Are you ready to challenge yourself? Keto style! From tracking macros to doing cardio or eating dairy free
True to the mantra “New Year, New You” I embarked on a self experiment in 2021.
Quick look back first at my Keto journey
I’ve been eating Keto for almost 4 years and through that have encountered my fair share of stalls and setbacks.
Year 1: Low Carb with a slow transition into Keto over 1-2 months. First stall after 5 months and 20lbs lost made me introduce exercise up to a point where I was running 10k+ a day. Tracked foods for the first few months and then again later in the year. Reached my goal weight and kept up the exercise
Year 2: Hurt my knee when running and shifted to doing weights. Kept eating Keto and regained about half the weight I had lost. Did not track what I ate much.
Year 3: Continued working with weights and walking 10k steps a day. Tried my first fast which was a 4 day egg fast through which I lost about 4lbs. Relost some of the regained weight but not much. Tracked for a few months here and there.
Year 4: Goal to lose 20lbs. Kept walking and introduced more dancing (Zumba, latin dancing). Did a full Clean Keto and Challenge Month and a 5 day egg fast. Learn more about my Egg Fast experience here. Also tried Carnivore for a week which you can learn more about in the Carnivore Blog Post. Ended up losing about 10lbs over the whole year.
2021 brought the idea of Keto Mini Challenges!
During my Thursday Night 9pm CST Live on Instagram we started brainstorming the idea of Keto Mini Challenges. Some of us had done the egg fast together as well as the Carnivore fast and we felt ready to try more!
We threw around ideas from dairy free Keto to Vegan, Pescetarian, Fat fast, Liquid fasts as well as non-food based challenges like Cardio based or Meditation.
People joined in - and you can still join if you like, just message me on Instagram - and the Keto Mini Challenges were born.
How do these Keto Mini Challenges work on a high level?
Each week on Monday we start a new theme or Mini Challenge
Each challenge is scheduled to be 1-7 days long
Anyone can join in at any time and opt out at any time
This is not a competition amongst each other. There is no ‘winner’. This is about challenging yourself and supporting each other.
Participants can volunteer to lead challenges
We’re alternating food-based challenges with mental-mindset-physical challenges
Challenges are not tied to buying a specific brand / product
The group has a group chat where we coordinate challenges, leads etc and then people can opt into Mini Challenges and join separate chats for those!
Why are we doing Keto Mini Challenges and why could it be great for you too?
Challenge yourself
Make friends, have fun together and support each other
Stay Keto while also trying new things
Some of these challenges could help you:
Jump start your Keto journey
Break stalls and help with weight loss
Reconsider habits
Open up your mind to new ways to do things or eat
Get to know your body!
Reach your goals in a different way
Try fasts and more without having to do the research yourself thanks to rotating leads
Let’s get to it, here are the currently planned Keto Mini Challenges!
As the group formed, people quickly volunteered to lead challenges and here’s our current schedule as an example of the breadth of ways to Keto we have been and will be exploring:
At the time of writing this, we’ve completed the Track & Meet your Macros Challenge as well as Cardio and Dairy Free. I’m working on separate blog posts as I am documenting my journey through these different challenges.
My learnings with these challenges to date
Every BODY is different: As we do these as a group we’re learning so much about how we’re all differently affected or reacted to ways of eating and exercising. It’s been fascinating for example how we all had such a wide range of experiences with dairy free Keto
Become aware of and reset your habits: As we try these different ways to Keto we’re becoming aware of habits we didn’t even know we had. With dairy free we all realized just how much of our daily fat intake comes from dairy and just how much this helps us with satiety and curbing cravings
Doing it with others beats doing it alone: What I learned through the recent egg fast and carnivore fast is being confirmed. Trying new things together beats trying them alone. You might have questions - like me, when I asked how to get my fats in with dairy free without increasing protein - and you’ll have a group that can help you trouble shoot.
Rotating leads mean very little prep work on participants: As we rotate leads, only one person has to go all in with research and set guiding principles while everyone else can just ‘go along’.
If these Mini Challenges have spiked your interest, feel free to reach out and join in. If you’d rather have 1:1 support to try some of these ways of eating and challenging yourself, reach out and book some time to chat!
More learnings to follow and the blog post on Tracking, Cardio and Dairy free as well!
Keto On!
Céline
Founder of Keto Anywhere