It feels good to feel good
In March of 2020 the world shut down. Like a lot of people, we thought the social restrictions brought about by the pandemic would only last a couple of weeks. Eager to take advantage of the time at home we came up with a list of things we wanted to do over the next couple of weeks. The list was mostly little things we had never gotten around to like “rearrange the guest room” but I decided to add something that had plagued the bakers in my family for years – finding the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. Those who know me know I have a massive sweet tooth so perfecting a cookie recipe sounded like a blast to me. Since we thought the shutdown would only be a week or two we tried 6 different recipes in the first 6 days.
While we did come up with a near perfect recipe on that 6th attempt we also came up with a new unhealthy routine for the first couple months of the pandemic. Our diets slipped away from the healthy living we had been in a groove with for years and the gym or pickup basketball was replaced with binge watching a new series every week or two. We still managed to get out of the house to take our dog for a walk at least once per day and still ate our vegetables but we still found ourselves the most lethargic and unhealthy we had ever been.
On May 15, 2020 we drank our first packet of KETO//OS NAT, roughly 2 months after the country shut down. I remember drinking the flavor Maui Punch but we didn’t mix them in water bottles where we could shake them up like we do now. I dumped the powder into a glass of water and tried to mix it with a spoon. Aside from the small clumps that came from my poor mixing skills I was surprised at how much I liked the flavor. We both drank the packets every day, but didn’t really share how we were feeling with one another.
After three days Maddie couldn’t stop talking about how amazing she was feeling; full of energy and more focus than she had felt in a long time. I was disappointed, but didn’t want to bring her mood down because I didn’t feel much of anything different. A couple days later I finally said that I didn’t notice anything, to which Maddie was surprised. We had slowly been working on gutting and redoing our master bathroom so the next day I got up with a plan to start tiling the shower and floor. 10 hours later (I’m not as fast as the pros) when the final tile was placed I finally realized what I had been feeling: it wasn’t a crazy high of energy that sent me bouncing off the walls only to be followed by a crash, but a steady energy and focus that lasted the whole day. Finally aware of how good I had been feeling, and still full of energy. Even at my most peak physical condition I would have never had the energy or focus to work on something like that for close to ten hours with no breaks and not get tired or lose focus. Ketones got my butt in gear.
The next day I was excited to pay attention to the energy I was experiencing and put it to good use. After months of occasional light exercise I started working out again. Gyms were still closed so I laced up my running shoes and found a couple routes that I enjoyed. Almost two years later I have yet to miss a day of drinking my ketones, with the world opened back up I play pickup basketball once a week, do 2 days of lifting or body weight HIIT workouts and go for a 4-8 mile run 3 days a week. Netflix shows take us months to finish now and home projects get checked off the list (almost) as fast as we can add them. I’m beyond grateful that ketones helped me break the rut of laziness. There’s no doubt, it feels good to feel good.