RE: My ketogenic lifestyle, or how I traded cake and cookies for mental clarity, better performance and consistent energy levels.
I've been a swimmer my entire life and love rigorous training of all sorts. My only issue is diet! What's worse is, I've been a vegetarian since 4 and am very used to loading up on carbs and burning it off.
This doesn't work well anymore because I'm 30, have a full time job, girlfriend (another full time job), study crypto's all day, and still manage to gym on average 5 hours per week about 3-4 times a week. In order for me to burn the carb intake I have completely, I need to be training like an competitive athlete, which I am not. It's a bit frustrating since I'm running fast 1 miles (6-7min), do heavy lifting (bench, squat, deadlifts), 42inch+ box jumps, etc. but still can't burn off enough carbs to get rid of belly fat.
How much time and money are you spending on shopping for food and cooking it?
I think if you are already exercising regularly at such intensity and including a good amount of resistance/weight training like it sounds you are doing, there is only one more thing to do to get rid of that extra fat: reducing your calorie intake. As you say yourself, if your current activity level with all that exercise is not enough to burn what you eat, then it is time to try and reduce it a bit.
It doesn't have to be drastic, I don't know how much you eat in a day, but depending on that and your energy requirements, starting by subtracting about 15-20% of your total calorie intake usually works. I use a calorie/macros counting app (My Fitness Pal) for this; in my case, my maintenance level is around 1700-1800 kcal/day, and I know that if I lower it to 1500 kcal I start losing weight, however if I really want faster results (without completely starving myself) I need to lower it all the way down to 1200-1300 kcal; in this way I managed to lose 4 kg in 4 weeks, and didn't gain them back afterwards.
Q: How much time and money are you spending on shopping for food and cooking it?
Not gonna lie, in the beginning, it does require quite a lot of effort to get familiar about what and how to eat in a keto diet. But once you go past the initial learning curve and find which meals work well for you, it becomes a lot easier to plan (most of the stuff I eat nowadays requires very little preparation time). Still, it must be noted that keto foods are usually expensive (meat, fatty fish, cheese, nuts, oils, avocados, very dark chocolate, especial "low carb" foods, artificial sweeteners), so if you need to eat a lot to sustain your body, it can really add up.
Thanks for your comment, @aaagent!