Your friends don’t want to know
When I first felt the wonderful health benefits of eating a keto diet I told anybody who would listen about it as if I had just come from my indoctrination into a cult. I really do believe it is a great way to maintain a healthy life but most people are not interested in hearing about it, especially at a social occasion. It was almost impossible to hold myself back when people were complaining about some ailment. As about fifty percent of the western adult population has some form of diabetes I was just dying to spew forth all the newly acquired information I had on the subject. People don’t dig this for some reason. I might as well have got myself a tambourine and hung out at the airport. After a while I was able to tone it down.
It’s a lifestyle change
Most people that are getting into their retirement years are not big on change. Myself included, so when you shove it in someones face along with your success story, it is off putting. Keto is not a weekend of enimas at a spa. It’s a complete change in diet that needs to be permanent. That part is enough to scare anybody. We as a society like to stay with things that we have become comfortable with which includes our diets. That is really the problem. Our modern diets are just packed with sugar and carbs. When we try to stop eating all these things our bodies just freak out. It is like withdrawal from any other drug and it’s not easy. I have found that people are really resistant to doing things that are hard.
Don’t make a scene
The best way to promote your new wisdom with people that you care about is to show them that it is no big deal to implement. Well, it is in fact a big deal but you don’t need to make it look harder than it is. I found people treating me a bit like I had an incurable disease. They would ask with a concerned tone: “Are you okay to eat deep fried jalapeno poppers?” Of course I do! I love Jalapeno poppers and every other kind of deep fried yummies! One option is to give a twenty minute lecture on the evils of deep fried food and the other is to just say “No Thanks”. Take option two.
You can show people it isn’t a disability to be on a healthy diet by just quietly making better choices especially when dining out. Most people have either seen or experienced a cringe worthy event when dining out with a new convert to some kind of diet. Your newly converted soon to be ex-friend gives the server a grilling over the menu with a series of questions. Is the chicken free run, grain fed, extra lean and harvested ethically? Is your beef sustainably grown, grass fed and humanely murdered? Is the spinach organic? Did the Virgin Mary pick it? Is all of your food preservative free? The dressing for the salad is extra virgin olive oil, isn’t it? Are your food supplies delivered via electric truck?
I have seen the grilling of a server go on like that for a full five minutes while the ones he was with were busy unfriending him on facebook and trying to crawl under the table. Doing this only shows people you are with that keto is hard and ultra picky. It shows people that it is difficult to eat out when you are doing keto (Vegan is worse). The answer to all those questions by the way, even if they say yes, it is NO. Count on it being no.
What can you do to go Keto and get along
The easiest thing to do is work on maintaining your health with a healthy lifestyle. People will notice and occasionally ask a question. This might seem like an opportunity to go into a full on old time revival faith healing rant but hold yourself back. Just answer the immediate question if you ever want them to ask you another one. When it comes to eating out you have to realize that you are going to have to make some concessions as far as organic and etcetera go. If you really want to ask all those questions, phone ahead and decide on something before you go. Most restaurants though have some kind of salad option that works fine. Pick that.
As always this is just my opinion. If you have some better ideas please comment below.