So as mentioned in my last post, I've gotten back in the gym ready to pack some slabs of mean, lean muscle on my long, lanky frame. Ironically enough, I'm using a diet, which is not that typical of an ectomorph with my fitness goals. I've gone Keto, or pseudo-keto that is, I'll explain.
The ketogenic diet is a high fat, low carbohydrate diet used to get the body into a state of "ketosis." Ketosis is when your body relies on fat as its primary method of energy derivation. Your body switches to ketosis when you stop eating carbs, which your body relies on for fuel by default. Ketogenic diets are typically used for weight loss (though they were originally developed to treat seizures), as ketosis is optimized for burning fat, so you may wonder why someone like me is using this diet to gain weight.
Well, the answer might surprise you, but I'm doing it to treat a fungal infection. For the last 10 years of my life, since grade school, I've had persistent fungal infections on my face, scalp, toes and armpits. I later, though research and much trial and error, was able to correlate these infections with carb and sugar consumption. The carbs, once converted to glucose, were feeding the fungal infection and causing the symptoms I was experiencing to manifest. A ketogenic diet, coupled with oral antifungals and probiotics has proved to be the most effective way to combat it. I will delve deeper into my fungal infection in future posts.
Now let's talk about how I get 4000 calories a day on a ketogenic diet. We'll start with the most important part of my diet-eggs!!
What you see in that picture is the amount of eggs I consume in a day-two full cartons. That's right, I eat 24 80 calorie eggs a day for a total of 1920 calories. I boil them, peel them, which can take up to 30 minutes sometimes, depending on how stubborn they are, and gulp them down throughout the course of the day. Now whenever I tell someone I eat 24 eggs a day, I'm told, "That's waaaaaaaaaay too much cholesterol!!" But don't worry, I've got it covered. In a future post, I will explain the science behind how I can consume 24 eggs a day and not worry about heart disease.
Next is almonds. Every day I consume a cup and a quarter of almonds every day. This works out to 850 calories. It's very convenient for when I'm driving.
Finally is my protein shake. I add 3 avocados-3*160=480, one quarter cup of coconut oil-470 calories, one scoop of egg protein powder-112 calories and just over a cup of almond milk which is negligible but my brand is probably 60 calories. This gives us a total of 1122 calories.
When added to the eggs and almonds, we get a total of 3892 calories. I guess I lied, I'm 108 calories short, and the kale and broccoli I also eat during the day won't be enough to cover it. Oh well, round up, you get 4000.
Anyways, that's my diet. Techinically it's actually a modified keto diet because a true keto diet would have a lot less protein. It's still pretty close though in terms of what foods are eaten and it has been very effective so far. Thank you for reading. Please stick around and follow me on my fitness journey!
My previous post: https://steemit.com/fitness/@laabo-afolabi/making-gains-as-a-tall-lanky-ectomorph
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