My Journey with the Ketogenic Diet:
In September 2018, I was diagnosed with diabetes (actually, I was pre-diabetic). The doctor immediately wanted to start insulin, but I said I wanted to "try to salvage the situation," so I didn't inject insulin and instead took metformin. However, this caused hypoglycemia.
At the end of the month, I went to Beijing for a conference. During the conference, I met an older friend from Northeast China. Seeing that I wasn't drinking and seemed downcast, he asked what was wrong. I explained, and he laughed and said, "Don't listen to those witch doctors! Stop taking your medication and just stop eating staple foods. It will be tough at first, but then there's the National Day holiday. Trust me, don't eat anything during the holiday. Just drink some coffee with sea salt and coconut oil every day. If you're really starving, eat two boiled eggs."
Of course, I believed him. I didn't eat for six days during the holiday. My weight was 95 kg at the time, and after six days, it dropped to 88 kg. Then I started eating only one meal a day. Here's how I did it:
- I'd wake up to a cup of coffee my wife brewed in a pressure cooker with sea salt and a few drops of coconut oil, then spend the day on nothing but lemon water.
Dinner consisted of 200 or 400 grams of steak, with four eggs for the 200-gram serving. My wife would also fry half a carrot and half an onion in butter. I'd eat a whole head of garlic with almost every meal, but no vegetables. Sometimes, if I got tired of steak, I'd have 500 grams of salmon.
From then on, I stopped drinking any beverages and avoiding anything sugary. Due to sleep problems, I'd drink a little spirits and red wine, but no domestic liquor.
I quickly entered ketosis. Back then, I still had to go to the office. One morning, a colleague saw me and asked why I was drinking so early in the morning. I said no, and he said my breath tasted like wine. I knew this meant high ketoacid levels. He told me to drink more water and take a vitamin and trace element supplement, and it would return to normal quickly.
Back then, I was jogging 3 kilometers every day (not even as fast as my wife's brisk walking pace), and my weight dropped rapidly, reaching a low of 76 kilograms. The loss was huge; all my old clothes and pants no longer fit, especially my pants—I could fit two bottles of Snow Beer in them and they were still too loose at the waist.
Later, I learned that running wasn't good at my age, and I shouldn't be too thin, so I stopped running, and my weight stabilized at 82-83 kilograms.
Seven years have passed in a flash. Now my blood sugar is normal, my blood pressure is slightly high (high diastolic pressure, but it returns to normal after rest—it's cryptocurrency trading, so there's nothing I can do about it). Since starting ketosis, my mind is exceptionally clear, my reactions are very quick, I'm alert and sharp, and my strength has increased. My endurance seems a little lower (probably due to age), and I don't have any of the discomfort I used to experience!
