Here is this week’s vlog. It’s on prioritization in your life. Putting the important things first. And the most important point is that you’re important too. So it’s ok to prioritize yourself. I’d say it’s actually necessary and helpful. You need to be strong to help lift others up. Leave a Like if you enjoy the video. If you have a question, counterpoint, or suggestion, leave a comment here or there. Subscribe and click the bell if you want to be immediately notified every time I upload a video to YouTube. Have a great week. Feel free to put in some quality “me time” for yourself. See you soon. Peace.
This week’s weigh in is up on YouTube. Great gains (or losses I guess) made this week. Last week my weight had gone up quite a bit, and I did manage to lose most of it again this week. Made some gains in happiness, too. Figured some issues out I was having with exercise. All around a pretty good week. Let me know what you think of it with a comment here or there. If you enjoyed the video please leave a Like. Subscribe and click the notification bell if you want to be immediately notified every time I post a video to YouTube. Thanks for all the support. I hope you’re having a great week. Peace.
Here is this week’s weigh in. Numbers are a bit up. I did decide to go off keto for the tail end of the class and that did result in a bit of weight gain. And I’m ok with that. I made a decision and I’m willing to live with the consequences. There were some lessons learned as well. Leave a Like if you enjoy the video. Subscribe and click the bell if you want to be immediately notified every time I post a video to YouTube. Leave a comment here or there letting me know what you think about this week’s weigh in. Hope you’re having a great week. Peace.
Sorry for the delay getting this week’s vlog up. Between being at class and getting laryngitis I wasn’t able to do the video Wednesday and Thursday I was in class and travelling back home. I apologize if I’m a little scratchy in the vlog. I’ve got my voice mostly back but not totally. This week’s vlog is about starting over. Let me know what you think. Leave a Like on YouTube if you enjoy the video. Subscribe and click the bell if you want to be immediately notified every time I upload a video to my YouTube channel. Peace.
I’m 48 years old. In less than half a year I turn 49. By conventional wisdom I’m supposed to be too old for a lot of things. Statistically speaking the better part of my life, time wise, is over. I’m heading into the period of winding down and accepting what life has given me.
At the beginning of last year, when I was 47, I started my ketogenic journey. Now I haven’t been able to weigh myself in the last two Mondays because I’m away on training. But as of my last weigh in two weeks ago I was just shy of 100 pounds lighter than when I started. But I’m supposed to be too old to lose weight. It’s just too hard at my age.
Up until last year I spoke only one language. Ok, technically speaking that’s still true. I’m only fluent in English. But I’m working on learning Portuguese, German, and Spanish. Saturday morning I took an Uber ride with a woman who is a native Spanish speaker and she complimented me on my pronunciation skills. I’m not fluent by any stretch of the imagination. In fact I’d say I have a long ways to go to get that level in any of the three languages. But I’m clearly able to take in a new language and do it correctly. But I’m not supposed to because I’m too old to learn new things. In fact it’s at this point that they say I should expect my faculties to start declining.
And job wise I just started a new career. I’m here doing my training as we speak. At a time when I’m supposed to be on the glide slope toward retirement at a career, I’m just taking off. But I’m supposed to be too old to be considering starting over in a job. I don’t have the years left in me to have a full career if I start over today.
But I’m choosing to get into shape. I’m choosing to learn new tricks. I’m choosing to start over. Why? I don’t know how much longer I have on this planet. None of us does. I could be half my age right now and still could be gone tomorrow. So I choose not to plan based off of a predetermined schedule that’s been arbitrarily foisted on me. I don’t worry if I have enough time to complete the tasks. I just worry about today.
And today I’ve decided I’d like to go to bed tonight a little bit better a person than I started this morning. Today I’ve decided that I don’t want to waste any of the time I have left on silly things that don’t make me better. After all I don’t know how much more of that time I have. Today I’ve decided I’ll start walking down paths that make me happier, including career paths. I don’t know how far I’ll get down the path before my time comes up, but who cares. I’d rather spend however much time I do have left on a happy path than I would being given twice as much time to walk down a miserable path.
Wake up each day with one mission. Be happy today. It doesn’t matter where you are in life. The beginning, the middle, or supposedly near the end. Take whatever time you have left, long or short, and just use it to be happy. Even if you’re supposed to be too old to start over, do it anyway if you aren’t happy with the way things are. Better to go out smiling not reaching your new goal than to go out sad living up to the expectations of acting your age.
Here’s to a new and brighter future at any age. Have a great day. Peace.
So I’ve been in Orlando (well technically Lake Buena Vista) for just under a week now. I’ve spent most of the time here at the Sheraton Orlando Lake Buena Vista Resort as this is both where I’m staying and where the training is being held.
There are a lot of options for feeding myself around here and I’ve gotten to them just by walking there. The weather has been most agreeable to walking from place to place. I’ve also walked down to the local Winn Dixie to obtain stuff I’ve needed.
Now I’m still relatively new here so I’m still occasionally getting mixed up about what direction I’m headed. This morning after trying a different place to eat (the Black Angus Steakhouse nearby had a wonderful breakfast buffet I wanted to try) I needed to go to the Winn Dixie to get some heavy cream for my coffee. So I started walking and when I got to Palm Parkway I turned left and headed toward the Winn Dixie.
I was walking down the road when I realized it didn’t feel right. I stopped, looked around, and realized I had gone the wrong way. Realizing my mistake I kept going down the wrong path, farther and farther away from the my destination.
Of course that’s not really what I did. Upon realizing my mistake I turned back around and when I got back to the intersection I went the correct way. It’s only common sense. And yet when it comes to our life’s direction we seem oddly content to do what I had suggested I did.
We are creatures of habit and even when we know that the direction we are metaphorically headed is moving us away from the place we want to be in life, for some reason we just keep walking down the same path. How do we do that? We associate with the same people who led us to where we are in life. We engage in the same activities that have not gotten us the results we want. We think the same thoughts about ourselves that have led to the devaluation of worth we feel towards ourselves.
So think about this. If you’d feel silly continuing to walk down a physical path that you know doesn’t lead to the physical location you want to be, why are you content to stay on a life path taking you from the life you want?
Look at the life path you are on. Do your friends help you get to the life you want? If you answered no, maybe they aren’t the friends you need. Do you engage in activities which move you closer to the life you want? If you don’t, figure out the activities that do. You only have 24 hours a day. Fill those hours with activities that create the life you should know you deserve.
Do your thoughts move you forward on your life path? They should. If they don’t start paying attention to your self talk. When thoughts creep in that have you taking the wrong turn at an intersection, get your bearing and replace them with the thoughts that have you moving down the correct path.
Don’t settle for less in walking your life path than you would walking a physical path. Being on the wrong physical path just wastes your time. Being on the wrong life path wastes something a lot more valuable. Hope you have a great week walking the path taking you to the life of your dreams. Peace.
When you start a diet, any diet, and begin making progress you’ll generate a bit of interest in what you’re doing to lose the weight. I’m always happy to discuss the ketogenic lifestyle with the people who ask, and what benefits I think it can have in their life as well. After discussing the basics I get two frequent responses. One response I get, the other I don’t.
The first response is “I don’t know if I can give up the things I like to follow the keto diet as you just explained it.” That I totally get. It’s a total rework of your diet. And most of the foods you love the most are probably not going to make the cut. It isn’t like the glucose based diets where you can slowly wean yourself off of them. You have to give them all up right when you go keto. You might find keto friendly alternatives to help you along but the reality is as tasty as some of them are, most are just not the same thing as you’re giving up. Again, I totally understand that response.
The one I don’t get is “I don’t know if I can afford to go on the keto diet.” That one makes no sense to me. One of the bonus effects of the keto diet, at least for me, has been the cost savings. Let me break them down for you.
The first is the cost of food. The higher fat meats are generally the cheaper cuts of meat. The vegetables you buy can be pricey if you get it pre-cut or frozen, but on the whole the cost of the vegetables is much cheaper than the cost of sides at a fast food place.
Oh, and while we’re on fast food, the money you save cutting that out of your budget is amazing. I’ll occasionally go to McDonald’s and get a couple of sausage and egg McMuffins no muffin and a black coffee, but for the most part I cook for myself at home. Keto is done most easily when you cook for yourself which means lower price per meal. Now if you have the budget and want to get grass-fed beef and cage free eggs that’s awesome, and yes it will cost more than the regular fare. But you can keto with regular beef and regular eggs and you’ll still be better off than you were eating the glucose based diet you were on. And even going with the grass fed foods you’ll still be ahead of the game compared to buying tons of processed foods like chips and pre-made dinners.
Second, there’s nothing else to buy. There are keto friendly supplements and prepackaged foods, but none of them are required to be successful on keto. Having said that I will make one caveat. In the beginning it does make transitioning to keto easier if you buy some exogenous ketones to fuel yourself with when you start out. The key here is that it makes it easier. It isn’t necessary. Supplementing with electrolytes is also helpful and can make you feel better but if you’re eating a well-rounded keto friendly diet it isn’t necessary. I do know that this can be true of many diets. But it seems especially true of the keto diet.
Finally, and this is the biggest cost saver, when you switch to a ketogenic lifestyle your body becomes very agreeable to fasting. Fasting becomes a cinch when you’ve fully keto adapted. And that’s the biggest cost savings of all. Fasting requires $0.00 to do. Even if you cook for yourself and have your per meal cost down to say $10 per a day, you’re still saving $40 a month if you fast one day a week. If you fast two you just doubled your bank account gains. And I can easily do 48 hours of fasting now that I’ve been living the ketogenic lifestyle for over a year. Of course the more you spend per meal the bigger the savings this becomes.
So from a “I’m not ready to make the transition” perspective I totally understand the hesitancy to go keto. But from the “I can’t afford to go keto” perspective, I just scratch my head. I think it’s actually cheaper to eat keto, especially figuring in fasting periods. And that doesn’t even begin to cover the cost savings from being overall healthier and happier. Or the cheaper clothing for me now that I don’t shop at the big and tall store. So from that perspective can you really afford not to live the ketogenic lifestyle? I’m thinking the savings speak for themselves. Hope you’re having a great day today. Peace.
This week’s vlog is up on YouTube. It’s about what’s important to you. We are often told what is and isn’t important in life from the perspective of others or society. None of that is important. You have to decide what is and isn’t important to you and prioritize what is. Leave a comment letting me know if you agree or disagree. Leave a like if you enjoyed the video. Subscribe and click the bell if you want to be immediately notified every time I upload a video to YouTube. I hope you’re having a great day. See you soon. Peace.
So I’m on a 24 hour fast. It’s not the first one I’ve done. It’s not even the longest I’ve done. I’ve made it over 48 hours fasting. Being fully keto adapted I can go a day or two without food easily. And I do so regularly to promote autophagy (your body killing off unnecessary cells) and weight loss.
When I first started fasting as part of my ketogenic lifestyle, though, it wasn’t so easy. I was keto adapted and used fat as my primary fuel source. I had plenty of fuel on board. So going without food intake wasn’t a physiological issue, it was a psychological one.
In our society we’re used to having food available at all times. Which means we’re used to eating any time we want. The idea of willfully going without food just went against my mental programming. And that’s not even counting the way our brains are hardwired.
Your brain fears scarcity. And there’s a good reason for that. Way back in the day, food wasn’t available 24/7. So when you had a chance to eat your body sent you signals to make sure you didn’t miss out. Who knew when the next available meal would come along. It’s a survival mechanism. The first time you fast, and probably the second and third, you’re going to be fighting some pretty strong urges to stop fasting. So here are a few suggestions on how to start fasting in a way that’ll be easier on you.
First, eat a big meal right before your first fast. I know this seems a little counterproductive but the idea is to make the first fast easy so that you lessen the urges and get your mind comfortable with fasting. If you start out on a nice, full stomach your brain is less likely to panic and you’ll last longer before it becomes concerned about the lack of food heading its way.
Second, and it goes hand in hand with the first step, make the big meal breakfast or early lunch. This is all about timing. Have the meal timed so that by the time you’re starting to waver on your commitment you’re about to go to bed. Sleeping gives you eight easy hours of fasting. If you started the fast around 8am or 9am and go to bed at 10pm you’re only having to hang in there for 13-14 hours, a little over half a day. Then you add the 8 hours of sleep in and you just fasted 21-22 hours. Even if you go with the early lunch plan because you’re a little wary, and eat the meal at 10am or 11am, your first fast would be 19-20 hours. You’ve taught your brain you can go nearly a day without food and be fine.
Third, have distractions ready. If you’re just sitting there thinking about how you’re fasting you’re thinking about food. And that’s just making it harder on yourself. So have pre-planned distractions. Like a book to read to keep your mind off of things. Maybe have a Sudoku app on your phone to play if a hunger pang arrives. Play a round or two to get yourself past the urge. Just make sure that whatever your distraction is it doesn’t play into the desire to have food. Like if you must have popcorn when watching a movie at the theater, that would clearly be a bad choice. Or hanging out with someone who you usually only meet for meals would be a problem because you’ll focuse on the food you aren’t having this time. Also, avoid strenuous activities like hiking or other sports as that will increase your bodies desire for food making things rougher. On a side note, once you’re used to fasting you’ll be able to exercise during a fast but I’d still avoid heavy resistance exercises.
Fourth, stay hydrated and keep your belly full of acceptable liquids. Water is fine on a fast and won’t end it. Coffee and tea, so long as you don’t add anything to them, can also be consumed on a fast. And they have the added benefit of encouraging fat burning. So drink enough to give your belly the sensation of fullness.
The final step is to be mentally prepared in advance. Tell yourself to expect the hunger, and remind yourself that it’ll be more psychological than physical. If you’ve mentally prepared it won’t be as much of a smack in the face. It’ll be part of the plan. When the hunger hits, and your brain is demanding food, you’ll remind yourself that you expected this. You just need to be patient and the hunger pang will go away because you know you have plenty of fuel on board. Even someone of lower body fat who has keto adapted for the health benefits has way more fat on their body then they could go through in a day. So just know in advance that you’ve got this and you will muscle through.
Those are my go to suggestions for handling your first fast. And probably the next couple of fasts as well. After I had fasted a few times and built my time up I stopped having issues sticking with the fast. And now I just fast for as long as I choose no problems. Give it time and you’ll get there too. And don’t be hard on yourself if you don’t make it all the way on your first few attempts. Go as long as you can and know you’ll go a little longer the next time.
I hope this has been helpful. If you have any other suggestions for making a fast easy please leave a comment below. I hope you’re having a great day. Peace.
I have not one, but two videos this week. The first is my weekly update. The second is a thank you video. I’ll put them both below. Great progress this week and I’m grateful to be over 500 views now. Thank you all so much for that. Leave a like and a comment on the video to let me know how I’m doing. Subscribe and click the notification bell if you want to be immediately notified every time I upload a video. I hope you’re week went as well as mine and I’ll see you next week for the next check in. Peace.
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