When I was following the Standard American Diet (SAD), I deprived myself of lots of things.
I was told not to eat the skin on my roasted chicken. I was told to eat the dry, white meat instead of dark meat. Don’t eat red meat more than once a week. Don’t indulge in eggs and bacon, or at least don’t eat them very often. Don’t salt your food. For the love of all that is healthy, do not butter your veggies. Good heavens, don’t cook with bacon grease. If you eat avocado, don’t eat more than a quarter of it. Use rubbery, light cheese. Watery lowfat yogurt only. Don’t cook with heavy cream.
The list of boring and bland goes on and on.
I wanted to be healthy, so I complied. And I was overweight most of my life, with several health issues: fatty liver, type 2 diabetes, and gout, just to name a few.
So, now I’m keto. I exchanged my list of dietary exclusions: I stopped excluding healty, natural fats, and started excluding processed foods, sugars, starches, and unhealthy industrial seed oils. I indulge in many the things I once deprived myself of: I eat the salty, crispy skin on my roasted chicken. I eat juicy, dark meat. I eat red meat regularly (bring on the steak!). I eat eggs and bacon regularly. I salt my food. And I butter my veggies. And cook with bacon grease. I eat whole avocados. Sometimes two.
Guess what? My weight issues and health issues have all resolved.
I leave this as a note to anyone who wonders I feel my ketogenic lifestyle leaves me feeling deprived: Why should I?
Prior to keto, I genuinely did deprive myself of a long list of flavorful foods in which I now indulge with impunity. On the “normal” way of eating, I deprived myself of a healthy weight, and a good clean bill of health. Sure, there are things that I no longer eat, but that’s not a surprise. I just traded my list of exclusions- mostly tasteless foods for delicious ones. Nothing more, nothing less.
Much of what I now eat is excluded by people on the Standard American Diet (SAD). Most people I know still do what I used to do. They don’t eat the skin on their roasted chicken. They eat white meat instead of dark meat. They only rarely eat eggs and bacon, and when they do it’s the whites only and two sad slices of overly cooked bacon they’ve wiped with paper towels to remove any excess fat. They don’t salt their food. They don’t butter their veggies. They don’t cook with bacon grease. They use light cheese, light yogurt, light salad dressings. They don’t cook with heavy cream.
In my humble opinion, it is they who are deprived. Not me.
#notdeprived #notevenclose #enjoyinglife #ketorocks