Day One (23 October)

(icky) #41

Thought I’d check in to say I’m still doing well. I had cauliflower with butter and parmesan for dinner today. Eating vegetables has become the highlight of my day… I’ve never found a cauliflower to be as delicious as it was today… I was in heaven :laughing:

Other than that, I’ve gone back to work after being off work for 6 weeks with really bad back pain. I work part-time in a bakery, to supplement my freelance income. Luckily I work as a driver, so I’m not surrounded with the produce all the time, but it’s still a strange feeling. We get quite a bit of free bakery goods to take home each shift and I’ve been giving it all to my neighbours… They’re super happy and I’m glad to give it away and avoid temptation. (It’s a really good bakery too, so their stuff is high quality and pretty delicious…) :woman_facepalming:

I wish weight loss was happening a bit faster… While I was off sick with really bad back pain, I was basically immobile for a long time and I ate so much comfort food… Damnit… I really piled on the kilos without noticing and I’m so frustrated about it now… Trying to be patient about the weight loss tho…

Other than that, I’m just building up my recipe base of Keto food that I enjoy, working out which lunches/ snacks to take with me when I’m out and about to make sure I have good non-carb options when I’m not at home…

I’m pretty happy with how things are going apart from weight loss being too slow for my liking…

I’m wondering how soon I could/ should fast and for how long… Since I’ve done a lot of fasting for well over a decade, my body is pretty good at going into ketosis easily, so I figure fasting is okay… But I feel uncertain about the timing of it… Would it give me a weight loss boost? Or would it just interfere with my body adjusting to Keto, at the moment?

(Robin) #42

I personally don’t believe one should fast to lose weight. To me, fasting should either happen naturally (as it often does) or as part of healing your body. The scales should not be the driving factor.

In my book, slow weight loss means I can and will maintain it. And I’ve done just that for 3 years now.
That’s my experience, anyway.

(icky) #43

Yeah… I agree with that. I’ve never fasted to lose weight before, but I’m so impatient at the moment :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

I guess the sensible thing is to wait a while and try to find some patience… Maybe I’ll set myself Christmas as a limit… Lose weight slowly/ naturally until then and then do an extended fast if I run out of patience.

(icky) #44

So I had two very weird (but positive) keto “moments” today…

I worked a night shift last night, so got up at 3 am, had a suuuuper stressful shift, which is very unusual, cos usually things are relatively calm and easy, had to do an extra 2 hours of overtime just to get all the fallout sorted out, then was rushing home and figured I needed to get some food, especially for tomorrow because I’ll be driving to a city that’s 2 hours away and spending the day there, with very little time between various appointments, so I figured I should go and buy enough keto food to take on tomorrow’s trip so that I’m covered, if I don’t find the time/ options tomorrow to buy decent keto foods in a city where I’m unfamiliar with the shops…

Anyway, I went to the supermarket, grabbed half a dozen keto foods that are “transportable” and good nutritous “snacks” and walked past one of the refrigerators and glanced at one of my favourite (vegetarian) snacks. They’re sort of like felafel balls, but not made of chickpeas… Anyway, I was going to pass them buy and ignore them, cos I know chickpeas have quite a lot of carbs…

Uh, yeah, I just looked it up… Google says they have 61 g of carbs per 100 g serving!! Omg… I love chickpeas… :cry: :pensive::sob: :broken_heart:

And so I realise felafels must have a relatively high carb content too… (Google says 32 g of carbs per 100 g serve… sighhhhh…)

So yeah, I was resigned to just passing them by and repeating my mantra of “Carbs are your frenemy” but then curiosity got the better of me and I picked up the package cos I just wanted to know how BAD it was… How high the carb count would be… And I read it and it said “2 g carbs per 100 g serve” and I was just like Huh? What? Am I reading this wrong? Is there some kind of printing error? But nope… It’s 2 g per 100 g serve… Soooo strange! I’m too exhausted from having been up for 20 hours straight to work through the list of ingredients and to figure out why it’s such a low carb count, but needless to say I was pretty happy (albeit stunned) and got a pack of these low-carb felafels and was just in disbelief that this is a relatively inexpensive, readily available, transportable, ready-to-eat keto product that happens to be one of my all time favourite snacks…

I was walking round the supermarket dazed from this experience and thinking “You never really “know” by just making assumptions about the carb count…” I mean there’s so many items where most people probably think “Well, the carb count of XYZ can’t be that high” and then it’s something ridiculous like 61 g for chickpeas, that most people would say is a “healthy vegetable”…

But I didn’t really think that the reverse would also be true (or at least only very rarely…) That you think a particular food probably has a “high” carb count and then it turns out it’s close to negligible, ie zero or in the low single digits… Just goes to show how assumptions can lead you astray.

Anyway, emboldened by this weird and confusing turn of events, when I reached the dairy aisle, I got some cheese and walked past the shelves with the desserts, including my favourite chocolate desert, which is actually made with soy milk, which I don’t like at all, but this desert is so well made that it doesn’t taste like soy AT ALL… and the reason I like it so much is that it’s got a very intense chocolate flavour (which probably covers up the icky soy flavour) and importantly has very little sugar in it, and doesn’t taste sweet at all… So sort of like a dark chocolate, but as a desert. (I’m addicted to carbs, but I HATE things tasting really “sweet”… I remember when we were kids my brother would lick his fingertip and dip it in the sugar bowl and then lick the sugar off his finger and he’d just loooove it whereas I’d be watching him, wanting to puke, because the taste of pure sugar was disgusting to me… So even though I’m a carb addict, I’ve always preferred savoury to sweet (so I’d definitely perfer salty crisps to ice-cream, and salty popcorn to (groce, disgusting) sweet popcorn)…

Anyway, so this soy milk (yuck), intense chocolate (yum), barely sweet (yum) desert was also on my “can’t eat this anymore” list… Cos how is a chocolate dessert in supermarket aisle gonna be keto…? But the weird felafel incident made me be more curious so I checked this dessert too and while it’s not zero carb by some freak miracle, the carb count was 15.7 g of carbs per 100 g serving… Which to me means that eventually, when I’m fully fat adapted, one serving (125 g in a seperate little package) has 19.6 g of carbs, so once or twice a month this desert is an option as a special treat, if I keep my carb count down way low that day, by say intermittent fasting until lunch time, making sure my lunch and dinner are zero carb and then having this dessert as a treat and unbelievably still staying with in the ketosis carb count for the day…

Anyway… the combination of sleep deprivation and keto engery boost is making me blather on like a weirdly annoying waterfall… So I will stop and try to get some sleep (it’s 11 pm here and I have to be up again by 6 am)… Ugh…! :confounded:

:sleeping::sleeping::sleeping::sleeping::sleeping:

(That’s me dreaming of 2 g carb felafels and 15.7 g treats on special occasions…)

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #45

What is the fibre content? You live in a country where “carbohydrate” means net carbs. If you want to know total carbs, you need to add “carbs” and “fibre.” (In the U.S. it’s different. But at least here, the labels say “total carbohydrate” now.)

#46

How adorable… I remember eating sugar with a big spoon.
Sometimes.
I do feel ashamed now.

The chickpeas were surprising but it’s for the dry stuff, it is possible to make a dish with it that isn’t super carby. 2g still seems too low… But who knows? I would carefully check the ingredient list…

By the way, I can relate. I love sweet things but I dislike too sweet things (but near pure sugar can be different, I always could eat at least a little spoonful of honey alone. but a normal chocolate or grapes? Borderline inedibly sweet! I can’t enjoy them fully. I am a bit shocked people put sugar into all kinds of fruit too. Most fruits are already sweet and only a few loses that during cooking. But there is sugar even some dried, very very sweet fruit, it’s horrible…)
And now… I like some unsweetened desserts. While others need some sweetness to be good.
Chocolate has a potential to be fine unsweetened :slight_smile:
Never had sweet popcorn but sounds bad.

Super high for a not sweet chocolate-y dessert. I can make WAY better. Okay, okay, convenience of packaged food, just saying, it’s so easy to make wonderful simple keto desserts :slight_smile:
(Not like I need them anymore. Give me some sour cream and I will be happy with that for dessert. But it took time and many carnivore days from my part.)

#47

I would get the keto dialed in first before beginning any fasting. Have a look at Dr. Jason Fung. Expert in fasting. New research has shown having a morning meal when fasting is better than waiting till later in the day to break the fast, at least for weight loss. Shifting the window. Everyone’s journey is different. While we expect life to be linear, it rarely is. We all live in the real world, where at times we do not eat according to our plans. Beating yourself up is not the answer. Accept it and move on. I have been doing keto and low carb for 13+ years now, and I eat what I want. Mostly healthy stuff. But there are times when I don’t. This is okay now as I look at the big picture.
Also, keep in mind that those on this forum are generally successful keto and carnivores. I have met many who have failed or could not do keto for a variety of reasons. When it comes to goals and expectations, remember that it’s about the systems and processes you do daily that determine whether or not you will reach your goal.

#48

It’s individual. If I eat before 3pm, it probably won’t be a good day for fat-loss. If I last until 5pm, it sounds superb to me. It’s how I function.
Anyway, I like to eat in my natural eating window and not when practically I can’t and feel very seriously bothered to force myself. I never like force but especially not when I am perfectly satiated and chill, food breaks that and starts me on a hungry all day nightmare. Unless I focus real hard and salvage it a bit. Still overeating but satiation.

But maybe it’s not for people who know very well they must eat later.

(icky) #49

Thanks for your answers… I have to leave for work now but I’ll respond later! :relaxed:

(icky) #50

Sigh… So I got the flu… Not the keto flu… The proper one… Been sick for almost a week with fever and the whole shebang… Ugh… Today’s the first day I’m back up on my feet again.
Got a weird phone call from my Dr tho… Before I got sick, he did some bloodwork and he rang to let me know that my Potassium level was “abnormally high”.
I said “Oh, I’m doing Keto, I know that can affect some blood levels like Potassium” but he said “No, the level is so abnormally high, it’s basically off the scale - like incompatible with human life - which is why we think there’s been a lab error. It would be good if you could have another blood test this week tho, just to sort that out…”
So I guess I’m going in for more bloodwork tomorrow…
Other than that, I’m just thankful to feel somewhat alive again, seeing as the flu was just horrible…

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #51

Obviously, your potassium couldn’t have been that high, or you’d be dead. So clearly a lab error.

But I had a high potassium test result, as well recently, though most likely not a lab error in my case. Rather it was most likely a reaction to physical stress; namely, Lyme disease and a broken ankle. I noticed that my urine was darker than usual and I was feeling somewhat off, and that is the point when I got the high potassium reading. (Not off the charts like yours, though; just really high.)

But funnily enough, I started feeling a bit better late that very that day, and my urine colour returned to normal, so when they re-tested my blood, the potassium was comfortably in the normal range. So I’m sure yours will be too, once you get re-tested.

(icky) #52

Thanks @PaulL

Had blood taken today for the new test (couldn’t get an appointment sooner that didn’t clash with work) and they’re also testing my T4, T3 and rT3 levels as I checked my posts here from 2018 when I did my first attempt at Keto and it definitely threw my T3 and rT3 levels out of whack… I ended up having to supplement T3 meds, to keep my Dr happy… I’ll be interested to get all of the results next week…

(icky) #53

Other than that, I spoke to my Diabetes Specialist… I see him because he’s also a Thyroid Specialist and I’ve had Hypothyroidism for about 15 years now… And at some point I started talking to him about my blood sugar woes (I’ll write more about that another time… too tired now… bout to go to bed early because I’m working nightshift tonight and will be getting up at 3 am…) and anyway, he started monitoring my blood sugar and insulin levels and eventually tested me for insulin resistance (which came back positive).

He mentioned it to me quite calmly at the next appointment and didn’t make much of a song and dance about it… I suppose he sees so many patients with really serious Type 2 and Type 1 diabetes, that a patient that is “merely” pre-diabetic/ insulin resistant isn’t much of a big deal to him…?

Anyway, because he said it so in passing, I never took it very seriously… But this last appt I told him I’d started Keto again and was explaining the health issues that had made me resolve to take it up again and stick with it this time and I mentioned being “sort of insulin resistant” was one factor. And he looked at me very sternly and said quite loudly “You are not SORT OF insulin resistant - you ARE insulin resistant!”

I was kinda like “Uhhh… okay…” and thinking “Well you might have explained it properly and with a certain sense of urgency the first time…” You know, more like “You are insulin resistant which means you are pre-diabetic which means if you do not change your diet and lifestyle you WILL get Diabetes Type 2 and will most likely need insulin.” That would’ve made me sit up and notice… Sigh…

Anyway, he and his inhouse Dietician, who I also spoke to that day both agreed that I should do an extended fast of about a week to kick start the weightloss and autophagy. If my body refuses to do a week long fast at this point, then that’s fine, but I should give it a try. So I guess I’m going to try starting on Sunday.

Anyway, I’ve got more to tell but I need to sleeeeep now cos of nightshift, so it’ll have to keep…