ketogenic – The Fasting Life

1.5 years in and 160 lbs down…

Monday, July 15th will mark exactly 1.5 years since I started this journey toward better overall health in general, and weight loss in particular. However, this past week (July 11th) marked a new, shiny round number of loss: 160 lbs now. I thought I would just take a few moments to talk about everything I’ve done to get to this point, where things stand now, and what’s ahead.

People regularly ask me what I’m doing, and the short answer is: fasting and low carb/ketogenic eating. That’s not all I do, though, so I thought I’d talk about all of the other smaller things I do, which I believe have contributed to this. Here’s every single thing I’ve been doing, in no particular order:

I fast. I mostly practise extended fasting, not intermittent. Extended would be anything over 24 hours at a time. I mostly follow a schedule of three 42-hour fasts per week. Roughly, that just means eating lunch and supper every other day. Otherwise, I’m fasting. What I eat during a fast: nothing. If you’re eating, it’s not fasting. What I drink when I’m fasting: water, tea, especially green tea (more on that later), and coffee. In a maximum of one cup of coffee or one cup of black tea per day, I’ll add up to 1-2 tbsp of heavy (35%) cream. About once a week, I might take a pinch of salt or a sip of pickle juice just for the sodium, but I generally get enough salt in through my food to not need anything else.
I follow a low carb way of eating. There are days when it’s low enough carb to qualify for the ketogenic label, but rarely, to be honest. Ketogenic means 20g net carb (for that, subtract your overall fibre intake from the carb intake) or less. I generally try to keep it ot under 50g. My initial goal was to lose 135 lbs, then I added another 50 lbs to that target and told myself that if I ever got to that bonus 50 lbs, I’d relax my self-imposed rules a bit more. I’m in that phase now, and it’s still working for me, so I’m content. I do not eat most refined carbs, or artificial sweeteners of any kind, whether natural or otherwise. When I make an exception, it’s the real thing or nothing.
I drink a cup of green tea every day. At least one. I genuinely do believe this has helped. Green tea can boost metabolism, suppress hunger, and contains 100% of your daily vitamin C intake. I own at least 18 different varieties.
On the subject of supplements: I generally don’t believe in these. Dr. Fung doesn’t recommend taking potassium without specific medical direction to, and my doctor has not told me that I need this. My electrolytes are just fine, as I mentioned regarding sodium intake, above. What I do take: magnesium to help me sleep, because fasting produces a lot of adrenaline. On multi-day fasts, I sometimes can’t sleep for hours if I’ve forgotten to take it. I also take a multivitamin, whether I’m fasting or not, and on days when I’m eating, I take a probiotic. I also take biotin, because major fat loss or hormone change (via any method) can cause hair loss. My hair did thin a bit in the 6-9 month phase of this, but it’s grown back in nicely. This is typical and generally sorts itself out once the body gets used to its new hormonal composition.
I exercise. This is a relatively new thing, as of February, but rapidly became a daily one. I alternate between high intensity interval training (HIIT) cardio, or weight lifting with a short spate of high intensity/steady state cardio. I also average around 14 km of walking per day. Sometimes I also ride my bike to work. And/or swim. Let me emphasize this point: this has not helped my weight loss. If anything, it has slowed it, due to my new muscle tissue gains. I do believe that it’s helped my metabolic health, and I just enjoy it in a way that I certainly never did previously. But exercise is not sufficient for weight loss. That simply has to come from the dietary end of things.
I take epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) baths. Much as with going to a spa/sauna/steam room and sweating out your toxins, epsom salt baths are great for both relaxation and detoxification. I’m really not a bath person (I get so bored!), but these have become a regular part of my self-care routine, because stress was a huge factor in my weight gain. Stress is something that you MUST learn to manage if you want to lose weight.
I get more sleep. Chronic lack of sleep and hydration are both linked heavily to weight gain and a ream of other health problems.
I drink a lot more water. See above.
I make sure to get more fibre, generally through vegetables like cauliflower and cabbage, but also nuts and seeds.
I make sure to get some cinnamon in my diet at least once per week. Cinnamon can have a powerful effect on lowering insulin, which is key to controlling weight.
I eat a lot of vinegar, generally in the form of salad dressings and marinades. Vinegar and fibre are both important offset factors for helping your body manage insulin response to the carbs we do eat (in my case, mostly vegetables).
This isn’t so much a dietary regime, and it’s an unpopular one, but I weigh myself twice daily, once in the morning and once before bed. Fasted morning weights will generally be the lowest. There are lots of people who find that weighing themselves is too rigid, emotionally difficult, etc, and that’s fine. Body measurements are a truer indicator in any case, especially in women, whose weight can change dramatically with water retention, etc. If you can divorce your sense of self-esteem from the weighing process, however, it’s just another way of tracking things. I like the statistics, so I do it. It’s a good way of watching the overall trend.

A couple of side-by-sides. The first selfie here was taken around September of 2017. The second was taken about two weeks ago.

me side by side

The first photo here was taken at my Québec City CD release in August, 2016. The second was taken about a month ago.

me standing before & after

So there you have it. I’m about 25 lbs away from my final target now, though we’ll see how things look once I get there! I’m determined to get basically every last bit of excess fat off my frame! Meanwhile, onwards and upwards. 🙂

What’s been cooking lately?

So, I thought I would just share a few of the delicious things I’ve been cooking/eating lately! I find that people often look at the list of keto-friendly foods and comprehend it just fine, only to go, “okay, great, so what do I make with that…?” At first it can seem bewildering, confusing, and very, very limiting. But in fact, there is TONS you can do with these ingredients! Here are just a few, in case it helps inspire your own cooking! If I used a recipe from somewhere, I’ll link it (note: this is not a monetized or affiliated blog!) If not, I’ll just describe my process! Feel free to ask for details in the comments, if you like!

These cheesy, garlic muffins. So good!! I used this recipe. As you can see, I did not possess parsley at the time of their baking, but they still turned out deliciously!

Cheesy garlic muffins

Cheesy garlic muffins 2

This keto meat pie. I used this recipe. I didn’t have (and couldn’t find) ground lamb, so I used a mixture of ground beef and ground pork. The shell of this meat pie is made with almond flour and psyllium husk powder, with sesame seeds to give it an interesting texture. It’s divine!

Keto meat pie

This coconut flour keto “naan”, slightly singed in the second photo! In the first, I served it (to myself!) with fried eggs and bacon, slathered in butter. In the second, I made a grilled cheese, pictured here with a rare fruit indulgence – a perfectly in-season blood orange. 🙂 For the naan, I used this recipe. Sometimes I make it with the garlic butter, but more often just with butter. For the recipes on this site, you can change the number of portions you want to make. For this, I also lower it to “2”.

Bacon, eggs, coconut naan

Coconut naan grilled cheese w blood orange

Speaking of bread-like substance, this keto garlic “bread”. I used this recipe, which is essentially the same thing as the fathead pizza crust that I’ve made and referenced here before. It works amazingly as garlic bread! This is half the recipe here. The only thing wrong with the recipe is the amount of butter needed for the topping – it’s not nearly enough. Use 3-4 tbsp, not 1! Once tbsp of butter with make a thick, unspreadable paste with your parsley, parmesan, and garlic!

Farmer sausage and garlic bread

This asparagus leek soup. My own recipe. 🙂 I chopped (and thoroughly washed) a fresh leek, cooked it on the bottom of the soup pot with fresh garlic, tossed in half a bunch of chopped asparagus, grilled it all, then filled the pot with water (around 4-5 cups), added concentrated chicken stock, sea salt, and pepper, let it cook until the asparagus was soft, partially blended it with an immersion blender, and finished it with heavy cream.

Asparagus leek soup.jpg

I’m calling this Asian-inspired chicken zoodle soup. I personally loathe the word “zoodle”, but it does save a syllable or two here… For this one, I started by making a batch of chicken bone broth in my slow cooker. I took aside a couple of portions for the 6-day fast I’m planning for next week and kept about 2 cups of it for this soup, augmenting it with water and concentrated chicken stock. In a separate pan, I grilled fresh garlic, fresh ginger, onion, chili flakes, and a broccoli-sprout slaw in a mix of olive and sesame oil, then added it to the chicken broth with some very spicy chili oil, along with about 2 cups of chicken breast chunks from leftover rotisserie chicken, and let it simmer. About half an hour later, I added half a zucchini’s worth of spiralized zucchini noodles, then topped it with green onions and cilantro. It was SO GOOD!

Asian chicken zoodle soup

Bacon cheeseburger casserole. I read half a dozen recipes for this, but didn’t like any one of them to use exclusively, so no link for this! I took about 5 strips of bacon, cut it up and cooked it with onion, then added around 1.5 lbs of mixed ground beef and ground pork and a package of taco spice. When the meat was cooked, I added chopped pickles and grape tomatoes to the meat, along with around 1 cup of shredded cheddar. Then I packed all this into a casserole dish (no need to grease it) and poured in a mixture of: 1 cup of whipping cream, 2 eggs, 3 tbsp tomato paste, 2 tbsp Dijon mustard (grainy is the best!). Then I topped all of that with more shredded cheddar and green onions, and baked it at 400 F for 20 minutes. This is my current favourite dish – it tastes exactly like a bacon cheeseburger, only without the wholly unnecessary bun!

Bacon cheeseburger casserole 2

Bacon cheeseburger casserole 3

The main feature in this next plate is the spicy, bacon-wrapped chicken tenders. I mostly used this recipe, though I didn’t make the accompanying mayo – and this chicken is so good that it really doesn’t need anything with it! I would agree with the recipe author’s friends who said that it was too spicy, though, and I like spicy food! I would cut the amount of cayenne to 1/2 tsp next time. This is just one chicken breast here, served with green beans in a soy/sesame vinaigrette and almonds, with sauerkraut. (Which I loathe, but yay for probiotics!)

Spicy chicken tenders w green beans

Let’s talk about breading: I had honestly never breaded anything in my life before this past week or two, but now that I’ve discovered that you can use crushed pork rinds for this, I can see it happening a lot more! For these next two dishes, I used a mixture of crushed pork rinds and parmesan for the breading itself. First we have these zucchini fries. All I did was chop up a zucchini, dip the pieces in egg, then roll them in the pork rinds/parmesan, and bake them on a wire tray. They were amazing! For the chicken thighs (which are skin-on, bone-in), I followed three steps: first I made a mixture of coconut flour, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, salt, and pepper, and shook the thighs individually in this mix in a bag. Then they got dipped in egg, then shaken a second time in the crumbs. Also amazing! The “breading” stays crunchy and is flavourful and really good!

Zucchini fries

Fried chicken

Speaking of zucchini, I’ve talked lots about zucchini noodles before. If you don’t have a spiralizer yet, go and get yourself one. They’re wonderful. It takes me about 30 seconds (max) to spiralize an entire zucchini, which is enough “pasta” for two people. You don’t need to cook it separately: just make your pasta sauce (from scratch, ideally – tons of sugar in store-bought pasta sauces!) and throw your zucchini noodles in at the last second. If you’re concerned that they’ll bleed out a lot of water (which they can), you can salt and drain them for 20-30 minutes first, but I don’t find it makes a huge difference. It doesn’t affect the flavour. This is zucchini carbonara: a garlic, cream-based sauce with bacon, onions, and grape tomatoes, finished with the zucchini itself and an egg.

Zucchini carbonara

Sometimes one has a taco phase. These two dishes happened fairly close together, since I made too much meat for the first one. 😛 This first dish is a taco fathead pizza (recipe, if you need it, and you do!). You can barely see all the cheese that’s under this mountain of taco-seasoned ground beef, grape tomato, red pepper, green onion, and sour cream (added post-baking!), but it’s definitely there! This was so rich that I couldn’t finish it. The second is a classic taco salad, sans the actual taco: a mix of spinach, arugula, and red butter lettuce, topped with (hot) taco beef, cheddar, grape tomatoes, red peppers, green onions, and sour cream. I also tossed the greens in a very light vinaigrette here, mostly just because I didn’t have any salsa on hand.

Fathead taco pizza

Taco salad

These seedy crackers have been tweaked and adapted from multiple other cracker recipes. They’re amazing with an asiago dip! To make them, do this: combine 3/4 cup pumpkin seeds, 3/4 cup sunflower seeds, 1/2 cup ground flaxseed, 2/3 cup almond flour, 2 tbsp za’atar (a Middle Eastern spice mix consisting of mostly thyme, sweet sumac, oregano, and sesame seeds), 1 tsp sea salt. After mixing this, add 2 tbsp olive oil and 1 cup of water. Stir it until it’s about the texture of pancake batter, or a bit fluffy. Spread it as evenly as possible into a rectangle shape onto parchment paper on a baking sheet (you can square the corners with your spreading implement). Bake for 25 minutes at 350 F, then take them out and cut them into crackers (about 1″ square, or a little bigger), then return them to the oven and bake for another 25 minutes. They’re a bit brittle with the almond flour, but don’t fret too much – they’ll still taste delicious!

Seedy crackers

Last, but not least, I’ll leave you with this recent creation. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to eat chicken salad or egg salad, so I made a chicken-and-egg salad. With avocado. And grape tomatoes, on a bed of spinach and arugula. I typically make either chicken or egg salad with very few ingredients: just mayo, a bit of Dijon or mustard powder, salt and pepper. It’s really all you need!

Chicken egg avocado salad

On that note, I’m into my 50th hour of this current fast! 😛 More cooking projects to come, but not before Friday morning! Bon appétit, all!

How to Keto: Part II: Replace the carbs

How to Keto: Part II: Replace the carbs

In the last post, I talked about ways to eliminate carbs from a meal. Now we’re at:

Strategy 2: Replace the carbs. There are a lot of vegetables that make seriously great alternatives for the carbs we’re so used to eating. The honest truth is that most carbs themselves don’t have a ton of flavour – we enjoy them for their texture, generally, and use them as vessels for the thing which actually has the flavour. And we can still eat those. Here are a few examples:

Zucchini. Get yourself a simple, hand-held spiralizer and make friends with zucchini. Zucchini is a vegetable that I was lukewarm about at best before I started this. I genuinely prefer it to pasta now. It takes me approximately 30 seconds to spiralize an entire zucchini. It has virtually no carbs in it, and you can use absolutely any (low/no sugar) sauce that you might have used on pasta or rice/potato noodles. I like to spiralize the zucchini, salt the “noodles” well and let them drain in a colander for 15-20 minutes (not at all necessary, but it can help get some of the water out which will otherwise release into the sauce, which I don’t care about for tomato-based sauces, but for cream sauces it can come in handy), then make my sauce. When the sauce is ready, toss the zucchini in and toss it for around 4 minutes, and you’re good to go. Here are a few of my go-to’s:

Basic marinara: ground beef grilled with fresh garlic, canned diced or crushed tomatoes, Italian herbs (oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme), parmesan cheese
Italian sausage: crumbled Italian sausage grilled with fresh garlic, canned diced tomatoes, oregano, fennel seeds, lots of parmesan, fresh spinach
Alfredo variations: grilled garlic (optional), grilled onions (optional), grilled chicken or shrimp, whipping cream, parmesan
Peanut/coconut: grilled garlic, onion, red pepper, shrimp/chicken/other meat then add peanut butter (1-2 tbsp max), soy sauce, chili flakes, lime juice, coconut milk, fresh cilantro

Photo: the above sauce, with salmon

zucchini noodles thai

Photo: roasted chicken thighs with pesto zucchini noodles

Chicken thighs w pesto zucchini

Eggplant. Both zucchini and eggplant can replace pasta in a number of ways. My favourite way to use eggplant is to substitute noodles in lasagna. Slice it in long slice about half a centimetre thick, drizzle the slices with olive oil and sea salt and roast them for about 20 minutes (turn halfway through), then layer them into a lasagna the way you would have used noodles. I’m going to try this with zucchini at some point, too, but I can’t see why it wouldn’t work. You can also use both eggplant and zucchini as “boats” to hold other things, in lieu of bread. Slice the veggie in half, hollow out the seeds, roast it as above, then dump whatever you like on it – spaghetti sauce, grilled meat, cheese, etc. I made zucchini garlic cheese “toast” like this once and it was great! There are other veggies that can work this way, too, such as spaghetti squash, which is delicious in season!

Photos: eggplant lasagna:

Eggplant lasagna 1

Eggplant lasagna 2

Photo: the above Italian sausage sauce on spaghetti squash

Sausage spaghetti squash

Cauliflower. True fact: mashed cauliflower is better than mashed potatoes, and I say this as a major fan of mashed potatoes. Cauliflower is another veggie that holds a lot of water, so whether you’re using it as a base for a cauliflower pizza crust or anything ground, you’ll probably want to drain the water out of it after it’s been cooked (boil/steam it). For a good mash, I like to boil the cauliflower, then mash it with a potato masher or hand blender (you can use a food processer if you have one, but I don’t!), mix in cream cheese or sour cream, whipping cream, butter, cheddar, green onions, bacon, etc (aka: anything you like, pretty much!) and then bake it for a few minutes. You’ll never go back to mashed potatoes! Cauliflower can also be grated (cheese grater or food processer) to make “rice” or “couscous”. I’ve made sushi using cauliflower “rice” before and it was great!

Lettuce. If you can find yourself a sturdy lettuce leaf, you’ve got an instant bread replacement. Lettuce wraps have started showing up regularly on menus, and it’s not at all uncommon for someone to request lettuce in lieu of a hamburger bun. I like making lettuce tacos, too. They’re incredibly messy, but so good. Greens can also make a great base for what you might have put into a sandwich otherwise. I love making chicken salad out of leftover rotisserie chicken, or egg salad at any time, and I still do! Now I just put them on my favourite base of mixed spinach and arugula.

Photo: lettuce tacos

Lettuce tacos

Photo: chicken salad on spinach & arugula with grape tomatoes

Chicken salad

So there you have it: a few basic ideas! This way of eating is very possible – it just requires a bit of thinking outside the bun. And taco. And tortilla. And pita. And manicotti. And – you get the drift. 🙂

How to Keto: Part 1: Eliminate the Carbs

How to Keto: Part I

On occasion when I’ve told someone that keto or low carb/high fat eating focuses on eating a lot of healthy fats, they’ll say, “okay, but you can’t just eat fat, so what do you actually do for meals?” There are two main strategies here, and I’m going to divide this into two long posts, because there are photos!

Strategy 1: Eliminate the carbs. Many meals in many cultures find their base in a carbohydrate, be that rice, pasta, or bread products. I’ve heard so many people say “I can’t do keto; I’m Italian! All we eat is pasta!”, or “I can’t do keto; I’m Indian! There’s rice in every meal!”, etc. I would argue that most cultures’ cuisines fit the bill here, whether that’s sandwiches in your lunch or nachos for a snack or popcorn at a movie or sushi with friends. Believe it or not, though, sometimes you can just take the carb element right out. The majority of my meals are essentially meat and veggies in some combination. Here are some examples of meals where you could annex the carb element:

The meal: roasted chicken, broccoli, mashed potatoes. Eliminate the mashed potatoes.

Photo: rotisserie chicken leg with large salad (romaine, spinach, grape tomatoes, cucumber, toasted almonds, pumpkin seeds, homemade olive oil/white vinegar dressing), babybel gouda

Chicken leg + salad

The meal: beef vindaloo, basmati, naan, salad. Eliminate the basmati and naan.

The meal: ham and swiss sandwich, apple, hard-boiled egg. Eliminate the bread and swap out the apple for some lower-carb strawberries, and eat the ham and cheese together on their own. It sounds a little odd, but I’ve had some excellent “deli plate”-type meals that are totally satisfying – any combination of cold meats (preferably non-processed), cheese, nuts, olives, pickles, boiled eggs, and veggies makes for a great lunch!

The meal: sushi: opt for sashimi rather than rolls/sushi.

The meal: breakfast: opt for combinations of eggs, meat, veggies, and cheese rather than toast, hashbrowns, pancakes, waffles, etc.

Photo: scrambled eggs with mozzarella and broccoli, bacon.

Scrambled eggs and bacon

Photo: Avocado baked eggs with pepperoni

Avocado baked eggs

Photo: Frittata (broccoli, spinach, red pepper, mozzarella)

Frittata

Photo: breakfast salad (spinach, sliced boiled egg, bacon, cheddar, homemade olive oil/white vinegar dressing)

Breakfast salad.png

Sometimes it’s not as easy, though. If you take the noodles out of a pasta dish, for instance, you’d likely be left with sauce, a few veggies, and maybe some meat. So then we come to the next post: Strategy 2: Replace the carbs.

The Fear of Keto

In the past few years, following a ketogenic way of eating has become somewhat popularized. I would say that the version of it that I follow is stricter than the popular version, namely in that I’ve also eliminated sweeteners of every variety. (This whole silliness of “keto” desserts is ridiculous – if the thing is sweet, it will raise your insulin, regardless of its score on the glycemic index. It may not raise your blood sugar, but it will almost certainly still prompt an insulin response, which is exactly what I’m looking to avoid.)

Meanwhile, keto – aka, eating as few sugars/carbs as possible so as to keep your body in a state of nutritional ketosis, aka burning its fat stores to produce blood glucose rather than relying on eaten sugars – has gotten popular, and with popularity comes criticism. What amuses me is that the most common criticism of following a ketogenic way of eating unfailingly goes something like this: “Okay, it works, but as soon as you go back to your old ways of eating, you’ll regain the weight.” Yeah: no sh*t, Sherlock. Why assume that someone would go back? I’ve said this repeatedly, but this is about making a permanent change, about realizing what foods help us and which ones we can easily do without. This isn’t something that you hit hard and then relapse and hope that the positive changes that came out will stick. Life doesn’t work that way!

The second main critique that comes up over and over again goes something like: “Keto is too restrictive, which makes it impossible to sustain.” To which I say: bullshit.

What is restrictive and impossible to sustain is a low calorie diet. Anything you term a “diet”, for that matter. Low calorie and low fat nearly always come together, since fat is far more calorically dense than other foods. Fat is also the one macronutrient that doesn’t prompt an insulin response, which makes it our friend. Eating fat has nothing to do with our body’s decision to make fat from what we’ve eaten. That all comes from insulin, which is caused mostly by sugar. High fat foods are delicious. This is a fact.

Often when people begin a new way of eating, they feel a bit lost and wonder what they can “safely” eat, what follows their plan. When you look up ketogenic eating, there are a lot of lists of individual food products, such as olive oil – but olive oil doesn’t make a meal, obviously! I’m going to start posting the occasional meal that I’ve made, just to share some ideas.

Meanwhile, if you’re new to low carb/high fat/ketogenic eating and are wondering what the yays and nays are, here’s a list for you:

Eliminate:

sugar in every form. Includes: table sugar, maple syrup, corn syrup, rice syrup, molasses, honey, agave, fruit juice, anything that ends with -ose (dextrose, maltose, glucose, fructose, etc), sugar alcohols (anything that ends with “tol”, including maltitol, xylitol, erythritol, etc), palm sugar, coconut sugar, etc etc etc
sweeteners of any other kind, whether natural (“natural”) or artificial. Includes: stevia, monkfruit extract, aspartame, acesulfame glutamate (the sweetener in Coke Zero), sucralose, etc
refined carbs of every kind. Includes: anything made with any type of flour (excluding almond flour and coconut flour), which includes pasta, couscous, virtually all bread products, white rice
beer

Eat considerably less of (think maximum once every 2-3 days):

vegetables that grow underground (potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, turnips) as well as corn and peas
fruit, excluding berries (blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries)
whole grains. Includes: brown and wild rice, oatmeal, quinoa, etc
legumes. Includes: chickpeas, black beans, kidney beans, peanuts (including peanut butter), etc.
other alcohols. Technically speaking, alcohol falls into its own macronutrient category, but is metabolized as sugar and very often stalls people’s weight loss

Seek out:

meat, fish (especially fatty fish such as salmon, tuna, mackerel, trout). Dark poultry is good. Skin is fine!
eggs (so delicious and flexible!)
full fat dairy products (note: watch out for yogurt!! It nearly always contains added sugars!). Look for the highest fat percentage possible. The higher the fat, the lower the sugar! Cheese is your friend!
low carb vegetables. Includes: broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, arugula, kale, other lettuce-type greens, leeks, asparagus, green beans, tomatoes!
nuts and seeds, especially walnuts
healthy fats. Includes: olive oil, coconut oil, sesame oil, butter, MCT oil, avocado
fibre! Look for this in ground flaxseed, chia seeds, nuts
green tea. All tea is good (though watch out for carbs in commercial chain store teas containing fruit! Many also add sugar and other sweeteners!), but green tea is especially good. The antioxidants (catechins) can help suppress appetite and are full of vitamin C!
vinegar and fermented foods (pickles, etc). Vinegar is a natural offset to sugars and can help metabolize them better

So again, you say, “so what can I actually eat for a meal??” Here’s a basic answer: meat and veggies. Just eliminate the carb element that I, at least, once felt was so crucial. I’ll be posting the occasional meal pic/idea/recipe, but let me start off with what I had for dinner today: farmer sausage (a Canadian prairies staple, courtesy of the Mennonite community!) and green beans, topped with butter and toasted almond slices. I also had a rare glass of shiraz with it!

Farmer sausage and green beans

More of that to come! Stay tuned!

Sugar everywhere!

The past 36 hours or so have been a pretty massive test of my strength of will. First, I had a big solo concert yesterday afternoon, so while I have performed while fasting before and been fine, I thought I would have breakfast (bacon and eggs) and then start my fast after that. It was a busy day, with not only the concert, but also some voice lessons taught, and a second performance with a carolling quartet as well. That night at one of my workplaces, there was cake and wine on offer. I was hungry by that point, but it wasn’t very difficult to refuse it.

Today at my other workplace, I was told no less than EIGHT times by well-meaning colleagues that there was cake, again. When I went to the staffroom for my lunch (aka: green tea) break, the room was filled with people eating cake. I endured it for awhile (now in my very-hungry zone, the dread 24-30 hour stretch), then politely found somewhere else to catch up on my emails and texts, away from all the cake. When I returned to my post, some kind-hearted soul had delivered slices of that same damned cake on a tray for the staff in my area, just in case we hadn’t already been bombarded with offers of said cake.

Then, toward the end of an ungodly 12-hour shift, the restaurant on the premises, which had been catering a private function, brought out a tray of leftover appetizers – crab cakes, chicken satay, prosciutto, cheese, pickles, olives, fruit, etc – and offered it around. The rest of my colleagues dove in – and still, I gamely refused (though I did bring a bit of it home for tomorrow!).

This morning at the brief staff meeting, the gift shop staff were promoting a product, as they do every day, and today’s choice was hot chocolate mixes. Sugar is everywhere, and sometimes there is just no escaping it. I’m pretty damned proud that I held out today. While I do still crave the sweet stuff, I genuinely do find following a low carb/high fat way of eating a lot more satisfying.

This is from Monday’s lunch, and they were delicious: Brussels sprouts cooked with bacon, butter, onions, garlic, and a dash of sea salt.

brussels sprouts

Strange how no one ever talks excitedly about there being free Brussels sprouts on offer in the staff lunch room, though! 😛

120 lbs down, 15 to go!

First, welcome to my new blog! I’m leaving up my former blog over at Naked with Life, but it had come to my attention that people were leaving comments and I wasn’t getting them. There were other issues as well, so here we are, trying out this platform!

As of today, I’ve now lost 120 lbs, which puts me just 15 lbs off the original target I set for myself 10.5 months ago. It’s honestly gone so much faster than I thought it would! I added another 50 lbs onto my goal for after I’ve reached this one, so in total, I still have 65 lbs to go, but I’m feeling good! I keep on shrinking out of my clothes, which is a good problem to have, yet a bit of a pricey one… I’ll be glad to reach target and enter maintenance mode, that’s for sure! Meanwhile, this is good!

Meanwhile, I have more and more people asking my advice about fasting and ketogenic eating. If you’re curious and haven’t ask yet, go right ahead – I’m happy to share advice just any time. 🙂