Week 1 of Ketogenic Diet

This is part of a series of articles I am writing chronicling my progress through my keto diet. I will post my results for the first week on this page.

Day 1-4

I have to go into work at nine so I usually wake up around quarter after eight. In order to cook breakfast everyday I get up at 7:30 instead. I prepare four pieces of bacon first (two for breakfast and two for lunch) and then use the bacon grease to cook my eggs in. I drink my coffee with my heavy cream when I get into the office, as a side note. I prepared my lunch the night before.

I made my egg salad with six eggs. I put them in a saucepan and filled it with water until they were covered about an inch. Then brought them to a boil for about ten minutes. I took them off the heat and let them cool for a couple of minutes before I ran them under cold water in a drainer to speed up the cooling down process. I then peeled them and put them into my blender. Once blended I stirred them with 2 Tbsp of mayonnaise, 1 Tbsp of lemon juice, and about 1/4 of tsp of salt. Voila! Done and simple. I adapted this recipe from this website. I take my lunch to work and come home after and make my dinner.

Dinner is really simple, especially after the first day. The chicken you buy already cooked so all you have to do is heat it up. The mini salad is simple enough, just add dressing. The cauliflower gratin is even more simple than the egg salad. You get a head of cauliflower, half a stick of butter, 1/3 cup of the heavy whipping cream and stir that bad boy up with salt and pepper. Then go ahead and put it in your microwave oven until the cauliflower is tender. Mash it up with a potato masher (fork works too, but I really recommend a masher. So much fun to use!) after taking it out of the microwave. Once you've done that, put six slices of the pepper jack cheese on top and nuke it again until the cheese is melted. Then enjoy!

This will be my breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next few days. When I change it up I will update this page.

Day 5

This was the weekend and that is usually when my schedule changes. I tried to do my best to keep up with my steady diet but was unable to. I woke up very late and had no time to cook breakfast so I brought to work my lunch and snacks. I substituted lunch for breakfast, minus the bacon.  My lunch consisted of a FULL avocado and the two cheese sticks. You may want to change it up a bit, even during the week, and that is perfectly fine. We (my wife and me) had company over and decided to go to a restaurant...oh no, there goes my diet, or so I thought. We chose a local steakhouse to dine at and that was very keto friendly. I had an 8 oz. steak with a side salad (plenty of dressing, I asked for sugar free and they had some) and some green beans. Now I normally wouldn't recommend too many green beans, ratio of carbs to fat leans towards carbs, but in this case it was between them and steak fries. That was a pretty logical choice. So all in all the day amounted to the following:

Breakfast: 170 calories, 14g fat, 1g net carbs, 10g protein

Lunch: 388 calories, 34g fat, 4g net carbs, 18g protein

Dinner: 874 calories, 42g fat, 19g carbs, 87g protein

Total: 1,432 calories, 90g fat, 24g carbs, 115g protein


So as you can see from the numbers up there the ratio was off. Too much protein that day and not enough fat. Try not to let that happen with you. Although I will say I went to the pharmacy after dinner and bought some ketostix (took me so long because I didn't want to use one too early, something you may want to consider seeing as it will take most people an average of three days to get into ketosis) and it turns out I was well into ketosis. So this plan DOES work.

Day 6-7

As was mentioned above, the weekends are sometimes hectic. Getting new furniture and procuring a vehicle in which to move it in can prove to be very time consuming. Hence my other variation in the diet today. Breakfast as usual but with four rather than two slices of bacon (and no coffee). Then I had nothing until dinner. Another restaurant! But again I tried to be smart about it. I got the caesar salad again. This time without croutons, which I forgot to do last time. From the sides I got what I thought would be best, so broccoli and apple sauce (I know, I know...but they didn't have much else) and a 9 oz. steak. So here's the breakdown of today:

Breakfast: 435 calories, 32g fat, 1g net carbs, 31g protein

Dinner: 594 calories, 33g fat, 22g carbs, 46g protein

Total: 1,029 calories, 65g fat, 23g carbs (Yikes!), 77g protein

Numbers don't lie. I messed up. Tested myself again and was still in ketosis, but I really do have to try harder, and you might find yourself in this situation from time to time. Sometimes life has other plans rather than the ones you've made but you have to roll with it and do your best

Day 7 is simple, I stuck to the diet.

So this concludes week one. The next day I will have to weigh myself and maybe I will see the results from this diet on the scale and maybe I won't. Something to take into account is that while you are on this diet you might not get results right away with your weight. Try not to let the scales deter your progress and make sure to test at least once a week to make sure you are still in ketosis. Although if you are following the plan I put together you should not have the problem of falling out of it.