Keto Diet – An Add-on to the Freelancer Lifestyle

I’m venturing a little outside my lane with this article about the kiet diet. It’s not much of a stretch to say that a good diet can improve all aspects of your life, not just your health. A good diet can help you focus, give you energy to fuel your day and endurance to withstand stress. I’ve found the keto diet to be one of the best improvements to my freelancer lifestyle.

You may have heard about the keto craze and wondered how real it is. I have to say, I’m a believer. In my article about the challenges of being a freelancer and some tips for overcoming those challenges, one of the challenges was maintaining a healthy weight. It’s easy to overeat and not be active when you work from home.  I will raise my hand to say I put on a “Freshman 15” my first full year of freelancing from home. When you’re in your 20’s, those pounds easily melt off. It’s a little harder when you’re in your late 30’s.

I will be tackling the Keto diet in this series of articles to share what I’ve learned.

Introduction to Keto

I did my research and came upon the keto diet as a weight loss method. I won’t go into all the science and nitty gritty details. There are tons of resources out there by better qualified people than me. Do your own research and consult your physician or nutritionist to see if it’s a right choice for yourself. However, I will consolidate everything I’ve learned and distill it into this overview in basic terms.

What is the Keto Diet?

The basis of the keto diet is to completely alter your body’s energy source. Left to its own devices, our body prefers carbohydrates as an energy source. That could be why we inherently crave carbs — bread, sweets, pasta… did I mention bread? The keto diet’s goal is to put your body into ketosis. This is a natural state your body is adept at performing in. In ketosis, your body uses fat instead of carbs as its energy source. To shed the extra inches around my waist, this is exactly what I needed!

Our bodies were built with this back-up system of using fat instead of carbs for energy. Imagine caveman days when they couldn’t reach into the fridge for food. When food was available, they ate everything they could and their bodies stored what it didn’t need as fat. When they couldn’t find food, their bodies entered ketosis and burned fat stores for energy. It’s a perfect system — one that still works in our bodies today. The keto diet is about keeping your body in a sustained state of ketosis (i.e. fat burning).

How do You Get Into Ketosis?

Getting into ketosis essentially boils down to depriving your body of carbohydrates. Without carbs, your body will switch over to fat as an energy source. The key is to do this safely in a sustainable way. Your body will naturally enter ketosis through fasting and depriving your body of ALL foods. Fasting can be healthy in short stints, but that’s not a sustainable lifestyle. If you’re looking at keto to lose weight, calorie deprivation isn’t the goal. Changing your body’s chemistry to burn off your excess fat is what keto is all about. This is managed through careful consideration and preparation of what you consume.

To get into ketosis, you need to restrict your NET CARB intake to 20 grams or less. By depriving your body of carbohydrates as an energy source, your body enters ketosis and starts burning fat instead.

Adopting the ketogenic diet means monitoring your nutritional “macros” — that is, how much protein, fat and NET carbs you consume. The balance of these three macros is what will determine your success on the keto diet.

NET CARBS

What are “NET CARBS”? Basically, you take the total amount of carbohydrates you eat and subtract the amount that comes from fiber. Fiber isn’t broken down and absorbed into your body so it can’t be used as energy. That’s why you can ignore it.

Let me put 20 grams of NET CARB into perspective. Guess how many NET CARBS is in 8 ounces of milk? This discovery hit me hard. My morning routine consisted of 8 ounces of perfectly steamed milk, poured artfully into a doubleshot of espresso. I enjoyed making my latte art every morning as much as I enjoyed drinking it. Imagine my surprise to learn that a single latte is 12 grams of NET CARBS! That’s more than half of my allowable daily NET CARB! Honestly, this is what I feared would be the end of my keto diet. Surprisingly, I’m surviving just fine without my morning latte.  Some days I’ll have a mini-latte with half the milk and that fits in with my keto diet just fine.

FAT

If your energy is not coming from carbs but instead from fat, then naturally that means you need to consume more fat! Really? We’ve grown up believing that fat is bad. Fat equals heart disease, obesity, cholesterol, etc. However, some fats are very healthy for you. What was true about fat 50 years ago is not anymore as science has discovered more about how the human body works. If you are restricting your NET CARB intake to a mere 20 grams, your body needs another energy source. You have to eat enough fat to make up for that difference.  On a keto diet, you should aim for 60-75% of your caloric intake to come from fat! It’s scary to think about eating that much fat but if you don’t you are depriving your body of the energy it needs to keep all your internals running smoothly.

Will eating too much fat make me fat?

No.  It’s hard to believe the science when we’ve grown up thinking of fat as something to steer clear from. But your body will reject too much fat so 1) it’s very hard to eat too much of it and 2) even if you manage to, your body won’t store the excess. Those of us with a little extra around the waistline didn’t get there because we ate too much fat. It’s because we ate too much carbs! When your body has more carbs or protein than it needs, it stores the excess as fat. Remember, that’s how our caveman ancestors survived dry spells when food wasn’t available.

What will blow your mind is this: when you eat too much fat (which is very hard to do), it does NOT get stored as fat. So, ironically, you can’t get fat from fat! If you eat too much fat, your body just passes it through your system. Unpleasant, but not detrimental to your waistline.

Why do I keep saying it’s hard to eat too much fat?

There’s a science behind this, but essentially it boils down to the earlier statement — your body will reject too much fat. When you eat a high-fat meal, your body will signal to your brain that you’re full. This is why you have fewer cravings on a high-fat diet. You just don’t feel the need to eat. Carbs don’t signal your brain in the same way. Have you ever finished a meal saying, “Man, I ate way too much” only to be hungry again in a couple hours? That’s because your body welcomes carbs — it’s the first choice in energy source and it supplies the back-up reserves (in the form of fat) in case of emergencies.

Remember, our caveman ancestors — they needed to be able to eat everything they could when they had it. They didn’t have refrigerators to store the food for later. Basically, they used their bodies as excess food storage. Because excess carbs get stored as fat, our bodies have evolved to allow us to eat as much of it as we can as a survival mechanism. That was well and good in caveman days when they regularly burned fat stores when there was no food. In modern society, we have a constant supply of food so excess carbs turns into fat that just sits on our waistline.

Protein

The third nutritional macro you need monitor is protein. Protein is important and as every vegetarian and vegan knows, there are a variety of ways you can source your protein.  You have to have protein in order to maintain your muscle mass, which you need in order to be strong and healthy. However, you can’t subsist on a high protein diet. Too much proteins can be converted to glucose in the same way carbs are. So a high protein diet will also knock you out of ketosis. So, careful monitoring of your protein is another key aspect of the keto diet.

Summary

So… here’s your summary on keto and ketosis:

Carbs Bad. Fat Good.

20 grams or less NET CARB (Total Carbs minus Fiber)

75% Fat | 5% NET CARBS | 20% Protein

Everyone’s macros will be different and you do need to factor in what your actual caloric intake should be based on your weight goals and activity level. There are keto calculators for that sort of thing. Understanding the general principles above will keep you focused on the big picture and not the exactness down to the gram.

Conclusion

I have to admit, I have always been fairly average weight. I’ve been lucky to not have weight struggles, but putting on an astonishing amount of weight in my first year of full-time freelancing was shocking and a little depressing. I never actually had the “Freshman 15” when I was in college, so I guess I hit this life milestone, regrettably, a little later in life.

I’ve found keto to be a huge benefit to my freelancer lifestyle. The keto diet has eliminated all my grazing and snacking habits.  I front load my fats at the beginning of the day to give me energy, and I feel so much more productive as a result. Also, working from home allows me the time to do all the extra cooking and baking that’s needed. Finally, there really are times when I’m in crunch mode and need to hit several deadlines. Being able to drink some bulletproof coffee or take some ketones for a boost of energy and mental pick-me-up, really works in a way that a normal cup of coffee doesn’t.

All-in-all, I’ve enjoyed being on the keto diet, and I think it fits really well with my freelancer lifestyle. I see keto as an add-on to my freelancer lifestyle and not just a fad diet.

Check out my next article on the Pros and Cons of the Keto Diet.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian or a health professional of any sort. The information and advice I offer on this site are 100% from my own experience, understanding and independent research. I encourage you to discuss any diet/nutrition changes you’re considering with a trained health professional.