About two years ago my boyfriend and I had come across the ketogenic diet. We both knew we needed to lose weight. I was also at the point that every time I ate a meal my stomach would be upset for hours. I was clearly in need of a major diet change. At first the keto diet seemed too good to be true. Just eat bacon and bunless burgers and we’d lose weight and feel better than ever? How could it be possible? We did hours and hours of research, reading books, reading websites and watching YouTube videos. After what seemed like years of learning every possible detail (it was actually only months) we knew we had to try it. What did we have to lose? It couldn’t hurt us to at least cut some sugar out of our terrible diets. In January of 2019 we decided to try it out. With our love and addiction of carbohydrates, how were we supposed to suddenly stop eating all the carbs that had become staples in our diet?

There are two ways to start a keto diet: easing in and going cold turkey. Easing into a keto diet allows you to slowly decrease your carb intake over time. Going cold turkey is just what you woukd expect, pick a day to start and go all in from day one. Deciding which method to choose will depend on your own personality, what role your family will play and your daily routine.

It’s easy to decide you want to lose weight right now. If all you’re looking to do is lose a few pounds and go back to eating whatever you want then obviously just jump right in. However, if you’ve done all your research and decide you want to test out a ketogenic lifestyle for a considerable amount of time, then I believe you should take some time to make this decision based on what will work for you. This step will be crucial in your success.

Working With Your Personality

If your personality is anything like mine you’re going all in. I’m 100% obsessive about anything new and I absolutely thrive on pushing myself to the limit. When I learned the difference between easing in and going cold turkey my mind was set! For me it was just a matter of how.

I understand everyone has a different personality. For most people this decision is going to take a bit more self reflection. You may need to ask yourself a few questions and take some time to come to a decision. After all, the committment to eliminate carbohydrates, the foundation of most people’s diets, would be considered a huge hurdle in anyone’s life.

Here are a few important questions you should consider:

• Do I need to give myself some time to slowly cut out certain foods?
• Can I drastically limit my portions of carbohydrate dense foods without overeating?
• Am I mentally/ emotionally struggling with the idea of eliminating carbs and/or increasing fat?
• Is it going to be difficult (financially or emotionally) to throw/give away food that I have already purchased?

If you answered “No” to all of these questions going cold turkey may be ideal for you. If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, easing into a keto diet is going to make it easier for your diet to be successful. People are so different so it’s hard to lump everyone into two categories like this. You know you better than anyone else. After some self evaluation and reflection make a decision based on what you think will be the most sustainable method for you.

Family Influences

If you’re single and living alone then this step is not going to be a significant one and you can skip right ahead to creating a plan. If you have a significant other and/or children living with you it is going to be important to get an idea of how your ketogenic diet is going to affect not only your life, but your family’s as well.

I was fortunate to have my boyfriend beside me every step of the way through all my keto challenges and successes. Having that support has been absolutely critical for me.

This doesn’t mean that your family needs to start keto because you do. However, the encouragement of your family is going to have a major effect on how you plan on getting started. If you know your partner is going to be positive and encouraging as you sit down for “spaghetti” dinner with your zuchini noodles, then it’s going to make it much easier to just jump in and go for it. On the other hand, if you’re afraid you’re going to sit down to eat and have they will try to hand you a basket full of bread to dip in your tomato sauce you might have a challenge sticking to an all-in decision.

Another huge factor is watching your significant other and children eating all the foods you wish you were eating. I can tell you from experience that once you get fat adapted and you feel great on your keto diet you won’t even give a second glance to that mound of mashed potatoes beside your daughter’s roast beef and gravy. In fact, once I was in ketosis and feeling great I looked at those mashed potatoes and felt disappointed having let her eat all those carbohydrates.

No matter how strongly you feel about the benefits of ketosis, when you first start out you will without a doubt look at those mashed potatoes and want nothing more than to reach across the table and shovel them into your mouth. You may even go to bed that night thinking about how much you wished you just had a little scoop. You can practically taste them. It seems absolutely absurd if you’ve never experienced going into ketosis for the first time, but the addiction to carbohydrates is a real thing. Considering how you’re going to handle watching your family eating the carb loaded foods you’re craving is essential in deciding how quickly to ditch the sugar.

Your Daily Routine

If you’re busy working all day then come home and run the kids to various activities and you rely on fast food four times a week, going cold turkey will present you with more of a challenge than someone who routinely cooks most of their meals at home. Most restaurants, especially fast food establishments, take some thoughtful planning when you’re on the keto diet.

If you eat any of your meals anywhere other than your own home (and plan on continuing to do so once you start keto) you are going to want to seriously consider easing yourself into a keto diet or ensuring that you have done some in-depth research on what you’re going to eat from your local eateries. To succeed be prepared to order low carb before you walk in the door.

Creating a Plan

You’re one step away from making a final decision! The very last step is to make a customized plan for each of the getting started methods. Following through with your decision is only going to work if you consider some of the major details of how each plan will play out. This is like a rough draft. You won’t be able to plan out every tiny detail, but you can get a good grip on the bigger picture of which plan you believe will be more suitable in your life. Here’s a few tips on how to get started for each method:

Easing In

This is the most customizable option. Here are the major factors to decide on for now:

• How long will you take to transition from your old diet to a full ketogenic diet? This could be days or weeks or even months. Remember that even a tiny step in the right direction is still getting you closer to your end goal.
• What is your daily carb intake end goal? Most people shoot for under 30 g of carbs, but you may be shooting for under 50 g or even under 10 g daily.
• How will you decrease your carbs? For some people this may be to start eliminating certain types of foods. For example, week #1 cut out all added sugars and week #2 cut out all grains, and so on until you’ve eliminated all carb dense foods. From there you can fine tune the portion sizes of your healthy food to meet your target carbohydrate levels. Other people choose to just slowly decrease their portions of whatever carbohydrate they’re eating to fit within their target macros that day.

Cold Turkey

Quitting the carbs cold turkey is a very dramatic and definitive way of starting. It’s far less planning and therefore far less time. Here’s the plan:

• Go do a bit of keto friendly grocery shopping. Get yourself some healthy fats, a few different types of meat, your favourite vegetables, eggs and if you’re planning on eating dairy some full fat dairy products.
• Go home and go through every food item in your home and separate every non-keto friendly food.
• Restock your shelves with your new keto friendly groceries.
• From that point on only eat keto friendly food.

At this point I’m sure you’re wondering what to do with all that food that’s not keto friendly. That’s completely up to you. If the rest of your family is going to consume those items just put them in a separate cupboard or in a special drawer. If your family isn’t going to eat these items then remove them from your home. Give the food to family members or if it’s unopened give it to a local food bank.

Now that you have visualized what each of the plans will look like it’s time to begin. Figure out your plan, pick a date and start!

Don’t Overstress About Your Plan

It’s great to have a plan but remember to stay flexible with your plan. Always keep your end goals in mind when starting out. This will help keep you on track. If it’s your first time starting keto you won’t be able to foresee all the bumps and glitches along the way to your success and that’s ok.

If you decide to ease in and find that the temptation of keeping the carbs laying around is just too much switch to cold turkey. Alternatively, if you go cold turkey and find yourself binging on an entire box of cookies by the third day because you just couldn’t survive without sugar, maybe try easing in. The fact is that no matter how much information you have or how prepared you think you are everyone’s body and mind reacts differently and usually unexpectedly to eliminating carbs. You’ll only know what works for sure by getting started!