Although I was hoping to be able to give my own review on this trendy form of dieting, I made a lot of keto diet mistakes that I think are better to share. They made the diet unpleasant, likely harder than it would have been, and frustrating enough that I gave up.
I can’t tell you if keto dieting is good or not because I didn’t do it right. So my hope is to be able to share all the ways that I did it wrong, so that if you’re determined to try it, you won’t make the same keto diet mistakes.
This type of dieting isn’t anything new. It’s been around for more than a century. It came back into popularity when a focus built around it as a technique for reducing symptoms of epilepsy in children. That said, when weight loss was witnessed as a side effect of this technique, it took a much bigger spotlight.
I thought I’d give it a try. My plan was to do it for 3 months, report to you about my experience and my results and then decide if I wanted to keep going. But I made a lot of keto diet mistakes that sabotaged my experience enough to make me give up entirely. I won’t be trying it again, so here’s the info I’m hoping will be helpful to you instead of my actual dieting results.
- I wasn’t ready for the adjustment period – My first and biggest among my keto diet mistakes was not realizing that my body would go through a lot of changes as it switched to ketosis. I was constipated at first, and felt sick and cramping, then diarrhea (T.M.I?) and nausea. I was fatigued the whole time. I thought I’d caught something. It made me stop, thinking I had the flu. The symptoms went away when I stopped. When I started again, they came back. It felt like I had a flu for several days. This set me back by almost a week, right from the very start.
- I didn’t eat nearly enough fiber – Most of us don’t eat enough fiber anyway, but I made some serious keto diet mistakes with my fiber intake. Essentially, I forgot all about making it a priority because I was so concerned with cutting carbs. This explained my constipation pretty clearly and the diarrhea that followed was likely because of my sudden overcompensating. Getting fiber back into my diet took a lot of careful balancing in my diet. It was a lot more work than I’d expected.
- I tried to do it all by myself – I didn’t realize how much is involved in trying to get my body into ketosis and keep it there. I tried doing it alone, which was a big mistake, especially if I was going to do it long term. Not only was I making tons of keto diet mistakes because of the substantial learning curve, but I also felt alienated. I couldn’t eat what everyone else was eating at restaurants or if I ate at someone else’s house. It didn’t take long for me to have to choose between feeling isolated and keto-friendly or breaking my diet and being a part my friends’ group. More than half the time, I broke my diet and had to start it all from scratch.
