Just One More Diet

I will save this list in the sidebar if I can figure out how. Blogger's not as easy as they make it out to be. :) YouTube - not in any particular order except A.D. Keto makes me laugh, that's the only reason he's on top A.D. Keto Keto Connect Cooking Keto with Kristie Highfalutin' Low Carb Ally McWowie Losing in the Forest Diet Doctor (most of the content is behind a paywall, but it's good content) Dr. Jason Fung Dr. Ken Barry Websites : Ketogenic Forums  - Great forum, good people I Breathe, I'm Hungry Keto Connect Diet Doctor I stay away from Facebook groups, mostly because those people can be crazy go nuts, I find Instagram is a "kinder, gentler" place. Here are all the keto peeps I watch on IG (Sorry they're not links. So sue me, I'm lazy.): _ketocarlie _ketomom a.d.keto baconand_megs bipolarcarnivore bmills_ketodude breathingketo brickreate californiacountrygal choczero chunky_to_hunky2018 dailyketo

So much to say, I don't know if I can say it all. I was in an intensive binge eating disorder program last year and worked through my outer layers down into the deep cause of my emotional eating. It was stuff that I knew about my childhood but that I hadn't really understood as the cause of my eating. The food is the symptom and the crutch, the arrow pointing to what is going on inside of me. At the beginning of therapy my therapist gave me specific advice: trust the food, trust yourself, don't restrict. Don't take away the only thing you have that helps keep you emotionally stable. If you are craving or binging go ahead and accept it, and accept yourself. While doing so look inside yourself for what you are feeling, don't just bury the feelings in food, but primarily don't restrict. Yeah, you may eat more at first but if you learn to trust that the food is there for you you can use it to "hold your hand" while you work through whatever is going on i

Last post I discussed how I wasn't going to be able to sustain all the "extra-curricular" keto activities I was doing, like blogging, reading forums, watching YouTube, etc. Most of that has calmed down, and as you might have noticed I took a break from this blog, but my eating hasn't suffered at all. Since my first weigh-in in May I have lost about 34 pounds. After tracking almost everything I was eating for the first month, month and a half, I got into a rhythm and now I don't track anything but I'm still losing weight. Don't get me wrong, I don't go hog wild. I read labels, check restaurant nutrition websites, make sure I'm getting large quantities of healthy fats, keep my goals in mind at all times, and I don't eat carbs. I've found a couple sugar-free (mostly) ice creams that satisfy the (much less frequent) sweet tooth, a great sugar-free dark chocolate brand that manages the emotions during times of stress, and I make sure to eat a

I'm starting to think that being obsessed with being on this forum, reading keto FB pages, watching all the YouTube pages, reading books, etc. is starting to get unhealthy. If keto is going to be a way of eating just like carb-eating was, then I won't be able to sustain all this extra-curricular activity I'm doing on top of the meal planning, cooking, dishes, and cleaning the cast iron skillet. It's nice to be on a forum and get new ideas and recipes and make new friends, but I think I know everything I'm ever going to learn about keto unless there's a new scientific discovery. I've been studying low carb physiology for 17 years, I know almost all of it already and what I didn't already know I've filled in neatly in the last two months. I just wasn't able to implement it until this year 'cause I needed therapy first, and I didn't know I needed therapy until last year. I just hate how I can't have dinner with someone or go to someo

I have successfully, sort of, ended my first 24 hour fast! Here are my thoughts. Breakfast-to-breakfast seems to work really well for me, Tuesday night the only trouble I had was when hubby and daughter started making their dinner and I could smell it all the way from my bedroom. I had been really focused on the book I was reading but for the next fifteen minutes I had to read the same paragraph at least 5 times. Then the neighbors started a BBQ outside and my stomach growled. I drank some water, distracted myself with videos, and very soon my tummy settled down and the hunger pangs went away. I was able to get back to my book, The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung. Don't read it if you don't want to be more pissed off at our government and "Big Food". At 9:45am Wednesday yesterday I started my first meal exactly 24 hours after finishing the last meal the day before. I wasn't hungry up until 9:30. I had no hunger pangs, no headache, and no growling until 9:30. I

Alrighty! It is Tuesday and as I was planning all weekend I am going to try a breakfast-to-breakfast water fast today. I'll probably be able to survive the fasting but the thing I am concerned about is whether or not it will trigger a binge tonight or tomorrow. Binging is all about the head-game. I learned in BED therapy last year that restricting what I eat can trigger a binge and since I started keto I have really come to recognize that immediate correlation. I have to be SUPER conscious that it's going to happen to have a chance of preventing or mediating it. There are several tricks I've learned in the last 6 weeks of keto. It takes a bit of 1) desensitizing; 2) active mindfulness; 3) distraction; 4) chugging water; 5) not letting my emotions get the better of me; 6) positive self-talk and self-compassion; and most importantly 7) flexibility. I have to trust myself that if I'm really hungry I won't keep myself from eating. I have to be willing to "go wi

We need some before & during shots. Starting with my well-before-keto on 3/29/2018. I have no idea how much I weighed here. Here's my closest to starting keto picture on 5/29/2018, at about 345, maybe 350. (Emma got my phone away from me and took a secret candid shot, those pesky kids!) I started keto about 5/24 but my first official weigh in was on 6/4, at 340#, when I'd already used up my glycogen stores and dumped most of the water weight. I decided to check my weight 'cause the pants were looser. And today, 7/11/2018, 323.2. You can already see a difference in my face. I've noticed this with previous attempts to do low carb/keto, that the weight seems to leave my face first.

Yesterday was really hard but I'm just getting started. 7:30 - Coffee with cream and stevia Some vague hunger pangs all morning 10:00 - Break time for everyone else but if I want to break the pavlovian response to eating at certain times just because it's that time. No, I'm NOT gonna eat! 11:15 - Mild headache and not-mild hunger have started. The experts say that the headache means have some salt and the hunger can be resolved with water or bone broth. I have no bone broth, so I'll just sip on bullion, which has lots of salt anyway. 11:30 - I have a cup of bullion broth sitting on my desk next to me in case I get lonely. 1:30 - I've been sipping on the bullion every time the stomach grumbles or the mouth starts to water. Now my jaw hurts. Maybe I'm clenching? 2:30 - Still doing well, I just had a little energy burst that made me want to move so I walked around the building. Now I'm bobbing in my chair a little. I love not getting the afternoon

After several unintended several-hour fasts last week (“ate small breakfast, just not hungry for lunch, not skipping dinner”) and an unplanned fast yesterday (“ate a big breakfast, not hungry for lunch, how long can I go before eating dinner, ah not very long at all”) I’ve decided to try fasting on purpose today. Yesterday I ended up eating dinner earlier than normal 'cause the hunger pangs were just too much. Big tip, and a tool I’ve used in the past is that sleep beats hunger. I slept from about 1:00 to 4:30, ate, watched videos, then slept again at 9 or so and woke up this morning at 5:30 feeling refreshed and ready to try this thing. So, my last meal was last night at 4:30pm and about 6:30am I had my morning coffee of 1/2c espresso + 1/4c heavy whipping cream and one of those teenytiny-scoops of stevia powder but I haven’t eaten anything else. At 6:30am that was 14 hours down. My plan is to ignore hunger pangs, drink water, and have dinner at 7pm as my breakfast, bring

Remember a few weeks ago what happened when I tried to restrict my fat and calories?  Just the thought of restricting lead me straight to a binge. I decided to stop even thinking of restricting and just eat what I felt like eating within the confines of 20g of net carbs which wasn't in and of itself making me feel like binging. Sheesh, do I put an e in binging, bingeing, or do I leave the e out? The dictionary doesn't like either way. Maybe one thing I should do is clarify that the first step in Binge Eating Disorder therapy is learning to trust food. Trust that you have enough food, trust that you can have food whenever you want, trust that there is no scarcity of food, trust that you don't have to horde food either in your pantry or in your body. I have found great success in the last year when I could just remember that first step. When I was having some emotional difficulties last year and early this year it was impossible to remember the first step and so I couldn

I was trying to explain to my husband the other day about an unexpected benefit I noticed of doing keto. Over the last four weeks I have had a definite reduction in my urge to binge. It's not that I feel like having a binge and I can talk myself out of it or that I have to exert effort to control it some other way. It's just that it doesn't come up. If I'm hungry I eat. Partway through a meal, even if I'm distracted by TV or conversation or whatever, it occurs to me to check if I'm satiated. If the answer is yes I stop eating, if the answer is no I keep eating. I'm not constantly thinking "I have to keep myself from having a binge" or "I have to remember to be mindful when I am eating". My therapist said that the first step to recovering from binge eating disorder was learning to recognize my body's satiety signals. If I noticed I was full I could take that opportunity to stop but even when I was full I still wanted to keep eating.

Amazingly, at less than 20 net carbs a day, it hasn't been difficult to do keto. I've been doing it sort of lazy, eating lots of fats, moderate protein, and only a little bit of veg and none of the carby stuff. I tracked for a week or so and then I noticed my calories were way higher than I wanted them from all the fat, and things went pear shaped for a day or two. When I tried to count calories and reduce my intake I suddenly had a binge episode, and then I had another the next day. I learned a lot in BED therapy and the first thing you learn is that restricting triggers binges. So, I slammed the brakes on tracking for a week but continuing with high fat and protein and almost no carbs and I didn't have a binge the whole week. For the last week now I've been slowly going back to tracking but I'm just making sure I don't go over in net carbs and under in protein. I'm leaving the fat alone and eating whatever I want. I see the calories numbers but I try not

In late-May I started feeling like I was pulling out of a depression I've been in since a friend of mine passed away in January. It wasn't so much that she had died, which was awful of course and I'll miss her very much. My emotional upset was more personal than that, more self-centered of me. She had always been the fat woman I looked at as my saving grace. I always thought, "If she can be that fat and still alive, then there's hope for me." I think I said this already but it bears repeating. So late-May I was pulling out of the depression, I felt more cheerful, less weighed down, wanting to go out more, maybe even see some friends. I could feel this episode was coming to an end and I was ready to take more constructive action with the panic and fear that had overwhelmed me when Randy died. Instead of just sitting on the couch every night, maybe now I could find the strength to focus my efforts on pulling myself back from that cliff Randy fell off. As I a

I'm having a lot of trouble organizing my thoughts on this subject and I really want to say all this stuff before I move on with other subjects so I'll just post what I have written down even though it's not finished and move on. I wanted to get all sciencey and cite sources but I'm just not that into it right now. I'm tired of all the USDA RDA bullshit and it feels like no matter what the science says there's just too much money in sugar and keeping people fat to get anything changed. I'm a relatively intelligent person but I also, possibly stupidly, believe in conspiracy theories. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the only person involved in JKF's death. I believe that the tobacco companies add extra-addictive chemicals to their products to keep their customer base growing. And I believe the food companies know exactly what they were doing when they added high fructose corn syrup and all sorts of other sugary substances to their products, and

In my last post I explained the background of my messed up relationship with food and how I got up to almost 350 pounds. Modern psychology calls it Binge Eating Disorder. I turn to food for emotional support as one would turn to a family member or friend, whether it be in happy times, stressful times, sad times, or just bored times. I ate my meals well beyond a feeling of fullness, even to the point of feeling slightly sick, because the overwhelming feeling of calm I got feeling, tasting, and smelling the food was impossible to let go of. Also, I was obsessed about when I would eat next, what I would eat, and generally speaking who would be eating with me. I made excuses to eat, putting myself in situations where eating was almost mandatory, like at a potluck. And I never turned down a free meal even if it was possible I wouldn't like it.  My Binge Eating Disorder has been a roadblock for me the entire time I've known about the ketogenic diet. You might have even wondered &qu

I keep putting off the discussion of my low-carb food plan so much that I'm starting to sound like one of those self-help books that repeats over and over, "Just keep reading for the secret to a better life!" but never ends up getting there. I promise, the backstory is necessary because it needs to all be taken in perspective. This post might actually be shorter than the others because it's a pretty simple subject. My family didn't like me and the only way I know how to soothe that subconscious pain is through eating. Don't get me wrong. My family loved me, they gave me everything I needed, they clothed me, fed me, gave me toys, kept the house clean, sent me to good schools, and provided me with countless enriching educational experiences. They just didn't like me. For instance, one day when I was in my early 20's my uncle (Mom's brother) said to me, "If you weren't related to me I wouldn't want to spend any time with you. You

I am nothing if not verbose. I'll try to be more succinct in future posts. Trust me, this will get to the more interesting parts about daily Keto dieting very soon. I just have to get all this off my chest before I start. So, family crisis hit hard in 2008. After a death in the family and a long-distance move I was stuck in a foreign place with antagonistic relatives and devil's food doughnuts were my only source of comfort. From January 19 to February 25 I gained about 40 pounds. Yeah, 40 pounds in just about 5 weeks. One day I heard a radio DJ talking about a great diet he went on called Medifast and I thought I had to give it a try. I read and researched it for a couple weeks and convinced my husband (was my "new boyfriend" in the last post) that I should try it and he promised to help. Medifast is a low carb, low fat, low calorie diet made up mostly of meal replacement "shakes, soups, and bars". As I said, I was desperate and was willing to try anythin

It all started in 2001 when I decided to go back to college to finish my degree. As a student I had almost-free use of the University Health Center and it turned out that the same (fantastic) doctor I'd been seeing the whole time I was in college ten years previously was still there. I quickly made an appointment for an annual exam during which I talked to her about my weight issues, my irregular periods, my excess facial hair, and just about everything I could think of. I remember it like it was yesterday. We were sitting at her desk and without speaking she turns to her computer and starts typing. I didn't know what was going on but I waited and after a moment she turned back and said, "I think you have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. Everything you mentioned fits. Let's do some tests and go from there." She printed out a sheet about PCOS and scheduled our next appointment. When I got home I started researching PCOS on the internet. There wasn't a lot on th

About twenty years ago I first heard about the low-carb diet fad, generally only called the Atkins Diet back then. Dr. Atkins was touted as a quack and his diet was generally dismissed as dangerous and impractical. The diet seemed ridiculous even to me because I had grown up during the low-fat, low-protein, high-carb fad and everything I knew and had ever heard was completely contradictory to eating low-carb. At the age of 16 I started Weight Watchers for the first time when it was still all "grapefruit, cottage cheese, and baked fish with no oil" and I specifically remember hearing and repeating the phrase "fat makes you fat" over and over. I don't know what scientific evidence Weight Watchers, our government, and society had to go on to make that recommendation but eating low-fat carbs just made me eat more carbs and I spent the next 30 years becoming fatter and fatter, insulin resistant, and now pre-diabetic. Don't get me wrong, I do not claim to have g

Ugh, this is so hard. I've been overweight my entire life but for most of that time losing weight was just about looking better or wanting to fit into nicer clothes or being able to snag a boyfriend, but it's not about those things anymore. I definitely weigh too much but going on a diet isn't just about being slim or looking good or wearing nice clothes now. It's become about my health, and at this point my health is in crisis. I'm pre-diabetic with severe insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, I'm on two different blood pressure prescriptions and something for depression. I have both a hiatal hernia and an umbilical hernia. I have messed up my knees, hips, and back. I can't stand for longer than five minutes and I can't walk farther than fifty feet without shortness of breath, pain, and discomfort. Walking around the grocery store is barely doable, let alone going to Costco, taking a family walk on the beach near our house, or teaching my daughte