Adam McConnell's Story

My name is Adam McConnell, I am 29 years old and live in Springfield, Missouri. I discovered the keto diet a few years ago when my brother found success with it. However, it wasn't until doing my own research by watching Dr. Berg's YouTube channel that I truly understood it. When I started this journey 7 months ago on the 15th of March 2021, I was 270 pounds. My diet consisted of fast food or fried food nearly every day for as long as I could remember. It was a never-ending vicious cycle because the weight I had put on made me depressed, but the high carb foods temporarily made me feel better while only making my weight gain get exponentially worse in the long run.

Now 7 months of keto and fasting later, I am 115 pounds down at 155 while looking and feeling the best I ever have! I started the keto diet in March of this year 2021 and have not gone out of ketosis or had a cheat day since. Within that first month, I lost over 20 pounds and felt much healthier. I didn't experience cravings like I used to and felt like I could easily go much longer without eating while still being focused and energetic.

An average day of Keto for me is a little bit different because my fasting regimen is intense currently. As far as eating goes, I have kept it simple and stuck with the same meal for the last 7 months. It consists of 2 hamburger patties, with one slice of cheese on each, 2 organic pasture-raised eggs, a 1lb bundle of asparagus spears sautéed, 3 0.5 oz. servings of pork rinds, 1 six-piece row of Lilly's extra dark chocolate with sea salt for dessert, and 4 organic strawberries. Lastly, I use 1 tbsp. of Irish butter, and 1 tbsp. of avocado oil divided across the pans, I cook the burgers, eggs, and asparagus in. Every two weeks I sub out the burgers with 4 filets of Atlantic salmon to get omega 3's.

For my fasting regimen, I started keto in March with 16 and 8 right off the bat, but within 4 days I was on OMAD. I kept up with OMAD for the next 3 months and then started doing OMAD Monday thru Wednesday and going until I felt hungry after that. I made it to Friday or Saturday the first couple of weeks and then made it to Sunday two weeks in a row. At this point, I decided I only needed around 4 meals a week, and ever since I have eaten Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday between 8 and 10 PM for nearly 3 months now. I also take a stress B-complex vitamin, iron, potassium, and chelated magnesium with every meal as well. I plan to keep up with my current regimen until the end of the year, and then go to a 16 and 8 fasting schedule while still staying keto for the rest of my life.

Exercise has played a huge role in my success by both eliminating stress, and accelerating progress. I have walked 5 miles nearly every day since I started this journey back in March. The first couple of months I would sometimes do 3 or 4 miles but quickly found the motivation to consistently do 5. Now every day I look forward to it to not only calm and relax my mind, but also to accelerate progress and keep my body moving.

As far as mistakes I have made on keto, the biggest one would probably be not counting serving sizes in the beginning. Those 3 0.5oz servings of pork rinds I eat with my meals now would sometimes be half a bag and I wouldn't really notice until I had already done it. All those little things add up quickly and when I started getting measuring instruments to keep track of all these different things, I noticed a huge difference within weeks of implementing them.

If I could offer 3 pieces of advice to someone starting keto the first would be, don't weigh often. I weigh once every 2 weeks now, but in the beginning, I would weigh every couple of days and the numbers on that scale can fluctuate so much if you do this. It can lead to unnecessary discouragement or loss of motivation. Instead, I have found weighing every two weeks provides a more accurate representation of progress and tends to be consistent if keto and routines are consistent as well. The second would be don't overcomplicate things. In the beginning, I was trying to get into macros, and it just made the whole thing feel like an unnecessary math problem to me. I personally find it is much easier to just find some keto meals you like and stick to those adding new ones in and alternating others out as necessary. Lastly, find a keto regimen that is easy to incorporate into your lifestyle. Keto isn't a temporary quick fix, it's a life-changing way to live that will improve your mental, physical, and emotional health. Incorporate it in a way that is simple and easy so that it isn't something you always think about stopping, but rather something you plan on doing for the rest of your life.