My three weeks on the Keto diet

 

I have been more or less on the keto diet for the last few weeks. I think I could be in, ahem, ketosis because I have kept my carbs super low and I do not get hungry much.

Do not worry, I still eat! I do not have to be hungry to eat.

This brings me however to my difficulties with this diet. You hear so many different things. I follow a few different people on YouTube and I hear different things.

Somebody said, "Do not eat if you are not hungry!"

And so usually I do not bother with breakfast because I am not hungry. However you do want to eat sooner or later, you know? I understand you are burning your own fat but what about all the nutrients you get from a balanced diet?

Speaking of burning your own fat.. Do you not burn your own fat on any diet? When your waist gets slimmer and your belly disappears that fat is going somewhere. Where does it go if you do not burn it? Obviously you do not need to be in ketosis to burn off your fat. It must mean you burn it more efficiently. But still.

Another thing. Some people say that on keto, your diet should be largely fat. Pardon the expression, largely fat. I mean they say it should be 75 or 80 percent.

But then someone else says you can forget about that and just keep your carbs low. You can eat chicken breast and pork tenderloin, very lean meats, and that's fine, you can eat more of them.

If you are eating lean meats and low carbs now we are getting into South Beach Diet territory. There is nothing new here. I like these lean meats. I do not have a problem with them. But does it make a difference with the keto diet if you lower the percentage of fat you are consuming?

It is impossible to find the answer to these questions. It cannot be done.

Here is my experience so far. I have lost 10 pounds.

Wow, you say. That is great! However.

Those pounds came off literally overnight. I mean boom, in one day I lost 10 pounds. That was about three weeks ago.

I was all excited. I thought: Keto is great, I thought. Problem solved! My body has turned into a fat burning machine and it burns up 10 pounds a week. Next week I can take off 10 more, then the next week 10 more, and then I am done. On account of I want to be 130 pounds.

But since then that scale has not moved!

I have not gained back the 10 pounds, is the important thing. However I cannot budge that needle one bit. It sits there, at 150!

Isn't it weird how scales always get stuck at round numbers?

I am not even drinking wine! And I have ramped up the exercise. Nothing extreme, I just get out every day for both a walk and a bike ride. I even count my calories and I log them on LoseIt.

I am starting to think this is a crock. I have lost weight before, not doing this keto diet. I wonder if maybe the keto diet is only good if you need to lose at least 100 pounds. I only need to lose a little. I generally do eat very healthy. I do not have a sweet tooth at all, as you can tell from the photo at the top of this page. I am not a snack or junk food addict. Wine is my one indulgence. 

So I do not think I am the keto diet's target audience. But still.

Darn it.

It should work!!

Vegan before 6

My sister was on Mark Bittman's Vegan Before 6 diet and so of course I had to do it too. There are these 10 pounds I want to lose. I have lost 10 and I need to lose 10 more.

I had heard of VB6 before. Except when I last heard of it I was working pretty much 9 to 5 and it is difficult to be vegan before 6 o'clock under those circumstances. You do not have time to plan perfectly and if you get hungry you are in trouble. You cannot just go to the kitchen to chow down a few more cubes of tofu.

I do the no-meat-on-Friday thing year-round and I was never able to plan well as far as packing my Friday lunch for work. And on Fridays when my stomach was growling, that was when my mind would go to Mark Bittman and VB6.

"Yeah, right," I would say to myself. That is a condescending phrase I picked up from Leonard Pennario.

However, now things are different!

My schedule is more flexible and so this diet is no big deal. It actually reminds me of how I used to eat a long time ago, before I got married and there was this other person in my house who insists on meat. May I add I weighed less then, too. I know it is very possible to eat meat responsibly but still.

Vegan Before 6 is also very similar to this traditional Catholic fast I did during Lent a few years ago. I did get through that OK, now that I think about it, despite office hours.

However as I discovered then, you do have to plan.

I enjoy a game, and I do spend too much time thinking about this because there is nothing like a new diet, so full of promise. I made veggie burgers out of pinto beans from a Moosewood recipe. Ah, here it is!

These beanie burgers are golden. Add some ketchup and ballpark mustard and your mind accepts them as the real thing. It is like what I have read about Mock Apple Pie. I have not had that but I guess what happens is, you use zucchini instead of apples and as long as you add the appropriate spices, nobody knows the difference.

Well, at church they would probably know the difference. At our after-Mass coffee hour I announced I was on the diet.

"Vegan before 6," I said brightly.

And these smart-mouth guys in our congregation are laughing at me.

""So you can eat meat now," one of them told me. "Vegan before 6 a.m."

Hahahahaa!

Why didn't I think of that?