Just One More Diet

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...