Wednesday

Hmm.  It appears that the fat fast worked, at least, sorta.  I ate crap yesterday (started out writing "carp", which would have been fine), and am down to 149.4 today.  That has to mean that if I could avoid the crap, I'd be lower, and that my metabolism is in a bit of a reset right now.

My problem is with sugar.  If it's in the house in an edible form, I succumb to the cravings - did twice yesterday.  I will be glad when the Easter candy is done, that's for sure.  Here's yesterday:

• bacon
  
• tea with cream
  
• the usual supplements
  
• cheese (maybe 6 pieces?)
  
• salami
  
• strawberries
  
• walnuts
  
• chocolate malted milk eggs (little ones, 2 handsful)
  
• steak
  
• salad with blue cheese dressing
  
• potato chips (the end of the Zapps Voodoo chips)
  

Starting out today with a fasted breakfast and a bag of macadamia nuts for starvation emergencies.  The plan would be to get to dinner with a few of them uneaten.  However, I'm a bit hungry now, so I don't know how well that will work.  I also still have a Snickers bar on my desk, from last week, and may end up eating it as well.  I hope not, but can't predict how the day will go.

Tuesday

Yesterday evening included chocolate, tortillas and tortilla chips, and cashews.  150.8 this morning - anyone surprised?  I'm having a hard time resisting temptation right now, and we still have a lot of leftover temptation.  Starting again this morning, even though I'm working from home.  Here's yesterday:

• tea with cream
  
• the usual supplements
  
• olives
  
• butter roasted pecans
  
• macadamia nuts
  
• cheese enchiladas with green chile
  
• tortilla chips and salsa
  
• cheese (yes, really)
  
• malted milk eggs - a lot of tiny ones
  
• cashews - a lot, not portioned out
  

I've had bacon so far today, and tea with cream.  Plan on keeping things like that for quite a while, and steak-and-salad for dinner.  And if I need nuts, to eat them in portions set out in a container.  Some strawberries as well.  Trying to stay out of the chocolate.

Monday

Good weekend, not from an eating standpoint, but from a weekend standpoint.  Nonetheless, I weigh only 149.4 this morning - down from 150.something yesterday.  I was a bit surprised, truly, because yesterday involved chocolate and nuts and potato chips, and I woke up with swollen fingers, so I know I've got excess fluids going on.  No idea what it will take to dislodge them; I suspect they're to do with the gardening work I put in on Saturday.  I am happy to note that I did about 4 hours of gardening surrounding an hour or so of shopping on nothing more than 3 strips of bacon and 2 pieces of cheese.  Ketosis rules; I love the stamina it imparts.

Here's what I recall about yesterday:

• omelet with ham, cheese, tomato
  
• hash browns
  
• tea with cream
  
• cheese (standard hunk-o-cheddar)
  
• malted milk eggs - I think 8 throughout the day
  
• one white chocolate truffle
  
• walnuts - I tried to keep the quantity down, but not tremendously well
  
• salad with blue cheese (also some seeds as garnish)
  
• miscellaneous seafood, grilled with sauces
  
• green beans
  
• garlic mashed potatoes
  
• half a slice of the innards of key lime pie (nasty texture to it)
  
• the remains of a bag of potato chips
  

So a long list, but apparently not as damaging as I feared.  We did not eat breakfast today owing to no defrosted bacon and being tired, so I have a bag of olives with me to eat throughout the day (I have started already; if a fast, just a fat fast).  It feels just now rather like it did when I was able to lose weight pretty easily; I am hopeful that the weekend did not take me permanently out of ketosis, and that I can eat low carb during the week and be back in it.  

Aha!

As I mentioned, I found myself seriously under the weather late Tuesday, after drinking more than I should have.  What mystified me the next day, when I was in my right-but-painful mind, was that I remember only 4 glasses of wine consumed over a 4-hour period with food.  And since I recall dinner pretty clearly and don't recall being particularly inebriated until the very end of it (and I confirmed with a fellow diner that I didn't seem all that drunk when we left dinner), I couldn't help but wonder what on earth was going on.  A colleague suggested that I'd fallen victim to the "endless glass" - we had waiters circulating and refilling throughout the evening; maybe they had snuck in a few extras that I just hadn't seen.  And it could have been that.  But I think I found a more likely explanation - a very low carb diet, which I'd been on last week for certain, seems to go very badly with alcohol - a quick Google search found multiple anecdotes of other low-carbers who found themselves almost completely intolerant of alcohol consumption.  Several of the anecdotes sounded remarkably like my evening - a worse reaction to drinking than they'd ever experienced before, after what seemed like a fairly innocuous quantity.

It is still possible that I just missed seeing some refills.  But having spent the prior week on a fat fast and demonstrating stronger ketosis than I'd seen in some time - and finding that I was still producing ketones even yesterday, I think it's possible that I ran into the same issue with alcohol.  The explanation offered on the forums where I found the anecdotes had to do with ketosis in particular; that the enzymes in the liver that produce ketones are somehow also used to detoxify and clear alcohol from the body, and that they might have been "busy".  Simplistic, I know, but maybe that was it.

Friday

I would not advise my weight-loss method this week to anyone, but I am at 148.8 this morning.  The net result of my business meeting was a two-day fast.  I say "net" because I did eat on Tuesday.  I also drank to excess.  I think I'll leave it at that.  I did not eat on Wednesday, except for about half a bag of Skittles.  Junk food, pure sugar, but it was all I could stand; I didn't even like the taste of tea.

I am more or less recovered now and was able to eat yesterday, but not a lot.  Here's the details:

·         Tea with half-and-half

·         A couple of pieces of bacon

·         A couple of strawberries

·         About a half-cup of hash-browns

·         A bag of potato chips

·         A burger and a half (sirloin burger patties, not grassfed)

·         Green chile

·         Cheddar cheese

·         3 malted milk eggs and one white-chocolate truffle

Not a very paleo or low-carb day, I admit, but I was treading rather carefully.  And, for what it's worth, I managed to be in ketosis at the end of the day.

Tuesday

Regress.

Annoyingly, I topped off a modest dinner with rather a lot of chocolate: seven or eight malted milk eggs and three Godiva truffles. 151.8 this morning. My ankles are puffy, so some of it is water, but three years ago, I could get away with mistakes like that, and now I can't. Grrrr.

Yesterday looked something like this:
- tea with cream
- the usual supplements
- broccoli cheese soup
- butter roasted pecans
- burger patty with Swiss cheese
- salad with ham in it, vinaigrette dressing
- potato salad
- too effing much chocolate
- two pieces of cheddar

Today starts a 3-day work conference, at the Ritz. Seriously. I will eat low-carb, and try to avoid desserts. Bringing macadamia nuts for emergencies.

Monday

I did not achieve my goal for the weekend.  And I'm not entirely sure why.  I ate pretty clean on Saturday; bacon, cheese and nuts, a naked burger for dinner without carbs.  Sunday morning, I was up half a pound.  And Sunday was a garbage eating day, including candy and potato chips and dessert and potato salad and a sweet fruit salad.  No change in weight from yesterday to today.  151.2.

I cannot list yesterday; I lost track.  Suffice it to say it pushed me well out of the ketosis I'd achieved.  So we are starting all over today.  No breakfast, I have some fat fast broccoli soup with me to eat if and when I get hungry today, and burgers-and-salad for dinner.  We need to buy some steaks for dinners, I think, and we will be eating a meat-and-leaves pattern for the foreseeable future.  Sheesh.

On the other hand, after rather crap sleep nights Friday and Saturday, I slept like the proverbial rock last night.  I would like more of that - and I felt energized when I woke up, not sluggish.  A very nice change from the past few weeks, I must say.  Drove to work without sunglasses, too, in hopes of getting more tonight.