So, my friend asked a question on Facebook about the difference between Keto and SouthBeach as diets, and here is an answer I wrote out:
I think that SB has a focus on “good carbs”… like, you can’t do keto and have brown rice. You can do your own google search on that topic if you want.
Ketosis is a thing that worked really well for me, but I straight up fasted for a while (like, 3days no food, 1 big nice meal, for a month) and gave up drinking. I lost 50 lbs between Jan 2017 and May 2018, and 25 of that was in the first month.
But it is the totally giving up drinking and anything like donuts (and I don’t do dairy or meat, but sometimes eggs) that really made the impacts for me. I also only eat a single large meal during the day that is mostly rice and beans and veggies.
As to how to give that stuff up, I believe (though this might be wingnuttery) that we have a microbiome made up of gut bacteria, and that this is largely what dictates our cravings… so fasting at the beginning of this dietary change modified what I was wanting to eat.
An alternate good hypothesis (whice I don’t understand any more than I do my gut flora, cause I don’t understand any biochemistry) is that our body can either run on carbs or on fats, and once we habituate it to run on fats we both need a whole lot less food and are hungry a lot less often.
But doing something like drinking a coke will knock your body out of that state where it is running off fats for about 12 hours, so you really have to be careful about how you do these diets… if you don’t really stick to them (and closely monitor how you feel) then you can do yourself a lot of harm.
So essentially, I gave up drinking and went into a fast for a month, did about 4 months of really strict keto, and then settled into a fairly plain diet. At this point, I’m mostly eating a diet that’s almost all plant-based ( I eat some eggs ) and I eat a single big meal in the middle of the day. I feel like ass if I drink or eat when it’s dark outside, so it’s a lot easier to avoid that stuff, and my weight has stabilized at the very low end of my recommended BMI range.
I dunno if this novel I’ve written is helpful… I’m just trying to procrastinate, but anyhow, that’s what I’ve been doing and it’s working well for me.
