So I was 275.8 and went to 273.6. Big deal.

I can say I did feel a might bit better in the AM. I know full well I feel better on a low carb diet and just a day proves it.

I have vacation time and took a day before I lose it to catch up on a few things around the house. Of course, the opportunity of being in the house by myself – with Halloween candy still by the front door – added some challenge.

I had a few slices of the mortadella wrapped around a few tablespoons of cream cheese as a late breakfast. and 2 hamburgers with melted cheese and Tabasco sauce as dinner.

I tried to avoid work – it should be able to get along without me for a day – but I saw something appear on my calendar – and it looks like a meeting at a client. This sucks. I don’t travel well – and I don’t believe I have any decent clothes that fit.

Later in the evening I sat with a drink and had the most profound sense of despair descend upon me. Where did this come from? It felt as if everything wrong with my life, all the tasks I needed to get to, all the shortcomings that humans have and need to deal with about themselves on a daily basis suddenly appeared together to torment me.

That’s not me – usually. I’m more accepting of the imperfections of life and myself.

I chalked it up to lack of carbs. Carbs mess with your brain – as do the lack of carbs. My brain was reacting to a different diet and this explained why the exact life I had a day before and was sanguine about now seemed unbearable.

My drink – another vodka – seemed unbearable as well – I tossed it, unfinished. I followed it up with a psyllium in water chaser.

Hungry before bed but still not completely having my footing yet with low carb eating, I found some frozen roasted cauliflower in the freezer. I nuked that and ate it. It was just roasted cauliflower but the roasting made it flavorful enough to stand on its own.

I went to bed but had indigestion – I think the large glass of water with psyllium was the culprit. I had a few Tums, noting that from the moment I started my diet my need for them plummeted.

So I decided to start – yet again – with an old standby: butter – lots of it – wrapped in roast beef. I made 4 or 5 of these tiny little wraps, wrapped them in foil, and brought to work. In my experience there is nothing like butter to accelerate ketosis.

I remember the other side – a place where carb cravings lessen, where hunger is not so persistent, where a sort of calm descends.

The problem is getting there. As I’ve written on before, the body’s conversion from burning carbs to burning fat can be a rocky one. I’ve done it more times than I can remember but I always feel the physical effects: headache, dizziness, at least. Also – while you’re actually in the midst of the conversion you still have full-on carb cravings – worse because if you have put little effort into curbing carbs prior (raises hand) – you are going to notice.

I started the day with coffee with Atkins Shake as creamer, then had one of my mini wraps as breakfast when I got into work. It tasted OK. I must admit part of my difficulty in restarting my diet has been perhaps a tiredness as to my food choices. Why have just a burger when a burger on a toasted bun is so much better?

As the morning progressed I found the need to ask a colleague a question and – somehow – the conversation turned to diet.

I told this person I had started a diet – and told them my goal was to eat a stick of butter today to get ketosis going.

I got ‘that look’. Very used to it – I expect it. The larger issue is: I owned up to being on a diet. I’m on the hook. It was unintentional, but now I have some social pressure to keep me honest.

Late morning I had 2 big tablespoons of psyllium husk in a large glass of water – horrible stuff unflavored and not ground fine – but I am very used to it. That was about as far as my plan extended – I really had nothing after that, which wasn’t good.

I eventually took a ride to the fancy supermarket down the road and got mortadella and cream cheese. No carbs to be found – and both are on a shortlist of what I’d call the ‘Protein/Fat Inversion’. Most foods – even most fatty foods have more protein than fat – but not these two – both of these have more grams of fat than protein per serving.

The deli guy gave me 2 slices of mortadella as I waited – I guess that’s lunch. I really should eat more like that. Small, high-fat, high-calorie portions that aren’t really all that high calorie in the end because you’re not eating that much.

While mortadella is not exactly a health food, I just need to keep the fat up to get over the carb withdrawal hump. Eating things I like will ease the cutover – then I might be able to apply some discipline and eat less processed fare overall.

(I’m beginning to touch on some of the psychological aspects of food that usually derail me but I’ll avoid a discussion on that now.)

I also ‘cracked open’ my copy of ‘The Fat Fast Cookbook‘ – a mercifully short to-the-point book on basically eating 90% of your calories as fat to jumpstart a low carb diet, with a bunch of recipe ideas. It’s a Kindle book and so it’s always handy as long as at least I have my mobile phone with me.

I had an afternoon coffee and discovered – damn! – they DID use my picture! 

Well, I have proven talented at using a mirror without looking at myself in the mirror. There’s a difference. I’ll have to do the same with this.

Evening was so-so. Got a pizza for the family and had a slice. Also had some vodka.

All in all – it could have been worse.

God am I ugly.

I’m married, in my 50s, and don’t need to get through life on my looks – but man!

I had my picture taken for professional purposes and it is awful. I almost can’t bear to look at it.

Apparently – neither can others. It was going to be used as part of a group of photos representing a team I am on, but it appears that my assessment of the photo – and my visage – is objectively correct: I’ve been dropped from the group and my photo is missing.

I’m quite happy about this. I have never been photogenic. I’m lucky if a good picture gets taken. I tend to freeze up when a camera is pointed at me, and my ‘photo smile’ makes me look like a half-wit.

The pictures capture this perfectly. Artfully taken by a professional, they capture all the reasons why a camera should never be pointed at me.

Now – you can’t cure ugly, but the ugly is made worse by the fat. I’ve had some success at addressing the fat issue before – and this photo might be that tipping point that leads me away from the Land of Fun Starches back to the Land of Low Carb Reason – a place I know exists. I’ve been there before. I’ve lived there. It was OK. No – I didn’t eat White Castle hamburgers there, but I did eat, didn’t starve, lost weight and felt better.

And I didn’t look like Jabba the Hut on a bad hair day.