What is Keto Lifestyle? #1 New Best

Let’s start with the basics. What is Keto?

Basically, going on the keto lifestyle diet is to switch your body’s source of energy from carbs and sugar to fat. If your calorie intake is lower than your daily needs, then your body uses fat reserves to make energy. 

This concept is simple and is not new, as some claim. It was invented by Dr. Russell Wilder in 1924 to cure epilepsy. It was quite famous until the arrival of epilepsy medications. We went from a good working natural way to a chemical based treatment. 

Keto Diet is a high fat, low-carbs regimen. By limiting carbohydrates, the body burns fat and uses ketone as an energy source.

Not only this diet improves your cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar, but they also reduces your appetite, boosts weight loss, lowers your triglycerides, improves your moods and sleep.

Guess who feeds on carbs? Bacteria and viruses thrive on sugar. It’s their only source of energy- see Fact No. 4 here. As with any cells, cancer needs fast sugar to grow – see this article. 

What is keto lifestyle?

Why a lifestyle? After months on Keto and after reaching the desired weight loss, we realized that the quality of life changed drastically:

• Better sleep patterns
  • no turning and turning or/and no sleeping aids to fall asleep
  • no waking up in the middle of the night for no reason
  • no nightmare or night-terrors (I’m a wounded veteran with PTSD)
• Reduce appetite
  • Many diets fail because of hunger because of reduced calorie intake. With Keto, we feel filled up even with 1,800 calories a day.
  • Studies show that when we cut carbohydrates but eat more protein and fat, we need less calories. Thus ease the weight loss process. See this post: Losing Weight Fast.
• Triglycerides drop nicely – my blood panel is now so good I do not need to take any medication, including baby aspirin.
• More stable blood pressure – my wife always had a fluctuating blood pressure On keto, it’s now stable and doesn’t need a daily monitoring.
• More energy during and at the end of the day, more clear thinking, etc. In Keto, the brain mostly runs on ketones instead of glucose.
• etc.
  These side effects are ours and you may feel different ones or at different levels.

Based on these constatations, why get out of keto? Let’s keep running it and let’s see what is keto lifestyle?

What is a keto lifestyle?

Consuming fewer carbs means cutting things like bread, fries, and many comfort foods with potatoes, rice, beans, or corn, etc. But there are different Keto bread options available today, with one issue. The Walmart “Kiss My Keto Bread Golden Wheat Zero Carb Bread, Low Calorie, Sugar Free” is at $14.99 while the Nature’s Own Perfectly Crafted Bread is at $3.19! That’s an $11.80 difference, which is not really sustainable for the long run, especially considering the keto diet sugar intake restrictions.

So why not make your own bread? It’s easy and very cost effective with a machine like the one below and Keto bread recipes or on YouTube.

We own that bread machine and we make keto bread for less than $1.75 (machine investment included), all natural, no additives, no preservatives, and it’s a really fun activity. Kids love making bread.

I know these recipes call for sugar – don’t OMG just yet 🙂 The yeast consumes the sugar and raises the bread. Bread rises as yeast consumes sugar and burps carbon dioxide, which gets trapped by the bread’s gluten. Not enough sugar and the rise is small, too much sugar, the yeast can’t consume all, and the bread turns sweet!

You can also make pizza dough with almond flower, keto cake batter, etc. This is a delightful addition to a keto kitchen.

Continuing our Keto journey, we realized that many of the veggies we can eat are very easy to grow:

Asparagus: 1g	Spinach: 2g	Swiss Chard: 2g	Celery: 2g
Lettuce: 2g	Cabbage: 3g	Cucumber: 3g	Cauliflower: 3g
Zucchini: 3g	Tomato: 3g	Green Pepper: 3g	Red Pepper: 4g
Broccoli: 4g	Brussels Sprouts: 5g	Green Beans: 5g	Eggplant: 6g

Two veggies we love but don’t grow here (Green Olives: 3g, Avocado (a fruit): 2g) have to be purchased.

As we lived in a condo, we joined a community garden. Our plot was 20 sq ft and in the first year we harvested 89lbs of veggies.

Today we live in the countryside and our garden produces more than enough keto lifestyle friendly veggies that we give about 40% to a food shelf.

Then the magic happens. We realized we could buy locally grown meat, mushroom, eggs and reducing our carbon footprint by a lot – for example our organic eggs bought in store were coming from Redding, California. 2,000 miles away and certainly transported by truck. Today, our free-range and organic eggs are from 1/2 mile away and it’s fun biking there – it’s also a very fun experience for kids.

When comes to keto lifestyle recipes, at first and we still use recipes but creation shows up and we create our own using our harvest. Cooking has a big advantage: instant gratification, which we all crave for Imagine that dish that everyone enjoys, and ask for and you cooked it – a very delicious feeling!

To sum up what is keto lifestyle, it’s a complete change from buying food, having a sedentary life to be very active, almost self-sufficient and having a more rewarding life living a keto lifestyle.

Be careful with lifestyle keto reviews

Many reviews are extremely favorable to lifestyle keto diet pill or other pills but I’m always against it.  

I even saw a keto lifestyle YouTube that claims “without the pills, you won’t go in to ketosis”. 

Let’s look at one:

Guess what, it is 100% legit and the article highly recommends the pills which contain:

• Beta-Hydroxybutyrate – a ketosis byproduct made by the body
• Apple vinegar
• Magnesium Stearate – easily found in many foods like chicken meat, walnuts etc.
• Silicon Dioxide – easily found in many leafy greens
• Turmeric Extracts… well, that’s a spice
• Gelatin which is a protein

Why would we pay between $40 and $80 a bottle for supplements that are made by our bodies or consumed daily? To help? Let’s see:

• Helps leveling blood sugar … hum… Keto does that, not the pill
• Helps lose weight… as above
• Helps brain clarity… as above
• Helps…

Well, it describes what being in ketosis is… what the point of spending money. 

For me, the big danger is pushing your body in ketogenic mode when your lifestyle is not keto (too much carbs) so you take the pills to help and that is risky.

Why these reviews… easy money, if you buy the pills through the link in the article the author get some 40% of your order. 

I do the same thing when I recommend books, cooking tools (like the machine bread above) or snacks and keto alternative ingredients. I might get 4-5% that we give to 2 homeless shelters – see here.  

If you adopt a good keto lifestyle, you do not need pills or supplements.