Comparison is the thief of joy. We are all different. You will hear us repeat this mantra over and over again. We are all different.
One of the biggest downfalls we see is when people start comparing their results to other people. We are all different. Different genders, ages, stress levels, activity levels, food consumption, level of seriousness, different motivations, different reasons why we are seeking the results and benefits of the ketogenic lifestyle, different hormone issues, and different metabolisms.
What may be the absolute best choice for one person may be the very thing that does not work at all for another. One person may cut carbs back to 50 grams a day and get great results, while another person cuts carbs back to 20 grams per day and doesn’t seem to be making any progress. One person seems to get unrealistic crazy results because they drop a bunch of water weight initially while another person struggles to lose any weight at all. Why is this? It is because we are all different.
We have also witnessed many people who are obese that really don’t eat much food. They do not fit the stereotypical idea of an overweight person who are just gluttons who eat too much food at every meal. When we dig deeper, we discover that many of these people simply cut back more thinking it was going to help with weight loss.
Instead, to combat their weight, they cut back on portion sizes, some cut back numbers of meals, and some people cut back to eating one small meal a day. These people have trained their metabolism to slow down to the point their body is holding on to any calories that it takes in.
These people have no energy level or motivation to get up and move. They don’t feel good. Sometimes these patterns have been practiced for years, and many times it has been practiced for decades. These metabolic issues are not like light switches that get flipped on or off. These are patterns that have become homeostasis. Their “normal” has got to be retrained and put into a higher gear. The good news is that the human body is amazing at being able to reset.
Everyone is different, and we would caution those who get fast results and want to brag about those results to anyone who will listen that you are now “doing keto” and losing weight fast and that keto is the easiest thing you have ever done. As fast as you got results, you can also get negative results just as fast. We have heard it thousands of times. It is people just like these that seem to disappear the fastest. Stopping doing the easiest thing they ever did puts that weight right back on just as fast as it came off. Generally speaking, these fast results are water weight that naturally comes off due to restricting carb intake. This water will be retained just as it was before if this person ingests sugar again.
Everyone is different, and what is really more important than fast results is knowing that our bodies are designed for the ketogenic lifestyle, and we call it a lifestyle instead of a diet. Eating this way really is a way of life because when we stop doing it, we get exactly the same results we had before. We get inflammation, water retention (which is a really fast way to gain weight) and fat storage, instead of using fat for fuel. Most people feel like garbage, the authors included, when we make the choice to consume sugar. Some of us have made those choices anyway. We are human, too. We are not perfect and we have suffered the consequences of these poor choices.
We believe choices like this are made due to “euphoric recall.” In the same way, drug addicts and alcoholics relapse because their brains can only seem to recall the good times and the fun times but seem incapable of recalling how horrible things really got. This is something we all go through during our journey, and we suggest that it’s not if it happens, but when.
The most important thing will be how you react and respond. Do you get back with your program of better health and wellness? Or are you the kind of person that allows a bite of cake to turn into a cheat meal that evolves into a cheat day, cheat week, or cheat month? Know thyself. It is so important to be honest with yourself. If you know this is how you respond, it would be important to focus on that rather than some euphoric recall memories from days gone by.