About John
Hutmacher

We didn’t start fat but look at us now…

How did this happen? I won “Best Body” in high school and here I am in November of 2016 (bottom left). Six months later I took the second picture you see below.
Like many of you, I’ve struggled since high school to keep the weight off. Especially after the birth of my first child, I had a really hard time. Starting when I was around twenty-nine, my exercise routine dropped off, I began eating whatever was around the house, and my lifestyle became very sedentary. My entire thirties, my weight bounced between 210 and 230 pounds, with 230 being the high point. I would make attempts to get back into shape and drop the pounds. Just like all of us, I knew the classical weight loss formula: working out more and eating less. I would get up at 4:30 a.m. and lift weights and walk for an hour. I would restrict my diet to a thousand calories a day. I have always had a lot of discipline, and I worked very hard at getting my body back to what it had been. The problem was, I wasn’t losing any weight.

Was I destined to be fat forever?

One day I was walking on the treadmill (per usual) watching CNBC. An interview came on with entrepreneur and author, Tim Ferriss. Most of the interview was about his business strategies, but I was fascinated by the lifestyle stuff he kept talking about. Intermittent fasting, burning calories from the fat your body already has. Totally new ways of thinking about how our body uses and stores energy. I immediately bought Ferriss’ book, Tools of Titans, where – among many other topics - he talked about fasting as a way to heal the body. He described what he learned from nutrition expert, Doctor Dom (Dr. Dominic D’Agostino): on a three-day fast you eventually enter a metabolic state or “fat burning mode” called ketosis. You lose weight not because of calorie restriction, but because of this different metabolic state you had triggered in your body.

He explained that we have two metabolic states: sugar burning mode and fat burning mode. Because of our modern diet, most of us exist in sugar burning mode. But, after just two days of not eating, you switch fuel sources and start burning fat instead.

So did you just have to not eat forever? How was this different than starving yourself? The next part blew my mind. Dr. Dom had a way to stay in fat burning mode once he started eating again. If we continue eating a certain way, we can stay in this fat burning mode, known as ketosis, indefinitely. “What?” I thought. I had to know more, so I jumped on the web and found my way to www.dietdoctor.com where I learned as much as I could about the Ketogenic Diet. I bought the necessary materials and began my own keto journey.

That was February of 2017. I started on this new diet, or really, this new lifestyle. I weighed 220 pounds. Six months later, I was in the best shape of my life. Truly. I was 16% body fat, a number I hadn’t been close to in years. My weight still fluctuated, but at its lowest I was at 173 pounds, just two pounds more than my high school senior year wrestling weight of 171 pounds. I was back to a 28-inch waistline.

But that doesn’t begin to tell the whole story. Eating a keto diet isn’t just about losing weight, it’s about improving your health overall.

How it worked. All the science behind it.

So, I spent hours reading books, tracking down studies, and watching endless hours of YouTube videos of doctors, scientists, and dieticians discussing ketosis. I synthesized everything I learned and implemented my take on the keto diet. Even after my initial positive results, I continued to be curious about how to refine my process. I became my own guinea pig.

All the supplements, blood test kits, and two-week plans – I’ve tried them. I have used every blood meter, lengthened my fasting to more than a week, gone on cruises and stuffed my face and then experimented with how quickly the weight comes off when I go back on my diet. The stuff that worked went in a Word doc called “Coaching.” The document quickly became a sprawling mess as I delved deeper and deeper into the nuances of ketosis. In addition, I had extra pages of detailed notes and years of spreadsheets tracking my own daily body stats.

When people saw the results I had gotten, they became curious about the ketogenic diet. This “Coaching” document was what I sent them to help get them started. While there were plenty of existing excellent resources to share with them, most people wouldn’t get past the introductions of my favorite books. They just wanted the nitty-gritty: what is ketosis, how does it work, and how do I get going? You’ve heard all the hype about ketosis. Maybe you’ve even done a little research but immediately got overwhelmed by the amount of information out there. It’s hard to tell what’s real, what’s useful, and how deep you need to go. 

This is the book that breaks it all down for you. You can read Keto Coach in one sitting and have all the tools to get started on your own keto journey. 

There’s enough science in here so you know why this the diet is working, but not so much that you need to read around it in order to effectively implement the diet.

Later chapters in the book will address more advanced topics in ketosis, for example, how to manage ketosis for bodybuilding or how female hormones influence weight loss cycles, even in ketosis. Most importantly, I will introduce in depth intermittent fasting, one of the most powerful tools in my nutritional toolkit.

Finally, in the back of the book, you will find reference guides for grocery shopping, recipes, workouts, and more.

Every day I meet people that aren’t living the life they want because of the extra weight they are carrying as well as the diseases and conditions they have been diagnosed caused by our modern diet. I was there with you, pre-diabetic, with no energy to play with my children or get out and enjoy life. Constantly trying different diets and workout routines with no real progress being made. But, with the powerful tools contained in this book, I know you will have results. You will have more energy and be enjoying life more fully soon.

Jump in with me and give it a try.