Minimalism and Keto – What they have in common & my journey

I started this channel in April last year because I wanted to help people improve their life through better health, mental clarity and in many cases weight-loss.

You might have noticed that I changed my channel’s and website’s name recently. My pursuit of minimalism has added so much extra happiness and fulfillment to my life in recent months, which is why I felt the need to share it with you as well. Plus, I wanted to change the channel name for a long time, since ‘mostlyKeto’ simply wasn’t fitting any more. I also think that the two fit quite nicely together.

For me, minimalism is realizing that buying more stuff you don’t actually need, quite often to impress people you don’t really care about, does not make you happier. It’s getting rid of all the unnecessary things that are just cluttering up your life without adding any real value to it. As a result, you have more time and money left over to do the things that really matter to you and that you love doing. That’s different for everyone: For me that’s more time with loved ones, more time to read, travel, be out in nature, more time to cook/enjoy delicious new recipes I want to try out and more time to contribute to the world in one form or another.I don’t want to one day hear my future kids tell their friends about how they barely ever see me because I’m always at work, trying to earn more money to pay for more stuff we didn’t need in the first place.

It’s about being more deliberate about the stuff you bring home and asking yourself first about whether or not it deserves a place in your home. And then, possibly giving away another item when you bring a new one home.
I’ve struggled with being messy my whole life and tidying up always felt like such a chore to me. I didn’t know that the actual problem was having too much stuff around. The simple step of owning less automatically makes your home look tidy, simply because you have less ‘problems’ to deal with.

My girlfriend and I also noticed how much fun and joy it is to give away things you don’t need any more, so somebody else can use them. And this was the first Christmas where we felt completely at ease and happy when we walked through a shopping mall and didn’t feel the need to buy anything we already own.

It’s also quite nice to go to your closet and just having the clothes you love and that you look good in, in front of you. You know that feeling when you go to your closet for a pullover and it takes you a while to find the right one? Maybe the first one you take out is the one that you’re just keeping around because it doesn’t fit you perfectly now, but just in case in the future it might… so you put it back. Or that one you got a great deal on, so you didn’t really care whether you love how it looks on you, as it was really cheap. Why not just keep the things that you love wearing?

Just to be clear – minimalism is not deprivation. It’s removing the unimportant, to have more space for what matters to you.

We’re obviously not perfect, but the simple pursuit of owning only the things we love using and giving away the rest has added so much happiness, extra money and extra time to our lives that we can now use to pursue activities and projects that we feel add more value to our lives. We love every second of living together in our cheap little 160ft2 apartment, which on a side note, allows us to have more money left over at the end of the month and thus, does not force us to pursue a career we don’t like just to pay the bills. Obviously, we neither have kids (yet) nor loans we have to pay off, so your situation might be different.

Now, what does Minimalism have to do with Keto?

In a way, the Ketogenic Diet, at least the way I like to follow it and share it with you, is minimalistic as well.
You remove all the empty calories from things like grains, starches and sugars and are able to focus on nutrient-dense, satisfying food instead – like vegetables, grass-fed meat, wild-caught fish, pastured eggs, high-quality fats and nuts & seeds. As a result, you naturally eat less food in volume, which then means you need less space to store it.Then, thanks to Keto’s effects on hunger, you can easily lower the number of meals you eat per day. Personally, I eat twice a day and it works fantastic for me. It gives you that extra layer of freedom from food, and if the situation calls for it, you can even do a fast and not eat at all for a certain period of time.

I personally love cooking. Most of all, I love recipes that taste awesome and require little work and only a few ingredients. The funny thing is, I barely ever enjoyed cooking before I started Keto 1,5 years ago. Once you realize the Ketogenic foods you enjoy the most, it’s also way easier to go shopping in my experience.

Like many other people, I’ve also had my own health problems in the past. Within a couple of weeks, thanks to Keto’s quite magical effects on lowering inflammation, the diet helped me get rid of my gastritis (inflammation of the gut lining) as well as constant shoulder and leg pain. It also helped me get rid of regular headaches I used to have and I haven’t been sick a single time since I started.

Not only that, but another nice side effect of Keto is that it makes you realize you do not need to work out that much (if at all) to lose weight or to stay ripped. Which again, gives you more time to pursue other things instead. I haven’t worked out more than once/week since August 2015 and I’ve never felt better.

In my opinion, just like Keto, Minimalism, whatever form that might take for you, is something worth considering for everyone. Especially in the world of excess that we live in today. That’s why I’m excited to share it with you. Here is a Youtube interview that really sparked our interest in pursuing a more Minimalist lifestyle. Maybe you’ll get as much out of it as we did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHg7y_mmgpI