Adam Discovered Keto and Lost 115 Pounds in Just 7 Months 

How did you discover keto? 

I am 29 years old, and I live in Missouri. I discovered the keto diet a few years ago when my brother found success with it. However, it wasn’t until I did my own research by watching Dr. Berg’s YouTube channel that I truly understood it.  

What did your diet look like prior to adopting keto? 

My diet consisted of fast food or fried food nearly every day for as long as I can remember. It was a never-ending vicious cycle because the weight I had put on made me depressed, but the high-carb foods temporarily made me feel better while only making my weight gain exponentially worse in the long run. 

Did you have any problems with your weight or health before going on keto? 

When I started this journey 7 months ago, on the 15th of March, 2021, I weighed 270 pounds. 

How has your health improved since you started keto? 

Now, 7 months of keto and fasting later, I am 115 pounds down at 155 pounds while looking and feeling the best I ever have! I started the keto diet in March of 2021 and have not gone out of ketosis or had a cheat day since. Within that first month, I lost over 20 pounds and felt much healthier. I didn’t experience cravings like I used to and felt like I could easily go much longer without eating while still feeling focused and energetic. 

How does an average day of eating/fasting look for you on keto? 

An average day of keto for me is a little bit different because my fasting regimen is intense currently. As far as eating goes, I have kept it simple and stuck with the same meal for the last 7 months. It consists of 2 hamburger patties, each with one slice of cheese, 2 organic pasture-raised eggs, a 1lb bundle of asparagus spears (sautéed), 3 servings (0.5 oz each) of pork rinds, 1 six-piece row of Lily’s Extra Dark Chocolate with Sea Salt for dessert, and 4 organic strawberries. Lastly, I use 1 tbsp. of Irish butter and 1 tbsp. of avocado oil divided across the pans. I cook the burgers, eggs, and asparagus in it. Every two weeks, I sub out the burgers with 4 filets of Atlantic salmon to get omega-3s. 

For my fasting regimen, I started keto in March with a pattern of 16:8 (16 hours of fasting with an 8-hour eating window) right off the bat, but within 4 days, I was onone meal a day (OMAD). I kept up with OMAD for the next 3 months and then started doing OMAD Monday through Wednesday and going until I felt hungry after that. I made it to Friday or Saturday for the first couple of weeks and then made it to Sunday for two weeks in a row. At this point, I decided I only needed around 4 meals a week, and ever since, I have eaten on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday between 8 and 10 PM for nearly 3 months now. 

 I also take a stress B-complex vitamin, iron, potassium, and chelated magnesium with every meal. I plan to keep up with my current regimen until the end of the year and then go to a 16:8 fasting schedule while staying keto for the rest of my life. 

Does exercise play a role in your success on keto? If so, how? 

Exercise has played a huge role in my success by both eliminating stress and accelerating progress. I have walked 5 miles nearly every day since I started this journey back in March. The first couple of months, I would sometimes do 3 or 4 miles, but I quickly found the motivation to consistently do 5. Now, every day I look forward to it, not only to calm and relax my mind, but also to accelerate progress and keep my body moving. 

What would you have done differently if you could do it all over again?  

As far as mistakes I have made on keto, the biggest one would probably be not counting serving sizes in the beginning. Those 3 (0.5 oz) servings of pork rinds I eat with my meals now would sometimes be half a bag, and I wouldn’t really notice until I had already done it. All those little things add up quickly, and when I started using measuring tools to keep track of all these different things, I noticed a huge difference within weeks of implementing them. 

If you could offer advice to someone starting keto, what would you say? 

If I could offer 3 pieces of advice to someone starting keto, the first would be: don’t weigh yourself often. I weigh once every 2 weeks now, but in the beginning, I would weigh myself every couple of days, and the numbers on the scale can fluctuate so much if you do this. It can lead to unnecessary discouragement or loss of motivation. Instead, I have found that weighing every two weeks provides a more accurate representation of progress and tends to be consistent if keto and your routines are consistent as well.  

The second would be not to overcomplicate things. In the beginning, I was trying to get into macros, and it just made the whole thing feel like an unnecessary math problem to me. I personally find it is much easier to just find some keto meals you like and stick to those, adding new ones in and alternating others out as necessary.  

Lastly, find a keto regimen that is easy to incorporate into your lifestyle. Keto isn’t a temporary quick fix; it’s a life-changing way to live that will improve your mental, physical, and emotional health. Incorporate it in a way that is simple and easy so that it isn’t something you are always thinking about stopping, but rather something you plan on doing for the rest of your life.