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Writer's pictureThe Useless Runner
Jan 18, 20216 min read

My KETO journey and those nasty horrible fattening carbs

Updated: Jan 23, 2021

moderation [noun] ~ /mɒdəˈreɪʃ(ə)n/

"the quality of doing something within reasonable limits"


Disclaimer: I am not a doctor ... blah ... blah .... blah .... n=1 .... blah .... blah .... blah .... final blah.


I am not here to convince you about anything.

I am not here to change your mind.

I am not here to tell you what your are doing is wrong.

I am not here to pretend I know it all. I don't.


I am here to tell you what I had to do to fix myself, to let Pete go .... one last goodbye.


My journey into a new way of eating started when I was about 18 years old (not that the new way of eating was the best for me). I had been obese since I was a kid, and at 18 I figured I could try and make some changes in my diet and exercise to be healthier, and have a better body composition. This was one of my first attempts at improving my health, and the beginning of the yo-yo effect.


Diet is such a controversial and vast topic, and there is so much literature about it, that I can literally bore you to death with a very long post (mind you, this is a long post anyway). I will try to simplify my journey to give you some context.


I was somehow phisically OK after I finished my 1 year mandatory military service, and started looking at ways to improve my diet. Most of the weight I loss in the army was through large amounts of exercise on a daily basis. We would spent hours doing all sort of workouts.


I started doing weights and looked at my first attempt to diet. I started eating once a day.


Needless to say, that did not work very well. I was eating veggies with some protein. I was always hungry, I had bad cravings in the evenings which I managed control by smoking cigarettes. Yup, you read that right. I was smoking to control my appetite. Not a great way to fail at something hey?.


I did this probably for a month, I do not really recall how long I did it for. In Uni I started gaining weight more and more as the years went by. I would lose 10 KG, then put on 12, then lose 12, and put on 15. This continued to happen until I graduated and moved away from home as I reached 105 KG.


After moving abroad, I had multiple jobs as I studied. I cleaned offices, made sandwiches, taught Spanish, Waited tables, cleaned supermarkets ... you name it. There was a lot of phisycal activity and my diet was based on loads of processed stuff. Same as in the army, I lost a lot of weight.


Then I got an office job.


In the span of 1 year I went up to 113 KG, I did no exercise and did not really have any interest in anything other than working, eating and drinking.


This went on until my wedding, where I managed to go down to 97 KG through a grueling 6 month very hardcore low fat and low calorie diet, and a ton of cardio. A TON of it. I was constantly hungry, I craved food all the time, and I was doing hours upon hours of cardio on my spinning bike.


After my wedding I went back to my usual diet and abandoned exercise for some years. Somehow I managed ty cycle from London to Paris in 2011 weighing 113 KG, and a little bit after my second kid was born I reached 123 KG, the tipping point of my journey.


Around 3 yeas before that tipping point, I read about inflammation and the many ways it can affect your health (Link HERE), I read a lot and tried a few things to try and reduce those issues brought to me by years of bad eating. It was not an 'eureka' moment by any means. It took me a long time to come to terms with my reality, and a lot more to understand the ways my body works and how to address those triggers in my life.


I read, I looked for advice.

I tried to understand how the body works.

I tried to understand what macronutrients are and how different ones have different processes inside our body.

I watched documentaries, plenty of them, about everything.

I found medical studies.

I found real Doctors, willing to talk about these issues. I read the science.

I learned to use the word 'MODERATION' the right way.

I learned to not be afraid of saturated fats.

I discovered KETO.


Not one size fits all.


This journey I embarked on, was only the beginning.


The more I read and practiced these principles, they helped me improve, be better, and have some sort of balance in my life. But this was not the whole picture.


I found that managing processed carbohydrates and having low GI foods helped me. I was able to lose the fear of fats, especially saturated fats, and they became the staple of my diet. I also learned that veggies like carrots, parsnips, cabbage and pees also have carbohydrates and help me when I need them. I embarked in a great journey of discovery, of re-setting my way of living and eating, and it helped me a lot to this day.


I also realized that there are many biased people out there, who take everything as gospel and demonize those who do not think as they do. This happened across many different ways of living and eating. I did not like that.


When I started exercising properly again, I got into triathlon. I had a tough time understanding how to improve. I have not been eating carbs regularly for a while, and had a few attempts at fueling my activities with fat and protein. This work at a certain level as I was able to have good long workouts, but did not really have energy to push when I needed.


It was back to the drawing board.


I discovered a few other things along the way that helped me immensely. I started reading more literature from Dr. Dan Plews (@theplews) about endurance training and various podcasts about the topic. I learned for the first time the term 'carb cycling' and 'fat oxidation'. These 2 tools became my baseline to adjust my diet in order to improve and perform better. This may be getting a bit too technical, but I consider it is important as it will enable you to do some more research on these topics to understand their applications.


Everything is bad in excess, even water.


This brings me to the main word of this topic: Moderation.


In my journey, moderation has been a difficult one to tackle, because it means different things to different people based on their own personal experience, and their own lens.


When it came to food, doing something within reasonable limits is something hard to do, or at least it was hard for me. I have been so metabolically defficient all my life, since my childhood. Eating all the sugar under the sun, having processed snacks, fruit juices, sodas, sugary cereals, all sorts of fast food .... you name it. Is the feeling that you have no control over how hungry you are, or have an understanding in your brain of how much is too much. I always found that very hard to do. It probably is easy for some of you, and is something hard to explain to someone who has not experienced it. Is like once you open the gate, nothing will close it, nothing. That was my life for almost 36 years.


You see, I discovered something that helped me, and made it a baseline, not the whole truth. I kept looking for ways to be better, and I found ways to add the benefit of improving my endurance, push harder, have more energy and enjoy doing the sport that I love, by being pragmatic, and not taking things as the final word.


Protein, Carbs, Fat. They all have different functions within the body, they all get processed differently in our gut, in our blood, in our muscles. They all help in the way you need them to help you if you use them accordingly.


You need to find the moderation that will help YOU, nobody else.


It depends on where you are in your journey, and what do you want to achieve. There is a time for everything, and things will happen, but there is no magic pill. Not for this.


Thanks for reading.







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