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Father’s Day 2021

Just a quick update for Father’s day. The scale told me was down 6 lbs. in 3 days. My ketone meter says my ketones were up to 1.8 mmol/L – which is def in ketosis. My blood glucose was 98 in the afternoon. My older daughter, out of college and in her first real job, bought me a pair of Airpods Pro wireless earbuds and cooked me an Italian Chili Father’s Day meal. All of this made for a nice day.

As to what I ate: I had coffee and cream, of course, then mid afternoon I had some leftover stir fry without the rice. I gorged on a lot of celery spotted with beef as well as ground pork and Winter Melon. I did not count nor attempt to weigh – which admittedly caused me some anxiety.

Father’s Day dinner was a bowl of the aforementioned Italian Chili, accompanied with grated cheese and Ricotta cheese. It was mostly ground beef with an onion, garlic, mushrooms, frozen red peppers, olive slices, and some Rao’s Pasta Sauce. I not only enjoyded it, but my entire family did as well. They ate it with bread, which I skipped.

I had taken a nap in the afternoon as the first wave of ketone effects leave you tired physically but more mentally alert. I woke and despite my better judgement had a half cup of coffee. While I enjoyed it, it kept me awake well past 1am. Before finally conking out, I had a hankering for some bologna and cheese so had maybe 3 or 4 slices of bologna on a slice of cheese as my well-past-bedtime snack.

Is it a diet or an eating disorder?

Not me but a kindred soul

My start date for this try was June 17, 2020. I’ve been pretty strict to the point that it might resemble an eating disorder if I didn’t have the science-y terms ‘Intermittant Fasting’ and ‘Autophagy’ to comfort me that I am doing the right thing.

I suppose that ‘disordered eating’ is in the eye of the beholder. There are so many different diets to choose from that someone is bound to frown upon the eating habits of most people – especially those of us with excess adipose tissue who comprise nearly the only group left where it is mostly ok to be prejudiced against. I mean, why don’t we just put the fucking fork down, get up from the table, and go for a run? Huh?

If there is a Hell, there is a special ring for the people who say that. It is filled with healthy, portion-controlled food. Every time they take a bite they gain 20 pounds, their pants don’t fit, and slim people question their character while eating fast-food burgers and fries and sucking up choclate shakes.

The day I started this I had cream in my multiple coffees, a cheese sandwich with lettuce and mayo as well as some ‘keto granola’ that someone bought prior to the scale weighing that prompted me to start. I ate nothing the remainder of the day. The remainder of the day was seltzer with added MiO ‘flavor enhancer’. (Note to MiO company: water has no ‘flavor’ – it’s kind of the zero-point for determining flavor. Maybe you should calll it ‘flavor creator’.)

Where was I? Oh – so my stats for the day were:

06/17/2021 – Calories: 1400 / Protein: 41g / Net Carbs: 42 / Fat: 121

Disordered eating? If you believe in 3 squares a day – yeah. Calorically I’m a little low but not in the ‘disorder’ range for one day (under 1000 every day would strike me as disordered for me), the protein is low, and while the carbs are high for a keto diet, a lot of people would consider this ‘low but ok’.

Yesterday however was a different matter. I had gone over 24 hours before eating 2 cans of tuna with mayo – and other than my coffe and cream, that was it. I wasn’t particularly hungry and was feeling the onslaught of ketones which might have helped to suppress appetite.

06/18/2021 – Calories: 1000 / Protein: 82g / Net Carbs: 2 / Fat: 76

That’s a little disordered in my book for me. YMMV. The calories and protein too low but the fat is right about perfect and the carbs – well, anything under 20 is ok in my book.

Then there’s today. I’m feelin’ it. What they used to call ‘The Atkins Flu’. Your sodium goes out of whack and you get headaches and feel sick. My gut has also noticed the change in volume and macronutrient proportions and I woke up with stomach pain that I soothed with a few tablespoons of plain yogurt, 2 cheese sticks, and a little pasta sauce for dipping. This made the top part of my alimentary canal feel better but the lower part was preparing for fireworks.

This always happens. I have never entered ketosis without a sudden purging bout of ‘the trots’. Ketosis is a big change – you are literally changing the fuel your entire body runs on – so I don’t get too concerned over this as long as a bathroom is handy.

My excuse for eating somewhat disordered is that I started without a plan and didn’t have the foods in the house I usually would have if I had planned this out. If I did, I might have eaten closer to the macros I’m tracking for (or maybe not).

At 5am I put in an order for food from my local grocery store to be delivered later in the morning. Reflecting on this purchase, I’m not sure I made the best choices:

  • 2 lbs. ground beef
  • frozen sliced peppers
  • sliced olives
  • Ricotta cheese
  • Shredded mozzarella
  • pickles
  • American cheese
  • Bologna
  • Lindt 78% Dark Chocolate
  • Romaine lettuce

I planned to make an ‘Italian Chili‘ of sorts by browning the beef, adding some garlic, pasta sauce, the peppers, and olives to make an Italian-inspired keto dish I can put mozzarella and ricotta on.

American cheese is a necessity in my life. I don’t buy the processed stuff (which isn’t cheese) and find it works ok in moderation. Cheese is like that. Atkins said no more than 4 ounces per day. He’s been dead for nearly 20 years and I think that’s still good advice.

The bologna *could* be problematic. Being a Boomer, I have a warm spot for this Depression-era mystery meat that has lost its popularity. If I can moderate my consumption I should be ok. We’ll see.

Took the kid out for an errand and felt a bit woozy but I survived. Started to get hungry about 5pm and I had an Atkins Shake – freshly arrived from Walmart and on my porch this morning. I drank a tanker’s-worth of this stuff in the early 2000s and thought I’d give it another go.

I was still hungry after that and I had some romaine lettuce leaves with Ken’s Steakhouse Ranch Dressing. A number of Ken’s sald dressings are very low carb and were a staple on my first go-round. I also had a Claussen pickle half.

Not too long after I had another ketogenic ‘poopsplosion’. Like a thunderstorm it moved in quickly, produced great violence, then quickly passed – leaving only menacing rumbles that faded away.

I seemed fine after that – and still hungry. That bologna called to me. Problematic, enigmatic – the taste of being a kid again, my Mom giving me a sandwich at lunch (That’s a lie, actually. I have no recollection of eating the stuff as a kid but bologna has always seemed part of my life. It never made a memory unlike my Mom boiling hot dogs for my lunch or making me pastina – a grain-like Italian pasta in the shape of tick-sized little stars – drenched in melted butter. Home for lunch, I would eat that stuff – or a grilled cheese or Campbell’s Tomato Soup with Premium Crackers or some other kid-friendly stuff I don’t remember – and watch the terrible cartoon ‘Corageous Cat and Minute Mouse‘ because there were only 7 channels in those days.)

Where was I – oh – I’m writing about keto on a diet blog in 2021. Us Boomers and our digressions, eh? Transported to 1968 and back in a flash. Time travel is real, kids.

ANYWAY – I entered the bologna in my Cronometer app and found I could have about 3 ounces of this false-memory-producing food. I weighed out 3 ounces and ate each slice with great pleasure, actually.

An interesting observation that isn’t about cartoons or false memories is once finished I ran upstairs and noticed a non-event: I wasn’t that winded.

Huh? Like – ok – I’m close to 300 lbs. and don’t exercise – I expect to be winded, and when I dash down the staris for some coffee before a meeting, when I’m back at my desk I’m winded. But not so much this time.

The ketosis perhaps? The poops, the headache, the mild wooziness, and the overall reduction in heartburn were expected. I was not expecting any impact on how winded I might be.

Maybe a fluke. I’ll have to see if it’a a pattern – can carbs make you winded? We’ll see.

My macros for 06/19/2021 – Calories: 1051 / Protein: 38g / Net Carbs: 23 / Fat: 89. Calories too low, protein too low, carbs ok, fat ok. I didn’t prepare for this at all and it shows – hopefully I can dial in these macros a little better in the coming days. I hope to cook my first batch of low carb food in a long time tomorrow – maybe that will help.

I decided the evening would be just seltzer with MiO. I was having the Strawberry/Watermelon flavor, which I’m OK with. It actually tastes like neither – and that’s the point: if they created a ‘Strawberry’ or a ‘Watermelon’ flavor on its own it wouldn’t taste like the real deal so market them as a blend and nobody will complain that they don’t taste like what they’re supposed to taste like.

Anyway. That’s that for that – this is my last post forever. Or maybe not. If I had an evolved sense of shame I would definately stop.

Announcing the CTFO Diet

This is kinda sorta day 2. I had some bread at noon yesterday then ate nothing until 4pm on 6/18. That made my weight descend enough to put me at 299.6 lbs. I never thought I’d be happy t see that number on my scale – but here we are.

While I had coffee and cream prior I broke the fast with 2 cans of Wild Planet Tuna and 4 tablespoons of mayonnaise. I feel weird and have a headache, and just for fun I tried testing my ketones – expecting them to be at zero.

They were at 1.3.

Now my body has been in and out of ketosis so many times it probably is used to it. So instead of struggling against giving up that sweet, sweet glucose-fueled lifestyle, it just sighed: ‘Here we go again.’ and cranked up the generator for ketones right away.

Those of you not professional stunt dieters would probably never experience such a quick transition to ketosis.

So anywho, I’m slowly making decisions about what form this diet attempt will take. Perhaps an umbrella rule for all that follow is:

I will not practice orthorexia

The definition that pops up at the top of Goole search defines this as: Orthorexia is an unhealthy focus on eating in a healthy way. Eating nutritious food is good, but if you have orthorexia, you obsess about it to a degree that can damage your overall well-being. Steven Bratman, MD, a California doctor, coined the term in 1996.

I’ve found that being too perfect can be dangerous to the longevity of my diet, so I am going to Chill The Fuck Out (CTFO) and not think thoughts like:

Is that egg organic?

Is that beef grass-fed?

Does that diet soda have aspartame in it?

Should I have spinach since it has oxalates?

Should I eat eggplant as it contains goitrogens?

Should I avoid chicken because it has arachidonic acid?

Should I avoid sucralose because it might disrupt my gut biome?

Should I eat 2 cans of tuna at the same time because of methylmercury contamination?

Should I avoid all omega-6 seed oils to minimize inflammation?

My answer to each of these questions is: I’m not going to worry about these things now! I’m going to CTFO and not indulge in hand-wringing over the type of thinking above. I didn’t worry about this sort of stuff when I first lost 80 lbs. on Atkins. These were nutritional barnacles that adhered to my thinking as I read and researched.

And maybe like barnacles they slow me down.

Maybe they’re not that important now. Maybe if I CTFO and just focus on doing keto like I did Atkins in 2003 I’d be better off.

Please note that each item in that list is worth considering – many I have blathered on about on this mess of a blog – but taking these and many other…let’s call them ‘micro-considerations’ – and set them aside for the time being. The stuff I see myself eating will be better than what I was eating – and it’s not like I’m going on a fat-bomb laden caloric-extreme lazt/dirty keto trip. It might resemble lazy/dirty keto a bit, but have more structure. I’ll do my best to keep an eye on calories and look for a window between 1400 and 1800 per day. I’ll *try* to keep my protein around 100 grams. i’ll *try* to keep my carbs under 20 grams per day.

I can always add these food restrictions – or fears – or beliefs – back in at a time in the future when I’ve lost enough weight to want to fine-tune my diet for better health – or Orthorexia Nervosa – whichever it is.

Boy. Am. I. Fat.

I am SO glad no one visits this dump anymore. Blogs are so early 2000s – nobody really wants to read long-form stuff unless it’s good – and while I might have had flashes of inspiration here and there, my 14 years of blather ends up not much better that one fat monkey banging on his IBM Selectric he got off of EBay – another relic of the early aughts.

Excuse me while I make a ditto of the fax I need to send. I have the phone number in my PDA.

OK, I’m back. Forgive me – a little high from the ditto fumes and the correction fluid I use while typing. What was I saying?

Oh yeah – I’m fat – I mean FAT. I MEAN FAT.

I MEAN FAT!

No excuses for me. The pandemic and a remote job left me such an opportunity to exercise and eat right and exit the pandemic lean, healthy, and vaccine-enabled. Of course I didn’t use the opportunity for good – I used it to indulge in what might have been the food habits of a 10-year-old kid who does the grocery shopping. I’m not a sweets person but there sure are a lot of savory crap foods!

I stopped weighing myself. Stopped checking my blood glucose. My commute from the bedroom to the desk to the kitchen to the bathroom and back to the bed made the Big Lebowski look like a real go-getter.

Well, I was actually *working* – which The Dude did not abide – a lot of hours and weekends as well – but in between the work and sleep and the potty breaks was plenty of guilt-free crap food and elastic sweat pants.

It’s not hard to predict where this would lead. Checking my glucose levels and weighing myself daily were important feedback loops that I discarded. At the beginning of December, with zero fucks to give, I threw in the towel on Low Carb / Keto / Wheat belly and ate whatever I wanted.

Now I’ve been controlling my intake of food and what I eat with varying success since 2003. I was artifically thiner than I would be otherwise for many years because I did those things, and while I might have had my transgressions, there were enough occasions in between of diet adherence that kept me from What Might Have Been.

And here I am at the amazing weight of 303 lbs. Way to go loser! My fingers and toes are like a giant baby’s – chubby and cute. While I am nearing 60 I have no wrinkes because the fat fills them all in.

I took a shower today and decided to give my old friend and old enemy the scale a try. It told me that number I will not mention again, but after the shower I weighed myself again just in case It was a false memory I was suffering from – they are very fashionable in the US these days.

Nope. Pretty much the same.

So I decided that now might be a good time to start a diet – which ruined my plans for an evening of wine and pizza – that’s for sure.

But what *do* I eat?

I gotta tell you – knocking around in the Atkins / Low Carb / Keto / Wheat Belly world for most of 17 years, reading every book and article I could find and writing 1,000 blog posts (of which I’ve probably only posted half) and written 2 or 3 bad books I never published – I am fucking SICK OF THE TOPIC!

So here I am, writing to nobody, sick of being fat, sick of dieting, and just plain sick (I’m not the picture of health nor energy) and yet I’m yoked to this diet approach because…why exactly? Sunk-cost fallacy maybe?

Maybe I can join WW (formally known as ‘Weight Watchers’) or Nutrasystem is still out there – right? Or maybe one of those ‘I’m too busy coding to eat!’ meal replacement crap like Soylent for bro developers who think it’s cool to drink this shit while hoping their stupid iPhone apps gets bought by Facebook for a billion dollars Mark Zuckerberg finds in an old couch under the seat cushions.

I really don’t have a plan. And part of me doesn’t *want* a plan either. But I guess for me – for better or worse – I long ago was baptized in olive oil into the church of Low Carb and despite my roundness I continue to believe. I no longer need science – it only exists to confirm my biases.

Now THAT is fashionable!

Diet Fail 2019 – Day 6: Sadly I’m in the Wrong Multiverse and Poems About Donuts

I think I made it to that zone where hunger can be managed with only a smidgen of willpower and cravings don’t grab you by the hand and lead you to the fridge to find that perfect ‘something’ you didn’t know you want.

Running errands with my younger daughter, we found our way to a McDonald’s where she – an athlete in fine shape – ordered a Big Mac and fries.

McDonald’s is *my* temple of cheap comfort food! To walk in there and not order anything was an insult to the congregants.

The fact that I didn’t care that much makes me a heretic to my tribe. There’s was only a small voice in my head that whined: ‘this isn’t fair’. I know that – we should live in a world where I could gorge on fast food pizza, burgers, and sub sandwiches, wash it down with beer, and find improvements in health and weight loss ensue.

If we do indeed live in a multiverse – a theory by some physicists that apparently live in states where marijuana is legal – that there are an infinite number of universes with different properties and an infinite number of ourselves, then there must be one where ‘fast food is health food’.

This ain’t it.

And *of course* the missus brought home donuts – the plain type without frosting – my favorite – and my daughter commented on how heavy and greasy they were.

The Homer Simpson in me sighed but in the grand scheme of things it just didn’t register all that much.

I *did* go out to get a few things to add to my food list and there was an actual vegetable, believe-it-or-not: romaine lettuce. I also bought turkey breast, among other things.

I’m starting to formulate a plan for less chaotic eating – I think some people call it ‘meal planning’, but that’s the future.

Except for coffee with cream, I had eaten nothing all day and it was only at 5pm that I had my only meal of the day. I rarely buy turkey breast and it was an impulse buy. I had some older but still serviceable romaine lettuce – about 1.5 hearts. I split this in 3rds, split the turkey in 3rds, smeared the turkey with avocado mayo, then wrapped the turkey on the outside of the lettuce and ate these rollups.

One thing I’ve always found in keto is the structural integrity of foods can be tough to navigate. That is the genius of sliced-bread: you can put nearly anything between 2 slices and you’ve not only got food, but an edible container in which to convey said foodstuff into your pie hole without bothersome accoutrements like plates and forks.

I found this quite good. I must have been hankering for green veggies and this hit the spot.

It also ended up being my only meal of the day. While later on in the evening I toyed with the idea of eating more, the hunger did not overcome the disinclination to get out of bed so I went to sleep instead.

Being the only meal of the day, it was relatively easy to tally my intake to an accuracy of probably +/- 20%

I use the Cronometer app and this is the breakdown it gave me:

Calories: 1176
Protein: 66 grams
Net Carbs: 19 grams
Fat: 89 grams

These numbers aren’t bad, but they are not ideal. I’m OK with that because it’s the behavior that surround this eating that are more important right now than getting deep into a macro fetish.

I’m indifferent to the donuts that sit 10 feet away from me. They do not sing a siren song that tells me that, warmed slightly in the microwave, they would be *ideal* with a big glass of milk.

It’s not like when I wrote a poem about a donut.

Instant Pot L. Reuteri Yogurt – The Exact Instructions

This is how thick the yogurt comes out

(Note: this post contains links to products I used. I DO NOT make any money off these links. Buy ’em – don’t buy ’em – I don’t care.)

UPDATED 08/13/19 with a few more tips.

The big first tip: It’s really easy to make once you get the hang of it! I make it sound awful but when you take the time to get it right the first time, it’s easy after that.

I have read Dr. William Davis’ Undoctored and decided to finally take the plunge and go the full monte. In a nutshell, he recommends a ketogenic-ish diet and specific supplementation so it’s not far from my usual attempt. It’s a ‘clean keto’ where grains are prohibited as well as artificial stuff. I think it is well thought out and I like how he presents it: as a cardiologist, he sticks to science and where he prescribes a certain course of action that might not be accepted science, he notes that his approach is experimental and as new information comes in he will refine his approach.

That’s the kind of scientific thinking I like to see. I don’t take is as he’s pushing snake oil as much as he’s saying: “Try this. It might work for you and it’s unlikely to harm you. Let me know your results and I’ll continue to refine my protocol.”

Alas, it is a fussy diet in that the doc states it must be followed in full to get the synergistic benefits – doing it only halfway gets you far less than half the benefits.

One of the trickier aspects – at least to me – is you have to make what I call his ‘magic yogurt’. Even Dr. Davis refers to this as ‘wacky’ in one of his videos. I’d even say it sounds ‘quacky’ given all the benefits he attributes to it (you can read them here). I have no idea if the stuff actually does anything or if Dr. Davis is full of shit, but I don’t think so – at least I believe *he* sincerely believes it helps – and I’m up for a new experiment.

This was the one part of the diet that I waited until now to try. I started the  diet 15 days ago and have been dialing in all the different parts. The yogurt is the last piece, I think.

To me, the instructions to make the stuff I found on the Internet were vague and a lot of people were spending a lot of time to fail at the attempt and throw out batch after batch. I did a lot of Google searches, came across recipes that didn’t provide me the details I wanted, and even did a chat with Instant Pot which yielded little help.

The problems with the instructions are that they try to cover too many different scenarios. I found it confusing (maybe I’m stupid).

This week I took the plunge and made the yogurt. I’m detailing here the EXACT steps I took for my own records and thought I’d share.

Continue reading “Instant Pot L. Reuteri Yogurt – The Exact Instructions” →

Day 40 on my new approach to a keto diet

There is no one ‘keto diet’. It has many variants that appear more or less the same to the outsider but are very different to someone deep in the thick of it – like Protestantism.

And like Protestantism, each of these variants interpret the same documents that underlie the practice, apply them differently, then follow, or try to follow a certain high-level dogma that results.

Like any set of competing belief systems, there is a necessary infighting between the variants about details. Just one of the many differences is the use of ‘exogenous ketones’. This is a product that most often contains beta-hydroxybutyric acid, which is the ketone fuel your body creates and runs on when on a keto diet. Some people have put this into a supplement and sell it.

Some variants of the keto diet think this is fine. Others will remove your post from their Facebook group if you even mention them.

Another controversy is: how much protein? Some groups recommend a lot less than others – and both scoff at the other’s interpretations of the documents that support their position.

The same goes for fat. All the groups want you to moderate it, but some make this central to their belief system – others seem to pay lip-service.

Lastly (though by no means the last), there is what I would call the position on what I would call ‘Keto food porn’. To me, this is the intricate and tortured attempt to create keto meals that resemble their high-carb inspiration, or inventions like a bacon-weave taco shell, or a round meatloaf with cheese in the center, wrapped in bacon.

Keto is very trendy right now (which will probably pass as it did before) and people are bringing enormous creativity to foods and recipes.

Some people love this. Some people think this encourages consuming extra calories, and the first group replies: who cares about calories? Just eat to satiety.

On this 2018 version of a keto diet, as usual, I came up with my own road to follow. While this time I have immersed myself in the most current thinking, joining over a half-dozen Facebook groups and listening to at least 50 hours of keto podcasts to learn what the current state of keto is.

One thing it does NOT seem to be is ‘Atkins’. While I believe that none of these people would be talking about keto if it wasn’t for Dr. Robert Atkins, who died in 2003, few people discuss him, and the current products the company he started are not held in high regard.

While you might be forgiven for using these products, you would not be applauded.

Another worrisome thing is just how dangerous this diet can be if you do it wrong – and most of these people climbing aboard the keto bandwagon do not understand the seriousness involved in altering your body fuel source and the serious medical problems it can cause. I will leave the authoritative research to others – and to you to dig up – again, I have nothing to sell and nothing to convince you to believe. These are the things I’m concerned might happen to people who achieve nutritional ketosis but are ill-informed about the pact with the devil you sign:

  1. Alcohol. If you are deep in ketosis, too much alcohol can lower that threshold for alcohol poisoning. Having a ready supply of carbs in your body can help mitigate a bout of binge drinking that ketones cannot, apparently.
  2. Pancreatitis. If you are unknowingly predisposed to this, a massive cheat can push you into this condition
  3. Gallstones. I had read that fat is necessary for the prevention of gallstones. Fat-phobic people predisposed to gallstones who try a high protein and lower fat version of keto might set themselves up for this. There could be other reasons as well.
  4. You can get dehydrated easily and your relationship to water needs to be watched. Too little OR too much can be bad
  5. Electrolytes. One thing normies eating a standard diet don’t tend to worry about is their electrolytes. People doing a keto diet do need to be careful about this because your need for sodium, magnesium, and potassium change. This can screw up the electrical system in your body – and you know what your electrical system does? It controls the beating of your heart! OK they say, I’ll just take supplements. Not so fast. TOO MUCH can be as bad as TOO LITTLE. People are messing with system not only they don’t understand, but that their doctors don’t understand.

It is for these reasons I DO NOT RECOMMEND A KETO DIET! The science surrounding this diet has been my primary hobby for more than a dozen years. To the regular person who comes along with no interest in learning the intricate details, I would not recommend this to them unless they had medical supervision by a doctor who knew the ins and outs of a ketogenic diet – and good luck finding one!

Stop reading yet? No? Ok – the rest of you left, let’s continue.

So what am I doing differently this time?

The first thing is that I have simplified my diet considerably. I have given up almost all artificial sweeteners (except sugar-free ketchup – not ready yet), dairy, nuts, cheese – and of course all grains and carby foods like potatoes. I now drink black coffee and plain water.

A partial list of what I’ve been eating for the most part?

  • Ground beef (moving toward New Zealand raised grass-fed beef)
  • Chicken thighs (moving toward organic – and I’d love to find pastured but haven’t yet)
  • Steak
  • Pork belly
  • Fire-roasted tomatoes and green chilies (for my chili)
  • Red and green bell peppers
  • Organic chicken broth
  • Lettuce (iceberg for now until people stop getting sick off of romaine which is a ‘thing’ as I write this)
  • Beefsteak tomatoes
  • Acocados
  • Asparagus
  • Organic celery
  • Eggs (organic and pasture-raised when possible)
  • Bacon
  • Olive oil
  • Coconut Oil
  • Coconut milk
  • Coconut flour
  • Mushrooms
  • Pickles
  • Kimchi
  • Organic hot dogs from grass-fed cows
  • Sauerkraut
  • Psyllium husks

And I am planning to try experimenting with adding:

  • Ghee (aka clarified butter – considered OK in a dairy-free diet by people not eliminating dairy for religious or ethical reasons)
  • Broccoli florets
  • Nutritional yeast (a powder that sorta kinda of tastes cheesy, is full of nutrients, and might be good sprinkled on my broccoli)
  • Cabbage

I did not start here 40 day ago. It took a while to convert from my diet prior to April 2 where my primary food group was McDonald’s. What prompted the change was a sudden, worrisome trend in my blood glucose. I was seeing numbers up to 140 in the AM and they would stay elevated – even with taking metformin.

In less than 2 weeks I was able to get that number down by 20-40 points. In the mid afternoons I can see numbers in the low 80s – and this is with my stopping the metformin over 2 weeks ago.

Carb withdrawal at first was miserable. I comforted myself with an abundance of American cheese – God, I love the stuff! I also guzzled down seltzer loaded with Orange-Tangerine artificial sweetener in the evenings.

I also had Greek yogurt in work and Kerry Gold butter in my coffee. That was after the coffee and heavy cream I had in my coffee at home. I usually didn’t eat solid foods, though I would grab an Atkins shake and have some chicken broth with extra salt at lunchtime. This seemed to help with the mild headachy feeling I would get – but otherwise I felt good. Here and there was 2 squares of dark chocolate.

I gave up on the Greek yogurt because it seemed to trigger hunger during the first week.

There were some trashy, though low carb choices, along the way. Oscar Mayer bologna as well as bologna’s more refined cousin, Mortadella. Kielbasa. Pork rinds. These didn’t impact my blood ketones, which I measured obsessively. I got as high as 3.5.

I stopped negotiating with myself in the second week. I no longer thought about ordering McDonald’s and not eating the bun. I could watch people in work and at home gobble up carbs – even pizza – and it not bother me. It wasn’t willpower – it was that I had detoxed myself from carby foods and no longer had an interest. While I would not say even now that I don’t miss pizza, I don’t have this terrible craving for it, either.

Besides – I had substituted a bunch of junky keto-friendly foods to take the place of the high-carb junky foods.

To be clear: I started this particular go at the diet primarily for my health. And that worked: I lowered my blood glucose and stopped taking metformin. I also pulled off 10-12 pounds in 2 weeks. That was nice – but not the primary goal.

After the first 2 weeks the scale did not really budge, however, and while I was still committed to the diet for health reasons, I did want the weight loss to be part of it.

Finally, on day 34 I decided I might be strong enough to pull off eliminating all dairy and artificial sweeteners.

Boy oh boy, did this suck!

The cheese got replaced with more calories from meat and tomato slices with my burgers. While I still continue to use sugar-free ketchup, the amount of artificial sweetener is trivial compared with how much of the orange-tangerine stuff I would blast into glass after glass of seltzer on ice.

I started eating avocados more regularly. They can be tricky as they go bad so quickly but I’ve been able to manage. Once almost ripe, they keep in the fridge for a few days. When you take one out, eat it that day. Mostly works well.

I don’t drink the Atkins shakes. I’m drinking my morning coffee with coconut milk – and recently nothing. I no longer put butter in my coffee at work – and find that a little coffee goes way farther than it used to. I sometimes find myself not drinking any coffee at work – and when I do, it’s black. I don’t really drink fats anymore.

While not every day, on some days I find myself only eating one large meal a day. This happened quite by accident, but then I found out it was a ‘thing’ – OMAD (One Meal A DAY) or 23/1 Fasting. It seems there’s this notion called an ‘insulin holiday’. Here’s how I understand it. It is not only sugars that trigger insulin: proteins trigger them almost as well. So while your blood glucose might be low, your insulin might still be high – and as you have insulin resistance if you’re like me, eating nothing for a while gives the body a chance to not have to produce insulin as if you were snacking all day – and this might lessen insulin resistance over the long-term – at least that’s how the thinking goes.

There is a trick to this, however: eat too little and you put your body into ‘Starvation Mode’. Do this and your body can do all sorts of things – like make your hair fall out while holding on to every last calorie like a miser – and make you feel quite crappy – and there are voices on the Internet that don’t think this can be done without putting you into starvation mode.

So what I am doing is counting my macros more closely. I used a calculator I found here, and it gave me these ranges:

Calories:     1200 – 1892

Carbs:        20

Protein:    94-124 (104 is ideal)

Fat:        77-155

So the lower end is my target – and that ends up being one very satisfying meal per day. I don’t do this on all days – sometimes I have an avocado at work, and/or chicken broth. Sometimes I just have salt in water – depends on how I feel.

But you know the weirdest part of this: my narrowed food choices are liberating!

My diet seems easier. I’m not futzing around with food or thinking about food all the time. Diets can make you obsess about food more than not being on a diet. The simplicity makes things easier to track – and I hate tracking. The overhead of the diet is a lot less. I have more time for other thoughts than what I am going to eat – and amazingly enough – I don’t feel deprived.

That was the last thing I ever expected to say.

I could go on – like about what supplements I am taking – but I’ll stop here for now.

 

 

 

Review: A Jawbone fitness tracker for a dirt-cheap price UPDATE

UPDATE 05/27/18: While my tracker still works at tracking steps, it now tells me that it ‘Can’t connect to the network.’ I think that’s because they liquidated the company last week and they pulled the plug on the server and the Jawbone.com site has apparently been taken down. The app is still in the IOS App Store (who knows for how long), but I’m not sure that you would be able to set up a new device – so I *DON’T* recommend buying it anymore. The device is useless without the app, so I’d say the party’s over…

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Years ago I had what I think was the original FitBit. I tracked your steps, told the time, and claimed it could track how many stairs you climbed. It also needed to be changed frequently and was a pain in the ass to sync to the app. It cost $99.

Then it got lost.

The FitBit One was the replacement. It was slicker in design – but I could never get the damn thing to work reliably. It cost $99.

In total, that was $200 I would never see again.

Fast forward to April, 2018. I wanted a cheap clip-on fitness tracker to just count steps. Instead, everything is now on a wrist band – which I didn’t want as I hate wearing anything on my wrists and can’t even wear a watch – and tells the time, tracks heartbeats, tracks sleep, etc.

I didn’t want all that – I just wanted to track steps, but I couldn’t find anything that simple. There also seemed to be only 2 options: buy a well-known brand for $100 and up, or buy a no-name brand with crappy reviews. Clip-ons were almost impossible to find.

I did a lot of looking and, almost hiding on Amazon was this Jawbone clip-on tracker ranging in price from about $9.00 to $15.00, depending on how ugly a color you are willing to tolerate.

I got one. I have been very impressed.

It has a battery that they say does not need replacing for 6 months – so no hassle charging it all the time. It syncs with the iPhone app pretty flawlessly. It has a whole bunch of features I don’t use – like sleep tracking – that don’t get in the way if you don’t want to use them, though if I do choose to use them someday they seem well-designed.

I believe these are discontinued models. While I think it’s a great design, it probably just couldn’t be found among all the other models – or maybe clips are so like 10 minutes ago.

My primary worry is that the device will outlast that app. If it is really a discontinued model, will they keep the app updated? Balance that question with: is it worth the risk at $9 bucks?

You make that decision for yourself.

Please note: I bought and paid for this thing myself. Nobody asked me to write this. I don’t get any money for this. Buy it – don’t buy it – no skin off my nose.

Here’s a link: http://a.co/inCFnhw

 

 

 

Keto is the Bitcoin of Diets

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For all you folks who do not spend their lives reading charts, a little explanation. This chart is from Google Trends, a tool that lets you see how often search terms are entered into Google. You can also compare one search term to another.

Now what the above chart shows is that the term ‘low carb’ (in blue) has been chugging along and has been steadily been gaining interest. It’s a far cry from the obscurity after the ‘Atkins Craze’ of 2003 popped and people moved on to the next trendy diet.

An interesting thing to note: see those little spikes in interest regularly spaced on the blue line? That happens every January when people decide to go on a diet as a New Year’s resolution.

Now take a look at ‘keto’ (blue line). Back when I started this blog, nobody would have known what Keto meant.

Well, things have changed. Look at that spike – keto is the Bitcoin of diets right now. It used to be called ‘Atkins Induction’ but after Atkins died the term was dropped because it seemed too harsh. Atkins himself recommended a diet of 20 grams of carbs or less, moderate protein, and high fat only for the first two weeks – then you were supposed to begin adding more carbs back in.

I ignored that advice back then and instead tried to stay in ‘Atkins Induction’ indefinitely.

I was ‘keto’ before ‘keto’ even existed.

Today, keto is everywhere. People who’ve only learned about the diet a year ago prop themselves up as experts, start Facebook pages, and build businesses around this diet. I got nothing against free enterprise, but it seems to me some of these folks are going off half-cocked. There’s one guy who advocates eating nothing but bacon for 30 days. Compared to him, this blog expands your choices to meat in general – and water.

The bacon guy is trying to build a nice little business off of this – you can join his special insider program for about $100. I bet he’s doing OK – it’s pretty easy to separate desperate obese people from their money.

I don’t want to imply anything bad about the guy. He seems sincere, came up with a trick that worked for him, and figures he can make a buck off of it. It also seems to work for a bunch of people – so who am I to nay say? Nothing wrong there.

The only problem I would have – and a big reason I have never tried to sell anything nor claim that I am right about anything (read my disclaimer here) – is that I wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending *any* diet to *anybody* because I ain’t no doctor.

Anyway, ‘keto’ – like Bitcoin – is in a bubble. I have spent a lot of time in the past year on these Keto Facebook pages and there’s a lot of hopeful folks who stream in, asking the same questions asked the day before, unwilling to read the pinned posts, who just want a magic bullet. These people don’t want to do the work – they just want to lose weight fast. I don’t blame them, but as more and more people stream in, try the diet without doing their homework, get bad advice from people on the page as ignorant as they are, they will give up, tell their friend that keto doesn’t work – and the bubble will pop and we’ll be on to the next diet fad. This happened in 2003 with Atkins – and has been happening with great regularity for over a century.

The thing is: I believe keto works for a lot of people. I think, like most diets, it can be hard. I think you need to do your homework, and be able to tease out the good information from all the bad information out there.

I will even go so far as to say that there is probably a lot of bad information on this blog. I’ve been writing for 11 years and my thinking on the diet has changed.

If I plan to start posting regularly, I think I also need to go back and either edit old posts or delete them entirely.

So moving forward I’ll be ‘The keto blog with the low carb name’.

Hey – AT&T stands for ‘American Telephone and Telegraph’ – and a telegraph hasn’t been sent in the US since 2006.

My Crappy Diet So Far 11-07-2014

Here’s another missive from the trenches. Where was I?

I was on day 3, where I had KFC chicken thighs for lunch.

For dinner that night I made the kids pasta. I was going to make burgers for myself – or maybe have more of my leftover kale soup – but had leftover pasta, meatballs, and Halloween candy instead.

The only consistent success of the diet so far has been the elimination of booze. That’s something, at least.

I’ve been feeling slightly better and have not had the GERD that wakes me in the middle of the night. I suppose a good night’s sleep is another benefit as I ease myself into a better routine.

Day 4 – Thursday, November 6, 2014 – showed still more, though slight, improvement. My weight continued to inch down. Now it was 237.4 – down 3.8 from that 241+ that shook me. My blood glucose also peeled off a few points, going down to 112 – 26 points lower than at the start.

Despite an awful, blunder-filled start, at least I’m stumbling in the right direction.

I had coffee and cream in the morning – perhaps too much – but I’m trying to go light on the unnecessary rules until I have a better grip on myself. We had visitors in work and that meant copious amounts of bagels and pastries – which I ignored. I did have 2 roast beef sandwiches – I should have stopped at one – and ate the meat off the bread and threw the bread away. Afterward I was uncomfortably full.

As there was plenty of free coffee, I drank still more of the stuff.

When I got home it was announced that I was going to take the children to their evening class. Typically when I do that I get pizza for the kids while I wait for them to finish their class. I thought this might be a good test of my resolve (fool that I am).

I ordered a large pizza with mushrooms and onions as per my older daughters peculiar tastes, and drove home pizza and kids.

My resolve lasted all of 10 seconds. I tore into two slices of pizza with my kids and enjoyed it greatly. A little later looking for something sweet I had a bit more of the candy corn. My younger daughter said: “Awwww”.

Fear not my little love, there is still plenty for you to rot your newly emerging adult teeth with.

This might be a good time to mention what I’ve been drinking the past few days. It hasn’t been alcohol. While I might miss the buzz I feel a lot better. Dieting is all about giving up things now for something better in the future. I am sorry to say that perhaps I’ve drunk enough alcohol for one lifetime. The fact of the matter is, unfortunately, alcohol just doesn’t agree with me anymore. When drinking alcohol, even hours and hours later, every meal feels like I am swallowing fire. The Tums consumption is keeping factories running three shifts in order to supply my needs. Without alcohol, this changes almost overnight.

So what have I been drinking? Well, Mary Dan Eades ruined almond milk for me with a post about the polyunsaturated fat in almonds. Thanks, Mary Dan! I don’t like to get to sciency in this blog anymore but I try to avoid polyunsaturated fats and keep my remaining fats to either saturated or monounsaturated. I don’t want to go into the science because we end up going down a rabbit hole of studies and then contradictory studies and endless debates and all sorts of arcane fine points that I would frankly like to avoid.

The result is that I might have almond milk on occasion but as a regular drink I’m going to try to avoid it. I’ve tried the coconut milk sold as a replacement drink for regular milk and I find this stuff or a horrid thing.

My liquids have been:

  • A daily pitcher of water at work. I bought one of those PUR water pitchers and it does a fine job of stripping the chlorine flavor out of the tap water at work
  • Coffee with cream at home, and coffee at work with Atkins shakes as creamer. I’ve seemed to lose my taste for black coffee. Perhaps I need to get used to it again just to keep the calorie count down.
  • Seltzer from my SodaStream (one of the best and most-used gadgets I’ve ever bought) with ice and MiO soda flavorings. Too much artificial stuff in that MiO stuff? I don’t care.

Day 5 – Friday, November 7, 2014. Down over a pound from yesterday to 236.2 – 5 5 pound total weight loss so far. My blood glucose is essentially the same as yesterday at 113.

Considering how crappy I’ve been doing over the past 5 days, the weight loss and blood glucose management shows just how spectacularly awful I must have been prior to that.

I can’t say I’m not pleased with the reduction, nor the reduction in Tums use, and not waking up in the middle of the night coughing and choking from GERD. I can still say, however, I am still in a crap mood overall.

So grumpy dieters, take heart: you can still have a crappy and cynical attitude and lose weight. You don’t have to be all positive and cheery if you don’t feel like it. Keep your grump on and still lose weight – and fuck those people who say you must have a positive attitude first before you can have any success.

A positive attitude has nothing to do with weight loss. Nice to have, it helps – but it’s optional. Your weight regulation mechanism doesn’t give a rat’s ass about your positive affirmations.

If I lose enough weight and notice enough positive changes that my mood starts to improve – great – I can’t wait – but long-term weight loss and maintenance will NOT be a result of maintaining a perpetual ‘blissed out’ Tony Robbins positive attitude. Your life, like everyone else’s, will have its ups and downs. If you can’t manage your diet when life gives you lemons and you don’t want to make lemonade, then it’s going to be hard to pull it off long-term.

To be continued…