolutely not. Will I cycle it periodically throughout the year to reset my body? You’re damn right!