I finally came up with a new name for this blog.
I'm going to call it “Just Do You” because there is more than one single approach to life that can help you get your weight, mind, and emotions under control.
In addition, there's no reason why you can't combine different nutritional approaches to help you design a personalized food program that you can live with for the rest of your life.
That's what I'm doing.
I'm not just doing Keto anymore. I'm doing parts of Keto, Atkins, mindful eating, and portion control all rolled up into one. I'm taking what's useful from each diet plan I have expertise in and dumping the rest.
At Reddit this patchwork approach to weight loss is called dirty, lazy Keto.
Dirty because I'm not focusing on just eating healthy foods.
I'm eating diet gelatin with real whipped cream and low-carb ice cream after dinner. I'm not avoiding sugar substitutes. I'm just keeping my carbs under control.
Lazy because even though I'm focusing on keeping my carbs low and portion sizes small, I'm not taking the time to count calories right now. I'm not counting the grams of protein I'm eating, and I'm not paying attention to the amount of fat I'm getting, either.
The weight is coming off just fine without doing all of that.
On this personalized plan, all foods that fit into my macros are allowed. I'm not denying myself my favorite foods. I'm just counting carbs and working the carby foods into my day.
And so far, this has been working well for me.
In addition, there's no reason why you can't combine different nutritional approaches to help you design a personalized food program that you can live with for the rest of your life.
That's what I'm doing.
I'm not just doing Keto anymore. I'm doing parts of Keto, Atkins, mindful eating, and portion control all rolled up into one. I'm taking what's useful from each diet plan I have expertise in and dumping the rest.
At Reddit this patchwork approach to weight loss is called dirty, lazy Keto.
Dirty because I'm not focusing on just eating healthy foods.
I'm eating diet gelatin with real whipped cream and low-carb ice cream after dinner. I'm not avoiding sugar substitutes. I'm just keeping my carbs under control.
Lazy because even though I'm focusing on keeping my carbs low and portion sizes small, I'm not taking the time to count calories right now. I'm not counting the grams of protein I'm eating, and I'm not paying attention to the amount of fat I'm getting, either.
The weight is coming off just fine without doing all of that.
On this personalized plan, all foods that fit into my macros are allowed. I'm not denying myself my favorite foods. I'm just counting carbs and working the carby foods into my day.
And so far, this has been working well for me.
I Started by Doing Strict Keto for 30 Days
After my drastic jump in blood sugar a little over 90 days ago, I ran back to Keto. My goal was to get my blood sugar under control as quickly as possible. The numbers don't lie, so I had to come face to face with my denial.
I need to lower my carbs for the rest of my life.
That's fact.
At this point in my weight-loss journey I'm willing to take a little bit higher number in exchange for being able to eat a few more carbs. I'm not looking for blood glucose to be in the normal range, anymore. Just below the point where diabetic complications begin.
After 30 days, I stood back and analyzed my progress.
I realized that I had not been paying attention to what I was eating and, therefore, the balance in my meals was way off.
Too many starchy carbs.
I also had to face the fact that gluten-free recipes are typically much higher in starchy carbs than the foods they replace, so I need to start looking for recipes that are lower in starches.
Another thing I learned during the first 30 days was that stress raises your blood sugar. It's not always about the food. Sometimes, it's your approach to life's challenges that matter.
The more stressed you are about what's going on in your life right now, the higher your blood sugar will be.
And last, I saw a strong connection between my hunger and blood sugar level. In the mornings, when blood sugar tends to be higher, I experienced very little hunger. As the blood sugar was used by the body, my hunger got stronger.
So I stopped eating by the clock and started listening to those hunger signals. This means that sometimes, I ate lunch, and sometimes, I did not. I let my hunger guide me.
Doing this allowed my eating habits to normalize.
How to Personalize your Low-Carb Diet
Personalization is an on-going process. A diet isn't something that you create all at once and then stick to the details for the rest of your life.
Dieting is an evolutionary process that changes from time to time as your body adapts to your low-carb lifestyle.
At 30 days, I took a serious look at how I had been eating before going Keto and came up with comfortable ways to keep my blood sugar under control without making too many drastic changes.
In the beginning, it was easy to blame the meds I'm on.
Weight gain and high blood sugar are both well-established side effects of the meds. It was harder to see how my eating habits played into the recent weight regain because I didn't want to go back.
Gluten free was already hard enough without having to trim the carbs at the same time.
But life is what it is, and I had to accept the fact that I'm never going to be able to eat normal ever again.
Low-carb gluten-free is the hand I've been dealt.
To keep diabetes at bay, I'll have to restrict carbs to some degree for the rest of my life.
So I decided to make those personal changes one meal at a time.
Breakfast:
I started the personalization process by looking at what we normally have for breakfast.Since we are gluten free, starchy pancakes and waffles were already a rare treat. Hashbrowns and fried potatoes showed up only now and then. Normal breakfast for us was eggs with sausage, bacon, pulled pork, beef brisket, or ham – fried or scrambled.
Occasionally, I'd make biscuits and gravy, pancakes, waffles, or fried potatoes. Not too often, though, so it wasn't hard to go 30 days without the starchy carbs.
Since I wasn't hungry in the morning, due to the high blood sugar, I cut my portions in half.
I went from having 2 fried eggs and 3 slices of bacon to 1 fried egg and 2 slices of bacon. I trimmed my sausage links from 3 to 2. Sausage patties went down to 1.
I tossed ham into scrambled eggs, along with some green onion and bell peppers, which went from 4 eggs total to 3. I dished up 1/3 for me instead of one-half.
It's been 90 days now and I'm still eating that way.
It's been 90 days now and I'm still eating that way.
The morning hunger has never come back.
Going forward, I'm going to experiment with ketogenic recipes that use less flour than a traditional recipe.
For example, I now know how to make mini low-carb waffles (Eggo-size) using only 2 tablespoons of gluten-free flour mix per serving. (If you're on Keto, you can use almond flour instead.) At 16.5 carbs for 2 mini waffles, they nicely fit into my macros, using real gluten-free flour, so I'm really happy about that.
I'm also going to experiment with potatoes, but not just yet.
Look at what you normally eat for breakfast. Can you cut back on portion sizes without feeling like you're being deprived?
Cutting my breakfast in half and avoiding starchy carbs lowered the amount of fat I'm eating, as well as the calories.
Normally, I would eat leftovers, baked chicken with a cup of rice, spare ribs with leftover potatoes, chicken noodle soup, or tacos.
Starchy, starchy, starchy.
Dropping the rice, pasta, potatoes, and corn tortillas left me with baked chicken, spare ribs, chicken-vegetable soup, and burrito/taco bowls without the tortillas. I also made ham-and-cheese sandwiches using sliced cheese for the bread. Sometimes, fried eggs with a slice of cheese on top.
For the first 30 days, I ate just meat for lunch. No vegetables, as well as no starchy carbs. I wanted my blood sugar to drop like a rock, which it did.
Moving into the next 60 days, after that, I did exactly the same thing for lunch, except that I occasionally had homemade cheese sticks or Carbmaster yogurt along with the meat.
This allowed me to have a more normal dinner.
Moving forward: I have not experimented with new recipes for lunch, yet, but I want to do that. I simply looked at what I was already eating and trimmed the carbs off of that.
Rice is low in calories but super-super high in carbs. I used to eat a lot of rice for both lunch and dinner. I definitely miss it. My brain keeps bringing it up as a potential side dish when thinking about what to make for dinner.
If you measure out a half a cup of rice, it's very very small for the 20 carbs it costs you. It's doable at slightly higher carb levels than I'm currently eating, but not right now.
I'm saving that experiment for later on.
Look at what you normally have for lunch.
If you're not gluten free, there will be less of a challenge coming up with ways to trim the carbs and calories, since you can just cut down on portion sizes.
The Old Weight Watchers Exchange Plans allowed you to eat a couple of servings of starchy carbs per day. The trick to making your personalized plan work is to find out the least amount of food that will keep you feeling satisfied and full all afternoon without having to reach for a snack.
Use your current lifestyle as a template.
Starting off with foods you're not used to eating will only enhance the cravings for your old lifestyle.
Also, think ahead.
With no leftovers to choose from, I had to pay attention to what I was going to eat for lunch. If you don't know what you're having that day, it's far too easy to reach for a bag of chips.
Not only because I cut snacking completely out of my life, except for rare occasions; but, also because I was used to serving rice, potatoes, and pasta along with a hefty portion of meat and vegetables for lunch and dinner.
Since we eat lunch separately, except on weekends, I made greater changes to lunch and fewer changes to dinner.
Hubby and I do not always eat the same thing, though. Since I'm the one who needs to cut down on carbs, to keep my blood sugar under control, he still eats gluten-free tortillas, Bush's baked beans, pickled cucumbers, candy, and other things that I don't eat any more.
These are not things that I crave or care about, so it wasn't hard to cut them out of my life.
For the most part, a low-carb dinner contains a protein source like meat or eggs, and vegetables or salads. To make this easier, you cut out the starches and just don't replace them.
On low-carb approaches, starches are returned to the diet very slowly once you are almost at your weight-loss goal.
But I'm not sold on the idea that waiting is the best way to do it.
I'm more inclined to experiment with how the body reacts to these types of calories now, rather than later, so a couple of times over the past 90 days I made some battered chicken strips and battered fish.
The thing to remember is that insulin resistance and your body's reaction to carbs and fats won't stay the same. As the weight comes off and you get older, the amount of carbs, fats, proteins, and calories you need to eat to maintain an ideal weight will change.
What you can get away with at the beginning of your weight-loss diet won't be what you can eat when you coast over the finish line.
This is why I decided to make the transition from gluten free to gluten-free low-carb as easy as possible.
Dinner for us is now a serving of meat and a low-carb side dish like salad, vegetable, diet jello, deviled eggs, or pork rinds with guacamole.
Sometimes I'll serve a dinner salad where our protein is chopped up and served over torn greens along with avocado, hard boiled egg slices, olives, and dried cranberries for hubby.
When hubby has a burrito or quesadilla, I simply eat the filling topped with sour cream, grated cheese, salsa, and sometimes olives.
The idea is to gently make changes to your lifestyle, now, so they can be permanent alterations, rather than temporary situations by the time you reach goal.
This is why diets need to be lifestyle changes and not templates you ditch once you reach your weight-loss goal. You want to slide into maintenance, so it won't be all that different from the way you ate to reach that goal.
This is a 7 p.m. ritual I'm not willing to cut out of our lives.
So when I designed my current weight-loss plan, I started with dessert and worked backward from there. I did switch from WinCo brand ice cream to CarbSmart chocolate ice cream, which costs me 5 net carbs instead of 30, and I do miss the wide variety of flavors that WinCo offers.
But, I'm satisfied with the switch.
Going forward, I'm going to experiment with ketogenic recipes that use less flour than a traditional recipe.
For example, I now know how to make mini low-carb waffles (Eggo-size) using only 2 tablespoons of gluten-free flour mix per serving. (If you're on Keto, you can use almond flour instead.) At 16.5 carbs for 2 mini waffles, they nicely fit into my macros, using real gluten-free flour, so I'm really happy about that.
I'm also going to experiment with potatoes, but not just yet.
Look at what you normally eat for breakfast. Can you cut back on portion sizes without feeling like you're being deprived?
Cutting my breakfast in half and avoiding starchy carbs lowered the amount of fat I'm eating, as well as the calories.
Lunch:
Lunch was a drastic change for me.Normally, I would eat leftovers, baked chicken with a cup of rice, spare ribs with leftover potatoes, chicken noodle soup, or tacos.
Starchy, starchy, starchy.
Dropping the rice, pasta, potatoes, and corn tortillas left me with baked chicken, spare ribs, chicken-vegetable soup, and burrito/taco bowls without the tortillas. I also made ham-and-cheese sandwiches using sliced cheese for the bread. Sometimes, fried eggs with a slice of cheese on top.
For the first 30 days, I ate just meat for lunch. No vegetables, as well as no starchy carbs. I wanted my blood sugar to drop like a rock, which it did.
Moving into the next 60 days, after that, I did exactly the same thing for lunch, except that I occasionally had homemade cheese sticks or Carbmaster yogurt along with the meat.
This allowed me to have a more normal dinner.
Moving forward: I have not experimented with new recipes for lunch, yet, but I want to do that. I simply looked at what I was already eating and trimmed the carbs off of that.
Rice is low in calories but super-super high in carbs. I used to eat a lot of rice for both lunch and dinner. I definitely miss it. My brain keeps bringing it up as a potential side dish when thinking about what to make for dinner.
If you measure out a half a cup of rice, it's very very small for the 20 carbs it costs you. It's doable at slightly higher carb levels than I'm currently eating, but not right now.
I'm saving that experiment for later on.
Look at what you normally have for lunch.
If you're not gluten free, there will be less of a challenge coming up with ways to trim the carbs and calories, since you can just cut down on portion sizes.
The Old Weight Watchers Exchange Plans allowed you to eat a couple of servings of starchy carbs per day. The trick to making your personalized plan work is to find out the least amount of food that will keep you feeling satisfied and full all afternoon without having to reach for a snack.
Use your current lifestyle as a template.
Starting off with foods you're not used to eating will only enhance the cravings for your old lifestyle.
Also, think ahead.
With no leftovers to choose from, I had to pay attention to what I was going to eat for lunch. If you don't know what you're having that day, it's far too easy to reach for a bag of chips.
Dinner:
Dinner was a bit disruptive for me.Not only because I cut snacking completely out of my life, except for rare occasions; but, also because I was used to serving rice, potatoes, and pasta along with a hefty portion of meat and vegetables for lunch and dinner.
Since we eat lunch separately, except on weekends, I made greater changes to lunch and fewer changes to dinner.
Hubby and I do not always eat the same thing, though. Since I'm the one who needs to cut down on carbs, to keep my blood sugar under control, he still eats gluten-free tortillas, Bush's baked beans, pickled cucumbers, candy, and other things that I don't eat any more.
These are not things that I crave or care about, so it wasn't hard to cut them out of my life.
For the most part, a low-carb dinner contains a protein source like meat or eggs, and vegetables or salads. To make this easier, you cut out the starches and just don't replace them.
On low-carb approaches, starches are returned to the diet very slowly once you are almost at your weight-loss goal.
But I'm not sold on the idea that waiting is the best way to do it.
I'm more inclined to experiment with how the body reacts to these types of calories now, rather than later, so a couple of times over the past 90 days I made some battered chicken strips and battered fish.
The thing to remember is that insulin resistance and your body's reaction to carbs and fats won't stay the same. As the weight comes off and you get older, the amount of carbs, fats, proteins, and calories you need to eat to maintain an ideal weight will change.
What you can get away with at the beginning of your weight-loss diet won't be what you can eat when you coast over the finish line.
This is why I decided to make the transition from gluten free to gluten-free low-carb as easy as possible.
Dinner for us is now a serving of meat and a low-carb side dish like salad, vegetable, diet jello, deviled eggs, or pork rinds with guacamole.
Sometimes I'll serve a dinner salad where our protein is chopped up and served over torn greens along with avocado, hard boiled egg slices, olives, and dried cranberries for hubby.
When hubby has a burrito or quesadilla, I simply eat the filling topped with sour cream, grated cheese, salsa, and sometimes olives.
The idea is to gently make changes to your lifestyle, now, so they can be permanent alterations, rather than temporary situations by the time you reach goal.
This is why diets need to be lifestyle changes and not templates you ditch once you reach your weight-loss goal. You want to slide into maintenance, so it won't be all that different from the way you ate to reach that goal.
Dessert:
This is why I'm willing to make some drastic changes to my breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I'm used to eating a small bowl of ice cream, a piece of cake, or cubed melon for dessert almost every night.This is a 7 p.m. ritual I'm not willing to cut out of our lives.
So when I designed my current weight-loss plan, I started with dessert and worked backward from there. I did switch from WinCo brand ice cream to CarbSmart chocolate ice cream, which costs me 5 net carbs instead of 30, and I do miss the wide variety of flavors that WinCo offers.
But, I'm satisfied with the switch.
For now.
Moving forward, I'll be experimenting with sugar-free recipes for cake and cookies, but not right now. Hubby's asking for cheesecake, so I'm going to start with that.
It's been over 90 days since I returned to Keto and our eating style is feeling pretty normal right now. I eat when I'm hungry, just enough protein to make the hunger go away, and then I stop eating.
I use vegetables and diet gelatin to round out the meal.
I'm trimming most of the fats, since I don't have a gall bladder, and I'm cutting out most of the major starches right now, with the hope that I'll be able to continue to make permanent changes moving forward; changes, I can live with.
For example, we're using those 16.5 carb waffles, a typical breakfast food, as the bun for our cheeseburgers at dinner.
Those waffles were a game-changer for us.
We love them.
They are soft and pliable and don't fall apart like gluten-free buns and bread do.
I weighed in this morning at 198 pounds, so the weight is coming off eating like this. I'm down from 222 when I started this over 90 days ago. That's 24 pounds in a little over 90 days without counting my calories at all.
I'm not going to tell you that I didn't cheat.
Because I did.
Moving forward, I'll be experimenting with sugar-free recipes for cake and cookies, but not right now. Hubby's asking for cheesecake, so I'm going to start with that.
It's Been Over 90 Days Since I Returned to Keto
It's been over 90 days since I returned to Keto and our eating style is feeling pretty normal right now. I eat when I'm hungry, just enough protein to make the hunger go away, and then I stop eating.
I use vegetables and diet gelatin to round out the meal.
I'm trimming most of the fats, since I don't have a gall bladder, and I'm cutting out most of the major starches right now, with the hope that I'll be able to continue to make permanent changes moving forward; changes, I can live with.
For example, we're using those 16.5 carb waffles, a typical breakfast food, as the bun for our cheeseburgers at dinner.
Those waffles were a game-changer for us.
We love them.
They are soft and pliable and don't fall apart like gluten-free buns and bread do.
I weighed in this morning at 198 pounds, so the weight is coming off eating like this. I'm down from 222 when I started this over 90 days ago. That's 24 pounds in a little over 90 days without counting my calories at all.
I'm not going to tell you that I didn't cheat.
Because I did.
Real life includes moments when you make exceptions to the way you regularly eat. We went to P. F. Chang's for our anniversary and we both ordered their Gluten-Free Spicy Chicken. I limited myself to about a half a cup of white rice to soak up the yummy sauce.
My blood glucose spiked to 275 mg/dL two hours after that meal. Not surprising, since it's super sweet, the chicken is breaded with cornstarch, and I treated myself to some of that white rice.
But since I went right back to eating the way I do now, for the very next meal, the glucose quickly fell back to normal over the next couple of days.
I easily lost the water weight I gained from refilling my glycogen stores, but it did take about a week for my weight to recover.
Since I was expecting the scale to do that, it wasn't a surprise, so I didn't feel bad. I just watched what my body did and ignored the urges to snack or cheat again.
This means you'll have to stay deliberately mindful after any indulgence, so the body learns what your regular habits are going to be. For example, I only had slight cravings for a week or so, and then the body returned to not being hungry again.
Facing the denial hasn't been easy. But since I'm not eliminating foods that are normally not found on a ketogenic diet, such as the gluten-free flour in those waffles, I have high hopes that this time I'm going to achieve what I haven't been able to do before.
What about you?
What are you currently struggling with?
How can we help you?
My blood glucose spiked to 275 mg/dL two hours after that meal. Not surprising, since it's super sweet, the chicken is breaded with cornstarch, and I treated myself to some of that white rice.
But since I went right back to eating the way I do now, for the very next meal, the glucose quickly fell back to normal over the next couple of days.
I easily lost the water weight I gained from refilling my glycogen stores, but it did take about a week for my weight to recover.
Since I was expecting the scale to do that, it wasn't a surprise, so I didn't feel bad. I just watched what my body did and ignored the urges to snack or cheat again.
This means you'll have to stay deliberately mindful after any indulgence, so the body learns what your regular habits are going to be. For example, I only had slight cravings for a week or so, and then the body returned to not being hungry again.
Facing the denial hasn't been easy. But since I'm not eliminating foods that are normally not found on a ketogenic diet, such as the gluten-free flour in those waffles, I have high hopes that this time I'm going to achieve what I haven't been able to do before.
What about you?
What are you currently struggling with?
How can we help you?
**NOTE: It's now been 32 weeks and I'm down to 182 pounds. For an update to this post, please check out our post at the Vickie Ewell blog on how to lose weight without counting calories, carbs, or points.
I have a great low carb cheesecake recipe if you'd like it.
ReplyDelete