Experimenting with a Keto Diet – Blog#20

24 Days Since Transitioning Off Keto

It’s been 24 days since I began transitioning off a Keto Diet.

I was expecting to gain about 2kg back of water weight. And I my plan was to transition slowly over 2 weeks, until finally on week 3 I was eating carbs at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

How I’m Going

So, how am I going?

Well, I no longer consider that I’m transitioning off keto. I’m off keto.

I didn’t stick strictly to the plan of one week of carbs for breakfast, then adding carbs to lunch for the following week, and then adding carbs to dinner for the third. I remember a point in that second week where I thought something like, “I feel like I’m ready to come off Keto now”. I had introduced a variety of different foods, and I could feel my guts were tolerating them.

My Weight

In terms of my weight:

The day before I started my Transition of Keto, on 9th December 2018, I weighed 74.7kg.
On 25th December 2018, I weighed 73.5kg.
Today, 2nd January 2019, I weigh 73.9kg.

Interestingly, while I expected to gain a couple of kilograms when I began transitioning, instead I lost about a kilogram!

Eating Carbs

I’m trying to focus on eating mainly low GI carbs. So that’s things like sweet potato, oats and brown rice. I’ve also been eating pumpkin, which when I’ve just Googled, has a moderate GI rating – I thought it was low GI.

If I feel like I’ve had too many carbs, then I try to cut or cut down on carbs for the next meal. And my ideal is that I don’t want to be eating lots of carbs at night – I’d prefer to have them during the day when I need the energy.

Overeating

I’ve over-eaten a few times over this holiday period. And New Years Eve was another. Both days I ate until I was stuffed. I stayed away from bread, but I ate plenty of meat, veggies, chocolate, candy canes, pavlova, christmas pudding…

I’m really conscious of what I eat now. Not that that necessarily stops me overeating or eating too much chocolate.

I haven’t stuck to my one-latte-a-day plan, and I’ve had a few sugar binges.

There’s a little bit of fear and guilt attached to overeating and binging on sugary food, because I don’t want to undo my hard work and gain back the fat I’ve lost. In saying this, I can come from the perspective that I know how to do a Keto Diet now, so if I gain a bit of fat and want to lose it, I know how to do it now.

I don’t want to live my life being in fear too much of the time about what I eat. I want to enjoy life and the food I eat. And maybe I need to accept and embrace my ebbs and flows around an ideal way of eating. Perhaps, like with other ideals, they are just that – ideals. And being an human, I’m not always going to be travelling at that ideal point, but I can aim for it.

I think it’s best I learn to accept that I’ll be falling short of that ideal, for whatever reason, some of the time. I just don’t want that some of the time to become a lot of the time. That’s where part of my fear lies.

Exercise

I’ve been continuing to go to gym, although my gym’s been closed for a total of 4 days over this 2 week Christmas break, with quite a few of the other days’ opening times altered, which has been frustrating.

Between my work schedule and the gym being closed / the opening hours being altered, I haven’t always been able to get to the gym when I’ve wanted. My membership runs out on 20th January, so I’ll be transferring to a more local 24 hour gym at that stage.

I’ve been getting to the gym 2-3 days a week over the last 3 weeks, and I’ve also been surfing. So if I surf instead of go to the gym sometimes, I’m okay with that. I guess what I try to think about is that I need to be exercising in some form, and while I want to maintain my gym routine, I can reconcile doing another form of exercise instead. And when the surf’s up and I’m able to take advantage of it, it’s worth it for me. I can reconcile that. And a couple of times I’ve been to the gym and and then surfed straight afterwards.

While I don’t love going to the gym, I’ve really enjoyed getting and feeling stronger.

I’ve hurt my supraspinatus rotator cuff a few times over the years. One of these times more recently, a few months ago, I went to the physio and she advised me to make sure I strengthened my back, not just my chest, so that it wouldn’t pull everything out, and potentially hurt my rotator cuff again.

I listened to that. While I used to hate doing back exercises (I much preferred chest), I’ve learnt to love working my back. I started off being able to do 1 or 2 pull-ups on my first full-body-weight set a few months ago, to now being able to do 10. Losing weight would have helped this, but there’s an increase in strength involved too. I can feel my back now, and I can pull myself over the bar.

When I do a chest day at the gym, I thrown in some lower-weight, higher-rep sets of cable rows on the rowing machine in a super-set, to reinforce balancing out my upper body.

I also enjoy feeling strong in my core. I’m doing some fit-ball, kettle bell and medicine ball exercises regularly during my gym routine which really help. When I do my warm-up jog on the treadmill at the start of my gym routine, I flex and engage my abdominal muscles while I jog. When I surf, I really notice the difference of how stable I am, how much stronger my core is.

I’ve found that, even though they’re hard work, I really enjoy the coordination challenge, and the results that some of the more natural movements with kettlebells, medicine balls, rowing machine, rope machine, pull-ups and the viper are giving me. I think I’d like to do more of these type of exercises moving forward.

Feeling strong and fit makes me feel better in my everyday life.

I feel so much better about myself. Feeling strong and fit is part of this. But honestly, a lot of this is aesthetic. I feel sexier. It’s nice to have put in work and to have achieved a goal, which was to lose my belly.

I feel more confident, and have a desire to work on my body more – to get more muscle, strength and overall fitness. And I’m considering joining the local volleyball competitions this year, for a bit of team sport. They’re held locally at my gym. I’ve never been into team sports, but I see them as a really valuable addition to people’s lives, and I want to explore that.

Stay tuned. More to come…

Experimenting with a Keto Diet – Blog#19

Transitioning Off Keto – Day 9

This is Day 9 of transitioning off my Keto Diet.

Cow’s Milk & Lattes

While I was on my Keto Diet, I was curious to know whether cow’s milk was affecting my body, if at all. I’ve always loved dairy. I’ve been eating butter, milk and cream as part of my Keto Diet, but have stayed away from cow’s milk because 0f the high carbs content. I’ve been using almond milk instead, which I find insipid, but not unpleasant – perhaps made more insipid because I drink the unsweetened variety.

I don’t have almond milk in my coffee though. It certainly doesn’t compare to cow’s milk, and one thing I wanted just as much as fruit while on my Keto Diet, was a full cream latte. And I’ve had a few recently. I’ve gone for a smaller size latte, because I’m still conscious of not eating too many carbs, especially in the form of sugars. And one cup of cow’s milk contains about 12g of carbs in the form of sugars.

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Experimenting with a Keto Diet – Blog#18

Transitioning Off Keto: Day 6

It’s Day 6 of my transition off a Keto Diet.

Research

I did some online research about how to do this – some blogs and a couple of You Tube videos.

There’s a lot of information about how to start a Keto Diet and stay on it. There’s also information about Keto Diet Maintenance. But there’s not that much information on how to come off of a Keto Diet.

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Experimenting with a Keto Diet – Blog#17

Day 50

It’s Day 50 of my Keto Diet.

End Date

So, how long am I doing this Diet for again? Well, I said 2 months initially. Then, when I was feeling uncomfortable, I addressed my uncertainty by changing the total amount of time to a range, 6 weeks to 2 months. Eventually, when I began finding the Diet more comfortable, I changed that to two months again.

Okay, so I’m aiming for 2 months. But is that calendar months, or 60 days? 60 days – 10 days away – would take me to the 19th December; 2 calendar months would take me to the 20th December – 9 days away. So, one day apart – that’s pretty close.

These are the mind games that I can play with myself. Is it this, or is it that? Do I think about it like this, or like that? So, I end up just doing mental gymnastics. I avoid a decision. I procrastinate. In this case this means not deciding on an end date.

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Experimenting with a Keto Diet – Blog#16

Day 42

It’s Day 42 of my Keto Diet.

Sweet Tooth

Sometimes I feel like something sweet. My sweet tooth hasn’t just disappeared by being on this Diet for 42 days.

I have some dark chocolate every now and then, which has some sweetness. But being the 85% or 90% cocoa varieties, and around 3g of carbs per 20g serve, it’s not the sweetness I’m used to when I go for a sweet treat.

Other foods I get some sweetness from are tomatoes, blueberries, coconut cream/milk, red capsicum, peanut butter, macadamia butter and jarlsberg cheese.

I’ve got to say that I tried macadamia butter for the first time a few months ago, and I love it and give it high praises. It has an amazing natural sweetness, and like to have it with avocado and smoked salmon.

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Experimenting with a Keto Diet – Blog#15

Day 40

It’s Day 40 of my Keto Diet.

Carbs, Fat & Fat Gain

I speak bout my Keto Diet quite often to people, although less now than I used to, because it’s a big part of my life at the moment.

I’ve spoken to a mix of people: some who heard about keto diets, and some who haven’t. But as I think about it now, more people have heard about it than I would have expected.

This doesn’t mean that they knew what it involved, and I find that mostly when I explain to people that it’s a high fat diet, they are surprised. It’s a shock or hesitation that I interpret as something like: “What? You can lose fat by eating fat?” Counter-intuitive.

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Experimenting with a Keto Diet – Blog#14

Day 34

It’s Day 34 of my Keto Diet.

More Emotional Eating

I’ve been a bit disappointed with myself at times in the last few days, because I’ve done some emotional eating. I feel guilty about it when it happens – guilty that I give in to dealing with my feelings like that. I guess I see it as counter-productive to my Diet.

I want to pretend that I don’t do it. I want to do this Diet well. But the reality is that sometimes I do.

A few nights ago I just wanted to eat. Not out of hunger. I just wanted to have some flavour in my mouth, and the comfort of food in my gut. Perhaps to do something ‘naughty’.

It was before bed, and I don’t like eating too close to bedtime. So there’s naughtiness in that too. I believe it’s not that good to have food in the stomach before bed, because we don’t need to fuel the body while we sleep.

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Experimenting with a Keto Diet – Blog#13

Day 31

It’s Day 31 of my Keto Diet.

I did a grocery shop yesterday and bought some Brunswick Original Kippers – boneless herring fillets. They were on special, and I like tinned fish like tuna and sardines, so I thought I’d give them a try, with the intention of having them for lunch or breakfast.
I tend to buy the same sort of things when I grocery shop, so it’s nice to branch out every now and then.

One vision I had was having them on toast – like I might do with sardines – but I forget that I don’t eat bread at the moment, unless I make a keto version. I haven’t made any more bread yet, but I bought some ingredients for pizza yesterday, so I plan to make that tonight. There’s a few recipes online for the keto pizza base. One is made out of cauliflower. Another is made of almond meal and cream cheese mainly. I’d like to try a yeasty version, so I’ll hunt around for a recipe. I’ll report on it later.

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Experimenting with a Keto Diet – Blog#12

Day 26

It’s Day 26 of my Keto Diet.

I hit an emotional wall the other day. Nothing to do with my Diet as far as I know.

Spa & Massage

With a day off work, and at the suggestion of a friend, I went to place called Kiva Spa in Mullumbimby. The same Mullumbimby referred to in Netflix series Ozark – well worth watching, by the way. I played around in the spas, sauna, steam room and plunge pool for about an hour, and then had an hour and a half massage.

When I woke up the next day, I felt slimmer. I mean, my belly felt slimmer. When I Continue reading “Experimenting with a Keto Diet – Blog#12” →

Experimenting with a Keto Diet – Blog#11

Day 23

It’s Day 23 of my Keto Diet.

It’s hard for me to believe that I’ve been doing this for over 3 weeks now! It was quite difficult in patches near the beginning.

Difficulties

One of the difficulties was that the Diet was new, and I wanted to get it “right”. I was weighing and measuring food, doing keto stick measurements to see whether I was in ketosis, thinking about recipes, and I was mentally consumed about what I could and couldn’t eat. Now I’ve stopped doing regular keto stick measurements, I know how to stay in ketosis, and I’m used to the sorts of things I can eat and what to make.

Another difficulty was that I felt uncomfortable much of the time – physically uncomfortable – whereas now I just feel “normal”. So “normal”, in fact, that whereas I Continue reading “Experimenting with a Keto Diet – Blog#11” →