My Keto Diet as a Muay Thai Fighter - The Mental Advantage (Patreon)

One of my favorite  feelings in the world is one that I've only experienced in early  morning, while camping in the desert or on long road trips, looking out  the window of the car at the crispness of light and just feeling... awake.  That clarity, for lack of another word, is so precious and rare that I  can attribute it to distinct moments in my life. Always camping or  driving. It's a bit odd. But three days into my "keto experiment," begun  a few months ago, I felt this kind of clarity. Like a fog had lifted or  a weight had dissipated, a mental alertness and, yes, a crispness to  everything around me. It wasn't all the time and I can't summon it, but  to have experienced it through something intentional felt like I'd caused an epiphany or something.

When  I run in the mornings, I listen to podcasts because it keeps my mind  busier than music does. One of the podcasts I listen to is Joe Rogan,  albeit selectively, and his guest was an Ultra Runner who eats Keto.  This was interesting to me because the guy is an Ultra Runner, the way  he eats was actually not even interesting enough to register in my mind  when I downloaded it. I just like Ultra Runners. They're intense people  and, generally speaking, because there's almost nothing written about  fighting by fighters, the closest I've found is what's written by endurance runners. It's a similar mindset, I think, especially the way I fight.  So I'm running, a 10k morning run, which is probably the equivalent to  the first 30 minutes of this guy's runs, and he's talking about how he's  been staying in ketosis for x number of years and how this or  that kicks him out, but that or this gets him back in. I didn't know  what ketosis was, so I was not super keyed into those details, but he  did talk about how the shift over from a high carb diet - which is the  norm for endurance athletes - to a low carb/ high fat diet had made his  performance as an athlete much better. Not his times, necessarily, which  is the part that anyone and everyone talks about - just what times you  can print on paper - but rather how he feels when he performs as an athlete. That distinction alone was enough to get my brain lighting up.

So  I told Kevin about it when I got home and in the podcast  they'd mentioned a movie that was on Netflix on the podcast, so Kevin  found it for us to watch. It's not a good documentary at all, really,  but it's called "The Magic Pill," and  I guess if you rely on tons of medicines to live your daily life, it's  quite radical to think that food could be your medicine. It follows, in  part, a couple of kids with Autism who try staying in ketosis for all  the benefits it offers the brain (the diet was developed to treat - and  successfully does treat - epilepsy) and they have pretty  incredible results. Near the end of the documentary, when Kevin and I  were debating whether or not to turn it off, there's a 60-year-old  former nurse with serious diabetes, who was able to get off her insulin  entirely within something like 6 weeks. I'm not diabetic and I've never  been diagnosed as being on the spectrum (although Kevin suspects I'm  somewhere on there), but the fact that these people saw results -  drastic results - in as little as 6 weeks filled me with resolve. I  decided I'd give it a try for 6 weeks, as an experiment. Kevin didn't  even seem interested in the movie at all, but seeing my motivation he  got right on board (he's the best).

I'm not going to launch into a  "how to" or "what to eat" kind of thing on ketosis, for two reasons: 1)  I'm not an expert and there is literally a world of information at your  fingertips; if you're able to read this post, you're able to Google.  And 2) you really do need to go down the Rabbit Hole yourself. Ketosis  is no half-assed attempt; you're either in or you're out and if you're  not willing to do the work to read up on it and do it right, you're probably not willing to go through with it. What I learned pretty early  on is that the traditional, text-book Keto plan is 20 grams (total, not  "net" - net carbs are a thing you'll run into that's borrowed from  Atkins) of carbs per day. A number that low means you are not  intentionally eating any carbs at all. You don't "budget them  in," but rather there are incidental carbs that quickly add up to 20.  It's not a "low carb" diet, it's a high fat diet, in so far as where you need to focus your attention. Eat fat. Eat tons and tons of fat (less total calories if you are trying to lose weight, but still way more than you think would be normal), moderate protein, and avoid carbs  as much as you think is possible. Additionally, because of what your body does when you enter nutritional ketosis, you need to pay attention to supplementing your electrolytes: salt, potassium, magnesium, calcium and if you are not in sunlight much, vitamin D. Because I'm a full-time, high-intensity training athlete, I have been very serious  about replenishing my salt, potassium and magnesium. This dietary approach is heavy on self-research, self-monitoring, and careful supplementation. It's not an instinctual "eat how you feel" diet, you treat food as medicine.

What I Learned About Potassium - A Detour

In February of 2018 I got Dengue Fever. It was terrible. I've never been  so tired in my life, I literally couldn't stay awake for more than 10  minutes if I was at home and sitting at the hospital for hours every day  to get my blood tested was a Hell I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies. I became so weak that I passed out in the hospital and split my chin open  on the reception desk as I collapsed - 5 stitches, thanks to Dengue. In my recovery from that, Kevin did some research online and that's when  he discovered the importance of potassium and magnesium, which I suspect  nearly everyone who casually eats an average diet may be deficient  in. So, we knew how important potassium was (especially) from my  recovery after Dengue, but in researching Keto we decided to bite our  thumbs at the paltry recommended daily allowance and bumped my daily  intake to a minimum of 4700 mg (recommended is 1600-2000 mg).  Unless you're downing spinach, avocado, broccoli and bananas like a  "juicing" infomercial, you're not even coming close to the amount of potassium you actually need. This of course comes with a warning that  "too much" potassium can cause heart failure, but the studies that prove that limit pretty much don't exist in a scientific sense, they're anecdotal; however people died. For this reason you will not find any substantive potassium supplement (for fear people will over use them), and almost all recommendations to potassium supplementation carry strong warnings. So, use your Google finger and decide for yourself what's safe. I've done this, I'm good - In the Patreon version of this article (below) I share what it is that I make for myself. I found the importance of potassium as a mood regulator is nothing short of incredible, insofar as it is something that is seldom thought about as one. Further, due to the importance of potassium in balancing out sodium (see below, the pair create a basic "pump" for cells), I do believe that a better understanding of potassium could be a potential life-saver in fighters who are using dehydration to cut weight, especially in lightly supervised, or unsupervised circumstances. This is something you do not want to get very low on.

It's enough to say, I approached the Keto diet coming off an awakened awareness of the importance of potassium as I recovered from Dengue  Fever. My bout with Dengue Fever made me realize that while I was  grinding away for more than 6 years in twice a day training in high heat  here in Thailand, I very likely have been doing so somewhat potassium deficient. I have always eaten pretty healthy with good proteins and veggies, aside from a wicked sugar binge at times, drank my electrolyte drinks, etc, so I was really surprised that when I added up my usual potassium intake I was still pretty short of even the low-estimate recommended levels. And this was not even counting all the potassium (and other minerals) I was sweating away, beyond what an average person needed. Semi-regular sports drinks and a decent amount of veggies wasn't cutting it. One of the interesting things about the Keto Diet is that because some minerals and vitamins are not easily gained from food sources you can end up becoming much more aware of, and directed towards making sure you have all you need. Looking at the symptoms above, I could see many of these showing up in small and sometimes large quantities. Note: for everyone concerned about Overtraining - and I wrote about that here in my much discussed piece The Myth of Overtraining some  of the listed symptoms of potassium deficiency map onto those who might suspect they were overtraining, in particular interest to me, fatigue and depression.

I've just assumed that "being tired" as a constant state is a natural result of training incredibly hard, for 6 years now, out-training anyone in any gym I've been in. I've fought over 200 times in Thailand and I've taken pretty much zero breaks in training. Like my husband says, I'm an Ultra Runner of Muay Thai. This is true in the sense that I feel more akin to Ultra Runners than I do to most any other sport I read about. I've been banging out 2 or 3 sessions a day for years, and being fatigued is something you just acclimate yourself to, just like being constantly in pain due to injuries large and small. You learn to live in it. Fatigue becomes your secret power. I used to half-joke that the Hulk's secret is that he's "always angry," mine is that I'm always tired. It really was what made me very difficult to fight. Tired is my normal.

This  is a real thing, while The Hulk is always angry, the Muay Khao (knee) fighter also lives in a state few can manage, it's a skill, learning to live and even thrive in states of fatigue. My secret has been: I'm always tired.

But it was really starting to add up somehow in the last year. Not just fatigue, but very notable brain fogginess, and bouts of depression. Telling myself that I'm always tired, and training mental toughness through fatigue, had caused me to miss additional things that were building up. This is what eventually led me to the Keto Diet, and several other changes as well. Potassium was the first step, but much more was needed. My husband and I really first took note of this deeper level of fatigue when I took on the 12 week mental training course offered by Niyi Sobo. The mental strain of the important things the course was asking of me was wrecking me, both physically and mentally. I was exploring my psychological blind spots and reformulating my approach to myself and my goals, but my body just could not handle the stress of it somehow, coupled with everything else I was piling on in my regular efforts. The strain got so intense I got hit by two cases of shingles in that time. Two: an outbreak many believe you can only get once (not true, I've had it 3 times in my life). It was an incredible course and I certainly recommend it, I came out of it a much stronger, better prepared athlete  and person with skills I now count on in my process, but in my state of depletion it was a tipping point - from that time on my year was also filled with acute fatigue and depressive feelings. Was this the "overtraining" that everyone so worried about? I really didn't think so, not even close. I don't believe in overtraining as most everyone uses  it, but I do believe in under-resting, and under-recovery. What was it?  What rest or restorative things was I missing? 

Just like Dengue Fever would alert me to potassium issues, my overall Depression and Fatigue that year was alerting me as well. As I look back, as I was grinding through the heat, and had been for some time, as I mentioned I was probably potassium deficient for long stretches.  I gained a great deal of mental toughness and resilience pushing through all those sessions, and learning how to manage negative thoughts with Niyi's aid and lots of mental training work I was doing, but else something was not right. Taking on more rigorous potassium supplementation (what I do is shared later in the article) started having powerful effects on my mood and my sense of fatigue.  Training just as hard and regularly, this was on the right track.

So why am I going on this long story about potassium, in an article on the keto diet? This isn't diet advice, it's a personal story. This is about how the body and mind work together, and my own discovery of  experiences through incredibly hard training, an unheard of fight rate -  possibly fighting more frequently than any person on the planet in terms of consistency over  the last 6 years - while retaining heavy content responsibilities  related to my Muay Thai Library project,  and my commitment to my readers. In Muay Thai, in Thailand's Muay Thai, balance is everything. Physical and mental. It's the art of doing something incredibly intense, often quite dangerous, and finding balance in the intensity. Where is the balance? I think turned to the Keto Diet.

The Mental Dimension - Keto helped me immediately

There  are thoughts that I call "Gutter Balls." Generally, they're negative  thoughts that I've thought a billion times before - almost on schedule -  and I cannot get them out of my head, even if I consciously can argue  against them and know I don't want to be thinking them and feeling the  things they make me feel. In bowling, when you throw the ball and it  goes wayward into the "gutter" on the side of the lane, there's no  getting that ball back out. You don't knock over any pins, it's  basically like "scratching" in pool. Not being able to get my brain out  of those thought ruts, those are throwing "Gutter Balls." For kids and  beginners, bowling alleys sometimes offer "bumpers," which are foam  tubes that you slide into the gutter of the lane and then when the ball  goes awry it bounces off the bumper and stays at least enough on the  lane that it will reach the end. Even if you don't knock over any pins,  you can't throw any Gutter Balls. What surprised me was that within the  first three days of eating for nutritional ketosis - and I suspect I got into ketosis pretty quickly - I felt like bumpers had been put on my  mental grooves. I still thought those same terrible, unhelpful and  depressive thoughts, but the ball didn't get stuck in those gutters. I could kind of bounce back out, or at least keep moving rather than being  locked into those grooves. I've done a lot of mental work to  try to get exactly this effect, and here it was occurring simply by how I was feeding myself. What this taught me, very quickly, was that all the  work I'd been putting in was being hampered by the chemical states I  was putting my brain in through my food. Like, you've gone to all these AA meetings but you're still drinking; then you stop drinking, sober up, and all of a sudden the really hard work you've been doing actually works without as much effort. Or like you've been driving with the handbrake on. The car moves, but when you take the handbrake off  everything is so much smoother.

What's crazy is that Kevin can actually just watch me and see whether I'm in ketosis or not. That  ounds like a bunch of infomercial hooey, but it's true. A couple of weeks into the experiment, after training (ketones are low after intense exercise, as your body has been eating them for energy, and maybe I had eaten something the night before that had knocked me out of ketosis) we were sitting  at a restaurant waiting for our breakfast. I was in a kind of detached mood, which in the last year has been my most common mood and isn't pleasant for Kevin, drinking some "bulletproof coffee" to help me get into ketosis while we waited for our food. Kevin said he saw a shift in my face, my persona, right in front of him. Like if someone's face is tense and angry and then it just relaxes - like in that movie Memento, when he's panicked and stressed and then just forgets what he's panicked about and there's this calm that washes over him. Apparently that happens to me. I didn't  feel it, it's not distinct like that for me, but Kevin literally watched it happen.

• Listen to this podcast with ultrarunner Nikki Kimball who claims links between a ketogenic diet and descreased depression.

And I think that more or less sums up what has made me choose this as a way of life, ultimately turning a 6 week "experiment" into a permanent effort. The thing about "diets" is that you're always waiting for them to be over, because there's some end goal. Somewhere north of 90% of the results people want is weight loss, which is meaningful and reasonable enough, plus it's easy to track. Because my goal isn't weight loss - and I'm not losing any weight - the things I am tracking are less tangible. It's the same thing that drew me into the podcast with that Ultra Runner: the fact that this is how he eats  because of how it makes him feel in his runs. Not numbers on paper,  actually how one feels. And not every day is the same. I still throw  Gutter Balls, but more often than ever before I can bumper myself back onto the lane much faster than I could in the past. I'm still tired  pretty much every day, but my life isn't one that would make anyone well  rested - and as a result of all the research we've done in order to  understand and do keto properly, Kevin and I have also made rest, and  specifically sleep, a huge priority. If you are serious about this, read  this book: Why We Sleep.  

check out the Kindle book 

So results from that will take a while to be able to report on and even  to know for myself but it's very likely to creating significant  changes. I push hard, I aim far and big, and I don't stop. So, how I feel  when pushing like that makes a big difference, and how I feel when  staying in nutritional ketosis is more focused and brighter than I feel  when running on glucose. 

If you'd like to read the rest of this  article which includes my own ketogenic approach, the things I eat and  supplement, and specifically how I've experienced my energy in fights  and in deep training, as well as a lengthy interview on the subject with  my husband, it's available to my patrons here. 

In comments section of this Patreon post I will answer all questions, in as much detail as I can. 

I  haven't noticed a decrease in energy, which I'd read online was  something many athletes experience when first becoming fat adapted. That  said, if I didn't eat before afternoon training before I started eating  keto, I'd be "bonking" pretty hard on the pads. I don't experience that  anymore. I'm not stronger or more energetic, but I guess because my body can pull from fat stores, if I don't eat before my session there is no difference between that training and when I do eat, which I think is  positive. I'm still experimenting with when to eat and what to eat  before fights, but this whole way of eating is kind of an extended  testing ground. Everyone is genetically different, your ancestors likely  passed through different famines and dietary restrictions than mine  did, and developed different responses to being in ketosis, so what  works for one person might have different results for another and I  really like that. The diet is not a Golden Key. It encourages you to figure things out by trial and error; you can grab baselines off of  Google or from podcasts or whatever, but then you take that information  and turn it into a "what works for me?" test. And you are always  tweaking, at least that is what it has been like for me so far.

I'm having a hard time writing this because I kind of assume that people  want me to write some kind of "how to" manual, or even lay out what my  daily food looks like, and honestly that stuff bores me so much I don't  even like to talk about it. But I do understand that people are looking  for baseline examples, so, the short rundown is a little like this:

*ghee, MCT oil, hydrolyzed collagen powder, heavy cream + coffee

*eggs, bacon, cheese, spinach, bell peppers, avocado, avocado/olive oil = typical breakfast items

*fatty pork or beef + cauliflower with tons of butter = typical kind of dinner

*supplements:  potassium (main sources are cream of tartar, cocoa husk tea),  magnesium, calcium, vit. D, vit. C, zinc, iron, acetyl L-Carnatine, turmeric, ceylon cinnamon, and your body in ketosis pushes out sodium so more sea salt than you think you need. acetyl L-Carnetine in particular seems to have really giving me a sharpness boost, after I hit a bit of a lull (it is different than just "L-Carnitine"). 

Below are some photos of meals and such I've had over the last few days, I'll start posting on my diet in more detail in future patron posts I think, for those who want to see what I'm doing - here's a glimpse:

above, my turmeric drink: 1 tsp turmeric powder, 1/4 tsp grated ginger, 1 tsp Ceylon cinnamon, juice of 2 lemons, maybe 5 grinds/twists of black pepper, a pinch of cayenne, and erythritol sweetener to taste. Add maybe 4 cups water in a big pitcher and drink a few cups per day. Turmeric, cinnamon and ginger are all powerful anti-inflammatories. And turmeric is anti-depressant.

above, a night I didn't want to cook, shop or order anything, so ate German-style cold cuts and cheese: goats cheese, mozzarella, salami, cured ham, pepper ham, bacon, everything doused heavily in a dressing I make with avocado oil, apple cider vinegar, garlic and salt. I'll make a  ton of bacon all at once and just put it in a plastic tub in the fridge to be eaten anytime, or like exactly this kind of time.

above, a nice breakfast I made for myself: 2 eggs scrambled in butter with parmasan, left-over chicken chaat, bacon, a bell pepper with cream cheese in it, everything covered in avocado oil and my turmeric lemonade to drink. 

above, supplements I take: magnesium, calcium+vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc complex (there's copper, iron and some other things in this), acetyl L-Carnitine, glutamine, creatine, collagen powder, mct oil

above, lazy dinner ordered in, I was just too tired to cook:  Greek style pork belly (this place also has lamb burgers, which I usually get; lamb is fatty and delicious), ignored the fries and tomatoes, Greek salad that's cucumbers, olives, olive oil, a slice of feta, oregano and onions.

above, this is my Bucket of Bacon that I frequently make and keep in the fridge for a quick, and always tasty fat hit. You can see the short Instagram video here.

above, homemade chocolate: getting a big fat bump can be hard at times. Kevin makes this with about 4:3 coconut oil to MTC oil, loads of unsweetened cocao powder, over low heat. Slowly stir in D-et erythrititol sweetener and a little heavy cream. Freeze and break off chunks as needed.

I also make "fat bombs" that are equal parts grass-fed butter, cream cheese, and whatever "flavor" I want of cocoa powder or cinnamon, usually. You can mold those in silicone in the fridge as bite-sized or you can just put it in a jar and keep it room-temperature to eat with a spoon.

And a little of my supplement stores:

Above, some of the vitamins and amino acids that are in the mix. The L-Carnitine has seemed to provide a significant boost. 

above, my shelf of supplements and spices: ghee, cream of tartar for potassium, baking soda for sodium, pink sea salt (this was a gift from Sean, who left it with me after a short visit from Hawaii - thanks Sean!), cocoa husk tea, collagen, cinnamon, cayenne, avocado oil, erythritol powder, (mct is in the fridge), etc. 

Potassium, the way I solve the potassium problem is to use cream of tartar and the pink salt as a homemade electrolyte drink. Each teaspoon of cream of tartar is about 500 mg, so I put at least that amount in each serving of my electrolyte powder and drink it 4x per day - 1 at each meal and 1 at each training session = 4. That's 2,000 mg of potassium. I then also drink 2 cups of cocoa husk tea per day, which are 2,000+ mg of potassium each, so I'm getting about 6,000 mg of potassium as supplements and will try to eat spinach or broccoli, coconut milk, etc. to get more. I aim for no less than 6,000 mg per day. This is far above the "official" daily recommendations, but I arrived at that number through research and knowing how much I sweat and am letting out my electrolytes by being in ketosis as well. That's my number. Do your research and play around with it. The more widespread 4,000+ mg recommendation is probably right for most people. Importantly, I am not recommending my supplementation levels to you. Too much potassium (research it) can be deadly. Yes, it can stop your heart. Do not overdo this. 

you can watch me make my bullet proof coffee, on YouTube

Bullet Proof Coffee: for me this is a tablespoon of ghee, tablespoon of mct, tablespoon of collagen, tablespoon of heavy cream and the coffee in a blender. It's foamy and delicious, something like 25+ grams of fat. It's basically a vehicle for mct oil and ghee. But I've had to cut it out at times and work around when I drink it due to my time-restricted eating and needing to sleep in the day.

It hasn't all been fantastic and I've had weird dips that I can't explain.  For the first week, the differences were incredible and I could feel a lot of mental clarity. Then a couple weeks in I was kind of down, never hungry and really not wanting to eat at all, and often nauseated after eating. My hunger has now kind of evened out, right now I'm at the 2+ month mark maybe, and I don't force myself to eat if I'm not hungry, but I'm also aware that as an athlete I do need to fuel myself. So that's an ongoing experiment. After adding acetyl L-Carnitine (a form of L-Carnitine which supposedly passes the blood brain barrier easier) my mental energy has increased again, though I'm not quite sure it correlation is causation.

If patrons are interested in future articles I'll start sharing my recipes more, and my food choices, and well as more details on how they are playing out mentally and physically.

For Women: Ketosis and Your Period

Recently  I've been really fascinated by how different the two menstrual periods  I've had since starting keto have been so, so different. All the  research on nutritional ketosis has been conducted on men, because  women's estrus cycle "complicates" results. So for the sake of having  more simple data (and sexism *cough*), women have been excluded from the  existing research. There are podcasts and articles (and very odd  threads) about how keto is different for women, how it's more difficult  to get into and maintain ketosis when your hormones are in the second  half of the month (closer to your menses), etc. The threads can be real  horror show, so don't freak out at how many women say they have very  long or heavy periods, but do take note that it's not a sign that you're  dying or anything. My first one started out with spotting (weird for me), got  crazy heavy for way longer than I've ever experienced, and had virtually  no cramps at all. The second one was really light but normal length. No idea where I'll  land over time, but it's just your body figuring stuff out. If you're on  hormonal birth control (which I'm not), likely there will be some weird  stuff going on as your body balances itself with the synthetic hormones involved as well. My sleep has been up and  down. For a few weeks I had bad insomnia (I read that happens), then  Kevin made me start a 16:8 time restricted eating plan and going to bed  at 10:00 PM and suddenly I was out like a light a good 2 hours before I  normally even try to start sleeping. So, it turns out I've likely been  sleep deprived for a long, long time (this is probably the huge too).  Electrolytes are also a big part of being able to sleep, so I make sure  to have magnesium, potassium and salt in the last meal before sleep. I'm  drinking a cocoa husk tea from healtholicious before bed. Heathoclious is an incredible source for Ketogenic diets for those  in Thailand, I've been very dependent on them in being able to take my  keto journey to the next level. Cocao husk tea is really high in  potassium and also has magnesium and it's really, really delicious. If I  drink it right before bed I can't have cream in it (because I finish  eating at 8PM), but it is super delicious with cream. The  time-restricted eating is a bit hard for me because I'm training until 6:00 PM or later, so getting home and shopping/cooking/ordering by 8:00  can be a rush, or just impossible. But it's pretty easy to not eat until noon each day, as that's pretty much how I was eating before with just a little bit more delay. I never ate before morning training or runs, so I was eating at maybe 10:30-11:00 most days, the keto diet also kills hunger; the main difference is that I can't have any cream in my coffee if I drink it before noon. Not the worst. I haven't noticed any single difference in anything from the time-restriction, but Kevin says he thinks it's very good for me, evening me out in the same direction the my diet has. You'd have to ask him how it's manifesting (or watch the video interview with me above), but probably it's that I'm not in a shit mood all the time anymore hahaha.

This might be a bit of a dangerous comparison to make, but to me it's very accurate. I don't see this way of eating as a way to manage weight or increase performance anymore than an alcoholic would stop drinking just to lose weight or get a better time on her marathon. Those things might happen and there are people who abstain from alcohol for specifically those reasons, and usually for specified periods of time: stop drinking to lose weight for a wedding or a race, celebrate your marathon time with a beer. Like that. Instead, I basically see myself as a miserable drunk, even if a high-functioning one. There are supplements you can take to be able to eat things that make you feel terrible - pills for the lactose  intolerant to be able to eat ice-cream, for example; or even those pills  that claim you won't have a hangover after a night of drinking. Sure,  great, no hangover but you're still putting something into your body  that makes you an asshole while you're "on it," and forces your body to  deal with tons of burdens to process it. That's what I've come to feel  "carbs" are. So, that's one reason why I stick to a pretty traditional  form of the keto plan, rather than the myriad ways you can adjust it for "cheat days," carb cycling, exogenous ketones, etc. If those work for you, awesome. But the point I'm getting at is that whether my output increases or even decreases doesn't matter to me. It truly is the same to me as deciding that I simply don't like how I feel as a drinker and  so I'm going to stop drinking, but the intoxicant is glucose. I'm more attentive to my husband, more focused on my work, better able to handle the emotional roller-coaster of my life. Those differences being perceptible to anyone else doesn't even matter, although I'm happy that some of them are. It's like those moments in the desert or on road trips; they just stand out. They're not for anyone else, they're not for a purpose. But if you asked me, "would you like to feel that?"... I would. Thank you.

If you'd like to read a book on the ketogenic diet, Keto Clarity isn't a bad one. You can also aggressively google around, avoid sites that are selling you something, listen to podcasts, and piece together the approach you'd like to experiment with.

If you are in Thailand and attempting a keto diet it's well worth looking into the Healtholicious site, which delivers very hard to find keto-supportive elements throughout the country (not a sponsor, I just like their site and the people who run it too!).  There is a promocode you can use on their site:    welcome10 

 10% discount on the first order (min. order value 2000 THB) 

Questions Welcome!

There are lots of places to have debates and arguments on the internet, but I'm not inviting this to be a debate space. If you have a firmly established vision on diet this isn't really the place to assert this. But if you're interested in asking about my experience or what I've found through my research (lots of critical Googling), feel free to ask any questions in the comments below, I'll try to answer as best I can. I'm not an expert on anything other than my own process, and even then I'm always just taking a perspective.