Friday

Yesterday ended up being about a 16-hour fast followed by a 7-8 hour eating window.  Classic IF pattern, actually.  By bedtime, I had hit "medium" on the keto-stick, a first in a long time.  And, no surprise, at 4:00 am, I had to get up rather abruptly and stomp a cramp out of my left leg.  I'd rather wondered if the rebalancing done by Rolfing would have perhaps caused it to move to my right leg, but apparently not.  150.8 today.  Not a big loss, but, I suspect, a real one.

Here's yesterday:

• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• butter pecans
• two stuffed peppers (peppers, ground grassfed beef, tomatoes, V8, cheese)
• 1/3 cup walnuts
• 1/3 cup cashews

It ended up at 70% fat, 21% protein, 10% carbs, and just over 1500 calories.  Pretty similar to the rest of the week.  

I think today is my last fat fast day.  In general, it has worked pretty well, and I mean to avoid carbs fairly strenuously going forward, since I've regained a ketotic state, and want to stay there for a while.  I'm still feeling a bit low-carb flulike, which would indicate that, while I'm producing ketones, I may not be burning them very well, so I want to give that a couple of days to get caught up.

No breakfast today, due to apathy (the appetite suppressing effects have arrived, I'd say).  I have some fat-fast broccoli cheese soup with me to eat at some point today - made it last night and it's pretty good.  Dinner out, I'd guess, and shopping for Easter cooking, a lot of which will occur tomorrow.  My goal for the weekend is to weigh no more on Monday than I do now, so I will continue to eat pretty low-carb.

The weather is finally hinting that it might be Spring around here.  I hope so - I intend, even if I don't really want, to get out and walk. 

Addendum

It occurred to me over the course of the last 2 or so hours that my brain is just hammered this morning.  I'm lethargic and achy and feel rather nasty, overall.  I'm so icky-feeling that I'm having serious trouble focusing my eyes.  So I have a theory (caveat: I'm probably not thinking clearly either; following a train of thought is really tough this morning):

I needed (still do) to readjust my metabolism to ketones.  I'm producing them right now, but can't use them.  Somehow, over the past year or so of what I thought was low-carb eating, I've returned to a glucose metabolism.

I suppose I'll know within the next day or so if this is true, because my brain and body will resume working, but it would explain why I was so crazy hungry the first couple of days trying to fat-fast, even as I failed at it so thoroughly.

Huh.

Thursday

Did a lot of gazing at natural daylight yesterday, and did find that I slept pretty well.  In fact, I was getting sleepy just sitting in the living room, as it got dark outside.  I think that's a good thing.  Eating yesterday was, well, flawed (what, again?).  151.0 this morning, though, with what feels like still more water to lose.  For what it's worth, I did a keto-stick yesterday evening and came out pink, so am in Ketosis.  Here's yesterday:

• omelet with ham, cheese, tomatoes
• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• bell pepper and sour cream dip
• 7 tortilla chips (I kept strict count)
• chile con queso dip (guessing about 1/3 cup)
• 3 Fuzzy's shredded beef taco innards (no shells)

I have looked at the Fuzzy's site, and trying to deconstruct the nutrition info in order to get at what I actually ate is just too damn hard. Suffice it to say that I kept the carbs pretty well down and did not hit the fat target again - and probably went well below the 90% fat target and above the 1000 calories.  Without dinner, I was at 65% fat, 22% protein, and 12% carbs.

I'm fasting today for convenience, and because I wasn't particularly hungry this morning.  Ketosis, I presume.  Now, whether it will help use up fat reserves I'd rather not have, in lieu of whichever sex hormones I am lacking at the moment, remains to be seen.  I hope so, though.

Wednesday

Well, huh.  151.4 this morning.  Any idea why?  No!  Water, I'm pretty sure, based on how badly my shoes fit today, and how much I ache head to toe.  There was a lot of salt in the dip.  Here's the list:

• 1 scrambled egg
• tea with cream
• 1/4 cup guacamole
• bell pepper
• a half cup of sour cream dip
• 1/4 cup butter roasted pecans
• pizza top from 4 slices 
• 3 pieces of cheese

That was it, but it was actually more food than Monday.  Sheesh!  The breakdown is like this:

• 1608 calories
• 142g fat (77%)
• 29g carbs (7%)
• 66g protein (16%)

So, improved ratios, but not the low calories.  I guess I should have skipped the cheese at the end; it would have pulled the calories below 1300 and the protein below 50 grams.  Still, I can't help thinking that I should be in ketosis now, and pretty strongly at that.  I can report improved sleep - if the cat had slept calmly instead of roaming the bed all bloody night, I'm not sure I would have awakened at all.  I don't know for sure that the sleep is due to ketone bodies; I've been trying hard to get maximum sun exposure on the drive in (a little cold and breezy to put the windows down, but I have no tinting and drove in yesterday without sunglasses), and that might also have something to do with it.

The plan today is to drink water more, maybe get outside mid-day (it's finally starting to warm up sort of), and keep at it.  If nothing else, I'm getting a very low carb diet just now.

Tuesday

I'm trying to do the fat fast thing.  After logging yesterday, I am not coming very close.  150.6 again today, so it could be worse, but here's the detail:

• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• two "servings" of butter roasted pecans (so far, so good)
• meatballs with spaghetti sauce and mozzarella cheese (probably less good)
• and the big oops - a trial recipe of raspberry cobbler, to see if it would be okay for Easter dessert

A nice short list, certainly.  But it breaks down like this:

• 1500ish calories (again)
• 130g fat (70%)
• 51g carbs (12%)
• 71g protein (17%)

Which is a pretty well balanced low-carb diet, actually.  But not a fat fast.  Most of the protein (40g) came from the meatballs, no surprise there.  Most of the carbs (35g) came from dessert.  Again, no surprise.  Another trial today.  I have started the day with 1 scrambled egg and about 1/4 cup of guacamole, which turned out to be crazy delicious together, even though the egg started out warm and the guac was very cold.  With tea-with cream, I'm so far at 76% fat, 11% carbs, and 13% protein.  I have a bell pepper and sour-cream based dip with me for one "meal", and pecans for a third, and dinner tonight will be pizza top (pepperoni and cheese, basically).  So I'm hopeful that we will be closer today.

I think this analysis is helpful.  I don't want to go berserk like this all that often, but it helps guide me as I work toward more ketosis and that 10 pounds of weight loss.

Monday

On Friday, I read a review of the Fat Fast Cookbook on the Fat Head website, and because I was primed for it, bought it.  Great decision - and I'm now doing a several-day fat fast, armed with the butter roasted pecans from the cookbook.  I kept the weekend very low carb and/or fat-fast oriented, although I don't think I hit the parameters for a true fast yesterday, quite.  As a result, I'm back down to 150.6 this morning.  Here's yesterday:

• tea with cream
• 3 scrambled eggs
• 6 slices of bacon
• two sliced tomatoes
• 1/3 cup walnut pieces
• 2-3 butter roasted pecans
• hamburger patty with about 1/3 cup guacamole
• 3 hunks of swiss cheese

I think that was it.  As I thought, it didn't quite hit the fast category (1000 cal, 90+% fat); I was at 70% fat, 25% protein, 6% carbs, and over 1500 calories for the day.  Still, the pattern was right, and I got the carbs way down, which was good.

We skipped breakfast this morning; the dog was up at 2:30 am throwing up again.  I wish I knew what she was getting into, but something in the back yard has her addicted, and we can't find it.  Very annoying.  I'm going to eat several small quantities of the pecans - or macadamias that I already had at work - throughout the day, and see how that goes, then have a modest dinner, probably meatballs with spaghetti sauce or something like that.

Anyway, the cookbook has some very intriguing ideas for getting one into nutritional ketosis, and some tempting looking recipes - and I have to say that the pecans are beyond good (the butter browns during the roasting, which just adds to the deliciousness).  And now I'm hungry, so I'm going to go eat them.

Friday

Yesterday didn't quite go as planned - not as bad as I suppose it could have been, but not as planned.  And I'm still 153.2 this morning - some of which, based on my ankles, is water.  Based on how I've been eating, though, not all of it.  

Here's yesterday:

• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• dilly beans - around 20 of them, I'd guess
• macadamia nuts - I ended up eating all 14 that I brought with me
• a cup of beef bouillon
• chicken breast - probably about 6 oz
• three pieces of longhorn cheese
• 6 malted milk eggs - the last of them

That was it, although I had a cup of tea with cream at the end of the day as well as at the beginning.  73g fat, 71g protein, 46g carbs (58%, 25%, 16%).  Note that we are now officially finished with the malted milk eggs.  I should never have bought them.  Today we weren't hungry, so I've not had breakfast.  I have another bag of macadamias and a bag of strawberries with me - the latter because if I don't eat them, they'll spoil.  Dinner will be baked fish; it is Friday, after all.

I'm also working on sleep - tried to get some unfiltered sunlight yesterday morning, but there were clouds, so I got it on the drive home, sort of - until it went behind the clouds again.  This morning, I doubled up on my vitamin D, to see if that helps.  No sunlight today, either, except right at sunrise - it's supposed to snow starting some time today and all of tomorrow.  Blecch.  In any event, I stayed asleep until around 4 am, and woke only briefly then, so progress.

And, I had no hot flashes yesterday or last night, so I skipped the hot flash pills again this morning.  Hoping we're through with that bout and for a good long while.