@chai2,
So, as already said, I thought what I was reading about that a low carb diet being 250 grams a day was off the charts stupid. From the start I was keeping at 150ish a day or so.
But, overall, I just wasn't satisfied with something. Now, to some/many it might seem like me charting everthing seems overkill and complicated, but it really wasn't/isn't. It definately mades things easier.
This something was that, as I said somewhere in a previous post, I was just keeping the flame of craving/semi craving certain foods alive. Carbs, sugar, whatever you want to call them, they are an addictive substance. I truly believe, especially now, that when someone says "well I'll just have this piece of cake because it's a special occassion, much of the reason you want it is mental, and because you already have just a little too much carbs floating in your system, and your bodies saying "give me more!" For someone who eats sugar and refined carbs on a regular basis, it's not even a choice, you just do it.
I don't want to sound like a know it all. I think it's something we all realize.
I wasn't unhappy restricting carbs to around 150, I just knew though I could be so much better. I mean better as a person. Being more optimum is that makes sense.
So, doing more research, and something I never would have considered, but that started making more sense to me, was going keto.
Now, if I had been restricted to reading, or watching videos of those body builder types, I would have barfed and thought they were well, not crazy, but not anyone I'd want to be like.
But, I started watching some vids of some women, normal everyday types, that more than anything, just seemed so healthy and glowing and well, "there" as far as being present. They weren't these stick thin women that looked like they were just wishing they could eat something "normal". They had healthy skin, where healthily slender, not thin. Their looks weren't forced by something outside of doing what was natural. They looked like a version of, quite frankly, me. What I could be, and what I used to be before all of the stress coritsol.
That's what was interesting. There was no "eat this, do this, you'll be a size 6". It was "this is how your body functions." They spoke of corisol, hormones, brain functions, organs, chemistry, and above all....FAT.
Not fat as in "You have to lose it."
No.
Fat in as you need it. You need to eat it, eat more than you can sit there and imagine while you're reading this, and it's going to make you healthier. A lot healthier. Duck fat, tallow, lard, olive oil, almond oil, avocado oil. Eggs cooked in bacon fat or butter. The fat in meats. Nuts like macadamia, brazil, pecans, walnuts. Whole avocados, as many as you care for. Almost any vegetable that grows above the ground, and go ahead and sautee it in that duck fat, and put some butter on top of that brocolli when you're done cooking it in that fat. Cheese! Olives, bacon, and if you want, more bacon. Take 4 or 5 or 6 cups of raw spinach, or cabbage, and cook it up in the bacon fat and then drizzle it with olive oil.
But, the trade off is limiting your carbs. Limiting them to an amount per day that seems impossible, like 25 or 27 a day.
However, that's not the whole story either. You limit yourself to 25 Net carbs a day. That's the number of grams ofcarbs a vegetable or fruit has, minus the number of fiber carbs. That's why you can eat as much avocado as you want. A four ounce avocado has 9 grams of carbs, but 7 grams of fiber, so only 2 net carbs. Do the math.
A typical breakfast would be spinach, eggs, bacon, avocado and if you wanted cream in your coffee, go for it. Fry those eggs in lard or tallow. Oh, and you'll need salt too. Good salt, not that stuff from a blue box.
Wow, I realize I sound like a zealot re-reading this. I'm not. I'm not all exicited and evangelical about it. But you know what? We've been lied to. Lied to so that we think we need to buy sub standard nutrition from boxes and cans, so someone can fill their pockets, and it's made us sick.
What makes us sick isn't the fat. It's the combination of fat and an overload of sugar. Our body just doesn't know what to do with it, and can't function efficiently.
Saturated fat isn't bad for the heart, and polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats actuall raise your hdl's and lower or ldl's. A win/win.
Here's a little image of what happens in ketosis.
As you'll notice, your pancreas, which secretes insulin, is taken out of the equation essentially. In other words, you give your poor pancreas a long deserved rest. Maybe even a chance to heal its beta cells, which are needed to produce that insulin.
Your liver doesn't mind. It can handle making the ketones, which is, as I've learned, a cleaner burning fuel. Your body functions more efficiently on ketones, than on glucose.
You might wonder, "what about fruit?" Well, at some point I'll incorporate more into my food, but I'm not worried about it now. Also, 5 or 10 thousand years ago, an apple, or peach or grapes were nothing like they are today. They were growing naturally, were much smaller, and more more tart, without as much sugar. Someone might occassionally risk knocking down a bee's hive, but there was no place to go get sugar fried in fat, aka Krispie Kremes.
What I do know at this point is that my overall BG is very much down, my fasting glucose is stabilizing, I have switched from taking a diuretic every day to every other day, and will titrate down from there in a few weeks, if things continue this way. Water retention has basically gone away.
It's a good thing the battery of the scale I have went dead, because I'm too lazy to change the battery, and I'm not tempted to weigh myself. I was however, in a Bed Bath and Beyond yesterday, and happened to go by the section of bathroom scales. I stepped on one, and wasn't really surprised to see my weight was down by 7 pounds. That's not water weight. That went off weeks ago, and my body has stabilized from there. It's not muscle loss either. That leaves fat loss.
I'm in mild ketosis, per those ketostix. I'm losing fat because that's all my body has to burn. I'm not losing muscle because I'm giving my body enough good fat so it has almost enough, and pulls what it needs from my current fat stores.
Have I bored you yet?
