Return to Keto: Part 3

This is the third and final part of this series, where I’ll detail what we’ve been doing for our eating in the last 2-3 years. Like anyone else, we are not perfect in this and have had many highs and lows in our weight, peaks and valleys in athletic performance, moments of personal discipline, and also the occasional shame night. Overall, the journey feels like we’re tracking toward health and also a sustainable lifestyle, but it’s worth noting that this transition has taken years - a decade even - to reset our eating patterns.

As I mentioned in Part 2, we started moving away from sugar a number of years ago by abandoning sugary beverages: soda, sweet teas, and fruit juices. These spike insulin production and actually cause hunger by cuing the body that food is on its way, which in turn drives up the demand for more carbohydrates. Even as I began substituting with diet soda or “lite” sweet teas, we were learning that because of the way our genes get expressed in our cells, even sugar-free sodas lead to an increase in insulin production. This is one reason many obese people, who drink a steady stream of Diet Coke, can never seem to get the weight off: artificially sweetened beverages elevate insulin and tell our bodies to hold on to stored fat.

One of the craziest/most brilliant things I did in this time: I started “buying” my kids’ Halloween candy. After they would do their trick-or-treating and come home with several months’ worth of candy (and no razor blades, drugs or poison - the sugar was bad enough!), I would pay each of them $10 to give up their candy. This cost a little extra, but they thought it was a great deal, and it took the sugary ‘edge’ off the holiday. The genius of this habit formation came this year, when they just gave the candy up without asking for payment - I think they each took seven favorite pieces, one a day for a week.

With no pre-planning, two Christmases ago Michelle and I purchased for each other two books by Mark Sisson. I bought her the Keto Diet Reset, and she bought me the Primal Blueprint. The former is focused on a 6-12 week “how to” of resetting the body on a ketogenic diet, really the best way to get started if you’re interested in this way of eating. The Primal Blueprint was an eye-opener because it was more about a whole lifestyle in which diet was just one component: it covers sleep, exercise, movement (play), getting outdoors, and responding to technology and other aspects of culture. Mark Sisson is a gentle, good-natured, and cheerful soul - he makes you feel good about making these changes in your lifestyle, appreciates how difficult it can be, and is so encouraging in the process.

In combination with our Keto Diet Reset, we went on a 40-day Sugar Fast, which was a very Jesus-y take on stepping away from sugar. I mean that in a good way. As people of faith, it is always important to us to integrate the movements of our physical bodies, souls, and emotions, with the non-physical part of who we are, our beliefs and values. This leads to a holistic life that is 100% physical and 100% spiritual, always present at the same time - a hypostatic union of what it means to be human. Whether it’s sugar, food, or something like technology (phones, social media, or just watching), there is nothing like a fast to make you aware of the connection between the physical and the non-physical. And by “replacing” sugar with a focus on spiritual life and disciplines, we were able to add new, positive habits in place of old ones (like eating/snacking).

The year that followed had a lot of ups and downs, both emotionally and on the scale. I held onto keto much longer, but once the pandemic and quarantine hit, coupled with the physical and emotional stress of caring for my mom, eventually it became too difficult to manage healthy eating for that stage of life. Maybe you can relate to seasons of life where it’s just too much to focus on diet and exercise. With the best of intentions, but late summer/early fall we were back to eating whatever; somewhat in moderation, but there was indeed pizza, ice cream, and of course, cereal.

A few weeks after my mom passed, we were ready to reset again with a 75 day commitment to sticking to our diet/lifestyle, as well as drinking huge amounts of water (a gallon a day) to flush our systems (I was flushing every 45 minutes if you know what I mean). Not that I recommend this, but we were ready to challenge ourselves with Andy Frisella’s #75hard. If you’re going to check him out, just get ready for lots of f-bombs (I tried to think of them as audible pauses, like “um”) and a not-so-gentle approach to how you’re living your life. 75hard is more of mental toughness program - and we were at a point that we welcomed the heightened focus.

75 hard is definitely not for everyone (well, Andy would say it should be). But by God’s grace we were able to reset what we were eating, and in the process also reset the amount that we were eating...we both lost weight and experienced transformations externally, but more important was the internal transformation (I'll spare you the progress photos). A key feature of this season, which we loved, was a daily walk in addition to our workout for the day. Some days, Michelle and I were able to take two walks together in a day, which was invigorating physically and transformative for our relationship.

We were also doing a lot of reading during this 75 day period, and one of the books we read was Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes. He’s not a medical doctor or nutritionist, but he is a food journalist who’s written about these things for 20+ years. You’ll see him appear in all the keto documentaries (That Sugar Film, Fat Chance, Fed Up, etc.), along with Robert Lustig and other highly-credentialed doctors who are sounding the alarm around the standard American diet (SAD) and the reasons why as a society we are getting fatter and fatter. As a person who’s just coming into his middle years and has a 100% chance of heart disease and metabolic syndrome, getting progressively fatter is something I want to avoid.

On a more personal note, I saw my new cardiology this past week. He’s a younger doctor (younger than me), and because I am young too, by heart patient standards, he wants to be very aggressive with my treatment. He was totally fine with me eating this high fat, low carbohydrate, no sugar diet, because he knows I am doing everything I can to reduce inflammation throughout my body, including my arteries (no sugar, no gluten, very little lactose, or dairy sugars). My diet, he said, would only affect about 10% of my cholesterol profile. Though it seems like only a small part, I am doing what I can to mitigate the heart disease I already have.

In the process, the keto diet (low fat/high carb) or way of eating is leading Michelle and I to an overall happier way of life. We’re leaner, feel more energetic, and continue to improve our athletic performance. In the long run, it will be effective for our family, too, as our kids observe and “catch” the way we are eating over the years. This has already happened with soda/sparkling water and our approach to candy and sugar around holidays, especially Halloween, Christmas, and Easter. These changes are just ‘clicks forward’ as we pursue the Best Possible Way to Live.

You might be thinking, “Living without Honeycomb (or Halloween candy, or ice cream, or pizza, or beer) doesn’t sound like the best possible way to live,” and trust me, I hear you. I want that Honeycomb as much as anyone, because it sparks those happy childhood memories. And I’ll probably eat Honeycomb at some point in the future. We’re all on a journey, with lots of ups and downs, and our genetics play a huge, invisible role: I was genetically predisposed to heart disease as a result of these environmental factors. You might be completely fine eating all those things (in moderation) and living a great life. But for us, this is working - and maybe for someone reading this, it will work for you too where nothing else has.

I’d love to continue the conversation, so please hit me up. Let me know if this has helped you, or if you have any questions. Thanks for taking the time to read/listen. I’m grateful to be in the journey with all of you.

Grace and Peace,

Mat