My journey on KDT was as tough as anyone would imagine but, when you research into this diet, you realise it isn’t just eating a burger wrapped up in lettuce instead of eating a burger with a bread bun. Keto is full of so many amazing foods that I would have never had before on a regular diet. It opens up your world to food so much and really makes you try new things in life which is great.
I started the ketogenic diet as a management option for my Epilepsy. I have generalised Epilepsy. I have tried so many anti-seizure medications in my life and reacted badly to them over the years and the only thing that has fully made life better is KDT and the medication I am currently on.
For the past 5 years, I’ve been on the diet and taking the medication and it has been good. The reason I stayed on the diet while also on the drug was to control absences and Myoclonics, as I used to have up to 50 absences a day. I am now at my highest of 10 daily and my Myoclonics used to be 20 a day now up to 5 daily. Keto has improved my concentration, my mood and life in general.
I started the diet on October 21st 2019, I was 15 years old at the time. The diet was mentioned to me in 2017/18 by my neurologist but was never confirmed I would go on it because of my age. My neurologist unfortunately based her theory of me not going on the diet because of the stereotyping as a rebellious teenager. This gave me a drive to prove to be people I could do this and that I could make this my life and priority.
I fell in love with diet and was seeing all of the benefits from the food I was eating and how it would work on the body and brain was amazing and I became fascinated with the process. Then because of this fascination with the diet I started cutting out bread, root vegetables, cereals, sweets, pastry’s and started preparing myself for keto (bare in my mind I did this a year before I went on KDT without even being confirmed I was going on it). Every appointment I went to I asked about the diet in the hope my neurologist would get the idea I really want to go on the diet and finally, they agreed.
I started the diet by trying out ketogenic recipes that I was given by my dietitian. We started by adding a ketogenic breakfast for 3 days, then a lunch and breakfast for 2 days, then added a snack for 2 days and then fully added all Keto meals breakfast lunch dinner and snack daily.
At the start of KDT, I found that the first 4-5 months of ketogenic food was difficult. That was mainly due to the fact that I did not have the knowledge that I do now. Before I didn’t know about satays, chicken nuggets, meringues, chocolate/ carrot/ coconut cake, pizzas, carbonara, chicken kiev, curry sauce, spice mixes, stir fry’s (yes all of this is ketogenic). At the start I was given recipes that weren’t as appetising as the food I have now. Now I eat all the food I used to eat before I went on KDT just in my own ketogenic special way.
People say you can’t eat the same food you ate before on a regular diet, and I promise that is not true. If I wanted you to take anything from this blog is to when you get your child’s carb allowance, go get all their favourite food and look at the back of the label and check if they can have some of it (not sweets obviously or chocolate unless 90-99% dark chocolate is their favourite). This will give your child some normality with KDT and will help them stick to the diet. There is no issue asking your dietitian how you can make pasta with your favourite sauce and use keto friendly pasta or rice instead, because they are there to help and they understand that you are just starting this diet as a patient and have to cook all the food.
My symptoms when starting the diet were actually fine. I had read a lot about how starting KDT was going to be quite hard with things like feeling extremely hungry, lots of horrible stomach pain, migraines. But I was actually ok, I had a small stomach ache and some migraines but overall, I was good. I was just so happy to be on the diet that maybe I didn’t even notice that my body took it very well - thankfully.
Now my daily intake is 17g of carb, 150g of fat and 50g of protein. For the past year I was going up to and down from 25g of carb to slowly dropping it to 17g of carbs - but finding the right amount of fat has been a rollercoaster as it takes a while to find your balance. I started the diet on 150g of fat and went slowly up to 240g of fat and it was interesting being on that much fat. I was on it for a long time and got very used to it. I thoroughly enjoyed having my prescribed ketogenic products and cream milkshake on the daily and can’t have it now because there’s too much fat in it for me. This can be a struggle now to have had my fat intake reduced but I’m getting back to it. I was slowly dropped down to 150g of fat again in the past couple of months because of my ketones not balancing and 17g of carb and the same protein.
For a good year and half now, I have started cooking my own meals breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I am quite an independent person so as soon as my mam was comfortable with me doing it, I hit the ground running. I developed my own way to keto - what I mean is I was always on the hunt for new recipes because I knew there was more to food than having pure curry powder mixed with water as my curry sauce. I refused to believe that. So I went into Tesco, Dunnes and Aldi and checked every food that I liked and wanted to try to see if I suited it. To see if it had suitable ingredients and good levels of carbs and fat. I always wanted to make my own recipes, so I started. I took normal recipes I had before and just tweaked them to become ketogenic. Like instead of having dark soya sauce, I have light. Or, instead of having premade carbonara sauce I make my own with cream and parmesan. I did that with all my favourite recipes and now eat all the foods I loved before.
The foods I now eat that are still very low carb are keto friendly versions of chicken nuggets, satays, stir fry noodles/ rice, pastas, pizza, burgers with buns, all kinds of cakes whether it’s chocolate, carrot, coffee, coconut, vanilla and strawberry/ blackberry muffins there is so much more to KDT and so many people don’t realise it - I didn’t.
For me, KDT it isn’t hard to follow because I read so much about the benefits and knew this is for me. It’s a hard mindset to put yourself in and I understand that’s hard for people. But when it’s your health on the line, you will have a better life. In my opinion your concentration will improve, your knowledge about nutrition and diet itself and how your body works. You will learn the amazing things KDT can do for your mood, and everything will be amazing for you. That’s what I thought about when starting the diet and I will keep this going hopefully for the rest of my life - all going to plan.
This diet gave me a career opportunity and showed me how much of an interest I have for nutrition, and I wasn’t interested in this at all before. I was interested in going into childcare, although to be honest I had no idea what to do with my life. Things hit you from all different directions in so many ways. I genuinely think that this coming your way should be a sign of a new chapter and challenge in life. Try not to be too scared by this new diet - you will never know what could come from it.
In summary, KDT has been life changing for me. My seizures have lessened, my concentration levels are better, my mood and life in general has improved. I leave school next year and after all I have learned from being on the diet, I hope to study Food science and nutrition. I know that this would not have been possible before going on the diet and I hope you find similar results.
