why I crossed the road to buy an egg

Keto cliff note, sort of: To get into and remain in ‘ketosis,’ in which the body burns fat rather than carbohydrate as preferred fuel, means eating less than 50 grams of carbohydrates a day. Better yet, less than 20 grams. This can be very difficult, it was for me, as there’s a drastic change in available food. Keeping in mind grams of both added and natural sugars are added to the grams of carbs relative to the numbers 50 and 20. There is a keto formula – 70% fat; 25% protein; 5% carbohydrate. Consider, as fact check, googling all this. Checking it out. Looking at labels.

The predominance of carbohydrates everywhere would scare Stephen King.

I became a person always looking at the ‘Nutrition Facts’ labels on the back of everthing. And googling when there was no label, like, how many carbs in a cinnamon raisin bagel? I learned stuff – pasta, once eaten, becomes sugar; every version of starch becomes sugar; a glass of fruit juice is a glass of sugar. I gave up spaghetti. Gave up everything potato, and rice. I gave up ice cream, I gave up all fruit. Began with ‘No’ to all fried foods. I gave up all grains, all my favorite cereals. I began adding fats from everywhere. Eggs, which I’d been led to believe much of my cardiac-risk-family-history life would kill me, became my best friend. Ditto bacon. Ditto olives and olive oil. Ditto hamburg. Ditto most vegetables. Ditto cheese, ditto sausage. Heavy cream in my coffee. By the way, that cinnamon raisin bagel – 49 grams of carbs.

I lost 25 pounds in two months in 2018, and that wasn’t my goal. Respitory infections I’d had for year after year after year – decades – stopped. Most colds went away. Much of the pain in my knees went away. Most acid reflux went away. My lipid panel numbers got and stayed better. I came to understand that food is medicine. Best of all, someone flipped a switch in my head, and everything jumped up with a new brightness. Way brighter. (If you know me well you may just want to take my word on that.)

Joyful, grateful keto tales are endless. Yet this new life devoted to keto changed in other ways too. Some of them darker. Which is important for me to talk about. But, enough yakety yak today. More of that later.