DAY 55 - 2016 WEIGHT LOSS AND BLOOD GLUCOSE CHALLENGE

Christmas Eve 2015

Today is Day 55

Weight goal - below 143.2
Actual weight - 142.2 - NEW LOW

Blood glucose goal - below 79
Actual blood glucose - 78

Today is a Feast Day!



For me, that means a ketogenic diet - high fat, moderate protein and very low carb.  Each day, I will weigh in, check my fasting blood glucose, find out if I will feast or fast that day, update my chart and post it here on the big blog. I'm posting it to motivate myself not to give up, and if I think that anyone is looking at this, it will help to keep me accountable.

I had a good day fasting yesterday.  I had plenty of water, a cup of beef broth, two cups of chai sweetened with Stevia, a glass of Diet Pepsi and two servings of sugar-free Jello.  The last time I had Jello, I had four servings and the next day my fasting blood glucose did not hit its usual low.  Yesterday, I decided to go ahead and have it again, but this time I would only have two servings.  And my FBG was still higher than it usually is after a day of fasting.  If it had been one point higher, I would have been fasting again today. I still have two servings left in the fridge, so if I fast again tomorrow, I will just have one serving and see if it still keeps my FBG too high.  If it does, no more Jello for me!

As you can see by my Feast/Fast heat map below, now that I am getting close to my goal, I am fasting a lot more often.  In the past week, it's been every other day.  I'm not really happy about that, and I'm hoping that it is not going to turn out that I need to do that from now on to maintain a healthy weight and fasting blood glucose.  I know that Dr. Jason Fung has suggested that to his diabetic patients, and so has Dr. Krista Varady, who wrote "The Every Other Day Diet" (2013).  There is also a plan by Dr. James Johnson called The Up Day Down Day Diet, which has the person eating normally one day and eating only 300-500 calories the next day. For a while, back in 2013, I tried this version and belonged to the JUDDD forum at Low Carb Friends.  I did this for 44 days and then stopped.  When I was doing it, I was also doing zero carb, and I think the combination of zero carb and only eating every other day was too much for me to handle.

During that time, however, I lost 5.9 pounds of body fat and only lost 0.7 pounds of lean mass.  My body fat went from 36.6% to 34.1% in only 44 days.  I was within 6.4 pounds of my goal body fat.  So it does work.

The only thing I do not like about a few of these plans is that they give "permission" to eat whatever you want on your feast days, and that includes junk and carbage.  So if you want to eat fast food, cake and candy on your feast day, go ahead!  I can't imagine what that is doing to people's blood glucose.  When I have feasted, I have made sure that it was real, whole food, high in fat, moderate in protein and low in carbs.  I do this because I care about my health and do not want to suffer from the effects of diabetes.

When I belonged to one of the groups, I was asking people who were gorging on sweets on their feast days what they thought it was doing to their blood sugar, and weren't they concerned about diabetes.  Everyone pretty much told me to shut up about diabetes, and none of them, that I know of, were checking their blood sugar.  Their weight was going down and that's all that concerned them.

Anyway, back to the point.  Am I willing to fast every other day in order to maintain normal weight and normal non-diabetic blood glucose?  I hope I am.  It has not been too hard so far.  The last time I did it, my husband was getting grouchy about it, because he had to be on his own for dinner every other day.  This time, I have not seen a bad attitude, which is helpful to me to keep me motivated.  His resistance to the way I was eating (and not eating) was a large part of why I stopped it back in 2013.  If he stays positive, it will help me.

54 DAYS DOWN AND 37 DAYS TO GO

39 FEAST DAYS AND 16 FAST DAYS - FASTING 29% OF THE DAYS

11.8 POUNDS GONE AND 6.2 POUNDS TO GO

66% OF THE WAY TO MY GOAL AFTER 60% OF THE DAYS

7-DAY AVERAGE WEIGHT - 143.5     7-DAY AVERAGE BLOOD GLUCOSE - 82

I made a few charts to track my progress.  The grey lines are my long term goals. The blue lines are my actual results.  The orange lines are my 7-day average using a trailing stop. The last chart is a little heat map to show at a glance how often I have actually had to fast to achieve the results I am after.

This is a personal challenge just for me, but if anyone reading would like to join me, please talk to your doctor and make sure that it will not conflict with your current medical condition or medications.  If you are taking the challenge, please be sure to let me know how you are doing!  Thanks for reading!

To find out more about this challenge - the rules and how it started - click here.