Friday, September 28, 2012

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD

I have been doing so well that I stopped tracking what I eat and I also stopped monitoring my blood ketones and blood glucose.  But in the past week, I have gained over two pounds and I feel like I've been slightly overeating protein and carbs and undereating fat.

It was my usual habit to have 2 eggs with cream cheese in the morning, then have a fat snack around lunch time and then have only 3 ounces of some sort of protein for dinner along with minimal veggies.  While I was doing this, I was never hungry and never felt the need to snack on anything after dinner.

For the past week, I have been having eggs and sometimes also bacon for breakfast, and then having some sort of snack that contains some carbs around lunch time and then too much protein for dinner along with more carbs than I am used to eating.  The result of this is that I have gained a little weight and I am also experiencing hunger during the day and after dinner.  Most of those days I was eating a snack before bed, like some sour cream or almond butter.

Another thing I have been doing differently is that I have been having a really big cup of tonic water from the golf course bar with lime.  My husband was drinking it one day when I went in there, so I tried it.  It was so good, that I kind of got addicted to it.  After doing this for a couple of weeks, I found out why it was so tasty and why I got addicted to it:  high fructose corn syrup!  I thought tonic water was just seltzer water with quinine added to it.  It turns out that it is also sweetened.  Each time I was having my 16 oz. cup of it, I was ingesting around 20 grams of carbs.  Sigh.  Obviously, I am not going to have any more of it.

This morning, I decided to check my blood just for fun, but it was not fun reading the results.  My blood glucose was always in the mid 70s or low 80s in the morning before eating, and this morning it was 108.  That is not diabetic level, but it is still too high.

The reading on my blood ketones upset me even more.  My average since entering nutritional ketosis has been 2.2.  This morning it was 0.6.  Of course, this would explain why I have been so hungry lately.  Nutritional ketosis will knock the hunger right out of you.  At least in my case, hunger = no ketosis.

I read, or maybe heard, either Dr. Phinney or Dr. Volek say that once you are out of nutritional ketosis, it can take weeks to get back in again.  So even if I had not been eating a little bit too much protein or carbs, this could have happened from drinking all the tonic water alone.

Well, lesson learned, and I am going back to tracking what I eat.  I am going back to where I left off, which is 135g fat, 57g protein and 28g (or less) carbs each day.

I am also going to start checking my blood glucose daily and checking my blood ketones weekly.

Has anyone else who is tracking seen anything like this happen?
at 15 comments:

Sunday, September 9, 2012

NUTRITIONAL KETOSIS - MONTH 2 RESULTS

On July 9, 2012, I started eating in such a way as to be fueled by Nutritional Ketosis.  If you are new here and do not know what that means, look at the links at the bottom of this post to read more about it in detail.  The short version is this:  I am eating very high fat, moderate protein and very low carb.  For the first several weeks, I was testing my blood ketone levels with a hand held monitor.  I have stopped doing this because the strips are very expensive and I know that I am in the "zone" that I want to be.  Because I have not changed the way I am eating, and I continue to lose body fat, it is reasonable to assume that I am still in Nutritional Ketosis.  If I start to gain body fat or change the way I am eating, I will do more testing.

I have been posting my results each week, but, starting today, and for as long as I feel like it, I am going to post my results only once per month.  I am so close to my goal now that the progress is pretty slow.

I have lost enough body fat now that my clothes are getting baggy.  At my job, it is nice to wear clothes that are a little too big so that I can bend and reach, etc., without my clothes having to stretch, so I am going to continue wearing the bigger clothes there.  I must admit that it feels nice to have my clothes hanging off of me for a change!

Being in Nutritional Ketosis, I am still experiencing virtually no hunger, and for a person who has always starved on any kind of diet, this is wonderful and makes it worth eating this way for the rest of my life.  My energy level is good, even at work, when I go for several hours without feeling the need to eat anything.  Friday, I left the house and forgot my lunch, so I just took my break without eating and felt just fine.

Here are my charts:


In summary, in the past 2 months:
I lost 1/2" around my neck
I lost 1/2" around my bicep
I lost 1/4" around my bust
I lost 1-5/8" around my midriff
I lost 2-5/8" around my waist
I lost 2-1/8" around my navel
I lost 1-5/8" around my hips
I lost 5/8" around my thigh
I lost 3/8" around the calf
Total lost:  11-3/4"

I lost 9.8 pounds on the scale (lost 9.8 pounds of body fat and gained 0 pounds of lean mass).
I went down 4.5 percentage points on my body fat.
I went down 0.034 points on my waist-to-hip ratio.

I did not track my food this week, but I ate pretty much on plan.

This is my daily goal:

1539 calories
135g fat (79%)
54g protein (14%)
27g carbs (7%)

Here is my "body goal":

136 pounds scale weight
40.8 pounds body fat (30%)
95.2 pounds lean mass (70%)
11.875" neck
28" waist
39.125" hips
0.716 waist-to-hip ratio
To get there, I need to lose 4.2 pounds of body fat, gain 2.6 pounds of lean mass and lose 2-1/8" around my waist.

at 11 comments:

Sunday, September 2, 2012

NUTRITIONAL KETOSIS - WEEK 8 RESULTS

I have noticed in the past week that my hunger has pretty much disappeared. My goal is to eat 135g fat, 54g protein and 27g carbs every day. As you will see if you look at my update and menu below, I have not been eating enough. There was one day that I only made it to 110g fat, 40g protein and 22g carbs. That is way low on fat and protein.

It seems that after I eat my normal breakfast, I just can't get myself to eat the rest of what I "need" to hit my goals. At dinner time, I might need to eat 4-5 oz. of meat, but all I can manage is 3 oz, or I feel like it is too much.

I am experiencing NO HUNGER when I am at work, and I spend a lot of time there speed walking. If I have a meal break there, I just eat my tiny meal and I am set for the rest of the day. Sometimes when I get home, I look at my numbers for the day, see that I have not eaten enough, but do not want to eat any more. I'm just not hungry.

I have never had this experience before of trying to get up to a certain amount of food. I guess this is the effect of deep ketosis (2.2 average on the keto meter).

At this point, I have decided to up my fat and protein at breakfast so that I do not have to eat so much protein at night. I want to be done eating a few hours before bed, but oftentimes I am home from work around 10pm, and it's just to late to eat something to hit my goal.

I have also decided to up my daily protein from 54g to 57g to meet the Phinney/Volek minimum requirement. I know it's not much, so it shouldn't hurt.

I just read the part in the book that says that too much protein is problematic on NK, but too little protein is also. I think I need to concentrate on getting my protein up to 57g at least every day. Eating only 40g that one day is just ridiculous.

Any thoughts, Readers?

It's been eight weeks since I started my experiment with nutritional ketosis.  I am eating higher fat, lower protein and very low carb.  Here are my charts:


In summary, in the past 8 weeks:
I lost 1/2" around my neck
I lost 3/8" around my bicep
I lost 1/4" around my bust
I lost 1-1/2" around my midriff
I lost 3" around my waist
I lost 1-7/8" around my navel
I lost 1-5/8" around my hips
I lost 5/8" around my thigh
I lost 3/8" around the calf
Total lost:  11-1/2"

I lost 8.8 pounds on the scale (lost 10.2 pounds of body fat and gained 1.4 pounds of lean mass).
I went down 5 percentage points on my body fat.
I went down 0.043 points on my waist-to-hip ratio.

I tracked my food five days this week, but I ate on plan every day.  If you want to know exactly what I am eating, look here, and then you can click the page numbers at the bottom to see each individual day.

Here are the averages of what I ate this past week, not including the days I did not track:

1423 calories
123.9g fat (78.3%)
54.1g protein (15.2%)
23g carbs (6.5%)

My goal was a little higher, and I did not intentionally eat less:

1539 calories
135g fat (79%)
54g protein (14%)
27g carbs (7%)

I stopped testing my blood ketones and glucose because the results are always the same and the strips are expensive.  After a few weeks go by, I'll test again for good measure.  If something starts going wrong, I will test sooner, but for now, I don't see a reason to test.

I did test my blood glucose just one time this past week, and here is the chart since I started nutritional ketosis:

 

I will continue to post my results once a week until I hit my goal, which is this:

136 pounds scale weight
40.8 pounds body fat (30%)
95.2 pounds lean mass (70%)
11.875" neck
28" waist
39.125" hips
0.716 waist-to-hip ratio
To get there, I need to lose 3.8 pounds of body fat, gain 1.2 pounds of lean mass and lose 1-3/4" around my waist.



at 16 comments:

Saturday, September 1, 2012

SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM



To My Much Appreciated Readers:

My humble, little blog has been targeted by a spammer.  For those who may not know what this means, there is a person "out there" who is being paid to place comments on my blog that contain links to other websites that are selling things, like diets, jewelry, lawn furniture and perfume, just to name a few.  I was gone for the whole day recently, and when I returned home, I found more than fifty comments awaiting moderation that were all made by the same spammer.  It took me about twenty minutes to open them, identify them and delete them.  Yesterday, there were twenty of them waiting for me to deal with when I returned from work.  It's very disheartening!

Because my blog does not require that you register, people can leave comments under "Anonymous."  The problem is that spammers can also do this, and they can leave many, many, many comments that I then have to deal with.

So, from now on, I am going to ask that you register to leave a comment.  I don't get a ton of comments anyway, so I am hoping that those of you who want to comment will not mind this one little step - that you only have to do one time - to save me the hassle and frustration of dealing with the spammers.

The only other choice is to make you do that other thing - every time you comment - where you have to type in the squiggly letters/numbers in order to leave your comment.  I, personally, hate those things and have to go through a few of them every time because they are so hard to read.  I would rather not comment at all rather than have to do that!

So, sorry!  I just can't waste my time with the spammers anymore.  If you watched the video above, you will get just a hint of how I feel every time I open my email to find I've been spammed once again.  "I don't like Spam!"

at 3 comments: