Examining the Evidence

...and looking for clues...

Hello! Apologies for the disappearing act. I was not being intentionally evasive but was trying to work out some things. I’m either making little progress or “a” little progress and I am not sure which it is.

Two weeks and two days ago (Saturday, January 13th), I went to Sacramento to help my daughter move some things out of storage. Because Keto was going so well and I was so optimistic, I made certain to choose a restaurant that I could guarantee would keep me compliant. We went for Mongolian BBQ at Silver Garden, one of my favorite places to eat.

For those of you who might not know what Mongolian BBQ is, let me give you a crash course, which will let you see how perfect it is:

I first had Mongolian BBQ on Guam at the Andersen Air Force Base NCO Club and I have enjoyed it ever since. Most Mongolian BBQ restaurants have the same set up.

There is a buffet line with a stack of large-ish bowls. You pick up a bowl and fill it with your choice of thinly sliced frozen meat. The most common are chicken, pork, lamb, and beef.

Once you have all of your meat in the bowl, having squished down the frozen rolls to pack in as much as possible, you pick your vegetables:

As you can see, there’s usually a decent variety and you get to pick. After that, you go to the sauces…

…and there are usually all kinds of sauces, including the house bbq sauce (this is not Texas BBQ with flavored ketchup… not even close), soy sauce, ginger water, sugar water, hot saunce, etc.

I picked meats, plus non-starchy vegetables like cabbage and celery, then added only soy sauce and ginger water so there would be no carbs added.

Once you get your bowl piled as high as you can, you take it to the next station, which is where people cook your food on a giant heated rock, basically.

They stir it around and eventually slide it into a clean bowl while you watch and salivate.

You end up with something like this:

I turned down my usual fried wontons. I turned down my usual egg rolls. I even turned down the egg drop soup on the off chance there might be something in it that would kick me out of ketosis.

Meats, non-starchy veggies, soy sauce. What could possibly go wrong?

I ate and it was delicious and I got another serving to take home with me for supper that night then I ate that as well.

When I woke up the next morning, I was completely out of ketosis.

Seriously… w…t…f…?

I did not eat anything other than the Mongolian BBQ for all of that Saturday. The only thing I can imagine is that the cook poured sauce onto it while cooking it and that must have had some form of sugar in it.

It sounds like nothing, but let me tell you, my heart was broken. I’d been so deeply into ketosis and had worked so hard for it and just like that, it was over.

Of course, I started scurrying like mad. I all but fasted on Sunday, made absolutely sure to only have non-carbohydrate foods. I stayed compliant, under my 20 grams of carbs for Monday. Then for Tuesday, which was weigh day. I gained 2 pounds. I continued compliance through the week and never could get back into even a little bit of ketosis. It usually takes 72 hours or so for it to kick in and then it builds from there.

By this past Tuesday, I was on the brink of a meltdown. Eric was great and talked me out of it. Keto works. It really does. I lost weight. I felt great. I never got into what I would cause depression, but just incredible disappointment and frustration.

Once again, I was doing all the right things and not getting results.

When I started this attempt, way back when I first began this journal, I had a feeling it was my last try, do or die. I am not unhappy with the results, but yeah, it would have been great to have more progress. I’ve done Weight Watchers, Intermittent Fasting, and Keto during this time. I felt best on Keto.

I am not quitting, but I am contemplating what comes next. Meanwhile, I have been eating carbs, but things like apples and air popped popcorn and low-calorie bread. There have been no splurges. I’m trying to do as little damage as possible while I work this out.

I am not sad, just contemplative about how I want to spend my life. The frustration and self-deprecation I felt during the time between the Mongolian BBQ downfall and Tuesday was not the quality of life I wanted. I need a plan that is not so fragile that if I eat meat and veggies, it all falls apart. I need something sustainable for me.

Since Tuesday, I eat lean meats, eggs, vegetables, and fruits, and that is about it. My clothes are not any tighter and I feel good. I guess this is a kind of holding pattern. I will probably go back to keto at some point, but more from a low-carb perspective than focusing on whether or not I am in ketosis and gauging my success from that.

It works for sure and ketosis and fat adaptation are a real bonus for weight loss. Thousands of people do it successfully, but apparently, I am not diligent enough to keep it going.

Something about that 250 point is critical because every time I get within a breath of it, things derail.

I will crack the code somehow. For now, my goal is to eat healthy, not gain more weight, and hope for the best.

On another subject, for the past week, I worked on repairing and optimizing 855 photographs (the actual physical kind) that I scanned into digital format. These were from 1978-1996, up until the time I met Eric.

I will work on the rest after I take a break from Photoshop for a bit.

I got to see photos of myself from age 16 through 35 and saw the full evolution of my weight gain.

1981: here, I was convinced I was fat because someone I trusted insisted that I was. I was working aggressively to diet down from my whopping 130 pounds. I had a baby that was not yet a year old. I was 19.

Age 26, now with three sons aged 5, 7, and 9, running 3 miles a day. Eating carrots at a party because my tummy wasn’t firm and so I was fat. I weighed around 125.

Age 29 in 1990. Now we’re starting to plump up for real to around 140. I was disgusted by how massive I was.

October 1991, age 30, getting fatter. This was two months after my first husband left me (we divorced, then remarried in 1994). I gained 80 pounds within a year.

I had a beautiful baby girl from a very brief relationship between our marriages. This is 1993 and I was a little past 31. After that pregnancy, I never again weighed under 200 pounds.

I’m on the left. This is 1996 and that is when I began sliding up and down the 230-250 range that would continue for the next two decades until I started moving between 250-270.

And here we are. Talk about a self-fulling prophecy. I have not given up. I feel like it is important to say that a few times, mostly for my own affirmation. I am, however, seriously regrouping and thinking about what comes next.

This past Tuesday, I was still two pounds up (253.8). We’ll see what happens this week.