Wednesday, March 12, 2014 – 4pm
I made a ‘wrap’ for lunch. I’ve always found it a big problem replacing the utility of something between 2 pieces of bread that you can eat on the run. My solution was to use romaine lettuce leaves as a ‘wrap’, fill with roast beef, cheese & Mayo, then wrap it in saran wrap so it looked like a cucumber.
This worked surprisingly well for dining ‘Al Desko’ (aka eating at your desk).
Not much in the way of a headache, but the keto cutover can be bumpy as energy levels go up and down – sort of like a car backfiring, or a car with a little water in the fuel line, there’s a certain inconsistency to how you feel which I could imagine would feel scary to one doing this for the first time.
I’ve been through it at least 100 times. It’s the normal abnormal. If I continue like this, the ups and downs will diminish as my body acclimates, and there’s usually an overall energy level boost after a few days to a few weeks. Despite the physical feeling, my minds feels clearer – and I am doing a lot of brainwork. The neurons are firing like they should even if the body is balking a bit at the moment.
So the big question that looms ahead – and the reason why I am trying to chronicle this a bit more closely is: just what is going to screw me up? As I’ve probably gone into ketosis 100 times, I also went OUT of ketosis 100 times – why? Unless the 100th time’s the charm, it will happen – and I’d like to catch clearly what causes this so I can hopefully avoid it. All the goodies still surround me in the house, the work stress is still here.
In the evening I ended up at a diner with my younger daughter and had 3 eggs, bacon and a sausage. I could have eaten more but I didn’t. Home late, I went to bed after getting my younger daughter ready for bed.
March 13, 2014 – 5:30am – 220.4
Given my diet and the second day of ketosis, the one pound loss is probably indicative that I’ve lost all the water weight and the water that I’m carrying now isn’t due to carbs. Your body simply does not lose fat that quick – it is physically impossible without liposuction. It’s probably fair to say that any loss from here will be mostly fat. Studies can be found that show low carbers are less likely to lose muscle during weight loss than people on other diets. Don’t know if it’s true, nor do I know if that applies to my unique biochemistry.
That’s the problem I have with much nutrition science: it makes generalities that only *might* be true, and if true, might not apply to me because I am not a generality.
If some of you are thinking: if I did what this schmuck did, would I lose close to 9 pounds in 3 days? I have no clue.
All I know is that what I am doing has caused this weight loss. Past experience shows it will continue to slow. It will certainly stop if I eat any significant amount of carbs or start eating stuff like low carb bread and Atkins bars. I will gain if I go to The Cheesecake Factory and order a bowl of pasta.
I will make another one of my lettuce-leaf roast beef and cheese wraps and see how today goes – again watching for: what circuit do I trip that makes me screw up and cheat? If I was talking to you in person, you might try to encourage me: “Aw, don’t think like that – you’re doing fine!”. But this isn’t about positive thinking or negative thinking – it is an honest experiment in trying to identify the series of events that cause me to lose my groove – not because I want to fail, but because I want to pay close attention to how and why I fail when it happens so I can have something to work with and not give myself a vague and useless answer like: I was tired.
Everybody gets tired. If it is ‘tired’ for example, I want to be able to drill into that experience to see the exact mechanism, take it apart, and clearly note the sequence of events and feelings that led to it in the hopes that knowing more will give me clues on how to stop it from happening again – or at least lessening the time between restarts.
I feel OK. Despite the stress of work and the usual stress of an overbooked modern life, I am eating to plan, don’t particularly have cravings that drive me crazy, and am not hungry. Mind is clear, and I will go into work with a very complicated set of tasks that I know need to be done and will probably do them pretty efficiently. My mood is certainly not ‘blissed-out grinning idiot’ – I’m at turns mentally fatigued, anxious, rushing, and trying to solve puzzles with a deadline, yet the emotions I feel about these things don’t feel as extreme as a few days ago where I felt almost as if I was suffering an existential crisis.
Let’s see how *this* day goes.
Low Carb Confidential 
I find I lose control when I just don’t want to MAKE another “routine low carb thing” A pity party. I want to be like everyone else. Now, if I have plenty of LC food in the fridge-already cooked just waiting to be eaten–then all is well. Last time I lost this battle is was due to one tiny thing. Instead of eating my peanut butter off a spoon I bought crackers with tons of seeds in them and starting having one every other snack (then two and then three) crackers topped with peanut butter when ever I was bored, sad, tired, or angry at work. Soon enough, I had a few potato chips, then a cookie (there is food around at work all day, everyday) and I was off the wagon. I had stopped packing a lunch–thinking the crackers were at work–so it was okay.
Right now I am eating a handful of cashews rather than make a salad.
Is it the ‘What the hell effect’?
http://www.kirklandsciencelabs.com/info/what_is_the_what_the_hell_effect
Perhaps low carbers are more susceptible to this because we restrict certain foods as opposed to portion contol where you can eat anything – just in small amounts.
Calorie-restriction diets allow you to have tiny portions of the food to love to torture you; low carb diets forbid a lot of foods you love to torture you.
Diets – any diet – suck, most assuredly. I do find the torture of low carb less torturous, but it’s because I *do cheat* on occasion – and gain weight – then take it off. Portion control with high carbs left me suffering *all the time*.