Fat, Dumb, & Happy Day 10 – Carb Ennui

March 19, 2014 – 221.2

Down 2 pounds. Still in ketosis. Drank wine and ate chocolate – but no peppers and tomatoes. Maybe it’s a fair trade.

Another interesting tidbit: my blood glucose went from 132 to 95 without meds (I keep forgetting to take them).

Let’s think about this one for a second.  I’ve been in ketosis every day since day 2. That means the total amount of carbs is so low that my body must convert fat into ketones as fuel. Despite this pretty low level of carbs, my blood glucose spiked to 132. It usually stays in the 110s, so 132 is high. This was not only after my nightshade soup, but also after a day where I had ketchup, mustard, raw milk cheese, and Lindt dark chocolate.

Then yesterday I have only roast beef, cheese, cream, Lindt dark chocolate – and wine.

And the number – without medication – plunges nearly 30 points to high-normal – what I was a decade ago.

A quick search on the Internet came up with this headline:  “Compounds found in chocolate, red wine may lower Type 2 diabetes risk”.

(http://www.cbsnews.com/news/compounds-found-in-chocolate-red-wine-may-lower-type-2-diabetes-risk/)

OK – I’m still suspicious of nutrition studies – especially ones from a major news outlet, condensed and twisted to get more pageviews. But what if instead of using this sort of thing to make decisions on what to do, you notice an effect from your own experimentation and find information that seems to explain the phenomenon?

Does a glass of red wine and 4 squares of Lindt dark chocolate before bed control my glucose levels? Or was this a fluke of some sort?

This sounds like a fun experiment, doesn’t it?

It would look something like this: continue to eat ketogenic low carb as I am, avoiding the nightshade family of vegetables, then in the evening have 1 or 2 glasses of wine and the dark chocolate. Track fasting blood glucose and see what happens.

I am not going to try to back this up with research to solidify my position or try to ‘prove’ anything from the current body of science. Instead, I’m going to try to prove it on my own body.

4pm

Stuck in meetings, I didn’t get a chance to eat until a short while ago, so I’ve been fasting since having some cream around 5am. When I went to the kitchen at work there were leftover sandwiches from some guests who came in and had a working lunch. I had a roast beef and cheese sandwich and a ham and cheese sandwich – throwing away the bread and tomato and hoping no one would come in and see me. I also had the tuna salad off another half sandwich as well as a dozen black olives.

7:30pm

I’m really tired, but I’m going to chalk this one up to work-stress. A lot of brainwork and a major launch next week where I’m a big part of the success or failure could mean I might be ‘free to pursue new opportunities’ Really Soon.

OK – maybe hyperbole. But it is a project that could get people fired if things go very wrong. I am lucky to have worked with a bunch of very smart and very hard-working, decent folks and we’ve tried to think of every little detail, but right now I keep running through all the details trying to uncover just one more thing to check, one more thing to test. It’s like a program running constantly in the background. Whether I am consciously thinking about it or not – I’m thinking about it. Brushing my teeth, I come up with things to add to my checklist. While driving I tell Siri – the somewhat intelligent voice-controlled feature on my iPhone – to remind me to check X and double-check Y.

I’m – ahem – *experimenting* with the wine and chocolate to control blood glucose – but ran out of the damn test strips! No fear – I can still perform the wine & chocolate part until I get more strips – science marches on.

As to ketosis, it’s beginning to feel as boring as being a weatherman in Arizona. Today, dry and sunny. tomorrow, dry and sunny. Morning – in ketosis. This evening – in ketosis. Yesterday – ketosis. The day before: ketosis.

How about from this point on I just report if I’m NOT in ketosis.

As mentioned, non-events are hard to notice because they don’t exist. Non-events, however, can be just as important as events.

The sun did not blow up today – that’s pretty important – I have that project to launch.

The non-event was at my late lunch with the sandwiches. I only noticed it hours later: as I stripped each sandwich of it’s bread and threw it in the trash, I didn’t care. I didn’t even see the bread as food – it was merely a container that held the meat and cheese I wanted. The thought of eating it was as foreign to me at the time as considering eating the sandwich bag a sandwich came in.

I’m beginning to notice the same with the goodies around the house. The apple pie doesn’t call to me, nor all the other various and sundry items in the house. Aside from the suspected solanine-induced grazing the other day, I’m just not pining for carbs in general and my favorite carbs – bread – in specific.

Even writing this caused me to fantasize about a fresh, hot baguette – but the fantasy wasn’t all that compelling. It might be described as ‘carb ennui’.

I hold no illusions that this will continue forever, but I’ll take what I can get in the moment.

Evening eats were the last of the Kerry Gold Irish swiss cheese wrapped in a few small grass-fed burgers and a few eggs and cheese.

Both I had with ketchup.

Remember that the ‘toxin is in the dose’? I’m hoping my suspected sensitivity to nightshades was because I simply ate too much of the stuff and a small amount of ketchup – a few tablespoons – might not cause the same effect.

It didn’t. Again, this is all speculative at this point, but the ketchup didn’t start the same cascade of hunger like I had the sunday night and Monday afternoon after having the soup.

Nor did the wine and chocolate.

Before bed I had a big glass of almond milk and then slept fine.