Well, it’s been a little while. I have continued to work hard on the
diet, despite not posting here regularly. It’s tempting to keep writing
lots of meaningless updates, but really it’s just been much of the same,
and not worth your time reading something new.
As you can see, the calories have been kept to approximately 1000 and
the weight has been steadily declining. There was a spike over
Christmas, which was caused by the excess drinking of (low-carb) beer. I
got this back under control quite quickly though, and it made no real
difference from my steady weight decline.
I believe I have now lost roughly 5 stone, which is good. I certainly
feel better for it, but progress is still much slower than I would
ideally like it to be.
Energy – My energy has massively increased from where I
once was. I still feel my energy increasing by day. It helps that I am
getting lighter, so need less energy to do daily tasks - but also my
body processes fats more efficiently.
Temptation – I’ve had basically zero cravings for
carbohydrates during these days. Of course I would happily eat them if I
allowed myself too, but I have enough self-control not to.
Foods – I have completely phased out eating sausages
entirely. The ISO cream has been good to me, but it’s simply too
expensive for me to buy now - as are the ‘zoodles’.
Christmas – Christmas went surprisingly well in the end,
with low-carb beer being highly viable. I think I ended up having 48
low-carb beers in the end over Christmas. We did end up having a BBQ and
Christmas meal on different occasions, both of which managed to keep me
in ketosis which is great.
Lockdown – Luckily, we have not yet had a lockdown, and I
hope it stays that way. I have not yet had any better ideas about food
to keep on hand if/when a lockdown occurs. I’ll cross that bridge when
it comes to it.
More Problems
So, I have some further problems with my diet - but I am slowly
getting better with time at maximising the effectiveness. I’ll discuss
the new items in the following.
Recording
I found some issues with my recording technique and had to adjust a
few items:
Coffee – I have been treating this as a zero carbohydrate
item, when in actual fact it’s not zero. It works out to be about 1g of
carbohydrates per cup. I updated all of my records retroactively, which
upped the previous records. On the plus side, I am now actually
under the 20g limit per day. (At least I believe so.)
Almond milk – I more accurately updated the records for the
type of milk I was using. I’ve now switched back to the old lighter
almond milk - which somehow now also mixes better with coffee
anyway.
Practice
I vaguely keep an eye on a Facebook keto group and some of the
discussions happening there. The group is mostly aimed at beginners and
people trying to keep themselves motivated - any in-depth discussion
never makes it past the administrators of the group.
In this group, I learned that I am quite likely doing a few things
wrong:
Coffee – This can apparently affect you metabolic rate, as
well as the way in which your body processes insulin. I did try to
reduce my coffee intake, but unfortunately I was not able to do so - it
absolutely destroyed my thinking capability. I believe I will have to do
this slowly, otherwise I can only look forward to caffeine withdrawal
symptoms.
Sweetners – These apparently can also affect the way in
which the body processes insulin. I have also been counting these as
zero carbohydrates, but technically there are some carbohydrates in
these. I should look to reduce my sweetner intake down to zero. I have
now officially run out, so as long as I don’t buy more, we’re good.
Water – I have not been drinking nearly enough water. I
have somewhat increased my intake, but it’s still not nearly enough.
That water where I live simply tastes of chlorine and it’s awful.
Stress
I found myself in recent times wanting to eat more in times of
high-stress. I guess this partially answers how I got here in the first
place. If I had a looming deadline, I would just buy a pizza and then
work afterwards, although not for so long, as processing one or more
pizzas would make me tired. In a moment of stress, my brain went back to
a previous place of known comfort.
I was of course able to override this feeling, but I think it was
important to recognize it was there. In the future I will need to create
better stress coping mechanisms.
Fasting
This is really the last step - which is to do intermittent fasting.
The idea is to go one or more days without food and fully rely on your
internal sources of energy.
I did try this recently, but it was mostly unsuccessful. I believe I
tried to cut out too many things at once, and it left me feeling
completely drained of energy. I’ll drop sweetners and fast for a day at
a time starting again from the next week. The coffee reduction is
something I will need to work on over time.
Coffee Space 
