The Path is Too Deep

Let’s be real. One of the things people frequently ask me when they hear about my lifestyle isn't about the protein or the fasting. It’s about the booze. "Chris, can you ever have a drink again?" The short answer is yes . You don't have to live the life of a teetotaler to be metabolically healthy. But the long answer is that drinking on a strict, clean ketogenic diet requires a completely different rulebook than what you’re used to. If you go into a bar thinking you can drink like a "sugar-burner," you will derail your progress, wreck your sleep, and wake up with a hangover that feels like strong regret. Here is the unfiltered truth about alcohol, your liver, and how to navigate a drink menu without torching your hard work. Part 1: The "Pause Button" (What Alcohol Actually Does) Before we talk about what to drink, you need to understand why it matters. When you are fat-adapted (like I am), your liver is a busy factory. It’s constantly breaking do...

In my introductory post , I laid out the "highlight reel" of my life from the last decade or so—a relentless series of events involving profound grief, career upheaval, health crises, and personal loss. I also mentioned that when my doctors and therapists, with the best of intentions, tell me, "you should bring your stress levels down," I often just burst out laughing. It's absurd advice. When the stressors are this significant and largely out of your control, you can't just "reduce" them. You can't tell the universe to "please stop." The stress is a given. It’s a non-negotiable reality of the world I'm living in. For decades, my response to that stress was what destroyed me. As I wrote in my "Loop Policy" post, my response was to turn to food—specifically, the high-sugar, high-starch, high-fat "comfort foods" that triggered my emotional eating loop. This was a disaster. I was trying to put out a fire with ga...

Of all the food categories I've audited for my clean keto lifestyle, none is more of a "grey area" than dairy. For many on a ketogenic diet, dairy is a staple. It's high in fat, moderate in protein, and (in its proper forms) low in carbs. But for those of us focused on a strictly clean , anti-inflammatory protocol, "dairy" is not a single category. It's a minefield of industrial processing, hidden additives, and nutritional variance. My "label detective" work has taught me that the difference between a "clean" dairy product and a "dirty" one can be the difference between an anti-inflammatory superfood and an inflammatory "dirty keto" trap. Today, I want to look at two of the biggest offenders: butter and cream . Part 1: The Butter Audit (The "Spreadable" Deception) Butter is a fantastic, stable, clean keto fat. But not all products labeled "butter" are created equal. This is one of the food in...

There is no shortage of fear-mongering when it comes to the ketogenic diet. But the single most dangerous and persistent myth—the one critics use to dismiss the entire lifestyle—is the claim that ketosis is "just a fancy word for starvation." This argument intentionally confuses two metabolic states that are as different as night and day. It’s like looking at a roaring, controlled bonfire and calling it an out-of-control forest fire. Yes, both states produce ketones. But one is a precise, well-fed, and restorative metabolic process. The other is a desperate, destructive, and catabolic survival mechanism. As someone who is 22 hours into a fast every single day, I am not "starving." I am thriving. And the difference lies in the quality of the fuel and the abundance of essential nutrients. Part 1: The "Two Fat Tanks" (Storage vs. Essential) To understand this, we must first understand that not all fat on your body is the same. Your body maintains two very d...

If you look at my professional bio, you’ll see "Manager of Program Quality and Compliance." You’ll see a 25-year career in adult education. You’ll see a 53-year-old man who pays taxes, manages a cardiac condition, and worries about his retirement portfolio. But every Thursday night, without fail, I put all of that aside. I sit down at a table with six of my oldest friends, I pull out a bag of funny-shaped dice, and for four hours, I am not a Manager. I am a Game Master, weaving a story of epic heroism, magic, and monsters. I have been playing Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TTRPGs) since I was nine years old. To some, this might seem odd. We live in a culture that often judges hobbies on a sliding scale of "age-appropriateness." Golf is for adults. Woodworking is for adults. Pretending to be an elf wizard? That’s supposed to be something you grow out of. But I’m here to tell you that this "game" is one of the most important, sophisticated, and beneficial tools...

For most of my life, "brain fog" wasn't an occasional annoyance; it was my baseline operating system. It was the soupy, cognitive "static" that defined my waking hours, a constant and exhausting tax on every single mental task. When you live with Inattentive ADHD , "brain fog" means having 50 browser tabs open in your head at all times, all playing different videos. It's the inability to track a thought from A to B without getting derailed by C, F, and Q. When you layer Dysthymia (Persistent Depressive Disorder) on top, that fog becomes heavier, weighted with low energy and a profound lack of motivation that makes even starting a task feel like climbing a mountain. My medication (Wellbutrin, a brand name for Bupropion) has been a vital tool in managing the underlying neurochemistry of this. But I've discovered that my clean keto lifestyle has been the other half of the solution. It's the protocol that finally cleared the "air," ...

 It's the most maddening, soul-crushing part of any health journey. You've done everything "right." You've mastered the rules. You've ditched the inflammatory oils and the hidden starches . You are consistent. You are disciplined. The weight has been falling off... and then, suddenly, it stops. The scale doesn't budge. For a week. Then two. Then a month. This is the "Great Plateau." It's the point where most people give up, believing the diet has "stopped working" or that their body is simply "broken." Having lost and regained over 190 pounds in my life, I am intimately familiar with the plateau. I've hit every single one. And I've learned that a plateau is not a "failure" or a dead end. It's a "checkpoint." It's your body sending you a message, and it's your job to become the "compliance manager" and run an audit to figure out what that message is. First, let's define...