OXtoberFest ZC Challenge

(Kellyn ) #168

Thank you! You have a great weekend , too!

#169

@Fangs … Had to laugh. I have no idea what to do with my self on days off, sometimes. Once we switched from square bales to round bales, I felt like I was twiddling my thumbs for most of the summer. Less on the job with the promotion means one more day off per week. I’m sure I’ll find something to do though! LOL!

GOing to run a couple errands, clean, and cook dinner for a couple friends tonight. Pharmacy teching this weekend for a couple short shifts. It’ll be nice. Have a great weekend if I don’t pop back on here again!

(Kellyn ) #170

I want show you a really great post from the zeroing in on health facebook page by BJ Leone that Elizabeth Stern posted. I think it is so good and some may need to hear it.

and from BJ: A call to all recidivists…

When I see posts with all the various colourful stories from ‘repeat backsliders’, I tend to chuckle even through my empathy. Not because I’m laughing at you, but because I can so fully and completely relate.

I can say one thing about recidivists…the problem is often that they have beautiful, sharp and very self-aware minds - but that often ends up meaning that they are also just too damned clever for their own good, really, at times.

That sharp awareness and astute self-analysis, when it comes to ZC, unfortunately doesn’t always do them many favours.

Insight will only get you so far with ZC. And often, too much ‘insight’ and intelligent rumination, without an equally strong foundation built on basic long-term repeated action, will end up making you stumble:

Mainly due to the tendency these types of mental machinations have to interfere with being able to able to just pick one path; and to stay on it without over-thinking it, for long enough for it to take hold.

The thing is of course that all of you are far from alone…

There are so many out there going through the very same thing.

And ultimately, it’s not a matter of figuring out what you’re “missing” in order to not sabotage yourself (that others seem to mysteriously have figured out)…it’s about you finding your own strong enough reason for doing it.

We can give you lots of tips - everything from not letting yourself get too hungry…to making inspiration boards…:smile:

And all of them may work or help, to some extent, some of the time.

But you already know that none of it will mean much for someone like you, who actually is trying to come up with something that will stick as an incentive to get you to stop fiddling around and going back and forth all the time:

Where your cognitive dissonance is basically taking you for a ride and flinging you around like a rag doll, back and forth between conflicting drives and desires, seemingly at will and seeming beyond your own will.

At the end of the day, it does take some “willpower” at times to get through certain moments…

And the only one who can muster it up and do it…is you.

You can be stuffed full of meat all day long and still struggle with recidivism, if you do not find and keep a firm grasp on your reasons, goals, and on your determination to honour the commitment to yourself that got you motivated in the first place, to do this.

That takes practice and repetition.

And like anything worth mastering, it needs effort and work put into it daily at a mental level too, not just in going through the physical daily motions.

The more you train your mind the more your mind will fall in line with your purpose, and the less it will be able to entice you to fall back to the path of least resistance and effort (ie, doing what you have always done before and have become conditioned to do as your baseline).

You have everything you need, and are more than capable of getting through this and succeeding…

And the posts I see from so many of you, clearly reveal this to be so.

In some ways, it strikes me that often these posts asking for help, are more of a self-pep talk (or a bit of a kick up your own bum), and a call to get yourself to a place of greater accountability with yourself.

The inspiration ultimately can’t come from anyone else - and this you all know too.

So I would say, use these posts that you felt urged to write - for whatever reason - as a way of realising that what you are really looking for is a confirmation in your own mind, of what it is you really want.

And that your task, then, is really to get your own mental wardrobe in order and organised.

So that you will not be greeted by all the clutter that so easily will throw you off track if there is not the necessary order and clarity needed therein, to mentally to get through all those wobbly moments that come up, once the light of day hits your new commitment in the face with the cold sting of reality.

That is, those inescapable occasions all will face at times, and when everyone must stand and make choices in the face of those inevitable times of doubt, apathy, irresolution, boredom, or whatever other obstacles come along regularly and must be overcome.

It’s not about having willpower of steel, so much as it is about having a purpose of steel. Find that purpose…

That is, having something that you can be motivated enough by to make it worth going through whatever temporary discomfort may arise, without losing sight of the value that purpose holds for you.

What you truly value, you cherish. What you cherish, you guard fiercely and nothing and no one can separate you from it. xx

#171

you too!! I am so not into tech stuff, I don’t even own a darn phone but my hubby and kid are all in with their Iphones LOL When I am ‘out and about’ I truly don’t want anyone calling me :wink: but I know when kid starts to drive in a year or so and college, yea I gotta get me a darn phone! Only for her to get me at all times, other than that, I would never bother :blush: And me, a former computer programmer from the North, moved South, went into farming and now I want total disconnect from any of that social phone stuff and more, but I love me my 'puter for zc forums HAHA

Enjoy your weekend and eat great!

you will and it will be farm related :wink:
we raised Boer Goats. Had like 170 or so and when kidding went down, OMG! madness but I went into a side biz for goat milk soap and it was stellar. I made a ton of bucks at the farmers markets selling that and it got so big of a biz I got into a few local stores BUT I sure worked my butt off! Watch what you ‘do with those days off’ cause it could cost way more in time on other things ya know HAHA I was so happy when it closed down, but I kept my soap biz and I bought fresh goat milk from the other farmers I knew to help them with sales, and I kept going and going til that day I said…omg I am SO done, almost 20 years doing soaps, I am so done HAHA

Alot of work but in the end a ton of fab memories.

YUP BJ makes good ones.

I started zc in ZIOH and they taught me alot. Everyone thinks ZIOH IS so militant but zc entrance requires being just that. It is the plan and they do it LOL yet so many find that so tough? ugh. I thrived on that actually. They made me zc and I thank ZIOH all the time for the info they gave me. Eat only meat/seafood and not one darn other thing! Yet some think that is wrong but in the end, to eat all the ON PLAN food you need to enact change and that works, but you never can do it on plant carbs. You never get the truth of what carnivore can do for your body if you don’t eat enough meat/seafood to make the change truly happen! It makes sense to me now :sunny: but when I started I was like, WTH? but in the end I listened and won thru it all!

One thing the veterans told me, and I fought it, TIL THE darn day I listened, just eat a ton of meat and seafood and keep that darn belly full when ya start…if one does that, the best plan is coming your way :slight_smile:

KP there is tons of great ZC info out there and you are reading and getting it and all…very cool and great stuff to post for newer people to read! Love that!!

#172

Definitely never. I can’t seriously undereat so it won’t happen. I need my calories, each and every day when I actually eat something. It’s very fixed in my life and it was noticeable in my carnivore and carnivore-ish days. But I will try a day once when I will be able afford lean meat and nothing else for a whole day. Okay, one day is doable even now. But it’s a more or less horrible waste (it depends on what route I choose, undereating or a lot of protein) and I am very much against that, actually. But I can offset it with a longer fast, after all… I only need to persuade my hedonist inner self to change 3 enjoyable days to 3 not enjoyable ones out of curiosity… And for the sake of a bigger deficit… No, it doesn’t sound good. Of course I would add fat but just the usual little amount for lean meat.
Desiring such a day would be different but I never ever desired much lean protein. I always desired lots of fat. And it makes zero sense to desire protein and only that, I rather just fast, much less hunger and suffering… Cheaper and less wasteful too. So I have problems with this on zillion levels, I doubt anything could break through it in years. But I may try. I always was curious what if I focus on protein but I can’t try it. Very low-fat isn’t what I do. I tried that once in my life for a whole day and it was awful (I knew that but well, curiosity).
No, doesn’t make sense. Anything but that. If ZC has that chance, I rather stay away from it. Certain dietary things frighten me and low-fat is one of them.

I honestly don’t understand those vegans. Normal vegans eat proper, extremely tasty plants. Okay, I didn’t try much vegan meat replacements, it took many vegetarian years when my curiosity finally managed to persuade my hedonist self who knew it can’t be good… That’s surely just one thing, there must be better ones but that was awful. And I didn’t get it. How can anyone ruin tasty plants (even wheat has nice taste in bread, for example) like that? And why? We must have different tastebuds (or different level of self brainwash, who knows).
By the way, my seitan is very tasty (and I still can’t bring myself to make it, I always plan it, it’s useful when I run out of all meat and barely have eggs. carni broke me and it’s problematic as I just go back to eating carbs instead when I have little animal food. I need to work on it). Nothing like meat but that’s a positive point as it’s something exotic and unique.

I really will be scarce, I so don’t do carni now and I have almost zero animal protein, it’s horrible… We do what we can tomorrow… I don’t even track (I should practice not tracking)… And this year just gets worse. One of the houses can’t give us eggs for a while as the foxes killed most of the hens. Well, we can get eggs from other not so bad places, I just like to get it from people we know.

#173

Day #10. One thing about these carnivore challenges is that they can look like a big task at the start. But the experience of them is that what looks like an endless winter from the start point actually passes in normal time, each day in it’s time, so that when we look back on Slaptember, or AugustPalooza, it seems that time flew past. The reality is that the challenge is not in the time commitment, the challenge is actually in consistently keeping oneself nourished.

I have that interesting thing happening now 10 days in. My fasting blood glucose levels have suddenly gone high.

This morning (before coffee): 7.2mmol/L (130mg/dl) with fasting blood ketones of 0.3mmol/L.

My wife points out that currently we have some people down from the city on the neighbouring farm property and they seem to think being out in the countryside is about being able to make noise (which they are constrained from in their city lives) - so they are out on their quad bikes driving around - not actually doing work, chainsawing anything that doesn’t move and burning it (they call it bushfire prevention), when they burn it they like to get a leaf blower to blow air into the fire and rev it like it is a Harley Davidson. They will go home tomorrow and I’ll see what happens with a return to tranquility to my blood glucose levels.

I’m going to take Billie (dog) for a run and a swim at the beach now, as I’m not yet hungry from this extra blood glucose. I’ll make like a plant (vegan’s will love this) and pretend I am photosynthesising because I will be, I will be synthesising Vitamin D. It’s 1pm.

4pm breakfast = smoked bacon + 4 local, happy chicken eggs scrambled. A big mug of beef bone broth with half a teaspoon of Himalayan pink salt. 1 shot coffee (100mg) + cream.
Pre-breakfast, post walk in the sunshine at the beach blood glucose = 6.0mmol/L (108)

#174

that is really hard S. Not having that good protein source availalble when you need it. I know you are trying hard to find farms that can supply and then that poor farmer had the foxes destroy the hens. ugh. Without a good supply it is truly impossible for ya to do carnivore, I am sorry you are getting hit so hard with finding what you need in your area!

#175

Prior to converting to the ketogenic diet, your muscles were the major sites to soak up and use glucose in the blood for energy. On the long-term keto diet, however, they now prefer fat as fuel. So the muscles are resisting the action of insulin to bring sugar into cells for energy, saying, in essence: “We don’t want or need your sugar anymore, so move it along.” Hence, the slightly elevated, but generally stable, glucose circulating in the blood.

As Dr. Naiman states only testing fasting blood glucose without testing fasting insulin tells you very little. That’s because two people could have exactly that same fasting blood glucose levels and have very different circulating insulin levels


good article with some info on that.

You had me laughing on your city folk :slight_smile: :slight_smile: You shoulda gone all Deliverance on them HAHA Leaf blower in the fire, ugh, that is just stupid, I would be smacking someone around for that one LOL

Nice walk on the beach! Ahh you and your poochie have it made in the shade!!

#176

Just zc’ing along in fine form.

small NY strip steak
6 sausage links
big old cheeseburger patty
tin of sardines

just chuggin’ along and all is good. Appetite is now just easy going. No big want of food, not less want of food LOL Kinda right in that middle where I like to be in my eating.

Oxtober is like 1/3 gone and boy time does just tick on! We are in like 3 days of rain now…ugh…no sun so I won’t like that. I live and die by the sunshine LOL but I guess I will survive thru it :wink:

#177

That’s true Fangsy. That is why I check blood ketones at the same time as they are a proxy for insulin levels. Ketone production gets shut down by circulating insulin. So, if there are blood ketones present (there are) then it is likely that circulating insulin is low.

Thanks for the resources. I’ll gobble them up with my steak dinner.

(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #178

I’m around. I’ll update details later.

Carnivore went out the window with COVID (my reaction initially was panic and anxiety but that is all gone now) but in the last 6 weeks I’ve been carnivore adjacent. Heavy focus on beef and eggs but stinky fish, pork, less chicken but some in the diet.

I’ve stayed keto but did eat some peanuts daily in the summer and gained 10 lbs from inflammation (because I lost it fast) and gave up the little bit of chocolate I was eating every couple of days. Will give that a try adding that back in on Monday. @FrankoBear thanks for checking on me.

#179

here is a blurb from my zero carb forum:

If after several weeks of ZC (Zero Carb), your levels are well above 120-140, you might try at that time to consciously choose leaner meats, which reduces the amount of fat intake, or some people have to increase their fat intake – it can be tricky. But as I said, probably not likely. No need to panic yet.

Your body is adjusting – your insulin and blood sugar and glucagon – they haven’t got the signals fully functional yet. Adaptation can take 6-8 weeks, or more for some, especially for those with diabetes or other health issues.

---------So I remember also you need longer testing, like 3 months over time with all numbers, not just that BS number taken in the morning daily, heck I can’t remember the resource for that info, I know I got it somewhere LOL

kinda brain dead this morning. so foggy and rainy and nasty, I just wanna crawl back into bed and wait for the sunshine HAHA

#180

yea it was a friggin’ stressful time for sure. I am so glad you lost the inflammation lbs and are eating more cleaner once you got your footing!!
tough times out there, best we can do is eat clean to help our bodies I guess :slight_smile: Happy you are doing so much better now!!

(Edith) #181

Yeah, I did something similar with tortilla chips at the start of the pandemic. At least peanuts are keto.:joy:

(Edith) #182

When I was keto, my morning blood sugar was always over 100 mg/dL. I don’t test is regularly any more, but when I do (on carnivore) it’s been in the 80s.

#183

:crazy_face:
:astonished::ghost:

you know I was fortunate guys, I went the other way.
I went into :robot::robot:
auto robot mode for holding onto my eating as the only damn thing I could control every single step thru the crazy of it all.

Luckily everyone got a foothold in better and are doing so well now!!!

Stress times, ya know I never thought I would live thru some of the stuff you read about, hard times, disease times to this level and more and whammo here it is but we are all ok ya know. Life is gonna swirl around us and do its thing to us at all times, best we can do is buck up and do what we can but in the bitter end of it all, there is SO VERY little we do control in truth thru the big old mother nature situation.

(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #184

Virginia,

I’m going to post details later on my accountability thread but I stopped 3 weeks ago my beta-blocker (Tropol XL) which turns out to increase insulin resistance (IR) and has other metabolic downsides. Today I cut my diuretic (spironolactone/hctz) in 1/2 and expect to get off of it in 2 weeks. Also causes IR and increases the risk of skin cancer, which I have had. I had been on it so long that I never read the flyer.

All of the above under my Cardiologist care. I expect my morning BG to go down from this and my carnivore adjacent lifestyle. If I get off the diuretic that will be 3 BP meds in 12 months gone for good.

(Edith) #185

I cannot imagine how satisfying that must feel. That is wonderful progress!

#186

Hey Peeps!
Seems like the day for good news! So here goes:

  1. got the promotion. I start Monday. $2/hr raise. =)
  2. got the results back on my bloodwork.
    12 hr. fasting glucose level was 91. No idea if that’s good or bad. I think it might be good?
    Ferritin…up to 12. From 7 or 8 or whatever it was…that’s pretty good. Of course, eating red meat almost daily, plus 2-4 iron complex, I was hoping it would be at least on the edge of normal! HDL was 93, I think. Forgot the LDL, but it was well within normal ranges.

If I think of more stuff, will post. But, all in all…pretty decent Saturday, me thinks! Have a happy day!

(Edith) #187

Congratulations on your promotion! Enjoy the extra day off each week!