Sunday, November 11, 2012 – 198.0 Blood glucose: 104
Boy, did I stink today. I have notice in the past that the beginning of ketosis can bring on an awesome funkiness. Is this a response to almost 200 grams of carbs the other day, the Halloween candy, or something else? This brought me to read a fascinating article on body odor in Wikipedia. Busy, though, so any investigation will need to wait. Same thing with what I ate today.
Monday, November 12, 2012 – 198.8 Blood Glucose: 91
Awesome blood glucose number for me. I wish I could keep it there or below that every day. Still in ketosis. The morning funkiness is lessened, however Monday was work and I forgot my Greek yogurt and subsisted on tuna and mayo as well as some roast beef and butter – the roast beef was past its’ prime, though – I think I’m throwing the rest away. I had plenty of cream as well. At home I made Whatever – to make whatever, you brown a pound of beef then throw in whatever you find in the fridge and hope for the best. I found an aging cauliflower heard, some homemade tomato sauce I cooked up in the summer that defrosted during Sandy and needed to be cooked up, and some mushrooms. Add some garlic puree the wife told me to use up and basil, oregano, some olive oil and 20 turns of the salt grinder. Let cook for a half hour and eat with a spoon from a bowl covered in Asiago cheese. It wasn’t half bad, actually, though not a ‘culinary delight’ by any means.
Calories: 2,156
Fat: 176g
Carbs: 34g
Net Carbs: 23g
Protein: 102g
Tuesday, November 13, 2012 – 198.0 Blood Glucose: 99
Weight slightly lower and the blood glucose slightly higher – maybe I can’t have both? Still in ketosis and the funkiness seems to have diminished.
I ate a lot today. I had 2 yogurt in work as well as a huge bowl (2 cups) of that ‘whatever’ I cooked up. I really enjoyed it – even when not covered in cheese – perhaps I should not be so quick to dismiss this random mixing of ingredients and make it again?
At home I laid waste to maybe 8 or 9 slices of american cheese with cherry tomatoes and mayonnaise, then took out 4 squares of the Lindt chocolate.
Last up was some of the kid’s McDonald’s fries – maybe 1/2 of a small serving. I also had a clementine.
Calories: 2,342
Fat: 170g
Carbs: 76g
Net Carbs: 58g
Protein: 121g
Wednesday, November 14, 2012 – 197.4 Blood Glucose: 102
Still in ketosis and the weight is down a bit – nice. Given how much I ate, it’s surprising until I remind myself that I frequently find that eating more calories can result in weight loss.
I also plugged my Fitbit into my computer for the first time in a while. The battery is too darn good – you just don’t have to charge it too often, and if you disconnect the base station, it can’t communicate back to the Fitbit website, nor the Loseit! website.
But now it could, and the Loseit! app sent me an ‘attaboy’ email calling me a ‘Exercise Idol’ and giving me a badge because I have exercised at last 3 times a week for 16 weeks.
The really great news in this is: I didn’t ‘exercise’ – I am just active enough in my daily life, with house, kids, work and life, that the FitBit measures enough activity to count as ‘exercise’. Isn’t that awesome? The Fitbit proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that even though I don’t formally exercise, I can’t be defined as ‘sedentary’. I’m a freakin’ ‘Exercise Idol’!
Eats for the day was 2 yogurt, a generous portion of cream in my coffee, and the last of the ‘whatever’ – the sort Italian-inspired concoction with ground beef, tomato sauce, mushrooms and cauliflower. I’ve quite enjoyed this goop – I might have to make more of this accidental agglomeration.
Dinner was maybe 1/2 cup of some aged raspberries, some ham wrapped around some Dubliner cheese and nuked for a few minutes, and pork rinds and salsa.
Thursday, November 15, 2012 – 198.6 Blood Glucose: 100
Ego depletion is when you are so exhausted or stressed that you lose all good judgement.
I was ego-depleted from work and came home hungry, but I had to rush out in 5 minutes to go to a parent-teacher conference. What to eat?
There was a fresh baguette just lying there on the table in front of me.
This is how all crimes of impulse occur. A tendency kept in check, meets opportunity along with ego depletion and the situation deteriorates. I imagined something of this sort occurred to General Petraeus.
My indiscretion was with a baguette and will NOT cause me to appear in front of a Senate Ethics committee, but it did escalate to include a bunch of other things that are decidedly NOT low carb. It’s a bit of a blur, but I seem to remember fragments including mashed potatoes, peanut butter M&Ms from the kid’s Halloween bag and some homemade rhubarb jam on a slice of bread.
When you look at a diet as a practice, some practices are better than others. This wasn’t one of the better ones, I assure you.
Lesson learned: endeavor to have ‘grab-and-go’ items at the ready for situations like this in the future. Atkins shakes might be a good choice. I prefer less processed fare, but it would have been the lesser of two evils here.
I won’t attempt a nutritional count because any number I put out would be so far off to be meaningless.
Friday, November 16, 2012 – 199.8 Blood Glucose: 133
This morning I thought of skipping the weigh-in. I didn’t want to know, but I made myself. I suspected it would be pretty awful, given what I had eaten the night before (I now recall a LOT of sliced pineapple), the fact that I did not have my ‘morning constitutional’ (Google the term if you’re not familiar with it), and I drank a pot of coffee just before the weigh-in. All of these thing did not portend a good number on the scale.
I turned it on with my toe, it beeped to let me know it was ready, I got on and when it’s little electronic brain had finished its task to its satisfaction, it beeped again to tell me how pleased it was with itself.
I was shocked at the number: 199.8. I have weighed myself before and after morning coffee before. Just that could cause a 1 pound gain.
Given the circumstances, while the weight is up a pound, I must have actually LOST weight doing this!
I still do feel a sense of failure though. Not because I failed, but because I failed to enjoy it more. It’s not that what I ate was ‘off-plan’, but it just wasn’t very good. If I am going to go off-plan, I should enjoy it more.
As to eats, I was busy at work and didn’t really have much of an appetite. Subsequently, I ended up eating only a Greek yogurt.
When I came home (with work I have to try to figure out over the weekend) my wife had bought bacon and sausages from the breakfast salad bar at the grocery store. I had some of that – the sausages with a little ketchup – and went to bed.
Calories: 1,032
Fat: 69g
Carbs: 14g
Net Carbs: 14g
Protein: 68g
Saturday, November 17, 2012 – 196.4 Blood Glucose: 96
Not bad numbers – considering that I had a little binge 2 days ago and this is the lowest weight of the week so far? Not bad. Blood glucose is second best. Not too shabby – not that I’d recommend the ‘high calorie junk day followed by too few calories day’ strategy as a planned course of action, but it is an interesting observation. I would imagine if we looked at calories over a weekly time span I have been running a little high. All the better that I am where I’m at – at my lowest this week but not in any way, shape, or form – starving myself.
I DO have to marvel at my prodigious coffee-drinking. I don’t mess with that decaffeinated crap – I drink coffee as God intended – full of wonderful, wonderful caffeine. But is it too much? Well, if ‘too’ much is defined as far to the right on the bell curve from what the average person drinks – yep – I get between 2-3 pots a day.
The interesting questions here, I think, are:
Does this do me any harm?
Does it have any impact on my weight – good or bad?
These will have to wait for another day, as I brought home some work to do over the weekend.
Being home, eats where bits here and there – some spam, some of the kid’s leftover fried eggs during the morning, pork rinds, some bacon, and butter in the afternoon, and lindt chocolate, a chicken breast Cacciatore-style (pasta sauce and grated parm cheese). I had cooked pasta for the kids and did have some of that – maybe a half cup.
Calories: 2,198
Fat: 159g
Carbs: 108g
Net Carbs: 96g
Protein: 96g
Sunday, November 18, 2012 – 198.0 Blood Glucose: 113
Not what I’d call a perfect week, but not a bad one either.
The practice continues…
Filed under: Atkins, cooking, diet, Eating Practice, Food, Food Monotony, general health, Goals, health, Hunger, Induction, iPhone, ketosis, Kitchen Experiments, low carb, Mindset, Personal Journal, pre-diabetes, prediabetes, recipe, Self-Experimentation, weight loss Tagged: | Food, garlic puree, greek yogurt, health, homemade tomato sauce
