As part of AIA’s Live Well campaign, I’d like to share about the keto diet - the high fat and low carb/sugar diet. I have struggled with weight issues since childhood. I have always been overweight, and the times that my BMI was normal was when I was at boarding school and when I studied in the UK for one year. Having to walk a lot during those times enabled me to lose weight, but when life was back to normal at home in KL, with a car, my weight increased quickly. It didn’t seem fair to me how most people I observed seemed to be eating about the same amount as I did but were not getting fat.
I tried many things - avoiding fatty food, skipping meals, the subway diet and nothing seemed to work. The subway diet actually did work but it was not sustainable. I just kept getting hungry and tired all the time and it lasted for only 3 weeks, and how long was I going to keep going on subway for, forever? There has to be a better way, one that I can do forever and not having to put too much thought of what or how much I ate. I didn’t find the answer then, and I submitted that this was due to my genes and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Sometime in 2018, a friend shared his weight loss photo on Facebook. In the comments, he mentioned he’s on keto and that it involves eliminating carbs and sugar entirely. I didn’t look it up further, and I thought there must be more to it, it can’t be that simple. But only a few days later, I met a client and she looked a lot slimmer and told me she’s on keto diet. She explained it the same way my friend on Facebook did - no carbs and sugar. That’s when I began seriously considering it.
First thing that comes to mind was what to eliminate from my current diet. I didn’t consume a lot of rice to begin with, but my meals were still carb-heavy with noodles, pasta and fruit. Wherever I ate out, carbs were the base of every food. I googled what’s keto and what’s not, and how people on keto prepared their meals. It was intimidating at the beginning, since I’m not a good cook.
So I just picked a few ingredients at the beginning and experimented. What’s important is that I had a sufficient amount of fat, protein and fibres without any of them coming from carbs and sugar. In my case it was chicken, cheese, brocoli and eggs. When I attend events, I skipped the rice and ate protein and vegetables. There was a period of adjustment. Every time I went grocery shopping, half the time was googling the carb content. For the first two weeks, it felt horrible. It’s something called the keto flu. I felt like I was getting a fever because the body craves sugar. Whenever I accidentally consumed something which has carbs above the keto threshold (about 30g per day), I’d feel my body shiver for a while until the sugar left the system.
Then there’s the good part. Once our body is on ketosis, we’d feel less hungry. That’s because when the body runs out of sugar, it will have to tap to our stored fat. This transition from sugar to fat feels very uncomfortable, so it alerts the brain to go eat again. On keto, when the consumed fat is used up, the transition to burning stored fat is unnoticeable. I’m pretty sure I’m butchering the science behind this, but that’s the layman explanation on how it works.
And work it did. In the first 30 days, I lost 10kg. In the following months, I lost another 10kg. So in total, I lost 20kg. I couldn’t believe it myself, my clothes got loose very quickly and I didn’t want to buy new clothes sooner in case I lost more weight. Everyone I knew who saw the transformation wanted a keto lesson, my self esteem got better and I also got more Tinder matches. No calorie counting and no portion control, easy.
Can you do it forever? Yes. Personally, I had a setback, but it was intentional. I got into a long term relationship in 2020, and my partner introduced me to many types of food I hadn’t tried before; mainly chinese food, and I didn’t want keto to get in the way of that, so I consumed carbs and my weight increased again. Soon enough it didn’t stop with chinese food but all types of food and snacks. My clothes got tighter again and now I’m back to being keto-compliant and hopefully lose weight at the same rate I did previously.
Is keto healthy? It’s debatable, but my blood test results show that everything’s normal, and I’m in the camp that believes it’s safe. Is keto the best diet? It is for me, but the best diet is whichever you can commit to. Or maybe dieting isn’t for you and you prefer working out harder to be caloric-deficit, that’s also ok. Or maybe, you don’t have to change anything at all, as long as you’re happy and healthy 🙂
Cheers. - wan
By: Wan Muthalib
https://wan-m.notion.site/Keto-Diet-af037c2af3de466caf027cfadf590f43