Cracking the Code to My Weight Loss: Keto + Intermittent Fasting

This very personal blog post is part of my new series in blogging about…well, life. In light of the new changes around here, I’ve decided to start blogging about whatever I feel like.

Plus, I’ve been telling this story to so many people lately that I wanted to document it somewhere so I could have a link to direct people to.

This is one of those blog posts that I’ll be actively updating and adding to as things change. 

If you’ve known me for the past few years, you probably know that I’ve been struggling with my weight. There was a point in my life where I never thought I would say those words. I had never had a weight problem before: in fact, my entire life I was naturally slim, with no effort involved on my part. I guess I had a great metabolism.

And then somewhere around 2009, my thyroid decided to go hypothyroid, which meant that I began to steadily gain weight despite eating less and really paying attention to my diet for the first time ever. To make matters worse, I also experienced decreased energy levels, which made it more difficult to be active. I watched in frustration as the numbers rose steadily on the scale, as I was apparently unable to do anything about it.

I tried different ways of eating, and nothing worked. I got on thyroid medication, and that didn’t work, either. I invested in naturopaths, and tons of supplements, and did tons of mindset work. I tried to exercise to stay fit, but rather than feeling energized after a workout, I just felt exhausted, so I had to dial back the number of days each week that I exercised.

Finally, in 2018, I made two lifestyle changes that made a massive difference in my weight and my energy levels. Surprisingly, they were incredibly easy to make. They just involved taking different actions.

Before I tell you the secret to my weight loss success, I want to say this: everyone’s body is different, and everyone’s body needs different things. What works for me may or may not work for you. This is not the definitive solution to weight loss. It’s what works for me (and plenty of other people on the online communities I belong to where we discuss these things).

Also: I am not a medical professional. See your doctor before implementing any changes in your diet or starting on new supplements. I’m just sharing my journey and what that’s looked like for me. This is not advice.

Stage 1: Keto

Back in June, when I was staying at The House (you’ll know what I’m referring to if you listen to my podcast), I started eating keto: that’s high fat, low carb. I read The Bulletproof Diet by Dave Asprey, and I started drinking bulletproof coffee every morning for breakfast (coffee blended with a chunk of butter). I added plenty of fat to my diet, and I cut out grains and alcohol.

Most people who do keto try to keep their carbs to under 20 grams a day. They track their macros (protein, fat, and carb consumption) and their calories and they diligently record all their data. I know myself well enough to know that if I have to count calories and carbs, I’m not going to do it, so I focused on doing lazy keto: I went perhaps a bit more extreme with my foods so I wouldn’t have to count carbs.

I focused on eating butter, eggs, bacon, avocado, and cream. I cut out sugar, fruit, root vegetables, and all grains. And I started losing weight for the first time in years. It was a little bit up and down, but it was a start.

Stage 2: OMAD

In September 2018, I started following the OMAD subreddit and began to get curious again about intermittent fasting (IF), specifically the OMAD variety. That’s One Meal A Day: you fast for 23 hours, and then you eat all your foods within a 60 minute window.

I had watched a BBC documentary on intermittent fasting a couple of years prior, and it inspired me to immediately try it. I was so excited to start fasting: the benefits were supposed to be fantastic. I decided to try the 5:2 type of IF, which is restricting your calories (500 for women, 600 for men) twice a week.

I hated it. I spent my fasting days in a permanent state of grumpiness. I thought about food all day long, and then hated my restricted calorie meal at the end of the day. It was awful. I decided that I wasn’t good at fasting, and I gave up.

Until September 2018, when I decided to try OMAD. I had been following the community on Reddit for a couple of weeks and I kept getting this intuitive nudge to give it a go. Finally, I took the leap and fasted for 23 hours, breaking my fast with a normal dinner.

It was easy.

I did it again the following day, and then the day after. And it was easy every single day. Yes, my stomach would growl from time to time, but I just took that as a sign to drink another glass of water or have another cup of herbal tea or black coffee.

I read Dr. Fung’s The Complete Guide to Fasting and became even more excited about the benefits of fasting.

Three weeks later, I was still practicing OMAD most days. If I met up with a friend for lunch, then I’d have two meals on that day. But otherwise, I was eating just one meal a day at least 5-6 days a week.

I had more energy than I’d had in years. My stamina and endurance improved. I was losing weight consistently. As I wrioe this, I was down 9 kilos (almost 20 pounds or 1.4 stone) from my highest weight.

I hadn’t felt this great in years. Nine years, to be exact.

Keto + OMAD Results

I believe that the secret to my initial success was the combination of keto and OMAD: eating a high fat, low carb diet means that my body is “fat adapted“: it burns stored body fat reserves for energy, which means that I no longer got “hangry” when I was in a fasted state. My body was burning fat for energy: the fat that I feed it, plus the fat that it had stored.

Whenever I see people struggling on fasting forums, it’s usually because they’re still eating a high-carb diet.

Benefits of fasting

The benefits of fasting are many, including:

• Autophagy (cellular regeneration)
• Increased energy
• Mental clarity + focus
• Decreased inflammation
• Weight loss

For me, weight loss is at the bottom of the list, because my increased energy levels, clarity, and focus far outweigh the esthetic benefits of fasting (even though that’s why I tried it in the first place!).

If you know me personally, or if you’ve been reading this blog or listening to the podcast for a while, you will know that I’m really into hiking and camping. I find that fasting gives me loads of energy for all my outdoor adventures, and it lightens up my backpack, since I don’t have to carry food with me!

Related reading – Intermittent Fasting When Hiking and Camping: How to Fast in the Outdoors

Stage 3: Keto + Alternate Day Fasting

Not long after writing this post, my weight loss hit a plateau. At the same time, I was curious about longer fasting, so I experimented with a three-day fast, which ended up coming in at around 76 hours. I did not enjoy this. I missed food, and the third day was hard (contradicting what everyone else seems to say about the second day being the most difficult).

I also came across this quote in a blog post:

“Megan Ramos of the Intensive Dietary Management program that Dr. Jason Fung runs, stated on the Fasting podcast with Jimmie Moore that in the IDM program they’ve found with their patients that eating OMAD is great for long lasting health but bad for fat loss because of metabolism slowdown and hitting hard plateaus.”

Because I didn’t enjoy the three-day fast, I thought I’d combine OMAD with ADF, or alternate day fasting. Here’s what an average week looked like:

• Monday: full fast
• Tuesday: OMAD
• Wednesday: full fast
• Thursday: OMAD
• Friday: full fast
• Saturday/Sunday: OMAD

This is not what most people refer to as alternate day fasting, but this new schedule kicked me out of the weight loss plateau, and it was easy to follow. For a while, it worked.

But as many people say, the body is great at adapting to things, so I ended up experimenting some more with extended fasting. It’s great for autophagy!

Stage 4: Plateau

Eventually, I went back to OMAD, because I really enjoyed the consistency of eating one meal a day. It made life easy. But then I hit another plateau…one that lasted about a year. Yes, a year. I ate keto/OMAD for a while, then I ate whatever I felt like with OMAD, then I went back to keto/OMAD because that’s what my body seemed to feel good with.

I tried a 7-day fast, and while the fasting was really easy, my energy levels weren’t great, and I really had to dial back my life that week. I thought it might kickstart a bit of weight loss, but when I went back to my OMAD after the extended fast, nothing really happened. (Later I learned that the maximum fast I can do and still feel great is four days—and I learned that when you do an extended fast, you need to follow it up with ADF, or alternate day fasting).

I went online and asked questions, and people said I really needed to focus on CICO (calories in, calories out) and track my calories and macros. I really resisted that, but I figured I’d better give it a try, since nothing else was working. I did. My OMAD calories were consistently between 1,000 and 1,100 calories a day, which was probably way less than what I actually needed. My macros were exactly what I wanted them to be. At this point, I didn’t know what else to do—so I went online and searched for “fasting coach”.

Stage 5: Getting help

In December 2019, and I signed up to work with a fasting coach. It’s been a huge improvement over getting advice from random internet people (like myself—I am aware of the irony in this, however my intention here is to share my story, not give advice). The first thing I learned was that OMAD was best for maintenance, and ADF was best for weight loss…except that in my own experimentations with ADF, I hadn’t been eating enough. The basic guideline for ADF is 2MAD (two meals a day) every other day.

There are several different protocols for ADF, and I started out with the following:

• No meals on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays
• Two meals on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays

There were other guidelines:

• Two solid meals on my eating days
• Each eating window lasts 30-60 minutes
• Leave a gap of 6-8 hours between meals
• Eat as early in the day as possible

I tried to keep it high fat, low carb, but I wasn’t doing strict keto. There was no calorie counting, just time restricted eating windows. It was an easy adjustment. Yes, I missed the consistency of OMAD, but I was getting better results from ADF.

A note on meal times: initially, I was trying to finish my meals by 6pm. Insulin spikes more later in the day. This is really useful information that no one talks about. Later, I realized how important this rule was for me in particular, so I moved to setting up my meals so I could finish my second meal by 4pm at the latest.

After a few months on this ADF protocol, my weight loss slowed down and I changed it to the following:

• No meals on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays
• Two meals on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays

This means that I was fasting four days a week instead of three. It was just as easy as my previous protocol, despite the fact that I was fasting for two days in a row, twice a week. And it jump-started my weight loss yet again.

To recap, here’s what’s worked to get me out of plateaus in my year and a half of IF:

• Moving from OMAD to ADF—this was the biggest game changer
• Changing my ADF protocol to one that allows for longer fasts
• Eating earlier in the day
• Extended fasting (again, four days seems to be my maximum) followed by ADF

Stage 6: Women are cyclical

We all know this, but if you’re a woman, this will affect how your body responds to fasting. The first two weeks of your cycle, insulin is naturally lower, and it’s easier to fast. The last two weeks, insulin is naturally higher, and it may be harder to fast—plus, you may have to be more careful about what you eat. Again, this is information that no one is talking about online, an dit’s super important.

Here’s my current fasting protocol:

• Week 1: Four-day extended fast, followed up by ADF
• Week 2: ADF – no meals on MWF; 2MAD on the other days
• Week 3: ADF – no meals on MWF; 2MAD on the other days
• Week 4: Fat-fasting breakfast OMAD

Dr. Fung talks about fat fasting in his book The Complete Guide to Fasting. Basically, you eat only foods from a very limited (high-fat) list: bacon, eggs, olives, avocados, salmon, leafy greens, butter. Period. I do put cream in my coffee only during my one-hour eating window. 

For weeks 1-3, I eat from the food pyramid that my fasting coach gave me, though sometimes I expand my diet to include keto foods (keto is actually a bit more flexible than my food pyramid options). I’m a big fan of chaffles and keto mug cake when I want something that feels like a treat but doesn’t involve actual junk food.

This has been incredibly easy to follow, and I’m losing weight consistently.

That’s where I am now. I’ll update as soon as things change.

Stage 7: Sleep

Anyone who has fasted for longer than 24 hours has probably experienced problems sleeping. It’s taken me months to figure out how to fall asleep quickly when I’m doing ADF or longer fasts. I used to lie awake with so much energy, I felt like I could bounce off the walls all night.

Here’s what works for me (again, see a doctor before starting new supplements of any kind):

• Getting to bed early (before 10pm, which was a rough transition for me since I used to go to bed between midnight and 1am every night)
• Taking at least 1,000 mg of magnesium glycenate in capsule form (consult your doctor before taking this or any other supplements; it’s best to take magnesium glycenate because other forms of magnesium can give you the runs the next day)
• Taking extra magnesium in the form of spray
• Getting even more magnesium in the form of Epsom salt baths
• Taking glycine—this is a new thing that’s really been helping me fall asleep quickly

A Note about CICO

I do not believe in CICO. I do not follow CICO. I am a petite woman, and I do not count calories. Ever. I focus on time-restricted eating, not calories.

I’m sick and tired of hearing people talk about CICO in fasting communities. Fasting is not about calorie restriction. It’s about lowering insulin. It’s about time-restricted eating.

Dr Jason Fung is my go-to expert on fasting, and he’s written two articles about CICO and why we shouldn’t be focusing on calorie reduction. If you still believe in CICO, read them both:

The Evidence for Caloric Restriction

Why The First Law of Thermodynamics is Utterly Irrelevant

Counting Calories Is A Ridiculous Way To Try And Lose Weight 

Mindset

I absolutely believe that the mindset and energy work that I’ve done over the past few years has been vital in getting me to this point. I have done a massive amount of work with Cara Wilde around my weight, and I’ve also worked with Claire Baker, Jo Trewartha, and Merran Lusher around both energy levels and weight. This is in addition to all the PSYCH-K® I’ve done with myself around my beliefs regarding weight loss.

Weight has been a big issue for me (no pun intended) ever since I started doing mindset work. Energy + weight has been one of the top three things I have focused on when working with myself and when seeing another practitioner. Since I started PSYCH-K® in 2013, that means that it’s taken me over five years of working on this. Why did it take so long?

As I always say, mindset work goes hand in hand with inspired action taking. I had been taking actions to try to lose weight and increase my energy levels, but they weren’t the right actions. I had also had several people recommend keto to me over the past few years, as well as the bulletproof diet. But it wasn’t until Cara Wilde mentioned it to me in June that it finally clicked and I took action to try it.

Maybe it was Divine timing, maybe it was because I had finally cleared all my blocks to losing weight. But the important thing is that I never gave up: I kept up with the mindset work, and I kept taking different actions. And when Cara Wilde recommended keto back in June, I tried it. I took action.

Resources

If you want to read more about keto, the ketogenic diet, or ketosis, my go-to resource is DietDoctor.com. It’s a website full of videos and recipes that was created by a Swedish medical doctor who is very pro-keto. He’s got a paid membership community where you can get even more resources, but for me the free stuff has been more than enough.

If you want more information on intermittent fasting, I recommend Dr. Jason Fung’s book The Complete Guide to Fasting. Dr. Fung is a Canadian medical doctor who works primarily with diabetics, using fasting to help them lose weight and get off insulin. His book is full of practical fasting tips, personal stories of people who have changed their lives through fasting, and more science than you probably need so you can understand how fasting works and why fasting is so good for our bodies.

Dr. Fung has a new book called Life in the Fasting Lane: How to Make Intermittent Fasting a Lifestyle―and Reap the Benefits of Weight Loss and Better Health 
that he co-wrote with Eve Mayer and Megan Ramos. It’s an easy to read book that gives the perspective of three people who have changed their lives through fasting.

The most helpful online communities that I’ve found are the following (all are on Reddit):

• /r/omad
• /r/xxketo (keto for women)
• /r/keto
• /r/ketorecipes
• /r/fasting
• /r/intermittentfasting

Apps

Two apps that I find really useful are:

• FastHabit for tracking my fast
• Happy Scale for tracking my weight, setting milestones, and calculating trends

Recipes

• Cheesebuns! These are a great bread substitute and work well as burger buns or for small sandwiches, or just to nibble on with a meal. Scroll to the last image in the post for the recipe.
• Chaffles! These are cheese + waffles. Another great bread substitute. I use the first recipe in that link, and sometimes I add a little shredded mozzarella to make them a bit crispy. You can use chaffles to make sandwiches, pizzas, burgers, etc. You can also use them as regular waffles, with berries and whipped cream. Because the recipe I use calls for cream cheese, they don’t actually taste cheesy.
• Keto mug cake! There are three separate recipes: vanilla, chocolate, and peanut butter. I combine two of them to make a peanut butter and chocolate cake.

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