Hey readers! Remember me? You may be wondering what happened. Essentially I gave up. Here's the story:
About a day before Thanksgiving last year, a friend of my husband needed a place to stay. As I may or may not have mentioned, we live in a tiny 500-square foot apartment. It's a one-bedroom. As you may imagine, a house guest is quite a burden. To further complicate matters, I was in the process of cleaning the apartment i preparation for Thanksgiving.
We gave him our bedroom, as my husband and I had been sleeping in our respective recliners in the living room. That wasn't a difficult sacrifice to make, but to add to the complication of the burden and stress of having a house guest, the reason he needed a room is because he could no longer afford to live in his apartment as a roommate. So we took on providing a roof and food for this guest.
Because we are in a good place financially partially because we have a tiny apartment and live modestly, we were fine helping this friend out. But it didn't remove the stress from the situation. That is built-in. As happy as we were to help a friend, the situation is simply stressful. It comes with the territory.
How does this contribute to my dietary buckling under? Well, I had already decided to stop temporarily while the holidays raged on, so I had already stopped all dieting. I was still eating sensibly. I didn't go on a binge or anything odd. I simply stopped taking the oil and counting calories obsessively. In all, I gained only about 5 lbs between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was at 379 lbs on January 1st.
I felt this was a success. What kept me from returning to the Shangri-La diet, though, was the house guest. That because my excuse. It was agreed he would stay with us for a matter of weeks, and that became months. While he has been living with us, I have not felt comfortable taking oil and daily weigh-ins. I didn't feel like explaining my dietary habits. I felt awkward. I gave up the diet completely.
Time passed, and I gained. As of my husband's birthday, on March 24th, 2018, my weight had ballooned up to 401 lbs. I was devastated. That was disheartening, but I knew it was not impossible to reverse the course I was on. It wasn't too late. I took up the diet again with vehemence.
I was able to drop to 386 lbs as of today, April 14th. In just 25 days, that was 15 lbs! Success! To get motivation, I went online to read success stories of people who dropped amazing amounts of weight. I watch videos of success stories on YouTube. What I discovered was that the most common diet of all of these successful people included two things: Keto and Intermittent Fasting (IF). I'd heard of Keto, but not IF. I'd always want to try Keto, and I had, somewhat, already been doing a small form of IF already.
What really piqued my interest were the videos from Dr. Eric Berg. He has thousands of videos that all said the same thing: carbs and sugars cause your body to release insulin, and insulin makes your body store fat. Very simply put, stop all carbs and lose the weight. What he said made absolute sense. I took in all the videos I could. I read everything he had to say on his website. And I decided to start Keto + IF and stop Shangri-La for good. Let's see how this goes.
Here's the plan:
I will eat once per day at around 6:30 AM. This is the perfect time because it is after we get home from work, and I can eat and then sleep. One of the main things that is needed for this to work is sleep, according to Dr. Berg. This will be extreme because I will be fasting for 20+ hours a day. Will I be too hungry to continue? What will happen? Also, I need to go shopping to get the necessary supplies.
This is what I generally learned that I need to do to properly do Keto + IF:
I need loads of greens. 7 - 10 C (or servings) of leafy, cruciferous greens, specifically. I am going to use Spring Mix. That has 16 different resh greens and lettuces of varying tastes and textures, including green romaine, arugula, baby spinach, radicchio, red romaine, mizuna, red oak leaf, lollo rosso, red chard, red leaf, red mustard, frisee, green mustard, and tatsoi. There are so many in there that I have never even heard of. The Organic Spring Mix at the grocery store comes in a 16-oz package. I only need about 3/4 of that for a meal. It's a lot, though.
With that, I also need protein and fat. Lots of fat, actually. I need to eat enough fat to make up 70% of my caloric intake. I need to drop carbohydrates and sugars down to 5% or fewer. I need them under 30 grams per day. As far as protein, I need the fattier proteins, and up to 9 oz per day.
I have decided that the easiest way to do this is to make a giant salad with everything I need in it. I can do that daily. It will be monotonous, but I don't mind monotony. This is what my meal each day will consist of:
7-10 C of Spring Mix greens
2 large, pasture-raise, non-GMO, hormone- and antibiotic-free hard boiled eggs.
1 whole small to medium avocado
1/4 C Bacon bits (4 Tbsp)
1/4 C Feta cheese (4 Tbsp)
1/2 C Mexican Blend shredded cheese
1/4 C Pecan halves
6 large, ripe, black olives
1/2 C Sour cream
1/4 C Sunflower seeds (4 Tbsp)
Meat - up to 6 oz of a meat I will feed my husband for dinner. He is not doing this with me, so he will have a more recognizable plate of food. I will take the meat serving I make for myself and put it in my salad.
1/4 C Low-carb salad dressing (4 Tbsp)
I had this salad today. It was difficult getting it all down. It was huge! I am also drinking about 10 oz of black coffee and trying to find a source for electrolytes. Electrolytes, specifically potassium, are super important.
Here're my stats and graph:
Starting weight: 401 lbs
Current weight: 386 lbs ⇩
Long-term Goal: 145 lbs
Short-term Goal: 359 lbs
The Keto + IF works graph:
About a day before Thanksgiving last year, a friend of my husband needed a place to stay. As I may or may not have mentioned, we live in a tiny 500-square foot apartment. It's a one-bedroom. As you may imagine, a house guest is quite a burden. To further complicate matters, I was in the process of cleaning the apartment i preparation for Thanksgiving.
We gave him our bedroom, as my husband and I had been sleeping in our respective recliners in the living room. That wasn't a difficult sacrifice to make, but to add to the complication of the burden and stress of having a house guest, the reason he needed a room is because he could no longer afford to live in his apartment as a roommate. So we took on providing a roof and food for this guest.
Because we are in a good place financially partially because we have a tiny apartment and live modestly, we were fine helping this friend out. But it didn't remove the stress from the situation. That is built-in. As happy as we were to help a friend, the situation is simply stressful. It comes with the territory.
How does this contribute to my dietary buckling under? Well, I had already decided to stop temporarily while the holidays raged on, so I had already stopped all dieting. I was still eating sensibly. I didn't go on a binge or anything odd. I simply stopped taking the oil and counting calories obsessively. In all, I gained only about 5 lbs between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was at 379 lbs on January 1st.
I felt this was a success. What kept me from returning to the Shangri-La diet, though, was the house guest. That because my excuse. It was agreed he would stay with us for a matter of weeks, and that became months. While he has been living with us, I have not felt comfortable taking oil and daily weigh-ins. I didn't feel like explaining my dietary habits. I felt awkward. I gave up the diet completely.
Time passed, and I gained. As of my husband's birthday, on March 24th, 2018, my weight had ballooned up to 401 lbs. I was devastated. That was disheartening, but I knew it was not impossible to reverse the course I was on. It wasn't too late. I took up the diet again with vehemence.
What really piqued my interest were the videos from Dr. Eric Berg. He has thousands of videos that all said the same thing: carbs and sugars cause your body to release insulin, and insulin makes your body store fat. Very simply put, stop all carbs and lose the weight. What he said made absolute sense. I took in all the videos I could. I read everything he had to say on his website. And I decided to start Keto + IF and stop Shangri-La for good. Let's see how this goes.
Here's the plan:
I will eat once per day at around 6:30 AM. This is the perfect time because it is after we get home from work, and I can eat and then sleep. One of the main things that is needed for this to work is sleep, according to Dr. Berg. This will be extreme because I will be fasting for 20+ hours a day. Will I be too hungry to continue? What will happen? Also, I need to go shopping to get the necessary supplies.
This is what I generally learned that I need to do to properly do Keto + IF:
I need loads of greens. 7 - 10 C (or servings) of leafy, cruciferous greens, specifically. I am going to use Spring Mix. That has 16 different resh greens and lettuces of varying tastes and textures, including green romaine, arugula, baby spinach, radicchio, red romaine, mizuna, red oak leaf, lollo rosso, red chard, red leaf, red mustard, frisee, green mustard, and tatsoi. There are so many in there that I have never even heard of. The Organic Spring Mix at the grocery store comes in a 16-oz package. I only need about 3/4 of that for a meal. It's a lot, though.
With that, I also need protein and fat. Lots of fat, actually. I need to eat enough fat to make up 70% of my caloric intake. I need to drop carbohydrates and sugars down to 5% or fewer. I need them under 30 grams per day. As far as protein, I need the fattier proteins, and up to 9 oz per day.
I have decided that the easiest way to do this is to make a giant salad with everything I need in it. I can do that daily. It will be monotonous, but I don't mind monotony. This is what my meal each day will consist of:
7-10 C of Spring Mix greens
2 large, pasture-raise, non-GMO, hormone- and antibiotic-free hard boiled eggs.
1 whole small to medium avocado
1/4 C Bacon bits (4 Tbsp)
1/4 C Feta cheese (4 Tbsp)
1/2 C Mexican Blend shredded cheese
1/4 C Pecan halves
6 large, ripe, black olives
1/2 C Sour cream
1/4 C Sunflower seeds (4 Tbsp)
Meat - up to 6 oz of a meat I will feed my husband for dinner. He is not doing this with me, so he will have a more recognizable plate of food. I will take the meat serving I make for myself and put it in my salad.
1/4 C Low-carb salad dressing (4 Tbsp)
I had this salad today. It was difficult getting it all down. It was huge! I am also drinking about 10 oz of black coffee and trying to find a source for electrolytes. Electrolytes, specifically potassium, are super important.
Here're my stats and graph:
Starting weight: 401 lbs
Current weight: 386 lbs ⇩
Long-term Goal: 145 lbs
Short-term Goal: 359 lbs
The Keto + IF works graph:
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