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?