Tag Archives: diet

Keto while traveling

This blog post is about being on a Ketogenic Diet while away from home. To learn more about the Ketogenic Diet, see my blog post here and this fantastic website Ruled.Me here.
 
Trying to stay on the Ketogenic Diet while traveling, or otherwise away from home, can be difficult for many reasons. Without having the ability or time to prepare and cook your meals, you are at the mercy of restaurant menus and other people who don’t fully understand what Keto is all about. But fear not, all is not lost! There are plenty of ways to try and stay in ketosis, or at least limit the damage caused by eating carby foods.
1. Learn about basic food stuffs/ingredients.
The more you know about basic food ingredients, the better prepared you will be for the curve balls you will encounter when you are away from home. At restaurants and friend’s homes, you’ll be able to pick out the “bad” foods from the “good” foods. This is a large topic, and I cannot begin to cover it here. My advice is to start Googling foods you are unsure about. And understand that sugar and carbs are hidden in many things, so if you’ve never looked it up, don’t assume it’s OK until you learn more.
2. Don’t take advice from friends who aren’t keto aware.
People who don’t know what ketosis or ketogenic diets are will often not understand enough about food in general to give you good advice. I can’t begin to count the number of times I tell people I can’t have carbs, and then they turn around and offer me fruits or a beer. People also have hundreds if not thousands of excuses they are armed and ready to fire at you, to peer pressure you into cheating. “It’s just this once.”, “You can go back on it tomorrow.”, etc. etc. Only you should have the authority to grant yourself a cheat day, based on your progress and you past determination. Do not accept other people’s excuses as your own.
3. Take advance of the grocery store while on travel!
While you may not be shopping for groceries as if you were home, that doesn’t mean the grocery store is no longer a viable option. If you’ve got a refrigerator in your hotel room or friend’s apartment, you can buy some frozen things like Jimmy Dean’s egg and sausage breakfast bowls. If you’ll be around an area for a few days, you can buy some stuff like a package of shredded cheese, which you know if you use it every day for 3-4 days, you could use it up no problem. Also look for hard boiled eggs, which can be a handy snack or breakfast item. You can even find some good stuff at 711’s and other convenience stores. I found a single serve mozzarella stick wrapped in prosciutto the other day, and that was amazing. Prefer fat-protein ratio with virtually no carbs! Also: bacon jerky. Seriously. Enjoy.
4. Watch out for relying too much on protein for calories.
You should not rely too much on protein for your calories, as this will kick you out of ketosis as your body burns protein for fuel. You MUST prefer fat over all other macros. This is why I avoid lean beef jerky and steaks, because they are just too protein focused. As I mentioned above, bacon jerky is a great alternative here, as it has a higher fat content than other jerky.
5. Learn and research common restaurants so you have options when your in a pinch.
Most burger places are actually a pretty good choice, as it’s easy to tell them to hold the bun, swap the fries for a salad, and load it up with bacon and cheese. Here’s a picture of the burger I just had from Erukea! here in Dallas, Texas.
I’m sure I have more advice, but that’s a good list for now. Good luck on your keto journey and feel free to write me comments on these blog posts if you have any questions! For the record, I’m around 193 lbs right now at 15.9% body fat. As mentioned previously, I don’t really care too much about my raw weight, but rather I’m more focused on body fat percentage. I started at about 21.0% so you can see I’ve had great progress so far!

Ketosis for optimal weight loss

I want to do a few videos about this topic, too, but since I’m backlogged with those in general, a blog post will do for now. For the last couple years, just before Summer time, I routinely jump on a diet called the Ketogenic Diet. There’s tons of resources out there for those who are interested in learning more, but the basic idea is that it is the fundamental clinical approach to low carb dieting. You’ve probably heard of Atkins or South Beach… or maybe a different low carb diet… well all of those are based on the clinically studied aspects of the Ketogenic Diet.

I’ve been doing it for a little over two weeks now and I’ve lost 5 lbs and 1.5% body fat. My pumps in the gym are still growing for the most part, even though it can have a negative impact on weight training. The idea is simple: in order to focus the body on burning fat for energy, you need to put the body into its natural fat burning mode, and keep it there. This is known as ketosis. The body is a complex system of organs, tissues, hormones, and other chemicals that change in order to adapt to the current environment. But this change is not instant, which is painfully obvious for anyone who has gone through ketosis induction, colloquially known as the “keto flu.” It can take days for the body to fully change over.

Anyway, enough of me explaining it, as I said, there are plenty of online resources. Go check em out!

To complete this post on my current health and fitness plan right now, it includes hitting the gym 5-6 days per week (which might be excessive for some, but I love it!) doing a push/pull/legs split. I’m killing it in the gym, having “defeated” four of my favorite machines, most recently the leg press machine, which tops out at 400 lbs. I’m not really doing many Olympic lifts, mostly because the racks are always so freaking busy. But thats alright, I dont need them.

Goal is to keep all of this up until August! I’ll be dialing it back a little here and there, but for the most part, I’m stoked to do this all the way through!