4 Sneaky Food Ingredients that Cause Major Health Problems

Eating healthier has turned me into a major label reader. This is somewhat of a blessing and a curse. Im learning day by day that there are some scary things in our food that we dont even realize are there. And some of these things we hear about on the news but dont really care because the food just tastes too good to give up.

From me to you, this is my honest warning about four pretty common ingredients that may be approved by the FDA in small doses, but appear in our food way more frequently that wed assume making us more susceptible to some of the major side effects.

High Fructose Corn Syrup
High fructose corn syrup is used in place of a more expensive ingredient called cane sugar. Cane sugar is sugar in its natural form. the HFCS industry leads us to believe that because it comes from corn, it is totally safe and even somewhat natural. Wrong. Your body doesnt process HFCS  the same way it would process cane sugar. In short, cane sugar takes time to break down and digest meaning it affects your body slower. HFCS doesnt require digestion so it hits your blood stream more quickly causing spikes in insulin levels and a more rapidly occurring process of fat storage. HFCS can also cause increased appetite, fatty liver disease and diabetes. The Huffington Post has a really in depth article on HFCS that is worth the read.

Foods to look out for: Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Oreos, Miracle Whip, and even Vicks Nyquil Cough medicine. Click here for a more complete list.

Brominated Vegetable Oil
This ingredient is made up of bromine which is used as a flame retardant. Its most commonly used in citrus beverage to keep the flavors from separating. So if you drink a lot of Mountain Dew or Diet Mountain Dew you are at risk for something called Bromide Dominance. This is when the bromine builds up in your tissue and prevents iodine metabolism. Iodine deficiency increases risks of breast, thyroid, ovary and prostate cancer. There are several blogs out there with more information on the risks of BVO and why companies use it.

Foods to look out for: Mountain Dew of most varieties

Monosodium Glutamate 
MSG literally acts like a drug in your brain. The purpose of MSG is to boost the flavor of food, but it doesnt actually do anything to the actual flavor. The work of MSG is done in the brain. It triggers your brain to release dopamine which in turn increases your enjoyment of the food. The affects are eerily similar to the temporary high of a drug addict. Subsequently, MSG is highly addictive and leads to overeating. MSG is in a lot of processed and packaged foods. Because so many processed foods are made of cheap ingredients, manufacturers use MSG to make the cheaper product taste good when in reality, the only reason we think it tastes good is because a chemical is forcing our brains to relate the release of dopamine to eating cheap foods. FoodMatters.tv has written some very compelling articles on MSG that will definitely change the way you think about processed foods.

Foods to look out for: Cup-o-Noodles, Hidden Valley Ranch products, Pringles. Click here for a more complete list.

Aspartame
What if I told you that you were drinking the feces of one of the deadliest bacteria in the world? I bet youd put your drink down and run to the nearest toilet to puke. Well, if you drink or eat things with aspartame, you are. Recently, the patent for aspartame was released to the public and it confirms that aspartame is made by taking the feces of genetically modified E. Coli bacteria and soaking it in methanol. The process is shocking and unnerving. As if the thought of drinking E. Coli pooh doesnt turn your stomach enough, consider the side effects of aspartame poisoning which include joint pain, menstrual cycle irregularities, seizures, migraines and more.

Foods to look out for: Chewing gum such as Extra, Yogurts including brands like Dannon, Diet sodas and more. 

Do you read ingredient labels when you shop? If not it may be time to start. After doing the research on these ingredients I am convinced that soda is entirely out of my diet. Its becoming more and more obvious that packaged foods are less food and more chemicals. The reasoning behind eating clean and making treats from scratch is becoming stronger and stronger in my mind.

Does this make you want to give up some of those process snacks? If so, which ones?

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7 Ways to Add Flavor to HCG Approved Meals

One of the hardest parts of sticking to any diet is finding recipes that taste good, or adding flavor to simple dishes. Having done four rounds of HCG, I have learned a few tricks that arent on the original protocol, but pose no risk to your weight loss. Here are 7 ways to add flavor to your HCG approved meals:

Franks Hot Sauce

I love using Franks Red Hot Original Sauce on chicken. Its a simple addition that really ramps up the flavor. Plus it only contains a few simple ingredients, all of which are approved for the HCG Diet. The only caution with this is not to use more than a teaspoon per meal because it does contain salt which can cause water retention. Franks Red Hot Original Sauce can be found in the condiment aisle of the grocery store.

Mrs. Dash

Mrs. Dash has a great line of salt-free, MSG-free seasoning blends that are absolutely amazing. Mix them up with some stevia and vinegar for a dressing, or sprinkle them on our meat while it cooks, these are a healthy, simple addition to any HCG Approved meal. Mrs. Dash seasoning blends can be found in the spice aisle in the grocery store.

Lemon Juice

It sounds simple, but adding lemon juice can make all the difference to your Tilapia or asparagus. Its also great on apples, in ice slushies, water and more. Lemons are super cheap, too!

Salsa

Now this one was a life saver for me in round three. I would use Pace Picante Mild salsa. It has no added sugar and its low in calories. I would add a couple tablespoons to chopped chicken and serve it over lettuce. Technically that is mixing veggies, I know, but it never affected my weight loss and it saved me from cheating on the diet on numerous occasions. Look for it in the Salsa aisle in the grocery store.

Onion
Like lemon juice, this seems like another no-brainer, but there are certain veggies that dont seem to pose any problems when mixed with other veggies. Onion is one of those. Try chopping up a small chunk of onion and grilling it with chicken and chopped tomato. Its simple but the onions add a great, fresh flavor that seasonings cant.

Combine your Fruit and Veggie Serving
Did you know that you can make some pretty amazing fruit and veggie combos? Yup. Try mixing your apple with spinach and topping it with chicken, you can also do that with oranges. Or you can try mixing grapefruit with cucumber, strawberries and lettuce, and even apples and celery. Mix and match your fruits and veggies to create new flavor combinations.

Trulicious Powder/Liquid

Trulicous powder is an amazing product of Blue Earth nutrition. It is stevia that is combined with a unique fiber blend to help promote digestive health. It is the best powdered stevia I have ever tasted plus its packed full of health benefits you wont find in Truvia. I love mixing some powdered Trulicious, cinnamon and sprinkling it on an apple then baking it. Its like a mock apple pie! Its also great in tea and coffee. Plus, HCGDiet.com offers Trulicous stevia liquid in multiple flavors.


What are ways you have found to add flavor to Phase 2 of the HCG Diet?

Looking for some health, Phase 2 approved recipes? Check out Eat Well, Slim Down. Its a digital HCG Approved recipe book with over 100 recipes! Plus its only $10! 

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4 Ways to Spruce up your Salad

Todays blog is dedicated to one of my favorite foods: salad. In my mind, theres nothing better than a bed of romaine lettuce topped with all kinds of goodies. I love salad so much I eat it nearly everyday. 

This love for salad has been an advantage for me as Im losing weight. Not only is it nutritious, but its a great way to fill up while still slimming down. I have had to modify my list of toppings to fit my diet, though. For example, on the HCG diet, dousing my salad in ranch is not really an option. I also have to cut out the cheese, the croutons, the olives, the ham, and the cottage cheese. It may seem to you that cutting these things out ruins the whole thing, it makes it boring.

Well maybe it does make it boring, but there are certain flavor packed, diet friendly toppings you can add in place of the not-so-diet-friendly ones. 

Here are my four favorite HCG friendly salad toppings: 

Salsa - Some people who do the HCG Diet are pretty strict about the mixing vegetables. I personally have never had a problem mixing tomato products with lettuce. Knowing this I set out to find a delicious salsa with no added sugar or oil. :) I didnt have to look to hard because luckily, Pace makes their picante salsa simple and delicious. I use a couple tablespoons on top of my lettuce. 

Franks Hot Sauce - The great thing about using hot sauce on salads is the way spicy foods help me slow down. Because my mouth is burning from hot sauce I usually drink more water and I get fuller faster. Franks Hot Sauce has a great flavor and it doesnt contain sugar or oil. The spicy flavor in combination with chicken and tomato makes a delicious dinner. Just make sure you use the hot sauce and not the wing sauce (it contains oil).

Lime Juice - This is one of the cheapest ways to tantalize your taste buds. I love squeezing half a lime over a bed of lettuce topped with a bit of salsa and lean ground been. Its a healthy taco salad!

Banana Peppers - Now these arent technically on the HCG protocol, but they happen to be one of my favorite things to eat in the whole world. I have to use them in moderation but banana pepper rings fro Mezzetta are packed with tangy flavor that is extremely satisfying on a bed of lettuce with no dressing.

What healthy toppings do you put on your salad? 

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ZERO CARB WEEK 4 RESULTS

Just eat meat.  

That is what I have been doing for four weeks now.  Well, mostly meat, anyway.  As you can see by my food logs below, I have also been eating Fat Bombs, which contain almond butter, cocoa powder and Stevia, and I also had a small square of dark chocolate on one day.

ADDING ALTERNATE DAY INTERMITTENT FASTING

While I was visiting the Low Carb Friends forum, I found a group of people who are following a way of eating called Up Day Down Day.  Basically, it is alternate day intermittent fasting.  You can read an explanation of how it works here.  I have fooled around with IF in the past, but never really gave it a chance to see if it would work long term.

There are a lot of different ways to do IF.  One way that I considered involves eating nothing two days per week, such as Monday and Thursday, and eating what you want on the other five days.  I learned a lot of very interesting information by watching the video Eat, Fast and Live Longer.  I decided against this because I have a big appetite, and I am afraid that I would eat too much on the non-fasting days, and the plan would not work.

Another method involves eating in a certain window each day, such as between 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm, and eating nothing in between.  I tried this once, but it did not seem to make much of a difference in my weight.

There is some compelling research being done in Chicago about alternate day fasting, which you can read about here and here.  Dr. Krista Varady has found that if she restricts her human subjects to 25% of their normal food on alternate days, they will not compensate by eating 175% on the non-fasting days, but will eat an average of only 110% of their normal food at those times

Yet another method is to eat nothing every other day and eat as much as you want on the other day.  I decided against this after reading that the same benefits can be gained by eating about 20-25% of the food you would normally eat on alternate days, and to eat a normal amount on the other days.  This does result, obviously, in calorie restriction, but the plan gives the credit to the activation of SIRT1, as mentioned in the link above.

This is the method I have chosen to try.  There is a calculator in the Johnson Up Day Down Day Diet (JUDDD) website that tells you how much to eat on the "Up Days" and "Down Days".  After joining the group at Low Carb Friends that are eating this way, I found out that many people do not use the calculator, but rather just eat around 400-500 calories on their down days and whatever they want on their up days.  Others have found that this was too much "freedom" and that they tend to over eat on their up days and lose no weight.  They then resort to the calculator and often find success with that.  There is at least one person there that I know of that ate nothing every other day and lost a substantial amount of weight doing that and has kept it off.

For myself, I have decided not to eat as much as I want to on my non-fasting days.  I just dont trust myself to not pig out and gain weight.  I am inputting my weight into the calculator each morning and using the numbers it tells me to use for my up days and down days.  For example, my weight this morning is 140 pounds, and the calculator is telling me to eat 1548 calories if it is an up day and 310 calories if it is a down day.  This totals 1858 calories for the two days combined with an average of 929 calories per day.  This is obviously pretty low, but it is only the weight loss period of the diet, and you can choose to eat more than that and still be in weight loss mode.  I chose the 20% weight loss mode, but you can go all the way up to 35%, and then the average calories per day would be 1045, which is more in line with a normal weight loss strategy.

As weight loss continues, you are to gradually increase the amount of food you are eating, using the calculator as a guide, if you choose, until you reach your goal and begin to use the maintenance calculation, which is 60% of your normal food on down days and 100% of your normal food on up days.  In my case, once I reach my goal weight of 136 pounds, I would be eating 917 calories on down days and 1528 calories on up days.  This would average out to 1223 calories per day.  Supposedly, this can be sustained for the rest of your life. 

The charts below show how I have been eating for the past week.  The down days are a little hard, but knowing that I get to eat more on the up days keeps me going strong.  It has only been a week, but I am already feeling that the down days are easier, which is what they say should happen.

Another option for maintenance is to do less down days in a week:  Instead of doing a down day every other day, you could do a down day every third day, or even every fourth day, if it does not cause you to start gaining weight.

Of course, the overarching goal of this is to reap the benefits of fasting without putting your body into "starvation mode" and causing the metabolism to slow down even further.  If you are eating a good amount of food every other day, it would be hard for the body to think you are starving to death!  Another benefit is that the fat stores appear to open up and allow body fat to be burned on the fasting days, and in my case, it seems to be working, because, in the past week, I have lost 1.6 pounds of body fat and only 0.2 pounds of lean body mass (muscle).  If I were to eat the 929 calories each day, instead of 310 one day and 1548 the next, a few things would happen - 1. Such a drastic daily decrease in food would cause my metabolism to slow down and stop weight loss, 2. Any weight I did lose would come not come from mostly fat, but lean mass would be being burned as fuel, which would raise my body fat percentage and 3. I would be so hungry every day that it would not be sustainable long term and I would just give up, especially since, with a slowed metabolism, I would have to eat less and less food as time went on just to keep from gaining weight again.

The question remaining for me is if this is a sustainable way of eating for the rest of my life.  That remains to be seen.  The best outcome would be if I could reach a healthy body composition and stop having to track what I eat, letting my newly-healed appetite signals regulate how much I eat.


EATING TO AVOID DISEASE

In the Johnson Up Day Down Day Diet, he says to eat whatever you want on your up days, and that includes junk food if that is what you want to eat.  He claims, and some of the people on the LCF forum agree, that this way of eating will work for weight loss even if you are not eating healthy food.  Without making any judgements about how other people choose to eat, I have hereditary terminal illnesses in my family, most notably ALS, and I eat in a way that should prevent me from getting those diseases, which means high fat, very low carb and no processed foods or unhealthy fats.  For me, it is about health first and weight loss second, and I have decided not to eat junk food.


PROTEIN NEEDS

Because I want to keep the proper amount of lean body mass, I want to make sure that I am eating a sufficient amount of protein.  I cant get this in every day, due to fasting on alternate days, but I want to get no less than 60 grams of protein averaged out between the two days.  That means that I am factoring in eating at least 16 grams of protein on fasting days and at least 104 grams on non-fasting days.


WHY I DECIDED TO MAKE THIS CHANGE

In a nutshell, even though eating around 1400 calories per day and staying in nutritional ketosis were helping me lose body fat at a nice rate, I found myself hungry a lot of the time, and I was starting to feel like I could not keep it up.  My appetite is just still too big!  A plan where I am only hungry every other day is more appealing to me than a plan where I am hungry every day!

Below are my food logs for the past week  As you can see, there were days that I went over the amount that the calculator told me to eat, but I got better at that as the week went on and I got more in the rhythm of the eating style.  Click on any chart to enlarge it.

This was my average macronutrient intake during Week 4:

  
BLOOD GLUCOSE AND KETONES

Because I am eating the way I am every day, I am not checking blood glucose or ketones on a daily basis.  An hour after dinner on August 16, I checked my blood glucose, and it was 71.  This morning, I did both tests before eating breakfast.  My blood glucose was 69 and my blood ketones were 5.2, which is really high (but not dangerously so).  My average blood ketones are 1.9, so I am still going strong in ketosis.

MY EXCESS BODY FAT 

My main concern is that I regulate my blood sugar, but I still have too much body fat and Im hoping this way of eating will help me in that regard.

Because I started IF this past week, I decided to start weighing and measuring again on a daily basis.  Im just too curious to see how my weight and measurements will fluctuate with Intermittent Fasting.  It should not be surprising, or alarming, to see more fluctuations than normal.  The charts below show my actual numbers in the darker line, and my 7-day moving average in the lighter color. Generally speaking, if the trend is down and the actual number is below the 7-day average, things are moving in the right direction.  The only things I want trending up are my lean body mass and my pounds of lean mass!

Here are my charts:

Since I started ZC four weeks ago, and Alternate Day IF one week ago, I have:

Lost 1/8" around my neck
Lost 1/2" around my bust
Lost 1" around my waist
Lost 1-1/2" around my belly
Lost 5/8" around my hips
Lost 1/8" around my thigh
Lost 1/4" around my calf
Lost 1.8 percentage points off of my body fat
Gained 1.8 percentage points onto my lean mass
Lost 4.5 pounds of body fat
Lost 0.9 pounds of lean mass


MY GOAL

I have a goal weight and body composition:

11.75" neck 
28.5" waist
38.5" hips
136 pounds on the scale
30% body fat
70% lean body mass

To reach that goal, I need to:

Lose 1/8" around my neck
Lose 2-1/2" around my waist
Lose 1-3/8" around my hips
Lose 7.8 pounds of body fat
Gain 3.8 pounds of lean body mass


RELATED POST:  Zero Carb Results by Week

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4 Mistakes that could be Ruining your HCG Diet

This isnt your first rendezvous for the HCG Diet. You know what youre doing. But for some reason, every once in awhile your weight loss seems to slow or stall. And that is frustrating, even for an HCG Diet veterans like you and me.

 We like to think we know what were doing, weve read Pounds and Inches, weve gone through every page of the guidebook, and maybe even got our hands on Lose 50 Pounds Guaranteed, but somehow even us veteran HCG Dieters miss details that could be slowing down our weight loss. 

Here are 4 things that may be ruining your HCG Diet:

Not Measuring
OK, lets be honest after our second or third week on the diet we lose interest in measuring everything we eat, at least I did. However, trust me when I say you need to measure, no matter what. The thing is, we think we know what 3.5 ounces of meat looks like but its easy to add an extra ounce and sometimes even two. Those extra ounces add up to extra calories and they can be slowing down your weight loss. So do it a night ahead or pack a food scale in your purse. This is one fine detail that when skipped adds up over time.

Over Compensating
Have you ever eaten something you were supposed to and thought, "I can fix this, Ill just do a Cali Kicker, some sit-ups, take green coffee, go for a walk, take my appetite control, and cut back on dinner." Im guilty of that train of thought. But you dont need to freak out like that. Just get back on track at your next meal and let your body correct the problem itself. If you do too many quick fixes at once youll confuse your body and the problem will only get worse.

Deviating from Protocol

I went through this phase where I was eating banana peppers because they are low-calorie and didnt have any oil, but the thing is they arent on the original protocol for a reason and that reason is sodium. There are also a lot of other things that seem like theyd be fine but they arent. For instance certain fruits like mango and watermelon are too high in sugar for the diet and can slow you down. Even unlisted veggies can cause problems. So simply put, if its not on the approved foods list... dont eat it.

Skipping Calories

Toward the end of Phase 2, I have a hard time getting all of my 500 calories in. I know that sounds crazy because Im not eating very much as it is, but the appetite suppressant in HCG Triumph drops is pretty powerful. So its tempting to skip out on your fruit or veggies, but then your body (even though it doesnt feel hungry) goes into starvation mode and you stop losing weight. Eat all of the food youre suppose to eat.

And for those of you who arent quite HCG vets, you may not have slipped into these bad habits yet, and thats good news. So take notes and make sure you never start. :) 

Are you guilty of any of the above diet blunders? What other bad habits have you found slow down your weight loss?

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Size Me Up HCG Round 4

Well, its time to start my fourth, and hopefully last, round of HCG! I am so pleased with my progress thus far. After my last round, I was able to maintain a total loss of over 80 pounds!

The stakes seem a bit higher this time, and thats probably because theres more on the line than my health. Let me explain...

If I lose 35 pounds in the next 38 days, I will receive a $1000 shopping spree! :) I know that I can do this, and I know if I dont hit that goal Ill regret it. So its time to get down to work!

My starting weight this morning was 205 pounds. 170 is the magical $1000 number that Im going to get to. 

As of today, this is me:

Heres a list of my measurements:
Height - 53"
Weight - 205 pounds
Thigh - 24.5"
Hips/Stomach - 44.5"
Waist - 34.5"
Arms - 13"
Bust - 41"

And now to compare.....

When I first started my HCG journey, June 2012, I weight 285.6 pounds. Since then Ive lost 80.6 pounds, and over 50 inches! I went from a size 24 to a 14.

I know Ive come a long way, and I wouldnt have been able to do it without the support of my co-workers, friends, family, and last but not least my readers. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you for that.

 Each day is a unique challenge. I remember being so terrified to start the diet. I was worried about failing, I was worried about it being too hard. Turns out, it is hard. But every uneaten scoop of ice cream, every tear, and every pound have been so incredibly rewarding.

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THE MODIFIED VIRGIN DIET EGG CHALLENGE DAY 4

Yesterday, I challenged eggs for the fourth day in a row on my modified version of The Virgin Diet. 

MY SYMPTOMS

• Acne - No
• Chronic mucus/stuffy nose -No
• Constipation and/or diarrhea - Yes, in response to coconut oil (I think)
• Fatigue -No
• Food cravings -Yes
• Gas and bloating - Yes, coconut oil (I think) and eating out
• Headaches - No
• High blood glucose - No
• Inability to lose weight - No - Starting weight 147.8 - Current weight 143.4 - Goal weight 136 - To get back to goal, need to lose 7.4 more pounds.  Can button "measurement shorts" with a slight "muffin top".  Lost 0 pounds yesterday for a total of 4.4 pounds in 25 days.
• Insomnia - Yes - Woke up in the middle of the night and had a hard time getting back to sleep
• Joint pain - No
• Thinning, limp, lackluster hair -No
• Muscle pain  - No
• Nausea -No
• Swollen fingers - No

MY MENU

Yesterday, I ate bacon and eggs for breakfast.  I cooked the eggs in a tablespoon of coconut oil, and within 30 minutes, I was in the bathroom with bad diarrhea.  I would love to think it was not because of the eggs, but because of the coconut oil, in light of the fact that I got sick the day before right after eating coconut milk for breakfast.

I went out to eat at a family party yesterday, so I did not track my food.  The meal was chips and salsa, then tacos, then cake, cookies and brownies for dessert. 

Here is what I ate: 2 servings of taco meat, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, sour cream and guacamole. One large serving of mixed fruit with no sauce. A little bit more guacamole and a little bit of hummus. Water to drink. I did not eat bad carbs, but what I did eat, I ate a little too much of, and spent several minutes in the bathroom with horrible diarrhea. There must have been something in one of the foods that I am sensitive to. All in all, aside from eating the fruit, I think I did pretty well.

Here is what I did not eat: Hard taco shells, soft taco shells, refried beans, Spanish rice, chips and salsa, canned soda, cake, cookies and brownies.

Here is why I am still disappointed with my choices yesterday: I ate too much taco salad. I am on an elimination diet and I am not supposed to be eating ANY dairy, and I had sour cream and cheese. I am also eating very low carb, and Im sure the fruit, even though it had no sauce, probably tripled the amount of carbs I was supposed to eat today. Also, I do not eat legumes at all, and I had hummus.

I noticed that what I did eat made me crave overeating in general. After eating the first serving of taco salad, I went for more, realized as I sat down that my eyes were bigger than my stomach, I was already full, but I ate it anyway, because I felt like a binge was coming on. After eating that, I kept drifting back to the buffet to get a little bit of this and a little bit of that, even though I was uncomfortably full already. I really found it hard to just stop eating. What made me finally stop was that we left the party. And now I am home, I feel sick and full, my stomach is bloated, and all I can think about is finding something to eat. Sigh.   


EGG CHALLENGE

Yesterday was my last day of eating eggs.  For the next three days, I am back to my total elimination diet as it was in the first three weeks.


MY EXERCISE

 None.


MY BODY COMPOSITION

Since starting this diet, my body fat has gone down from 37.6% to 35.9%.  That means that I have lost 4.1 pounds of body fat and 0.3 pounds of lean mass.  To get to my goal of 136 pounds with 30% body fat, I need to lose 10.7 more pounds of body fat and I need to gain 3.3 pounds of lean mass.


If you are interested in getting a short synopsis of how this plan works, you can click on the link at the beginning of this post or you can listen to Jimmy Moore interviewing JJ Virgin by clicking here.

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NUTRITIONAL KETOSIS WEEK 4 RESULTS

Its been four weeks since I started my experiment with nutritional ketosis.  I am eating higher fat, lower protein and very low carb.  After looking at what an average body fat percentage is for a woman my age, I have adjusted my goal, which means I now have only 7.5 pounds of fat left to lose and 0.9 pounds of lean mass left to gain.

Here are some of my charts:

In summary, in the past 4 weeks:

I lost 1-1/8" around my midriff, 2-1/8" around my waist, 7/8" around my navel and 7/8" around my hips.

I lost 4.8 pounds on the scale (lost 6.5 pounds of body fat and gained 1.7 pounds of lean mass).

I went down 3.3 percentage points on my body fat.

I went down 0.036 points on my waist-to-hip ratio.

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:

1549 calories

136.4g fat (79.2%)

55.3g protein (14.3%)

25.1g carbs (6.5%)

This was my goal, and I was not too far off:

1539 calories

135g fat (79%)

54g protein (14%)

27g carbs (7%)

I will continue to eat this way for the next week.

I tested my blood ketones one time this past week because the strips are so expensive, and I can see that eating this way is keeping me in nutritional ketosis.  In order to stay there, my level should stay between 1.0 and 3.0.  My average of all the times I have tested is 2.2.  Here are my results since I started testing:

Because I can see that the way I am eating is keeping my blood sugar stable, I am not testing it every day.  I did test two times this past week.  Here are my results since I started testing, and these numbers are excellent:

I am continuing my experiment.  I am in nutritional ketosis, and my blood sugar is normal.  I am not hungry during the day, and I think I have hit on a good amount of fat to be eating.
 

RELATED POSTS:
Nutritional Ketosis - Week 1 Results

Nutritional Ketosis - Week 2 Results
Nutritional Ketosis - Week 3 Results
Less Protein - More Fat - "The Optimal Diet"

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