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 cant 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. Im 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 its 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 its not much, so it shouldnt 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?

Its 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, Ill test again for good measure.  If something starts going wrong, I will test sooner, but for now, I dont 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.

RELATED POSTS:
Nutritional Ketosis - Week 1 Results

Nutritional Ketosis - Week 2 Results
Nutritional Ketosis - Week 3 Results
Nutritional Ketosis - Week 4 Results
Nutritional Ketosis - Week 5 Results
Nutritional Ketosis - Week 6 Results
Nutritional Ketosis - Week 7 Results 
Less Protein - More Fat - "The Optimal Diet"

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HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO US!

Bill are is 69 years old and I am (almost) 58 years old. We eat high fat, including lots of heart-healthy saturated fat, sufficient protein and very low carb. We avoid eating artery-clogging whole grains and sugar.  Neither of us needs to take medication of any kind, we are normal weight, and disease free. We both had high blood sugar, but not any more. Medical professionals are amazed at us!

Today, we celebrate our 39th wedding anniversary.

 

 

 

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The Night Before

Ok, so Ive been waiting for something to grab me for a while. I stumbled across The Fast Diet this morning and in fine British mode, theres no time like the present. 

Ive planned to start my fast diet tomorrow and with it being Monday might be a tough task. Id rather start off tough though whilst I have the motivation, with the intention of it becoming easier, rather than the other way around...

Ill be posting a series of posts detailing how Im doing along the way and offering advise to anyone who may be following me and taking part also.

Wish me luck!!!!

D x

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Size Me Up Round 5

Its that time again, Im doing another round of the HCG Diet! Woohoo. I finished my fourth round in March, which means that I havent done the diet in 8 months! Im so nervous. It feels like the first time all over again.

Two months ago, I wasnt planning on doing another round on the HCG Diet. I just wanted to keep running, eating healthy, and maintaining (I have done a pretty good job of maintaining within 5-10 pounds of where I left off in March). While Im not quite at my goal weight, I havent wanted to rush these last 30 pounds. Ive come so far in the last year I wanted to pause the weight loss to enjoy my 100 pound mile mark before hitting the 130 pound mark. And while my heart was set on taking it slow, that has recently changed.

I speak highly of HCG Triumph Drops. Working for this company and using their products has helped me
lose a considerable amount of weight. I blog openly about choosing these drops because they contain the HCG hormone and they arent low-quality, watered down drops. HCG Triumph puts a lot of time into formulating their products. When HCGDiet.com recently added Triumph Hormone Free drops to their website I was interested. Like many in the HCG community, Ive always been skeptic of hormone free drops, but because I have a behind the scenes look at the way HCGDiet.com operates, I know how much thought, time and testing goes into HCG Triumph products. When HCGDiet.com launches a product its because it works well. These drops are hormone free and different than what I am used to, but they are not low-quality or watered down.  I am excited to see what is in them how they work for my body, so even though I wasnt planning on it, I cant contain my excitement. I want to try them! Here we are, Round 5. :)

This round, I am doing it with my boyfriend and a couple of co-workers. We will be using the hormone free drops and Ill do my best to document all the similarities and differences between these drops and the other drops Ive used.

Pre-load weight: 189 lbs
Post-load weight: 194.4 lbs
Goal weight: 175 lbs

Current Pant Size: 14
Current Shirt Size: Womens XL
Current Bra Size: 38D


Today is day one on Phase 2. Its going well so far. I packed my lunch ahead of time and sent a packed lunch with my boyfriend as well (Brandon is getting an extra serving of protein each day so he can workout a bit). Day 1 seems to be going smoothly. I dont feel overly hungry and I dont have a detox headache. Brandon is a little hungry but doesnt seem to be complaining too much. I am documenting what we eat and I am making sure we are keeping to a schedule of eating every 2 hours or so to avoid feeling famished.

My eating schedule today looks something like this:
8:00 a.m. Crio Bru w/ 2 tsp Trulicious
10:30 a.m. Triumph Hormone Free Drops
11:00 a.m. Orange
12:00 p.m. Wasa Bread
1:00 p.m. 3.5 oz chicken, 1 cup broccoli (raw)
2:00 p.m. Triumph Hormone Free Drops
3:00 p.m. Apple
4:00 p.m. 1 cup grape tomatoes
5:00 p.m. Triumph Hormone Free Drops
6:00 p.m. 2 scoops Triumph Slim
Calorie Count: 530

Tomorrow Ill be blogging about the ingredients in Triumph Hormone Free, and Ill look at how they are different from the typical hormone free drops. Be sure to check back!

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THE VIRGIN DIET DAY 5

Yesterday, I completed Day 5 of The Virgin Diet.

MY SYMPTOMS

• Abdominal cramping - Yes, sometimes, even after just drinking water in the morning
• Acne - Yes
• Chronic mucus/stuffy nose - Yes, but improving
• Constipation and/or diarrhea - Yes, the latter, even sometimes right after eating  or drinking water
• Fatigue - Yes, especially in the afternoon
• Food cravings - No
• Gas and bloating - Not really
• Headaches - No
• High blood glucose - No (yesterday was 88 an hour and a half after eating dinner)
• Inability to lose weight - No - Did not weigh this morning, but lost 2.2 pounds in the first 4 days - Starting weight 147.8 - Current weight 145.6? - Goal weight 136 - To get back to goal, need to lose 9.6 more pounds.  Can still button "measurement shorts" with a slight "muffin top".
• Insomnia - No
• Joint pain - Yes, but greatly improved
• Muscle pain  - Yes, but improving
• Nausea - Yes, sometimes after eating or drinking water

WHAT I AM EATING

I normally eat like this:

135g fat (78%)
57g protein
28g carbs

Yesterday, I ate like this:

137g fat (67%)
91g protein
64g carbs

I had shakes for breakfast and lunch that were comprised of coconut milk, water, non-dairy protein powder, ground flax seed, raw greens, frozen berries and a few drops of Stevia.  I also had 2 tsp. of cod liver oil in the breakfast shake.

For dinner, I had a slow cooked chicken thigh, a serving of steamed broccoli with coconut oil and sea salt and 1.5 oz. almonds.

I ate breakfast at 7 am, lunch at 2 pm and dinner at 6:30 pm.  I did not feel like snacking after dinner.

I drank 72 oz. of water, but never within an hour before eating or an hour after eating, in order to not dilute my stomach acid.

OUT OF TOWN AND OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE

Currently, from Saturday through Monday, I am acting as caregiver to a terminally ill friend.  I left my house yesterday morning fully armed with all the ingredients for my shakes, including my blender and digital kitchen scale.  I also brought a bag of almonds, a jar of Bubbies sauerkraut and two avocados. I walked in with two grocery bags full of stuff, packed with ice packs, due to the 2.5 hour drive to get here.

One of the reasons I have gained weight in the past couple of months is because I have been coming here three days every other weekend.  While I have been here, I have had to eat what was served me, and often it contained carbs and lots of them.  I also was eating things that I had a choice about, like raisins and ice cream.  It is very stressful here, due to the seriousness of my friends illness, and I just did not feel right not eating what was offered me, and I was so stressed that I was craving carbs and giving in to those cravings.

Also, I felt that it was "small" of me to be thinking about my little weight problems when I was in the home of a dying person.  My problems seem small in comparison, and I was feeling selfish for caring about my weight.  But then, when I got home, I would start caring again, especially when I got on the scale and realized that I was gaining 2-3 pounds every other weekend and could not take it back off before it was time to come here again.  So I would come here the next time, resolving to do better, but then do badly again because my weight problem is not important in the face of my friends suffering.  It was a vicious circle of weight gain, guilt and grief.

But, this time, I brought stuff to make shakes for breakfast and lunch, and I cooked enough chicken thighs that I can just serve myself one of those for dinner each night along with whatever veggies I can scrounge up out of my friends freezer.  And as far as the off-limits carbs available here, I will just not eat them this time, which is easier to do when I know that if I ate them, I would ruin this experiment and also have to confess that fact to you!

Because I am here without my own bathroom scale, I will have to wait until Wednesday morning to weigh in.  I will be traveling on Tuesday morning, after breakfast, and I dont like to weigh unless it is first thing in the morning before eating.  Until then, I will just have to use my "measurement shorts" to track my progress while I am here.  Yes, I brought the shorts with me!

If you are interested in getting a short synopsis of how this plan works, you can listen to Jimmy Moore interviewing JJ Virgin by clicking here.

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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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Im Thankful Im not a Quitter

November is the month of giving thanks, and while I try to give thanks regularly for the wonderful things in my life, I want to post a special blog on the topic. I am blessed to have a job, an apartment, a car, my health, an amazing family. I am blessed to be in school, to have talents, and to have so many people who support me while I chase my dreams. Not a day goes by that I dont realize how blessed I am.

But theres something else Im very thankful for this week, something I dont always recognize. Its not a person, a place or a thing. Its a personality trait of mine. Its the reason I have done all that Ive done. Its the reason I am who I am. This week, I am especially thankful that Im not a quitter.

7 days into starting the HCG Diet I was down 6.6 pounds! Wooohoo. I was so excited, but I knew that I was about to hit a road bump.... Let me explain: I am blessed to have a boyfriend who takes me for who I am and makes me feel beautiful despite what the scale says. Before starting this round of the diet, he made me promise for his birthday I would eat whatever I wanted. So Monday I knew I was going to have a cheat meal when my boyfriends parents took us out for his birthday dinner. Then I knew Wednesday was his birthday dinner with friends. Same request, "Eat what you want."

So today I weighed in, knowing I was going to be up, I saw I gained 3.6 pounds back. A little discouraging, but not surprising. I stepped off the scale, my never-quit personality wiped away the feeling of discouragement. I took a breath and thought, "So what? Today is a new day. The birthday celebrations are over, and I dont need to rush."

Ive had to remind myself of that quite frequently through my journey, "Dont rush." It is so easy to get down on yourself and be negative about your body. If there is one thing I want everyone to know its this: Your body is amazing because it functions and youre alive. Stop hating it and just try your very best to take care of it. The weight will come off if you just stay focused, take your time and most of all stay positive. You will mess up, mostly because youre human and it takes time to break habits that were formed from emotional eating, but you can ALWAYS try again. There may be things in life youve given up on, like wearing your hair in a bob (flashback to kids calling me mushroom head in 8th grade), or trying to keep your dog from barking at the mailman, but never EVER give up on your health.

So heres to me and my journey, heres to starting fresh today and getting back on track. Heres to you and your beautiful life. Go live it the best way you know how, and dont forget to be grateful for every second of it.

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