Category: Diet Fail 2019

Diet Fail 2019 – Day 10: I Failed as Expected – But Look at This Yogurt!

OK – everybody’s got ‘stuff’ they have to deal with. If you want to avoid this:

  1. Don’t love of care about anyone
  2. Sell all your possessions
  3. Move out of your house / condo / apartment
  4. Live on a mountaintop

Or be this guy. He’s probably worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He’s (as far as I know at present) homeless, has one bag of possessions, and sleeps on friend’s couches.

Like Thoreau, it’s kinda not real. Thoreau also talked about living a simple life, but as I understand it, Walden was not far from his perhaps not rich but comfortable family’s home (they made pencils, if I recall correctly). At any time, he could have called it quits and gone back to the Real World. Same as the guy above. At any time he can give up his minimalism, buy a mansion and a yacht, and be done with his couch surfing.

Most of us don’t have this luxury.

We’ve built lives step-by-step and for most of us, riches do not appear. People came into our lives and we allowed ourselves to love them, though love almost always leads to heartbreak in some form. For some of us our love created new people who will always break our hearts as they grow up and grow away as they must to become their own persons. The great psychoanalyst Erich Fromm said that a child’s love is the most tragic as it must always fade or the child becomes a cripple of sorts – a Norman Bates. It does not mean they stop loving their parents, but that golden time where Mom and Dad were their entire world must pass as they grow and we are revealed as human and fallible.

We invested our time in careers and the money that came from that work into possessions, experiences, and investments. Most of the possessions seem of much less value after owning them than before. The experiences fade from memory and become a series of photos that form some narrative that provides glimpses of the truth – or just provide an image from the past with no memory at all. Our investments are a hope for our future but can disappear in an instant as the future holds no certainties for those of us that inhabit the middle class.

So I failed because ‘reasons’. I haven’t given up, I’ve just had a setback. I’m not going anywhere – I’ve been here – failing – since 2007.

But let me tell you about my latest batch of yogurt!

It was done today and – wow – what a beautiful batch! People who make this yogurt often complain about it being watery. Take a look at this pic:

This is how thick the yogurt comes out

My aged yogurt used as the starter after more than a dozen batches still got the goods and made a fine, beautiful batch.

Now, when I get back on my diet, it’s waiting.

Diet Fail 2019 – Day 7: I’ve Reached the City Limits

My day started at 6am when I made coffee for the missus and I. Of course I had cream. I weighed myself but don’t remember the number. It was lower than when I started but nothing impressive enough to note. As it was a workday, I worked. I drank about a pot of coffee with cream and only ate around 5pm. I seem to have fallen into a One Meal A Day (OMAD) pattern unintentionally. Some people do this intentionally, some think it’s crazy.

Actually, it’s crazy to see the different keto communities fiercely sweat the details while anyone from the outside world think we’re ALL crazy. I spent some time on the Facebook keto groups and their differences were staggering – at least to me. Dirty keto vs. clean keto. Fat bombs are the dope vs. fat bombs are *for* dopes. 16:8 fasts vs. 20:4 fasts vs. fasting for a week – or a month. I had to give them up as – and you gotta admit it – us keto people can be grumpy at times. Getting all those grumpy newbies asking the *same* questions over and over to the grumpy admins pretty much made me wonder why I was there.

Add to that the fact that some of these groups were about as laid back as Catholic School Nuns. That’s not to say that there were some groups that were pretty chill, but on the whole, I thought I could do better elsewhere if I’m looking for information.

I gave all that up some time ago.

Anywho, by the end of work I was in a sour mood. I ate roast beef and butter, and 2 hot dogs on a slice of goat cheese.

That gave me the following breakdown:

Calories: 1199
Protein: 41 grams
Net Carbs: 4 grams
Fat: 114 grams

Unusual for me, after eating I felt the urge to finish up some unwashed dishes, scrub stains out of the sink, take out the garbage, then put the cans out at the curb – and even prep the coffee maker for tomorrow. I suppose you could say that I am exhibiting the signs of increased energy even though I don’t feel energetic at all.

Oh yeah – checked my ketones at 7pm and they were 2.3. Above 2 is high for me. I do start to feel an extra-level sort of weirdness at this level. In my estimation it is akin to taking a powerful drug.

This was a day spectacularly mundane – one of those days where you show up – ‘punch the clock’ – do what you gotta do – and finis. I’m pointed in the right direction, I’m making progress, but the road is long and monotonous. Now it is less willpower than perseverance. I’m in the groove, now I just have to show up every day. I might futz with different recipes, meal timing, maybe even (gasp!) exercise, but the real work is walking this road seemingly with nothing ahead but a long stripe of blacktop that leads to a distant horizon. I think I know where it leads, but it takes a long time and each day your progress teases you as the distance of the horizon never seems to become more near.

I’ve reached the city limits – I got out. Now the road is monotonous. It must be. That’s how roads that take you to distant places work.