Tried Atkins when I was 23. Thought I was fat at 123 lbs. I suffered terribly for a week (went into ketosis, lost weight). We have a joke that I hate my best friend’s husband since I met him one homicidal night in the throes of Keto Flu.
As a female, afraid to try again. Most males seem to do OK. Might be able to get rid of grains, etc. but fruit will be hard.
Anyone have any ideas for Keto for a 62 year old heavy broad that suffered on it before?
Eat a lower calorie, balanced diet.(40/40/20)P/F/C
No liquid calories.
Go for walks.
Lift weights.
Do some yoga/meditation.
Don’t stress.
Find a support group. A couple of middle age plus people I follow are Serious Keto (youtube) and 2krazyketos (youtube, they also have a great Facebook group). They both have incredible testimonies.
If you do decide on this life, start by "detoxying" your house and dispose of/donate all of your carb foods and artificial oils (seed/canola). Fill cabinets with healthy fats, almond flour, coconut flour. Fill your fridge with fatty meats, full fat cheese, heavy cream, butter, and low carb veggies. If you like chips, pork rinds.
Take a vacation for your withdrawal week.
Electrolytes. Carb withdrawal will result in your body burning through stored glucose. There are lots of water molecules bound to glucose molecules that will be flushed and they will pull out electrolytes when they go.
Eat as low carb as you can go to break the carb addiction.
Eat fat as much as you need to stay full during withdrawal.
Salt under the tongue when you crave carbs (sweets).
Premake a nice, rich, low carb dessert for awhile. Depends on your social/work life temptations and will power, but people will tempt you, snacks brought to work, etc. Have your outlet easily available.
People will say "oh, a little bit won't hurt," but most little bits will be over 20 net carbs and you will be out of ketosis.
Record and cherish the non-scale victories (NSV). If you have chronic pain, you will see a reduction. If you bloat when you eat, it will stop. You will eventually find weightloss to be an added benefit but the other wins will overwhelm it.
I did Atkins over 15 years ago and lost weight. I found I could not go down to zero carbs and had to moderate it a bit. I would get very shaky and feel sick. Moderating it a bit got rid of that. After a year I got off Atkins and slowly gained the weight back over the years. Cutting calories did not work for me.
When I turned 66 my husband and I went on Keto which is very similar. I found again I could not go as low as my husband on carbs without being shaky etc. So.... I eat some carbs for breakfast. Did great and lost the 25 pounds I wanted to. It didn’t happen overnight. My husband lost weight quickly - 90 pounds for him.
So now I am where I want to be and I keep the carbs very low so as not to put it back on. Feel great, never hungry.
My advice is to try again. Perhaps do what I did, don’t go to zero.
No advice from me. You have good taste in trucks!
Do you happen to have a boat and, if so, we should hang out!
Those ill effects (sluggishness and headaches mostly) when you are just going on low carb are dehydration from losing the water retention that carbs cause
Just make a point to stay fully dehydrated and you should be fine. Switching slowly is another option if you are still wary.
Sadly, the first week on very low carbs IS HELL. Your body, and the entire sugar loving batch of gut bacteria, go through quite the upheaval. But you should have stayed with it, because that is the worst part. After a week, all the cravings and bacteria die off symptoms go away.
Here’s how to get through that first week.
1. Decide what your go to foods will be. Shop and prepare. Ideas: a big tub of cooked yummy treat meat such as bacon ready to warm and eat. A roasted chicken, cooked and sliced or shredded already. High quality sliced sandwich meats. Good quality cheese and shredded cheese and any soft dairy with protein that you love, like plain greek full fat yogurt, ricotta, etc. all these things should be available during any moments of hunger,cravings, or snack time. Combine them with each other, seasonings or fats (butters, creams, olive or coconut oil), and vegetables. Lettuce, cabbage, spinach for wraps, surfaces (like what bread is for), pickles to wrap sliced meats around.
Favorite meats to prepare for meals. Chicken wings, steaks, whatever you love.
For sweet cravings, have lots of cooked greens (spinach, collard, kale, whatever) cooked with salt and garlic and olive oil. This one food kills my sugar cravings and satisfies some other craving that will lead to changing your cravings. Cooked greens with garlic is powerfully satisfying in its own way and helps take away cravings for sugar.
Make nachos with no chips or beans (after a few weeks you might add some beans into your diet as some of your carbs but not week 1). Lots of jalapeños, melted cheeses, guacamole, sour cream, salsa. Eat in bowl with fork or spoon.
Absolutely no fruit, sweet veggies like carrots, breads, tortillas, desserts, or fake sugars. Just salty stuff. Let pickles and bell peppers be your crunch foods.
No dessert or fruit for 6 months. No sweet tasting drinks, no fake sugars or sugars of any kind at all. Water, unsweetened tea or coffee only. The gut bugs respond even to fake sugars to keep your cravings for sugar active. Get rid of that species.
After week one you will start thriving and your gut bugs will change their populations. The species you will now have will not crave sugary junk. They will crave resistant starches. You can feed them by putting potato starch or inulin powder into water and drinking it. Even a tsp a day is fine at first. You can add the powder to your full fat yogurt too.
This will get you through week 1. Slowly you can add the best resistant starches into your diet as your allotted carbs. Root vegetables with peels will be best to feed those bugs, even white potatoes, but in small quantities. The gut bugs are your digestion, immune system, health, and moods. We need these little guys.
Will you never eat chocolate again?? Nope. I snack on it every day all day. 92%. Anything over 90% is really just a superfood antioxidant. It’s not sweet and to me it’s the most delicious thing. But you have to be off sugar for a long time until you learn to adore it. I do. Anything sweeter than 90% tastes a bit gross to me now.
Good luck. You’ve got this. You will definitely see weight come off even if (women, damn it) it takes a few weeks til the body really gets it on this new way of eating. After 6 months you can add in fruit, 1 serving a day, and still keep losing, but not before then.
I am 76 yrs. old, female, and started Keto diet in December of 2017. I weighed 284 lbs.
I have been quite strict, no “cheating”, kept my total carb grams under 20 daily.
I now weigh 158 lbs and look really good for my age. My health has really improved with excellent lab results, arthritis much improved, great sleep, no hunger.
Find a supportive doctor. They are out there, but you do have to hunt for them.
Research the excellent docs on Youtube.
Ease into it. Try cutting x grams of daily carbs per week until you get down to 20 grams/day or less. Make sure you're getting more calories from fats to ease cravings, also try to increase the between-meal times.