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Don’t think of it as a diet. You have to think of food as medicine.

First thing to do is go to the diabetes section of Walgreens and buy some “Keto Sticks” to test your urine. They change color when your liver is making ketones.

If you are really serious, get a “Keto Mojo” meter and test strips from Amazon, about $85 for the meter and starter kit. This will let you test your blood glucose and blood ketones. It gives you a ketone number instead of a range of colors on the pee sticks.

It takes a couple days for the body to start making ketones, then another week or two to where the body is actually getting adapted to using them. In the mean time, your body is still trying to burn carbs, but there aren’t any. It will take a while for the liver to get the message to start breaking down the fat and making ketones.

You have to go through a short period of the “keto flu”, where you don’t have a lot of energy. Your body is making ketones but is not efficiently using them. So you pee them out and your pee sticks say you are making ketones, but not using them yet.

The main thing is to get your brain running on ketones by eating high fat, moderate protein, VERY low carbs. And don’t eat throughout the day. Best results if you pick a narrow range of time to eat. This is called intermittent fasting.

Try to go at least 13 hours between dinner and breakfast. Even better to skip breakfast and eat between 12 and 6, or something like that. You have to use whatever carbs you ate before your liver makes ketones. Some people do one meal a day. If you watch youtubes on keto, you will see OMAD, for one meal a day. That’s what I try to do but I mess it up by snacking on pecans and a strawberry here and there, or a taste of peanut butter now and then.

I have been buying big untrimmed tri tip roasts and slow cooking them in the oven. I use all the fat and drippings. I slice it thin, about 1/8”, about one ounce per slice. I’m 71 and sedentary, and I find five or six ounces is enough. Reheat gently in the skillet with some fat and drippings and it tastes like prime rib. NO BBQ sauce or katsup!

After a week or so, you will find you stop thinking of food, because your body has all the fuel it needs, in the form of stored fat. If you are over weight, be prepared to go shopping for new pants.

My last blood work showed I was pre diabetic with fatty liver. I was size 42 in April, now 38, and my weight is down from 233 to 205.

I had tri tip about 9 hours ago, then a small handful of pop corn. I just tested, and my glucose is 106, ketones are 0.8. Anything over 0.5 you are in ketosis, but I would like to see them up around 1.5. I find they go up about a full point for every day I don’t eat. I did a three day fast in May and got them over 3.0. This is where you start getting into “therapuetic ketosis”. Between 0.5 and 3.0 is considered “nutritional ketosis”, good for weight loss.