Archive for April 2018
I purchased this book less then a month ago. The whole title is “The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store.” The book is a retelling of the author’s (Cait Flanders) personal improvement plan where she gave up shopping for a year and the effect it had on her life.
As I mentioned I haven’t owned the book for even a whole month but I’m already done with it. I started reading and got through it very quickly as I enjoyed hearing her story. The big reason I picked this book was that my body fat isn’t the only thing I want to lose. I’m not a bad spender by any means but I do realize that considering my yearly income I should probably be a lot better off then I am. So I’ve been working on my becoming more of a minimalist and reigning in my spending habits. And this book covers both topics.
It’s in a journal style narrated from the author’s perspective. She recounts each month and the impact following her rules of shopping had on her finances, lifestyle, and mindset. I got drawn into her story and saw how a lot of what she talks about would be applicable to me. Especially when she talks about how she downsized her life.
I also liked how the initial project of getting her spending under control turned out to have a lot wider impact on her and taught her a lot more about herself then she expected. If you are looking for a guide on how to improve your finances this book can help but it’s more a book about personal growth then financial success. It’s a heart warming story about how Cait became a better person when she came to realize what was and wasn’t important in her life and the trials she went through and overcame while doing so. I highly recommend this book, which is ironic as it’s a book about spending less. But as the title only runs $1.99 in Kindle format I think it’s a reasonable expense even if you’re looking to control your spending too.
I am including the link to the Kindle version of the book with this post. It’s an Amazon affiliate link so I do benefit from you clicking on the link if you go on to purchase the book. The book comes in a variety of formats, including an audiobook narrated by the author. So if you don’t have a Kindle you can still get the book, and yes it still would work as an affiliate link. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did if you do choose to purchase it.
https://amzn.to/2KaCI6S
So first of all, the weekly weigh in update. This past Wednesday was my day off from Keto for the month, where I get to enjoy things that aren’t keto and I know I’ll be knocked out of ketosis. I explained why in a previous post so I won’t go into detail not that. I mention this because, as expected, my weight went up, not down. I weighed in at 309.8 lbs (43.6% body fat) which means I went up 3.2 lbs. Some of that would be fat, some of it water weight as getting knocked out of ketosis means I retain water easier. How I fare when I weigh in next Monday will determine if I will continue the practice of taking one day off a month to enjoy things that aren’t keto.
Which brings me to the second part of the title “chasing numbers.” It’d be very easy for me to get discouraged and stressed about the fact that my weight went up. And by a decent margin at that. But I don’t. This is one weigh on one week of the many weigh ins I’ve done since January 1st when I started this journey. It would be very easy to get hung up on the 3.2 lbs gained in a week, but not very productive. It’s better to focus on the fact that overall I’m still down 42.8 lbs from January 1st which means I’ve made an incredible change in my life and I’m healthier then I was when I started.
Let me use this analogy. In June of 2017 I moved from Bellingham, WA to where I now live in Madison, AL. I drove the entire distance in my 2011 Toyota Prius with it’s original navigation maps from when I bought it new. Needless to say in the six years between a few changes had occurred along the way that made my navigation system wrong, leading to added miles I wound up driving to get back on track. If I handled that trip like a lot of people handle dieting, by chasing numbers, the second I got side tracked I’d have given up on the trip and just taken up residency in Wyoming because clearly the trek was a bust because I added miles. Sounds silly but when we chase numbers expecting each week to be a better number then the last, or at least some forward progress, we lose sight of the overall goal, and give up prematurely. I wanted to get to Madison, AL so I accepted the unexpected detours as part of the cross country travel experience and kept going. If you focus on the long term goal, and not the weekly numbers, you can make it to your destination too.
Another way some keto lifestylers chase number is with blood ketone tracking. I have a Keto-Mojo Blood Glucose/Ketone meter I use to track my ketones with (you can buy it at https://keto-mojo.com and for the record this is NOT an affiliate link, I get no money for this I just really like the product). You need to be at least at .3 mmol/l to be in ketosis, ideally .5 mmol/l, and the greater the number above that the better. It’s easy to want that “the better” so much you start doing things not to live a healthy keto lifestyle but instead to get the number up as high as you can. And when I test and I get a number like 1.4 mmol/l I’m excited about that, but I remember it’s just a number. I could chug a blender bottle of exogenous ketones and easily break 2 mmol/l, but it wouldn’t truly reflect my level of ketosis. It’s better to measure how you feel. If you’re at or above .3 mmol/l and you’re full of energy, your mind is sharp, and your clothes are getting looser, then you’re doing great. If you’re at .5 mmol/l but you’re sluggish, in a brain fog, and you’re hoping you don’t have catastrophic structural failure of the seat of your pants, that’s not so great even though the number is larger.
My overall point is don’t chase numbers. Chase trends. If overall you’re losing weight, don’t sweat one week of gain. If you’re blood ketone level is consistently at or above the .3 mmol/l mark and you feel great, the feel great part is what you should focus on. Now if you start trending down over multiple weeks, yes of course look into why and make changes accordingly. If you regularly register 1.4 mmol/l of blood ketones and it starts going down over successive readings then yes you should start looking into why. But chasing numbers after every weigh in or ketone reading is just going to drive you crazy which will cause stress which will hinder progress. Always think long term.
Final thought for this post, I’m going to start posting book reviews. These will be of books I’ve downloaded and read on my Kindle. I’ll include a link to the book in the review. I will remind you in each post this is an affiliate link which I do profit from. I’ll give the pros and cons of each book, but if I’m reviewing it I think the book is a good purchase because it’s a good read (even though I’ll admit on some of these books it’s a good read because of the information you learn more so then the actually readability of the book). So there you are, have a nice week between now and my next weigh in update.
As part of my Keto journey I decided to give myself one day off from Keto a month. The reason being it makes for a bit of a pressure release for any cravings I might feel the rest of the month. By giving myself a free day where I can enjoy things guilt free I’m easily able to put off my cravings the rest of the month. But I wanted to share a few thoughts about cheat days.
FIrst, I think the frequency of them is important. If you try to have a cheat day every week I think you’re dooming yourself to failure. In a seven day week if one of the days is definitely not keto you’re down to six days of keto tops, obviously. But tops is the key here. Once you get yourself out of ketosis you have to get yourself back into ketosis. That’s going to run you at least a day, maybe more. So now it’s a 5 days of ketosis max deal. And it’s possible you’ll take a couple days to get back in so you may be down to 4 days of ketosis. Half a week in and half a week out isn’t the way to go if you want to make progress. And, although I’m not a doctor or researcher, I’m pretty sure that going back and forth like that between ketones and glucose isn’t good for the body.
So I chose one day a month because even if I do take a couple days to get back in I’m getting over 26 days of ketosis for the month on a short month. And that’s if it takes me two days, which brings me to my second point.
I don’t take long to get back into ketosis because on the day after my cheat day I do a fast. Doing a fast puts me right back into ketosis by the end of the next day. On the outside I can use a day of fasting and exogenous ketones and I’m right back into ketosis. So it’s a trade off based on making adult choices. Which is why after referring to it as a cheat day most of this post I’ll let you in on this secret, I hate the name cheat day. Cheating to me means you’re doing something you know you shouldn’t be doing. That’s cheating in my mind. I’m not cheating, I’m taking a day off because I’m an adult and I choose to do so. I’ve weighed the consequences and don’t feel one day a month is going to hurt my progress enough to make it not worth it.
Sorry if this was a little meandering. I usually just type these out as I think them up. In the future I’ll try to edit them a bit better. Last order of business. As I mentioned before I do use exogenous ketones to help get back into ketosis. The one I use the most because I like the flavor and the feeling I have after I take it is Julian Bakery InstaKetones in the Orange flavor (with and without caffeine depending on how wiped the fast makes me feel). I am including a link to them on Amazon. To be above board and transparent this is an affiliate link. If you click it and buy it I do benefit from that financially. I want you to understand that before I place the link. I won’t recommend or link to something I don’t use or trust. Although I am ok with making money on these recommendations I don’t wish to do so at the cost of my integrity. Also, different people will react differently the same product so just because it worked well for me, or tastes good to me, doesn’t mean I can guarantee it’ll be the same for you. I’m only saying that I’ve enjoyed the product and it’s worked well for me. So here is the link if you’re interested and I thank you in advance if you make a purchase.
https://amzn.to/2K2sCFe
In the future when I post links to items I am recommending I’ll make a brief mention that it’s an affiliate link each time because I think it’s the right thing to do and you should have all the facts when deciding. But again I will only post links to things I have personally tried, have worked for me, and I would be willing to put my name on.
So there you have it. Not as quick as I’d assumed but it’s my feelings on days off from keto. If you have any questions please do comment them below and I’ll respond as quickly as I can. Take care.
This will be a quick post. Working on setting up different ways to share my progress, which is taking up a bit of my time. But I did say I would do a weekly check in on my weight loss so I want to be good to my word. As of this morning I weigh 306.6 lbs. which is down 1 lb on the nose from last week. Why body fat percentage went from 43.4% to 43.1%. Doing a little math with last weeks numbers that means I actually lost 1.4 lbs of body fat this week so I gained either .4 lbs of muscle or water. Obviously I’m hoping for muscle. I’m probably going to do another post between now and the next weigh-in on the 23rd. Some things I wanted to cover were products I used when I first started to deal with the keto flu and I also want to start sharing other things I’ve learned on my journey that I think would be helpful to anyone considering going keto. So I will see you guys soon. Hope you have a wonderful week.
Did my weekly weigh-in this morning. I’m down another 1.8 lbs this week, taking me to 45 lbs lost overall. I’m not dropping weight as fast as I did in the first month but slow and steady progress is still progress. Plus, I ran the numbers and noticed something interesting. When I started I was 52% body fat and now I’m 43.4% body fat. Based on my weight then and now that would mean I would have had a lean mass weight of 169.2 lbs then and now it’s 174.1 lbs lean mass. So that’s nearly a gain of 5 lbs of something other then fat. Some of it could be water but I’d like to think that some of it is muscle mass. And with every pound of muscle mass gained I naturally burn more fat during the day with no extra effort. So again I’m happy with the progress.
And now for some accountability. I do need to work on the amount of exercise I get each week. I said I was going to start doing that before but I did drop the ball on that.
As for the why I dropped the ball, well I got sick this past week. Two days this past week I spent most of the day in bed due to a bad cold I caught at work. That’s the bad news. The good news is it killed my appetite. Why is that good news? Well it was nice to see that even under the weather the Keto adaptation helped me be better about not eating. Before if I got a cold I might not be hungry for most of the day and then it’d catch up with me and result in me raiding the fridge or ordering some very unhealthy food. This time the not eating didn’t bother me. My body still had plenty of fuel from the on board storage to make ends meet so when I did decide to try eating later in both days I didn’t make bad choices. I just never got so hungry I felt like eating whatever I could shove in my face. So that was really good.
The blog has been mostly about Keto and I might add more posts during the week about progress in other areas of my life. Like I’m considering a shopping ban and may report on that. I also have gotten much more serious about meditating since the beginning of the year and being mindful and other things to improve my inside me along with my outer appearance and the health of my body. Might blog about that. Thank you to the ones who’ve stopped by before to read my posts and thank you to any new comers. Feel free to leave a comment if you so choose. Have a great week.
So I did my weekly weigh in this morning. As it’s the first Monday of the month I’ll do my monthly update as well, which will include progress pics. So first the numbers. I came in at 309.4 lbs and a body fat percentage of 43.6%. That’s down 5.2 lbs and 1.0% body fat from last week. For the month I lost 7 lbs and 1.5% body fat. The reason for the small difference between the monthly and weekly numbers is last week I posted my first increase in weight. That was due largely to the day off from Keto I took as an experiment. Right after that day I wasn’t sure I’d ever do it again but seeing how well I bounced back this week I’m reconsidering. Doing it just once doesn’t give me a lot of data to use in deciding the effectiveness of it. On the other hand I didn’t find the day off as enjoyable as I’d assumed I would so I’m not sure it’s worth knocking myself out of ketosis, even if just for the day. The next one was going to be April 18th so I have until then to decide.
And now for the pics. The first one (me in the Flash t-shirt) was taken on January 8th. So it was after my first full week on Keto. The reason for that is I hadn’t considered doing progress pics at first until someone mentioned it would be a good idea. So by the time I had taken this photo I’d already lost my first 10 lbs. As you can see I didn’t think to take a side shot with the first one. The picture of me in the red t-shirt was my first update pic I posted to Instagram on March 5th. On that day I weighed in at 316.4 lbs with a body fat percentage of 45.1%. And finally the pic of me in the dark grey top was today’s pics. As of today I’ve lost 43.2 lbs and 8.4% body fat since the first of the year. Pretty happy with those numbers.
So the final thing I’ll post is a question real quick. My plan for the monthly update was posting the “starting” pic, last month’s pics, and the current month’s pics. I thought reposting all the pics would be a bit redundant. So what do you guys think? All the pics every month or just the starting pic and the last month comparison? Thanks in advance for any likes and I’ll catch you next time I post.
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