In October 2016, one of my husband’s co-workers sent him this video:
Thank you Sarah Hallberg! Thank you co-worker for sending it to my husband. Thank you husband for praying for it, and then sharing with me, and being willing to forge on ahead when I wasn’t on board yet. And thank you to our children for putting up with the two of us. I’m so grateful for this way of eating.
For me, Keto is:
Sustaining
A Keto style of eating gives enough sustenance to last for hours. I don’t have to keep refueling. I don’t have to feel hungry all the time. I don’t have to fight against all of the survival hormones all the time. They mean well. They are there to protect me. I’d rather not fight them. I feel nurtured and nourished.
Intuitive
I can trust my food intuition more because I’m not being given mixed signals. I eat when I’m hungry and eat until I’m full. I don’t eat all of the fat in my bowl if my body says “no”. I save my bowl of food in the fridge until I’m hungry again. If I had to write all of it down, and had to throw away what I didn’t finish, I would not be successful. I often forget to start making food until I’m too hungry. Timers haven’t worked well. Having food ready to warm up and eat, really works for me. I feel confident. I feel that my needs are valid. I feel cared for.
Tasty
I love salt. I love fat. I love butter. I love cheese. I enjoy the flavor in my food. My food is never dry, starchy, and bland. It’s salty, or sour, or spicy, or savory, and yes, even sometimes sweet. I don’t eat food just to eat – I eat and enjoy. I feel like the abundance of the earth is mine to take joy in.
Restorative
B-12 is amazing. Iron is important. Calcium, sign me up. Essential protiens, check. Essential fatty acids, check. Reduced inflamation (I can bend my knees), thank you. I feel restored to health in many ways. Disautomina is one of them. Ketogenic styles of eating can really benefit and in some cases restore nervous systems. Here is a slide from Amy Berger‘s Talk at Keto Salt Lake 2022, that explains some of the mechanisms behind that restoration:
Ancestral
The Ketogenic style of eating also helps to restore ancestral ways of eating. Diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and Alzhiemers run deeply in my family. As do Neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD, Dyslexia, and Autism (which often presents with epilepsy too). A ketogenic diet has mechanisms that help with all of these genetic conditions.
I wanted to share with you an excerpt from “me ‘n Mama”, the book my Great Grandma and Grandpa Swan wrote. My Great Grandmother Deloris said,
“I strained the milk into a big two-gallon pan and put it in the refridgerator. There was hardly a meal that went by without a big pan of milk sitting on the table, … I seldom skimmed off the cream. I just stirred it up and we all drank as much as we wanted of that good rich milk. We didn’t know about cholesterol in animal fats not being good for your health then. Now we are paying for our ignorance.”
Oh, how I wished they had never been told that falsehood! I wish this old way of eating had not been replaced by all the new fangled food-like substances that I grew up with.
And then there’s my husband and my children’s ancestral eating. They are members of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, even though they are blue-eyed and light skinned. This is because the tribe’s culture has always been very inclusive, and so their rules for membership are inclusive. For my husband, it is very improtant that the Ketogenic diet has roots in the naitve peoples of North America.
I don’t know if Ketogenic style of eating are ancestral for everybody, at least not year round. And that’s okay. It seems to be the case for me. With Keto, I feel like my genetics are not defective. I don’t feel doomed to an early (and rather large) grave. I feel like I can learn from the past and share the knowledge with my kids.
Why Keto?
Because a Keto way of eating really helped me and maybe it can help someone else.