November 2022 Maintenance

(KCKO, KCFO) #1

Another month, almost done with 2022, yea.

The holiday feasting season is upon us again. What is everyone planning to do about all the holiday festivities to stay on plan?

October 2022 Maintenance
(Jane) #2

I am down 6 of the 10 lbs from the COVID-era, so happy about that.

We are isolated in rural Arkansas so no parties to navigate - just New Year’s Eve and that is just one night. My brother-in-law has moved near us from Colorado so I will have him over for Thanskgiving and Christmas dinner. I will make a mix of keto and traditional dishes for both meals. I have been at this so long that one day of holiday eating doesn’t throw me off the rails - I just go back to keto the next day (after sending all the leftovers home with brother-in-law LOL).

(KCKO, KCFO) #3

@Janie Sounds good to me.

We love fondue and we have found great keto friendly things to dip into it. So that is pretty much our go to for special occasions.

I have no issues with going higher carb for a day or even two, but DH is diabetic and does, he luckily has been keeping off meds for years now with just his diet and exercise routines. He does seem to be able to have a day or so around 100g of carbs without any kind of serious issue. He is a TOFI so keeping weight on him is a big issue for us.

#4

Today my scale was a jerk and showed 75kg. BOTH in my full winter dress and without it. After showing 73kg for a longer time. So I have some temporal problems but I expect my 73kg back :slight_smile:

But what is more important is my waist. I do my absolute best to avoid clothes shopping. I need to slim down just a tiiiiny bit to fit into 3 of my pants (trousers for Brits and who learned British English, I did but then I mingled with various people so I may use Ozzie slang and US stuff sometimes).

The next holiday is on the 24th of December for me (and it needn’t to be off keto I think but there are chances of something tempting) so I will have my very low-carb November now :slight_smile: Barely any fruit season, November was always the easiest after the January - May period. All the other months are inevitably carbier, not all the time since I am in a long term though on/off relationship with carnivore(-ish) but often enough.

Okay, I surely will have carbier days on December too, hopefully most of them still will be keto.
I stopped making carby cookies so that won’t be a problem, fruits will happen but not so much… But this year my fruits come earlier. My SO said that medlar season is almost here. Not a problem, we both aren’t so very interested despite it’s a nice thing. But I mostly just enjoy the unripe looks and the fact that I have fresh fruit in December, it’s so fun (maybe not this year, if it starts now, it will finish before the month ends). Once it lasted until almost Christmas!

Good luck, everyone!

(Pete A) #5

I won’t be too exposed to the wrong foods, and when I am I may taste “something” Its not an issue for me.

Like @Janie I easily and quickly bounce back though it could be annoying…

#6

Hi, all. All goes well. I’m averaging 25 grams of carbs per day now, having added whole milk for coffee, a veg every day (up from twice a week), and even a few nuts here and there when I realize a day’s calories are too low or I still feel hungry at the end of my typical light lunch. Did my monthly “health check” which still showed a .5 bHB after two weeks of doing that, so clearly no problem. I hate supplementation, but the buzz in the LC community about iodine made me buy a bottle of it to see if it does something magical for me. I worried about the taste beforehand, but no taste at all to me in my mineral-laden well water. Worried about nothing! :smiley:

I have a few symptoms of low thyroid, like a 30 point drop in BP right after I eat (so I go from borderline high to borderline low in a snap), hair loss, low metabolism, and when I went to the knee doctor to see how badly I’d bolixed it up this time (not bad! a NSAID gel fixed me right up), my temperature was 93.88F. Which is fine if you’ve been dead for six hours, but a bit low for a normal morning. I wouldn’t take pills for it were I diagnosed, so I’ve never pushed for more extensive tests to confirm if I do have a thyroid issue, but a supplement, I’ll try.

Will eat mashed potatoes on US Thanksgiving --a potluck-- but no dessert. I’ll stick a piece of sugar-free gum in my pocket in case I get envy while watching others eat desserts, but I doubt I will care. Sugary stuff seems like poison and insanely too sweet to me now. And I’ll be stuffed with turkey and turkey skin anyway, plus whatever clean LC veg is available, raw or cooked.

I feel like I should keep eating just as I am until the first of the year and then think about maybe adding a bit more vegetable carbs, depending on where I am then. My health self-check this morning had me at 25% body fat on the nose, which is good. 24% might be better, but at my age, I don’t want to go much lower than that. I like the dress size I’m at right now. If I lose another, fine. If I lost two sizes, I’d definitely up the carbs to regain some, because that’d be too low for me.

No part of me thinks “I’m off a diet now and I’ll go have all the carby things.” Finally learned my lesson! And as one gets older, thinking “I’ll never have X again” isn’t very painful. “Never” isn’t that many more years of abstaining.

Have a lovely month, all.

#7

I wouldn’t think like this, my mind is different (and I want 7-8 more decades at least anyway) but I have “I ate sooooooooooooo much of this all my life, it’s enough for a lifetime!”.

Oh yes, turkey is so much better than borderline inedibly sweet desserts! (Not like I behaved accordingly in my first low-carb years… or in extra cases even much later… exotic nostalgic time restricted things had some charm and I always loved desserts. But many people evolves much quicker than me. I do more or less okay in general but occasional days… I went wild back then.)

(Karen) #8

Just hoping to stay where I am. Just had one day of fasting fingers crossed that I have a loss but I would be OK with just being where I was.

(KCKO, KCFO) #9

Woot, woot, finally hit my goal weight again. Now to stay put.

(KCKO, KCFO) #10

Oh good I am not the only one thinking this.

I don’t want to go too far off my goal weight, I look ok now, feel good, DH thinks I am sexy and he is the only one who matters.

(KCKO, KCFO) #11

So what are all the USA folks planning for Thanksgiving?

We will do a fondue with keto foods to dip into it. Easy, no left overs to eat for days. It is just the two of us anyway. Makes life less stressful for sure.

(Robin) #12

Wow. Love that.
I have family here or that would be my plan too.
We’ll have brisket (everyone finally admitted it was not their fave, thank goodness). Then the usual. Son must still have dressing. Everyone else must have mashed potatoes and gravy. I will be hoarding the fatty bits of the brisket.

#13

Going to a potluck, 50ish people attending. Five turkeys were cooked. I peeled 20 pounds of potatoes and did five loads of dishes this morning in the communal work, and sliced peeled apples for pies yesterday. And I made two dishes of my own! I won’t eat either, but they’re “healthy” from a whole foods perspective. (Gotta get this stuff out of my cabinet one day, and potluck dishes is how I do that.) For my plate, green beans cooked two keto-friendly ways, plus turkey, plus a few green olives. (I plated them this morning and drank all the brine, one of my favorite drinks. Got looks, but I’m used to people thinking I’m odd!) My one indulgence will be mashed potatoes, and I won’t eat a Devil’s Tower of them. No dessert. I’m happier with meat and green beans than with dessert.

Christmas will be much like this, btw. Same group, same kind of food plus a ham. FAR too many desserts. A crowd that’s easily 35% T2D and they’ll snarf them down, two or three servings each, and “cover it with insulin.” SMH. I was hauling around pies this morning with zero desire to have any, despite how beautiful they looked (some good bakers in our group!). I think I’m good there.

I am stopping the milk as of tomorrow. I’ve added back an inch on my waist in four weeks, nowhere else, and I don’t think it’s the carbs making me fat, I think it’s minor bloating from the milk. Ah well, I won’t miss it terribly. But without it, I also won’t want coffee (usually only a wintertime thing for me anyway). So I’ll be drinking hot water as my morning drink while the cold weather lasts.

Hope all in the US had a great keto Thanksgiving!

(KCKO, KCFO) #14

Very good idea. I was never much of a pie person, I loved hearty breads “they are oh so good for you.” Yeah they are, if you want to just pack on lbs. And I got my fast typing ability back after ditching all things gluten.

(KCKO, KCFO) #15

After the holiday I felt like a longer fast than my current ones. So I am shooting for dinner Wed. night that will be 72 hrs. So far, so good.

Got a nice surprise, already I have dropped below my goal weight, which I have been trying to reach the last couple of months. I get there and then bounce up again. Going under with this little amount of fasting already makes me think I might just be able to stay down here, which I would love to do.

Anyone else altering your fasting or eating due to the holidays?

#16

I had my Thanksgiving potatoes. Honestly? meh. Also, I helped with about eight hours of work with the potluck prep, and people snarfed down the food in 50 minutes. It took another four hours for others to clean up. That’s not a great bang for my work buck! So Christmas, I’ll stay at home and make myself a ribeye and eat alone. Five minutes cooking, and I don’t even need to wear a bra for the event, lol. And ribeye is far better than turkey anyway.

Back to carnivore right now, except when out to eat. Then a side salad or broccoli is fine. I don’t want to be one of those people at a restaurant. My closest friends know how i eat and don’t comment negatively any longer. I don’t need to make a big to-do of it in public. Also veg don’t bother me in any way I can detect. I’d rather have eggs and meat at home, but out, a salad helps me blend in.

collaroygal, I don’t fast. I don’t weigh, either. I do have tight jeans I love, so I know when I regain, and once a month I test body fat percentage, because I care about that, not weight. As long as I’m under 25% body fat and over 20%, I’m at goal, whatever mystery number my weight might be.

I did a deep dive into science on weight maintenance. There is veritably none that is good. I discount everything from WW (published through CalTech), which is biased, and if you read the fine print, the people answering are still obese and up from their lowest weight, so not sure how much of a success that is anyway! And most participants did not give any specifics on how they maintain.

The only good data is an older study that comes from the National Weight Registry in the US. (Also, there are plenty of solid studies that say 85% of people, five years out, are fatter than when they began, but I was looking only for maintenance strategies) Those (almost all) women exercise 90 minutes a day and eat on average 1450 calories per day. They record their food, daily or nearly so. They weigh weekly and cut back even more on calories if they are up in weight for the next week. That’s pretty much the whole trick for them.

I’d love that kind of data for low carb. I suspect it’s more like don’t go over 1800 calories for women, exercise, and keep carbs under 40 grams, but that’s only a guess. I want the science. Real facts, aboveboard methodology, 2 years maintenance, the biggest n= they can find. So I’m sticking with that guess but am keeping my carbs much lower for now, except very rare days like Thanksgiving.

Losing is easy. Maintenance is the trick. I’m going out to lunch twice next week and had to scour the menus at fairly carby restaurants to find something I was willing to eat. In one case, there is sugar in every damned dish! But a few entrees are only 2 grams, so I’ll go with one of those.

#17

:scream:

I tracked for several years but not all the time, it’s not how I imagine life and needed breaks. It gave me a little info, that was good, I am curious and got some fun numbers too but otherwise it didn’t help (I am not big on stopping eating just because the numbers say so :wink: never did that).
But after years? I couldn’t stop! I stopped… And 2 days later I noticed I started it again.
But fortunately I can’t track on carnivore, usually as I have no idea about the macros of my main ingredient. So I finally stopped and didn’t start again. It’s nice.
I merely track how much meat and eggs I eat per day, it’s interesting info for me.

This is my plan. But how could I eat such a tiny amount of food every day…?
But it’s not all about gender. One woman uses 1500 kcal a day, the other 3200. Just like for men, it varies greatly. Height, muscle mass, activity, personal factor… Even fat mass but it’s about maintenance so I think about a normal healthy amount here.

For me, losing is almost impossible (I put several years of effort into it. I don’t say it was nothing but I surely didn’t lose), almost as hard as gaining (that’s truly impossible I guess unless I really want it? maybe even then, I didn’t try), maintenance is the easiest thing ever (I gained 1 kg a year before with constant overeating but I won’t and can’t do that again. and I stopped at 80kg anyway. way too high for a short one with little muscles but could be much worse) BUT I never had an okay weight so I can’t possibly know. But I find it extremely unlikely I will have any problem with it. (But I am a huge optimist and envision activity and more muscles for my future.)

(KCKO, KCFO) #18

Time for a new thread. Happy Hollies everyone.

(Robin) closed #19