Happy Christmas

Also, sugar is poison

I have been trying so hard to work around this obvious and inevitable conclusion and obviously, did so without success.

I really wanted to keep sugar in my life, at least on the peripheral, much like you tell a lover you’re breaking up with that you really want to stay friends. It’s so rare that it works and I’ve fallen squarely into the “not working” department.

One of the reasons I wanted so much for Weight Watchers to work for me is that I really (really, really, really) wanted to keep sugars and fruits and breads in my diet and still lose weight and WW allows for eating almost anything as long as you stay within your point limit.

As a result, here I am having gained back a few pounds and certainly having made no progress, plus I feel like crap which I will get to in a minute.

I fell down a rabbit hole the other day with these videos and I have to say, despite people saying they are propaganda, they sure do feel true to me and follow exactly the experiences I have had:

This one:

and this one:

and this one:

Well…. shit.

Even intermittent fasting was promising because I did not have to follow a specific restriction other than watching my calories during my eating times.

And here I am with no weight loss, yes weight gain, and physical detriment. I don’t know how much I have gained. As I mentioned, when I saw my health care provider last Tuesday, I was up by 3 pounds, which isn’t terrible, but I feel like I am up at least a couple more pounds since then.

Because it’s the holiday, I have played fast and loose with sugar, having the occasional Dr. Pepper, lots of candy and cookies, and I feel like complete crap. The joints in my knees and of all things, my left thumb, are inflamed and painful all the time. My belly is bigger. I don’t sleep well. I don’t have good cognitives, I can’t remember things (more pronounced than usual for my age), and I generally feel dull and disconnected.

Now that the holidays are behind me, I have decided that I have to confront this head on and recognize that sugar and I are not a good mix.

My goal now is to adapt back into a healthy keto diet. That is where I felt best, despite the depression that ensued and despite the deprivation. Physically, it was what my body wanted.

If those are potatoes, this ain’t Keto. God, I’m going to miss potatoes.

I hear all of the assertions that it is not sustainable, which does not address that fact that literally thousands of people eat this way all the time as a lifestyle.

No more screwing around. No more wasting time. No more trying to adapt what is clearly poison to me into my eating plan.

A study at Connecticut College demonstrated that sugar is more addicting than cocaine and can initiate obsessive compulsive behavior in the brain. Researchers who worked with rats found that sugar lit up the same neuro receptors as cocaine and that the activity was even stronger with the sugar. I mean, yikes, but it makes sense.

A 2008 study at Princeton proved that rats became dependent on sugar and craved it like a drug. They binged on it and suffered withdrawals without it.

I mentioned early on in this journal that the depression I suffered was what caused me to give up keto in the past. Keto is very hard to maintain and requires strong discipline, especially in a world where sugar is everywhere and people have no qualms about giving it as gifts or pressuring you into participating in eating it. Add in grains and starches and a social life becomes almost impossible to manage.

I read hundreds of Reddit posts about Keto and followed the video and written journals of people on Keto and did not find anyone suffering the depression I did, but later studies show that this is apparently common. People just do not talk much about it or didn’t when I last researched anecdotal accounts. It seems the depression is something I will have to push through to get to the other side. I take Wellbutrin for depression now, which I was not doing in the past, so that could make a difference.

It’s easy to say that I don’t have to go to one extreme or the other. I can cut out refined sugar, cut out juices, cut out the obvious sources of “bad” sugars. The problem is that I have trouble regulating, so in some ways, it’s easier for me to let it all go than to pick and choose from my favorite sugar children.

Another mitigating factor is the Saxenda I still take, which helps me to be more dismissive of food in general. My hope is that with these tools, I can see some good success. I will post an updated weight soon and keep documenting my progress. I am not hiding accountability, I promise. It has just been crazy busy for me lately with the Winter Green Egg issue publishing and having holidays with the family.

Now that I am on the other side of that, I do not foresee any pitfalls in my future and by the time I get to any, I hope to be well entrenched into my new way of eating and also weighing a good bit less.

lowcarbalpha.com has lots of great info & recipes

To recap for any who do not know, the Keto diet encourages no more than 20-50 (I err on the side of 20) grams of carbohydrates in a day’s eating. This causes the body to deplete itself of glycogen and begin to burn fat instead of carbohydrates, resulting in not only weight loss, but fat loss. It takes up to a week to get into this state, which is called “ketosis” because ketones result from this process and are cast off in the urine, where it is trackable using urine strips and also in the breath, where it is trackable using a breath meter.

Basically, you eat meat, healthy fats, cheeses, eggs, a few nuts, and lots of green vegetables. The trick is to keep eating and feeling full so you can distinguish a craving from true hunger. I will start off not tracking calories, but instead eating only keto-friendly foods while my body adapts, then dial in the calories later if I do not see progress.

Here we go again! I am tired of believing I can do this in any kind of easy way and still see results at my age. It’s going to be the hard way or I’ll die like this. For now, I’m happy to just get the inflammation in my knees to back off.

Today and tomorrow (Dec 25-26) are an induction slide. I will start off with Kind Keto, meaning I keep in potatoes since they are a whole food, then they will phase out as I get adapted into the process. The potatoes do have to be prepared without frying in trans fats, so no fries. I hope to hit ketosis within 2 weeks.