November IF/EF chat, all welcome!

(Liz ) #222

Super reports, everyone!! Hope everybody who celebrates it has a great Thanksgiving.

Warning!! Food talk ahead:

As an experiment I made a totally unsweetened pumpkin pie with an almond meal crust & it was pretty good! I don’t eat any sweeteners so I figured I’d like it fine. With a little tweaking of spices & maybe just a few drops of stevia to offset a slight bitterness it could really work. The sour hint seemed like it could be from the cream cheese, like the kind you get from sour cream? But I don’t want that profile in what is essentially an unsweet pumpkin cheesecake.

I gave the test pies to my parents & I’ll make a new improved one to take to my in laws lol. My folks are troopers for being my test kitchen :smile: of course I left them with a tub of fresh whipped cream as well!

#223

Darcy, I’m so happy for your progress! These are happy tidbits indeed. :slight_smile:

The fire is so inviting…oh how I miss having a woodstove…

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I am currently at hour 22.5 I believe and will break my fast on turkey and the keto goodies I made today: Cabbage and bacon, keto bread, acorn squash, keto pumpkin cheesecake and I’ll throw together a spinach salad w/ blue cheese crumbles and maybe a few pecans. It will be nice to try my first keto holiday ever!

#224

Ha, I love your cheesecake story! Maybe some more cinnamon? I think you’re right about the sourness from the cream cheese though. I wonder if it would work with mascarpone?

I made a tiny ramekin-sized pumpkin cheesecake for myself tomorrow. But, I used stevia and some erythritol. I had my granddaughter test the extra-mini bit that filled 1/3 of another ramekin. She said, “this is to die for!” Oh boy! :smiley: I can hardly wait, since the rest of my family will be enjoying my homemade apple pie. I’m happy to have something that I can enjoy, and yes, with some whipped cream, for sure.

#225

You have a wonderful Thanksgiving too! Your menu sounds wonderful! Wow, all that cooking while fasting, you are superwoman. Our meal will be combination of the high carb favorites with a few keto things. I asked my aunt to bring fresh green beans and broccoli to steam instead of her usual green bean casserole. I am letting my sister bring potatoes so I don’t have to have them in my face for a long time (used to have a major potato addiction lol). My MIL will do the sweet potatoes. Meanwhile I asked my cousin to bring cut up veggies and dip instead of “heavenly hash” which was a high-sugar fruit salad type thing. We always have to have the brown-and-serve rolls for family feasts, but I plan to make some keto rolls too. I’ll make some boxed stuffing mix for the normies, but also am going to invent a “stuffing” made with Miracle Rice (shitaki) so here’s hoping that turns out okay. My mom will bring some store-bought pies, and I am not sure yet what to make for the keto dessert, but there will be something good. I would like to do keto cheesecake, but I think everyone would want some and there wouldn’t be enough (24 people), so maybe pumpkin cheesecake bars. Anyway, the whole meal will be a compromise, but I think it will be good. We don’t have our celebration until Saturday, so I have some time to work out the details.

Yes, I love my fireplace. It is my only consolation during Wisconsin winters, when I would by far rather be on the Space Coast in FL.

#226

Welcome back! I also have been absent a lot, busy with kids’ school mostly. It’s always nice to reconnect here in the forums.

#227

You could surely make some cheesecake bars, and your planning for family additions sounds like a good way to deal with the temptations. And with your celebration set for Saturday, I know you’ll find something that will work. Remember you could always try baking just a single serve cheesecake like I did.
I do find myself tempted a bit, but since I KNOW that I’m not eating that way, I just keep fasting. I enjoy preparing food for others. I think that I vicariously eat carbs through them at times…is that normal? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

#228

Thanks! I love my fireplace too… Sounds like you have great dinner planned. I’m joining family on Friday and will bring my own “cornbread” and cranberry sauce and will eat lots of their turkey and drink their wine. :smiley:

#229

I do that too! Not ideal I suppose.

#230

Good plan! How are you making the cranberry sauce?

#231

I bought a huge bag of freeze-dried cranberries (no sugar) online and just covered 2 cups of them with water, then cooked them with erythritol, stevia and lemon juice – all to taste – on the stove for about 10 minutes. Jelled up great!

#232

Oops I am doing a lot of that today. If it is bothersome to people (as I imagine it well can be!) I can blur things out or delete, what do you think?

(Liz ) #233

I tweaked the spices in the second batch & added a wee bit of stevia but it’s still a tiny bit bitter, I think it’s actually the pumpkin! Oh well, it’s still pretty good with the whipped cream :smile: That’s great your recipe was a hit!

(Liz ) #234

Eh! I know it’s a fasting thread but it’s THANKSGIVING :woman_shrugging:

(Donna ) #235

Made it through Thanksgiving! Whew!!

I did all the cooking, so it was LC, my sister and my parents came over with a ham (no sugar! She had to go around and search to find one that wasn’t sugar glazed – she said this a couple times. Haha. But, I’m glad she did.)

I was able to keep myself busy helping everyone get their food and then toward the end of the meal, hopping up to get the pies out and ready for serving, so I stretched out my meal and consumed very little. It was more vegetables than I’d normally have, green beans and yellow squash. I made a LC cheesecake and had a small slice, about 1/2 regular size, and that was enough for me. It was good, but I don’t expect to be sneaking off to the refrigerator to get more and more this year.

I think I will fast and follow my body, see how long it wants to go.

I’ve caught (another!) head cold, which is annoying. I’m not going to take my dried elderberry capsules this time, as I’m suspicious they might have had a carb impact last time. Looks like Echinacea and hot tea for me!

(Annette) #236

A couple of silly questions, if you don’t mind.

I am trying my first EF.

May I drink coffee to which I have added cinnamon, salt, and cayenne while brewing? May I leisurely drink the coffee while working or will I have a constant insulin response?

May I drink LaCroix?

Thanks!

(Liz ) #237

Not silly! The answer to both is yes! I think LaCroix is just fizzy water, yeah? I also drink black, green, and herbal tea all day/evening long when I fast.

(Liz ) #238

Me before going to my sister in law’s for Thanksgiving: “I will not talk endlessly about Keto I will not talk endlessly about Keto I will not talk endlessly about Keto…”

Me at Thanksgiving: 5 hours of endless Keto talk :roll_eyes: (at self)

What is wrong with me?!?! I’m going to get uninvited to family gatherings lol. But seriously, these folks have known me 18 years & they can see I look different. They know I’ve been low carb a long time but I’ve also almost always been obese & suddenly this year I’m getting lean. So in my defense they did ask about it!!

I find when I talk about Keto (like a ZEALOT UGHHHHH) there’s the simple overall concept that I can say in one or two sentences like Carl, but if they ask WHY then I’m suddenly Richard with the science talk lol. But it’s the science that’s key to explaining it! So there you go.

This family is mostly not overweight & they were trying to understand if this is a way of eating that would benefit them anyway (YES your dad/grandpa had diabetes & congestive heart failure :frowning_face: ).

I got the usual: oh you have to give up fruit? Potatoes? Types of disappointed faces but some had done Whole 30 & knew how much better they felt on that so it wasn’t totally new info to everyone.

I don’t know how to convey to sugar burners how your brain changes on Keto so that food is no longer the focus of your day & what you eat is so delicious you don’t miss fruit & potatoes, at least not as much as you thought you would. It’s such a leap of faith and you really have to be motivated. I remember my sugar burner thoughts & I don’t know how someone could have convinced my addicted brain to go cold turkey. I’m still surprised I’ve done it TWICE (Atkins in 2003 and Keto in March of this year).

Anyway, anyone else have the Keto talk at the Thanksgiving table this year?

(KCKO, KCFO) #239

Well there was lots of Keto talking at my Thanksgiving dinner. We went to a fellow ketoer,s house, Carey graciously hosted us, for a wonderful keto only dinner. We talked a LOT about keto, wanting to share keto with others, and recipes of course. It was a wonderful meal.

And I was actually down almost two lbs. from yesterday. Win-win all around.

(*Rusty* Instagram: @Rustyk61) #240

My thanksgiving was great. I had eggs/bacon for my morning meal, left over ribeye for noontime meal and @Brenda 's short ribs for dinner. I also stayed under my 1700 cal goal. So, I’m already planning my next 72 hour fast starting sometime sunday or Monday.

(Donna ) #241

I’m fasting since Thanksgiving dinner, which ended at 1:30pm yesterday. I have a head cold with sore throat and I’d like to do an EF so I can hopefully maintain my losses from a 7 1/2 day fast that ended Wednesday at noon. I lost 8 lbs on that EF, and I’m only up 2 lbs and I’m hopeful that another EF right behind it could help me stick that weight.

However, my mother in law called last night and she’s coming – today. A relative has died and she’s coming for the funeral. She lives 3 states away and we haven’t seen her in over a year. She will stay here at our house. (Just envision a stressful situation, because that’s what it always ends up being.) I hope the cortisol alone doesn’t make me gain.

She will probably only stay 3 or 4 days, but this will complicate my plans for an EF. Maybe I can beg off food because of my sore throat and sip hot green tea the whole time?