How did you stick with it though? I can do the diet, but find it hard to do with social stuff. For me, doing keto was quite a lonely thing.
Eating out, most cuisines you can adapt. Nowhere serves a keto pizza, for example, but even stuff like Indian, there's a buffet where if you avoid the rice and legume-based stuff and stick to meats and veg, you're in good shape.
Eating at friends' places is the one tricky thing, but these days people are pretty cool with it if you decline food based on a dietary restriction.
Giving up snacks or junky foods like breakfast cereal is the hardest for me, but there's a great keto porridge recipe I like -- add a handful of berries and it's still 2-3 grams carbs but filling and good.
Longest I stuck with it so far was 6 months, for accelerated weight loss, and now I prefer a lower-carb diet but am no longer strict about keto stuff.
Best outcome was breaking my relationship to food -- like it rewired the part of my brain that was all "satiate your hunger with sugary junk" to where I can satisfy hunger cravings with a handful of nuts, or even a hot tea with cream. That seems to be permanent so far.
Those things have been harder than retraining myself not to eat when watching TV in the evenings.
I purposefully broke keto once (for my birthday). I had Pho and some cake. It was deliberate and delicious, and the next day I felt like complete garbage. That also helps motivate me as I like feeling good :)
"Being in ketosis" is hard to track; the urine test strips are helpful but not always accurate. Someone came up with a breath analyzer at some point but I lost track of the project.
Some recent stuff has shown that a 24-36hr fast can "kick start" ketosis as well; anecdotally it seems to work for me, but again I have to kind of go by feel. (Or if I note that I suddenly drop the 3-5 lbs of water weight that came on when out of ketosis.)
I don't track myself being in ketosis on a daily basis, but I can definitely tell if I go over based on how I feel.
Definitely up the fat, especially cause grilled chicken won't be particularly fatty itself...