Editor’s Note: Please enjoy this guest post written by Robert Ludwig.
Paul Newt asked me to write up a little something about my experience with the “keto” diet that he encouraged me to try.
After reading the article he wrote on this website, I figured I would give it a shot. He actually asked for it a while ago and like everything else, I procrastinated, but here it is.
To start with a little background on me I’m 30 years old and have always been a pretty active person.
I grew up competing in wake boarding competitions, winning national championships at the amateur level, as well as being a pretty successful wrestler at the high school and collegiate level. After I was no longer wrestling, I began training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu which I still participate in (although I will admit to slacking as of late) and I spent six years in the Air Force. During all these years I was lifting weights regularly, but never dieted besides the brutal weight cuts of wrestling season. I never needed too.
I ate pizza and burritos, drank beer and chocolate milk and life was great.
If you asked me just two years ago if I would ever pay for a personal training session my answer would have been something like, “No, I have it all figured out”. Turns out I didn’t have a lot in this department figured out and most of my success in sports was probably due to being a little better of an athlete than I realized and not due to my training or diet methods.
Just a little more on the history before we get to the diet. Since July 2014 til present day, I have had 4 surgeries (two knee, two biceps tendons) and have had a total of seven since age 16 (another knee, foot, shoulder). This is not including countless broken bones. I don’t think I have bad genes, maybe a little bad luck, but it is what it is, as these were all sports related injuries. In my teens and early 20’s it was actually pretty easy to bounce back. I would just do what I always did, stay lifting whatever I could, breeze through physical therapy then get back on the board or on the mat before the doctor said I could.
Again, I had it all figured out. In July 2016 I had an ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament) reconstruction and a medial and lateral meniscus repair.
The doctor said that this was a full year recovery. My exact words to him were “yeah, for regular people”. I started physical therapy and actually struggled for the first time. After 5 months of limited progress and me feeling something was not right I requested a new MRI. It showed that I needed another surgery. After the second surgery the doctor said that I could go back to wake boarding and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu after the prescribed time had been met, but that my knee would never feel the same and I would be limited in some aspects that maybe I wasn’t before. This was not good enough for me.
Shortly after this is when I admitted that I didn’t know everything about training and took some sessions with Paul Newt.
The results spoke for themselves:
- July 2016: knee surgery
- December 2016: knee surgery
- August 2017: 425 pound dead lifts and wake boarding pretty well for a recovering cripple.
September 2017 rolls around and BOOM! Torn biceps tendon. Another surgery. With the help of an awesome physical therapist Bob Scaccia and some more training sessions with Paul Newt, back to form in no time!
My strength was back, my athleticism was back, but I was carrying a little more weight than I normally did.
This went on for some time. At first would tell myself it was because I was coming off of injuries and wasn’t doing everything that I always did. The fact was that I was now 30 years old and still ate and drank like I did when I was in college and that’s not a realistic lifestyle to maintain. Maybe Paul was right and I shouldn’t be eating pizza and burritos every day. On February 12th, 2018, Paul sent me his article on the keto diet and told him I would give it a shot since he hadn’t steered me wrong yet. Once again, he was on to something. At my starting point I was 197 pounds, the heaviest I have ever been. As of this article, 5 months later, I am 155 pounds and have abs again without touching cardio. Yes, 42 pounds.
My initial goal was 25. In that 5 month period my workouts have not changed. I have not noticed any significant loss of strength and I eat five or six times a day. I still eat plenty of things I love and ate
before. I’m not going to get into what type of foods to eat, what to stay away from, or how ketosis works, as Paul has already addressed that in his article. What I will say is that after reading his article
and giving it a shot it works. I still eat pizza, pasta, burritos, rice, potatoes, and whatever else I want one day a week (cheat day!).
The system is not perfect. I do still often crave foods that fall outside this diet, but when you consider all the things that you don’t have to give up or compare to other trendy diets of the past, this diet produces a pretty good return on investment. I have a lot of friends and even co-workers who say “I could never do that” or “you can’t just cut something out of your diet”. To me that is garbage because I have never met anyone who likes pizza or burritos more than I do and I can do this diet. It won’t happen overnight and you still need to put the work in at the gym but this diet works and I have never once gone hungry.
Editor’s Note: Rob’s commitment to his exercise and eating program cannot be understated. Consistency is his biggest ally. In the beginning of his keto plan, he seldom made mistakes, or abandoned a day’s eating plan due to one small misstep. Initially, his cyclic ketogenic rotation (CKD) was defined as carbs below 75 grams/day, but, in practice, he was closer to under 25 grams/day of carbohydrate intake. In the very beginning, he was allowed one 2 hour cheat meal window on Sunday. As a relatively easy fat loss precipitated, his “keto” plan has evolved into low carb Monday through Friday, with Saturday/Sunday “refeeds” and eventually, Monday through Thursday, will extended “cheat weekends” starting on Friday that include excessive amounts of beer, pizza, and burritos. As of this writing (7.20.2018), at a current bodyweight of 154-156 pounds, Rob can pretty much do what he wants, although I don’t recommend that much beer and pizza.
It’s worth mentioning that one of the ways Rob was able to make his eating plan work for his hectic work schedule was by ordering atypical, special request meals from local pizza shop businesses like Brothers Sports Bar & Grill. Shredded chicken, bacon, cheese, and jalapeno (no bread) was ordered so often that they nicknamed it, “The Five-O“, for easy reference.
Rob’s workout plan is far more complex than he lets on, and Rob has benefited by being diligent about keeping a detailed training journal – something I strongly recommend. As Rob’s success has (again) demonstrated – consistent, progressive lifting of free weights in conjunction with a goal-specific diet IS the fastest way to change the human body (NOT cardio, NOT jumping around doing stuff like time-wasting, spirit-crushing burpees and “boot camp” workouts, and NOT just relying on sketchy protein powders and meal replacement shakes and bars).
Thank you for reading!
Paul Newt has a passion for learning in all its forms, and finds great enjoyment in conceptualizing, creating, and improving systems that lead to success. Paul spends his time training, coaching clients, being a great husband and father, consuming non-fiction books, tinkering with new technology, researching investments, and building on old, refining current, and discovering new successful methods to improve human health, performance, and appearance. Paul’s lifelong goal is to become the best version of himself, and add value to the world by assisting others in doing the same.