Well, this year of blogging was an unmitigated disaster.
As it goes however, I choose to be kind to myself.
Not going to sugarcoat it, I failed spectacularly in just about every endeavor I imagined back in January. Then March came in like a lion and forgot to leave. All these months of stress eating, starving myself, and stress eating once again and I’m right back to where I was this past January. Damn. Through all of the disordered eating one thing shined through. I told myself that I would not go back to the old habit of overindulging and then just saying “go for it” and lose track of calories for a while. If I fell off the apple cart, I just dusted off and jumped right back on. (Yes, that was a play on falling “off the wagon”)
COVID took our year from us. All the hopes and dreams we had this year have been replaced with caution and illness. We will get back to something of a “new normal” and it will be good. We may not get this year back, and we must grieve for those lost, but we need to close the chapter and move forward. Let’s honor the lives lost by living the best lives we can.
Between too many hours teleworking online and all the personal stuff going on, I’m personally finding it difficult to spend any more time online than I have to. There’s online grocery shopping (don’t forget the pickup time), virtual medical appointments, online classes and their assorted virtual meetings, and catching up via Skype with family and friends. There’s no more inclination to actually go to the laptop to write. My laptop used to be my escape, a place to put my thoughts into words and share them with an audience.
Falling apart. I feel like I’m falling apart. My quarantine began on March 12, 2020. I am immunocompromised, so when my son came home that day I heard about COVID and how a classmate came to school very sick and coughing, I freaked the F out. The next day the school announced its closure, and we’ve been home ever since. It’s now August 29th and my son’s school starts again for the first time on Monday. School is at home, so it’s won’t be much of a change.
I’ll try to find time to blog, but it’s going to be a lower priority right now.
March came in like a storm and never left. My life in lock down has been way too much to write about so I took an unexpected sabbatical. My child has been home since March 10th and I’ve been doing my damnedest to keep his education on track seeing that he’s starting his Senior year in a couple of weeks. My health survived the lock down and I didn’t gain the weight that I expected to gain, but I didn’t lose much either. So there’s that.
During this time, I wanted to consolidate my healthcare providers so I didn’t need to travel so far from home to more populated areas. So I found new doctors, new plans and new hope. Started a new medicine this week for my arthritis, and got rid of a few unneeded meds too! I find my body is much more cooperative when I’m not on a bunch of meds that really have no clinical relevance to my current health status.
I miss my blog so much, and the ability to keep up with it is now more important than ever. I promise to keep you all up to date and maybe even set up a few “coffee groups” that we can do together and vent all of our frustrations!
The trials and tribulations of the past have finally settled down. Life is a natural ebb and flow, and I need to remember that. Having anxiety over life events is getting to be a stumbling block to my journey.
Yet still I persevere…
Got on the scale at the doctor’s office and was surprised to see another 10 pounds down from my last weigh in. Not yet time for my A1C but I was shocked how resilient my metabolism has become through the rough times. I truly was expecting a weight gain, not a loss. Knowing that meant I didn’t have the feeling of failure in my mind. I accepted what I had done from a dietary standpoint, and then I moved on. It really is a testament to personal growth.
So I end my day today overjoyed and amazed at myself. I need to learn to be kinder when I stumble and gracious when I fall. Just going to end here with my all-time favorite song.
Here I go again on my own. Going down the only road I’ve ever known. Like a drifter, I was born to walk alone. And I’ve made up my mind, I ain’t wasting no more time… -Whitesnake
I’ve experienced a fall from grace. It’s actually common with keto and intermittent fasting, to fall out of those strict diets. That doesn’t make it easier for me to reconcile how badly I screwed up.
Me, a two liter of soda and Godiva.
I doubted coming on here and admitting my fall. Like an addict, I hid my dysfunction behind a veneer of normalcy. I didn’t want to blog because I thought I would feel shame on a level I was unprepared for. I noticed one thing about my behavior though. It falls within the textbook definition of addiction. I am addicted to sugar. So it’s time for a change.
Guess what, there is a 12 step plan for food addictions. While the name conjures up a negative visual cue, “Overeaters Anonymous” it states exactly what it’s about. I’m learning that there is more to my dietary changes than just changing what I eat. It’s also about changing why I eat. So, I contacted my local chapter to attend a meeting. I plan to let you know how it goes.
I’m struggling right now. My ghosts are haunting me back into old habits. My past is filled with lots of ugly, and the main reason I self-medicate with food. If you ask most overweight people, my guess is that they would talk about using food to make themselves feel better. I fit that mold perfectly. My self-medication started in childhood when I found that a candy bar made me feel better about my life. I have a dark past and food was always my constant. I never really got into any other self-medicating things, I didn’t like how alcohol made me sick and illicit drugs weren’t an option. Food is universally accepted and socially tolerated.
Yesterday, my son and I got into a heated argument. Due to my past, I suffer from PTSD and loud noises will trigger me, even the sound of yelling. After the argument calmed down I was a wreck. My heart rate was high and I felt like I wanted to jump out of my skin. Eventually I calmed down enough to feel the exhaustion that comes with a visit from my PTSD. That’s when the old ghost came in. The voices in my head were telling me to go eat something sweet. I fought for two hours before I finally gave in. One bowl of cereal later, my craving was gone but I was so disappointed in myself for breaking Keto. I have to admit, the cravings are less than in the past, before I started this journey I would devour an entire box of chocolates after a PTSD event.
I write this to remind you that we are all human. We will have days that suck. We will have days that we thrive. Finding some sort of balance is what is necessary for survival. Even if it’s messy, or shameful.
I’ve always had massive cravings for chocolate. Not just any chocolate but bitter 85% cacao chocolate. Not a horrible craving to have, but one that was so important to take care of. Along with the craving I was experiencing muscle cramping in my large muscles. I found this uncredited image on Pinterest and my life changed. I found through research that most of our cravings for foods come from a deficiency in our bodies. I also experienced Type 2 Diabetes, and that was helped by increasing my chromium stores. Once I balanced everything out and was less deficient, I use this chart to eat the foods that help my essential mineral consumption.
I hope someday I find the person that created this image. I’d like to say thank you for making an image that truly changed my way of thinking about food. Cravings are not a bad thing, just your body talking to you about what it needs to be optimal.
One of the biggest issues I have had in this journey of mine is consistency. You see, I live in a home with two other people. They do not practice IF or Keto, but I cook for them both. I quit trying to keep up with them by using “safe” foods to mimic what they were eating so I didn’t feel left out. Sometimes that means I fall. Hard. Painfully.
Friday is pizza night at my house. I usually make myself my “safe” pizza crust with almond flour, cheese and egg. Toppings are Keto friendly anyway so I go with my cheese, pepperoni and mushroom. Well, I neglected to check on my supply of mozzarella. I didn’t have enough to make my crust and my child loves Pan Pizza, so I picked up my phone and ordered in. I wanted to just get the pizza “fix” without the crust. When the pizza arrived, I looked at the beautiful thin crust pizza with cheese, pepperoni and mushroom and sighed. While my kiddo was happily munching his pizza, I carefully peeled off the cheese and topping and ate. All of a sudden everything became surreal. It was like the pizza was taunting me. “Have a bite of the crust” the pizza said. “One bite won’t hurt you”. Oh yeah, I was justifying like crazy but I took a bite. I don’t know how time stood still, but in a flash half the pizza was gone. Mind you, I have a wheat allergy so I was not going to fare well through this splurge.
When I came to and realized what just transpired, I felt so ashamed. I felt like I failed. I spent the weekend beating myself up in between numerous trips to the bathroom. Yeah, wheat makes me really sick. After a long pity party and really painful intestinal cramping I decided to blog about it for the first time.
People who are overweight really do try to lose it. I have not met many overweight people who haven’t spent huge amounts of money trying to fix this problem. We rise, and we fall. We pick ourselves up again and do it from square one again and again while listening to the world that we’re not trying hard enough.
Walk a mile in our shoes and you will find that we want what’s best for our bodies. We have goals and dreams just like anyone else. Sometimes we have our demons we must battle in order to thrive, and that fight is exhausting. It just takes the perfect moment between the battles to fall.
Tomorrow I will pick myself up and go again. I will do another 72 hour fast to reset. During this fast I will feel amazing and help repair the damage from Friday. I will remember how I feel and now after journaling it, I will succeed. One little baby step at a time.
I included intermittent fasting to my diet to see if it could help since I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted from Keto. Turns out fasting is the absolute best thing I could have ever added to my Keto regimen. There are lots of ways to start fasting, it’s something we all do overnight. Breakfast was named to “break the fast” we have every night when we sleep. Look at it like this, you’re already a faster!
I started with getting rid of my morning meal. It turns out that if you are overweight, skipping breakfast is an easy way to extend your fasting time and to help extend the benefits of your overnight fast. For my needs, I usually eat nothing before 11 am. I do hydrate however, and have a cup or two of black coffee or plain/herbal tea with nothing added. The caffeine in the coffee acts as an appetite suppressant and helps you get over the hump when fasting becomes difficult.
There are different ways to fast. The most common is the 16:8 which means if you start eating at 11 am you can continue to eat until 7 pm. Now, calories in/calories out is still critical. You don’t want to shock your body by trying to eat every minute of your 8 hour feeding window. Start with a high protein food to get started, I usually eat a cheese stick to break my fast, then wait about an hour for a main meal. If you dive in right away after fasting with a big meal, you will set yourself up for a binge that most of us wouldn’t be strong enough to stop. So, be kind to your body and take it slow. If I were eating during my 8 hours it would look like this:
11 am: Cheesestick and coffee with heavy cream
12 noon: Green salad with homemade ranch dressing, protein like tuna or chicken, olives, pickled vegetables. Herbal iced tea.
2 pm: Almonds, Cheese
4 pm: Celery, raw broccoli, etc.
6 pm: Dinner, focused on protein and vegetables that are grown above the ground.
8 pm: Cottage cheese with Strawberries (plain, no sweetener)
As you can see, an 8 hour food window gives you plenty of options to eat. This way of life is not about deprivation, it’s about respecting your body and what goes into it. Now the greatest thing about Keto is involved. Eat the butter. Have the Ghee with stirfry vegetables. Add coconut oil to recipes. Don’t be afraid of fat. Your body will thank you.
Now, a word of warning. If you consume too much protein (BACON!) your body has a sneaky little way of converting the protein to carbohydrate and messing up your blood sugar, knocking you out of ketosis. It’s called gluconeogenesis. Gluco (sugar) neo (new) genesis (make). That’s right my friends, your sneaky little self can make sugar out of protein! So keep your protein grams around 110-120 grams and you’ll do fine.
If you’re following the Keto diet, you already know about macros, your guideposts to staying in ketosis. My personal macros are 23 grams of carbs, 145 grams of fat, and 116 grams of protein. I average about 1800 calories in, but doing Keto with intermittent fasting means that most of my calories come from the fats I eat. This is where it’s important to buy quality food, because your outcome will reflect what you are putting in your body. With Keto + Intermittent Fasting, you truly are what you eat!
Apps I found helpful through this journey:
LIFE Intermittent Fasting Tracker
Carb Manager Diet Log
Thanks for reading so far, and I will add more soon. Stay tuned!
So, I started Keto about three years ago because the ketogenic diet was a treatment option for my child’s epilepsy. I wanted to find out more and when I started looking at the numbers, I realized that Keto could be an efective option for me to control my Type 2 Diabetes. Back in the early stages of medicine, the ketogenic diet was the only way to control Diabetes, no matter the type, based on the body’s innate ability to burn fat instead of sugar and bypass the pancreas and insulin usage. Well, this diet wasn’t very appealing because of the severe dietary restriction needed to achieve ketosis led most of the people using it to be inpatient at the hospital under close medical supervision due to the stress on the kidneys. Fast forward to today, the current popularity of the Keto diet is a far cry from what the first doctors to put their patients on the ketogenic diet experienced.
Most people on today’s Keto diet keep their carbohydrate levels low enough to reach ketosis, but not so low as to experience the problems experienced by those first pioneers to the diet. It’s a balancing act, and one that takes more attention to detail than the standard American diet. I’ve found that it is achievable with the proper mindset and careful monitoring of food.
These are the resources I’ve found through my years that were so helpful in my journey. They are:
The Obesity Code by Jason Fung, MD
The Metabolism Reset Diet by Alan Christianson, NMD
Simply Keto and Beyond Simply Keto by Susanne Ryan
Now for a personal note. My breaking point was my weight. At my heaviest, I tipped the scales at nearly 400 pounds. Whew. That’s a lot of emotion in that statement. As of today, I am down to 330. Keto is not a quick fix for me, but in upcoming messages I will let you know what it took for me to lose the weight. You lose a lot of water weight on Keto. If you start, you must hydrate with water spiked with pink salt for essential minerals. The only vitamins I add are a daily multi, potassium and magnesium. Hydration is not a joke, you must drink lots of water to keep from getting muscle cramps and otheer dehydration issues. Plus you will have to get rid of those artificial sweeteners. They elicit the same insulin response that sugar does and since insulin is a fat storage hormone you will not see weight loss happening.
Sending my love and blessings. Chat with you next time, and leave questions for me and I will answer them in my next post!
Coffee Talk with Charlene 