Keto-foraging at a rural grocery store

Being keto in a rural area has its difficulties. Low-carb specialty products don't really appear at the rural grocery store--- not enough demand.

Gary's Quality Foods of Stephenson, MI is a cut above. In season they have a little produce from local farms. They were known for their meat department, though now the exciting meats are at the related Gary's market in Wallace, MI.

Gary's in Stephenson is now the sole grocery in town. Their rival went out of business years ago. But now two dollar stores have opened in town, both with a lot of processed food, crappy carbage, and other not-really-food junk.

Gary's only has a small fresh veggie section, but it does carry fresh veggies (and fruit, which is a matter of indifference to me.) It doesn't have the more exotic ingredients, but it does have the basics. Even some KETO basics. And sometimes they surprise me--- they regularly carry fresh ginger root, for example.

Cauliflower, that keto mainstay, is not always a given in their fresh produce department. Last fall I know they had some from the local Jandt's Farm, which was a real prize. I always prefer to buy locally-grown veggies when I can.

The goal of this foraging expedition was, first of all, cauliflower. I wanted to make up some cauli-rice (cauliflower rice, steamed riced cauliflower) in bulk and freeze most of it, so I could just pull out some and heat for easy meals.

My luck was in. They did have some Dole cauliflower--- since the local cauliflower isn't ripe yet. As you can see in the picture, they also had broccoli and brussel sprouts, neither of which were on my purchasing plan for the day.

My next stop was in the meat department. There is a recipe for West African stew that I was itching to try. I found it in my recipe book More-With-Less cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre--- a Mennonite cookbook with an emphasis on economy, and saving the world through a more vegetarian diet. It was written by a large number of contributors, though, most of whom added meat to their recipes.

What the recipe called for was beef, but since it called for 2 pounds of it and I'm not made of money, I decided to buy a pack of pork steaks and cut them up for stew meat. The bone, of course, got frozen in the 'pork bones' bag for future bone broth cooking. (You CAN make bone broth from pork!)

The recipe calls for tomato paste also. I could have used real tomato paste--- perhaps using a little less than called for--- and I imagine the carb count would still be acceptable. But I have on hand some Walden Farms calorie-free ketchup, which is also carb free. I bought this at Gary's market also, though I'm not sure they still carry it, it's an older bottle. I used 1/2 cup of it in the recipe to partially replace the tomato paste.

My foraging expedition was a success. My freezer has a batch of packs of cauli-rice, and my Crock-Pot®️ is busy cooking the West African stew. Future blog posts will include more about how I make cauli-rice, my stop at a local farm stand for zucchini, and eventually my own version of the stew recipe, once I refine it.

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This is the recipe book I've mentioned. It's one of only two regular-diet, carb-filled cookbooks I turn to all the time. Mostly to find recipes to tweak. It's really worth owning in spite of the lower-meat-consumption emphasis. 

The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet: Just a You-Can-Still-Eat-Carbs Lie

Carbohydrate addiction. I can relate to that. Carbohydrates play the role of an addictive substance in my life. Which is why I bought the book  pictured at right: The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet. I thought it would help me deal with my addiction.

What would you think of a program for people addicted to heroin, alcohol, gambling, marijuana, casual sex or cigarettes that told the addict: You can still have your heroin, alcohol, casual sex or cigarettes once a day. And you can have as much of your addictive substance or practice as you can consume during one hour.

Would that actually be helping with the addiction, or just enabling the addict to live in denial about the addiction? Well, that is the plan of the Carbohydrate Addict's Diet. You eat two low-carb meals a day, and for the third, you get a Reward Meal, in which you can have all the carbs you can eat. Later iterations of the diet insist that you eat your regular low-carb foods--- your protein and salad--- and if you want more carbs than you planned on for your Reward Meal, you have to eat extra protein and salad as well.

In Dana Carpender's book How I Gave up my Low-Fat Diet and Lost 40 Pounds, Dana gives her own review of the diet. She likes the idea that if you eat excess carbs, it's physiologically better to finish the carb binge in an hour. But when she tried the actual diet herself, she plateaued at a weight higher than she liked, and she didn't feel very good with the daily excess carb dose, since she had been on low-carb previously.

My own experience is somewhat similar. Except that I am a real sucker for carbs, and once I felt permitted to eat any carbs I craved once a day, I didn't feel very inspired to concoct two low-carb meals, with salads, every day. (Call me a barbarian, but I don't regard salad as a meal, or even much of a meal component. I'd rather have bacon.)

Going on the Carbohydrate Addict's diet just led me off low-carb and back into eating large amounts of carbs, like barbeque flavor potato chips, Butterfinger candy bars, pizza and cheeseburgers.  It worked about as well on me as a 'rehab' plan allowing alcoholics a 1 hour alcohol binge every day would help alcoholics.

One proof that the Carbohydrate Addict's diet didn't work for people in the long term is that there doesn't seem to be any community of Carbohydrate Addict's Diet devotees online anywhere. Another is that the original diet was modified in subsequent books to try to limit the carb consumption at the Reward Meal.

I believe that the Carbohydrate Addict's diet is not a help for real-world carbohydrate addicts, but a cruel lie. People who are tempted by this diet would be better off trying a standard ketogenic diet and actually dealing with their carb addiction instead of feeding it on a daily basis. Find new ketogenic-friendly foods you love, and those old carb foods will have less power to tempt you.

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Have you tried The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet? Did it fail you, too? Or perhaps you are still on the diet and want to defend it. Your input is welcome in a comment!

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Here are the books I mentioned in this blog post. I recommend the Dana Carpender book, but The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet, since I don't recommend it as a diet, isn't on my must-read list.

Recipe: Parmesan/Mayonnaise Baking Sauce

You've probably read a version of this recipe on the back of a commercial mayonnaise jar. The recipe calls for using it on---- horror of horrors--- boneless, skinless chicken breasts. One online version of this recipe recommended low-fat 'mayonnaise.' None of that here!

I bought some good grated parmesan on my last grocery run into Menominee, MI. I thought it would be better than that common kind of parmesan that seems to have eternal life in my fridge.

I wanted to upgrade the mayonnaise ingredient as well. My store bought mayonnaise contains soybean oil, and we don't want any soybean products around here. Except for soy sauce, of course.

So I made 'baconnaise', from The Ketogenic Cookbook by Jimmy Moore and Maria Emmerich. I also glanced at mayonnaise recipes by Dana Carpender from 200 Low-Carb High Fat Recipes and Fat Fast Cookbook. Maria Emmerich's recipe was the simplest--- unlike her usual recipes--- and it called for 1 cup of bacon fat, which was just the amount I had in the freezer. I made the 'baconnaise' with a stick blender right in the 1 pint wide-mouth canning jar I'm storing it in.

Parmesan/Mayonnaise Baking Sauce

1/2 cup (125 milliliters) good mayonnaise. Home-made is best. DON'T use Miracle Whip or lowfat 'Mayo.'
1/4 cup (75 milliliters) good Parmesan cheese.
1 tsp. (5 milliliters) sea salt or Herbamare salt
dash pepper
1/2 tsp (2.5 milliliters) herb or spice that goes well with the meat or vegetable you will be using the sauce on. (Optional)


Mix ingredients together in a dish or small canning jar. It mixes quickly, so you won't need to break out the stick blender.

TO USE:

On chicken: Coat the chicken with it, and bake at 350 F (180 C) for 45 min. to an hour. The coating should be well-browned.

On frozen fish: Coat the fish with it, and bake it at 375 F (190 C) for 8-12 minutes.
On frozen cooked shrimp: Coat the shrimp with it, and bake at 350 F (180 C) for about 10 minutes.

You may also use it as a condiment on any meat or vegetable you like. It will add fats to your meal--- important if you are eating lower-fat chicken or fish.

FOR LOW INCOME KETONIANS: Yes, you can make it with ordinary (not low fat) mayonnaise and ordinary Parmesan from a low price store or from your local food bank. It's not the best, but when there is no better available it's certainly better than most low-income food alternatives.

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This is the cookbook from which I got my 'baconnaise' recipe. I highly recommend it.

Using keto/lowcarb podcasts daily to stay motivated

This is how it happens with me: I get started on my keto/low-carb diet, at first I am mildly obsessed with it, always reading my diet books and looking for new recipes to try.

And then I stop being so obsessed, don't think about food or my diet much, don't daily record my blood sugar, weight, and blood pressure numbers, and before you know it, I pick up a candy bar or bag of chips on my next trip to the Family Dollar store to buy cat food. Eating the carbs gets me to crave more carbs, and so before you know it I'm making a daily snack run, buying more than one candy bar or bag of chips, or having carb-laden restaurant meals with my mother....

Because of my diabetes and related kidney disease, I can't live like that anymore. It would just make my life miserable and short. So: I have to stay a little obsessed with the keto way of life in order to stay motivated.

My method: podcasts. Specifically the Jimmy Moore family of podcasts. You can find links to these podcasts in the sidebar on the right--- scroll down.

I usually download a podcast 5 days a week. I put the audio files on a Sansa Clip mp3 player, which clips to my shirt so I can listen while doing things like exercising, folding clothes, hauling manure from the barn, moving chicken pens, or herding sheep. People who commute to work can listen while commuting, I'd imagine. Jimmy Moore, the 'LL Cool J' of podcasting, or so some guy on his podcast says, does 5 podcasts a week. All of his old podcasts are still available, but I listen to the best and most informative podcasts more than once.

There are other keto podcasts out there, but what I like about Jimmy Moore is that he so often has medical doctors as guests or co-hosts of his podcasts. He often talks about medical research studies that have come out. It makes me feel like I am on the keto cutting edge--- a different feeling than when I was doing Original Atkins based on a decades-old second-hand book.

Before I became aware of the podcasts, I used diet books for the same purpose. I would daily read a little from the original Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution or more modern books, up to Keto Clarity and The Complete Guide to Fasting.

This concept is not original to me. I've read that members of Alcoholics Anonymous often make a habit of reading daily from their Blue Book to keep on track. And Christians often do daily Bible reading, or watch the daily Mass on EWTN television. It's a way to keep in touch with what is important to you.

What about you? Do you listen to keto or low-carb podcasts? Which ones are your favorites? If you share your favorite podcasts in a comment, I will listen to them and possibly add them to my list in the sidebar. Do you have any other daily methods to keep you motivated? Let me know in a comment! (You may notice I'm a little obsessed with comments today. Haven't had one on this blog in a while.)
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Do you have questions--- for me or for other folks on keto/intermittent fasting? Join my new Facebook group, KetoNissa's Ketogenic and Fasting group, right here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/583596832037760/

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And now, the advertising. Sorry, it's annoying to some, but I'm on disability and my house needs some repairs, so any little bit helps.

Learning to measure your ketones

I started out on the Atkins diet, and on that diet I first learned about the benefits of being in ketosis, and how to check if I was in ketosis using urine test strips.

But the urine test strips are not the most reliable method of testing your state of ketosis. You can be in ketosis and not be putting out many ketones in your urine.

The ideal way is to measure your blood ketones. There are meters for that, similar to the little meters you use to test your blood sugar if you are diabetic.

The problem is the little test strips you have to buy can be pricey, ranging from $1 per strip to $6 per strip, according to Jimmy Moore. It is probably worth doing anyway, but if you have limited funds, there is another way of measuring your state of ketosis that's better than the urine test strips, but not such a big ongoing expense.

This alternative is KetonixⓇ, a meter that tests your breath ketones. I have had one for some years now, and I can test and test and test without having to buy strips or anything for each test. You blow into it, and it lights up in colors, which tell you how deep in ketosis you are.

My own Ketonix is an older model. The current one costs $270 and links up to your computer (I think) and so does more. They only have the one model available, at least on Amazon.com.

For a blood ketone monitor, the KETO-MOJO is advertised on Jimmy Moore's podcasts, and the ketone testing strips are about a dollar each. I'm seriously thinking about getting one, since this is the best test, but my old Ketonix is still working well, and as long as it does, it will do well as a backup device. Maybe I would alternate days between the two testing systems so I would use half as many strips?

Anyway, the important thing is if you make keto testing a daily part of your life, you can tweak your keto diet to work better for YOU. I mean, if I get kicked out of ketosis every time I eat a certain food, maybe I shouldn't eat that food.

Do you test for ketones daily? What method do you use? Are you thinking of trying another method? Do you think testing helps you stay in ketosis?

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Recipe: Baked chicken with veggies in one oven pan

This is a simple way to make a chicken meal without much fussing. I started baking chicken inspired by the chicken wing recipes in Dana Carpender's 500 Low-Carb Recipes, which start in chapter 2. (Page 43 of my copy.)

I used chicken thighs instead of wings when I first made the recipes and it worked. Bone-in, skin-on thighs, of course. Why would I let a chicken processing corporation steal part of my chicken from me?

I have since simplified the baked chicken a lot, in part because I now harvest the schmaltz (chicken fat) from the pan for other uses, and so don't want it full of salt, spices and other things. Though I usually bake chicken thighs--- 2 for an individual serving, 3 if I'm extra hungry--- right now I'm working my way through a cut-up fryer from Amish Farms, some brand they carry at Jack's Market in Menominee (Michigan.)

PREHEAT your oven to 325 F  (170 C.)

Put aluminum foil over your baking pan for easier clean-up. Place your chicken pieces UPSIDE DOWN on the pan.  Do not salt, season or flavor the chicken.

Bake 20 minutes. Take your chicken out and flip it RIGHT-SIDE-UP, and put back in the hot oven for 20 more minutes.

PREPARE THE VEGETABLES:
I use frozen vegetables mostly. Which are pre-cooked (blanched) before freezing. In the picture I used chopped-up cauliflower, with a tiny pinch of frozen onions. I put in 2 Tablespoons of chicken bone broth, a splash of soy sauce, and about 1/2 Tablespoon or so of bacon fat. Butter, coconut oil or other good fats will do as well, including schmaltz. I put the veggies in a mini loaf pan, but you can also make a disposable mini-pan out of foil. Any low-carb acceptable veggies will do.

Next step: Take the chicken out of the oven when the second 20 minutes is up. Place the loaf pan with the veggies on the pan with the chicken, out of the way of the cooking chicken. Put back in the oven for a final 20 minutes. Use this time to set the table and prepare your plate.

WHEN FINISHED:
Take the veggie loaf pan out, with oven mitts, it is hot, and take a spoon to get the veggies out without taking the liquid from cooking. Put the chicken on the plate.
AT TABLE: sprinkle a little salt, seasoned salt, or soy sauce on the veggies. Sprinkle salt or soy sauce on the chicken's skin. You may remove the skin to save for 'dessert' and put a little salt or soy sauce on the 'naked' chicken, to make sure that part is flavorful too.

OPTION:
If you have a sauce made up--- Hollandaise, a Chinese peanut sauce from Carpender's recipe books, or a home-made Ranch dressing, you can warm that up a bit and serve that with the veggies and chicken. You can even warm your bit of sauce in a little container on the chicken pan for the last 5 minutes of the cooking! I'd use one of those foil cupcake pan liners for sauce-warming.

HARVESTING THE SCHMALTZ:
On your chicken-baking pan there will be some chicken fat left. To get pure schmaltz, you want to run it through a filter. I use a milk filter since I used to have dairy goats, but you can also use a coffee filter. Get out a small (1 pint or 1/2 pint) canning jar. Put a canning funnel or regular funnel on top of the jar. Pour the chicken fat from the pan through the filter and funnel. When the jar gets full of schmaltz, if you already have another container of good fat you are using up, you can store the schmalz in the freezer.

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How about you? How is your #ketodiet going today? Any tough times? Any easy times? Please share in a comment!

Thank you to the person who bought items through my Amazon.com links. It is really helping me!

Decaffeinate your favorite tea at home

Tea--- which is made from the plant Camellia sinensis--- is a useful drink on the ketogenic diet. Plain tea is allowed even as a fasting fluid--- which means, if you are on the 'no-breakfast' plan, you can sit down to the family breakfast table and have a cup while the others eat. You can also use tea as the basis for a 'bulletproof' beverage by adding butter or MCT oil and heavy cream.

Herb teas are not true teas, and the tea-like drink made from peppermint leaves or chamomile flowers is a tisane, not a tea.

There are different forms of the tea plant. Regular tea or black tea is processed and oxidized to a greater extent than other tea. It has the most caffeine of any kind of tea. Pu-ehr tea (my favorite) is a kind of tea which has been aged, and is from older tea plants, and is similar to black tea in caffeine content. Oolong tea is less oxidized, has less caffeine, and a milder flavor. Green tea is not subject to the oxidation process and has less caffeine than either black tea or oolong. White tea is made of baby tea leaves and has even less caffeine than green tea. [Red tea, or rooibos, is not from the tea plant at all and is a caffeine-free tisane.]

To decaf your own tea, simply steep the tea leaves or tea bag for 30 - 45 seconds and discard/reuse the 'tea' from that steeping, which will contain 80% of the caffeine. Then make your cup of tea from the leaves/tea bag.

I reuse my tea bags, as my paternal grandmother did before me. I use regular tea bags, not decaffeinated by the process above, in the morning when I need some waking up. In the afternoon and evening, I use the tea bags I used earlier in the day, which by now have little caffeine. This way an excess of caffeine does not disturb my sleep.

The steep water from home decaffeinating can be allowed to cool and used to water plants. It can also be diluted with more water and put in the cats' water dish.

Dear readers old and new, how has your ketogenic diet been going over the past weekend? Have you seen any great benefits, or are you just hanging on at this point? My blood sugars have been going up a little from my 5-day fasting period, which I guess is normal, but it disappoints me just the same!

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I have a book at my home called Lose Weight with Green Tea by Patricia Rouner.  I didn't lose any weight from it, but the author shared a lot of scientific studies about the benefits of all the forms of tea. If you are a tea lover you can learn a lot from this book!

My favorite kind of tea is Prince of Peace brand Pu-ehr tea. It has an earthy flavor, which I came to love after I grew used to it. My niece Brianna got me a couple of boxes of it for Christmas, but I'm out right now. Sad, sad, sad! But I will soon buy more.

Yes, the links below are Amazon affiliate links. If you buy through the links, you will NOT have to pay any more, but I will get a small commission which will be a big help to me, so THANK YOU if you choose to buy through them. 

Dealing with hunger on my 5-day fast

I’m currently on day 5 of a 5 day fast, and I must admit I haven’t been particularly hungry. I had no hunger on day 1, and the hunger I’ve had since then has been mild— not like the hunger I get a couple hours after eating carbs, when I’m ravenous for more carbs. My fasting tips are below.

Start by being on keto:

I was on day 25 of restarting strict keto when I began this fast. I had gotten over any initial ‘keto flu’ symptoms and was feeling fine and energetic (which is rare for me.) I started the fast when lunchtime rolled around, I hadn’t eaten, wasn’t hungry, and didn’t want to bother with cooking. I know Dr. Jason Fung starts off his diabetic patients with a prolonged fast, but without doing keto first I just couldn’t manage that.

Minimize temptation:

When I was cheating on my keto way-of-life, I often drove to the local dollar store every day and came home with carb-laden food (or non-food.) And of course when I bought a family-sized bag of barbecue potato chips, it was gone by the end of the day. Even though my family consists of cats who aren’t interested in potato chips and couldn’t get the clips off the bag if they did. Now if I came home with barbecue-flavor mice….

I didn’t go anywhere the first three days of fasting, and so wasn’t tempted to buy junk. The fourth day I went to Menominee, MI (30 miles) to visit my 91-year-old mother, and also to go to Jack’s Market of Menominee, where I could buy Kerrygold butter, miracle noodles, and smoked salmon. (They didn’t have any frozen duck, so I’m going to go get one in Trenary, MI.) 

I was a lot hungrier when I was in Menominee, because normally while I am there I get to eat stuff that I can’t get back home on the farm. But the hunger wasn’t that bad, as I have said.

Anti-hunger measures:

What do you do when you feel hunger pangs? Here are my methods. 

1. Get busy. Preferably away from the kitchen. I did a lot of cleaning in my garage, while listening to a Jimmy Moore podcast.
2. Drink water. You need to stay hydrated while fasting. And if you stay busy you may forget to drink.
3. Drink plain tea (or coffee.) Dr. Jason Fung allows plain tea or black coffee as a fasting fluid. The tea seems to suppress my hunger. I don’t know about coffee since I don’t drink it.
4. Drink a cup of home-made bone broth. (If you don’t have any, try Broth of Life dehyrated, organic bone broth. Use 2 teaspoons per cup, Dr. Jason Fung allows home-made bone broth as a fasting fluid. It’s actually better fasting if you DON’T resort to bone broth, but experienced, regular fasters tend to quit their use of bone broth while fasting naturally, as their bodies adapt. 
5. Semi-bulletproof beverage. When the hunger pangs are hard to ignore, Dr. Fung allows a bulletproof beverage, though discourages a FULLY bulletproof beverage. On days 3 and 4 of my current fast, I had a ‘semi-bulletproof’ beverage with 1/2 T MCT oil and 1/2 T heavy cream. Once it was in tea, and once in bone broth. The bone broth had 1/4  tsp. Himalayan pink salt added. 

My favorite MCT oil (Amazon affiliate link.)

Blood sugar results:

If you are diabetic you may be interested in what my blood sugars have been doing, before strict keto, during strict keto, and while fasting. Here are my results:

Cheating on my keto: 329, 277, 500, 186, 261

During strict keto, before fasting: 184, 187, 170, 201, 127

During my 5-day fast: 102, 94, 111, 91, 97

I should note that I did some fasting before I started the current fast, and my strict-keto readings are before I did any 24 hour or longer fasts. 

Have you tried fasting yet? How was your experience? Are there things you will do next time to prepare yourself for fasting? Share your experiences!

Disclaimer: 

I am not a medical doctor or dietician, and nothing in this blog should be construed to contain medical or dietary advice. Check with your own doctor before making any changes. Preferably, with a doctor that knows about the benefits of keto and fasting. In addition, know that if you are on diabetes meds, you MUST, MUST, MUST consult with your doctor before fasting, since you will need to reduce your meds.

Recipe: Stewing hen meat and bone broth in one Crock-Pot

A stewing hen is a retired egg-laying chicken that no longer lays a lot of eggs. Gourmet cooks really rave over broth ("stock") from stewing hens. If you buy your eggs direct from a farm or an urban chicken-keeper, you may be able to get stewing hens, maybe even at a decent price. You might even be able to get the original owner to butcher it for you, as in the Joel Salatin model. Or you can learn chicken-butchering on your own, as I did. There are great YouTube videos to help you learn.

I love to cook in a Crock-Pot®️. Because it cooks stuff on its own for hours and so I can go outdoors and do chores like hauling manure from where it was originally crapped and where I want it now, usually the compost pile.

I have made bone broth many times. I save my chicken bones when I cook chicken, and when I have enough bones, I make bone broth. Note: I don't salt the broth when I make it. If it cooks down enough, it may end up too salty for me. So I plan to add salt later when I use the broth.

I put the dead, plucked, eviscerated, cut-up chicken into the Crock-Pot, add water to cover, and then cook. I think I started on high for an hour and then switched to low. I thought it would take 6 hours or so, but I kept testing with a fork. I think it took about 24 hours until the meat felt tender enough. I then removed the chicken into another pot, let it cool enough to touch, and then picked off all the meat and put it into canning jars. Since I planned to freeze the meat, I put a little of the broth from the pot into the canning jars.

Then I put the meat-free bones back in the Crock-Pot, and let it cook another 24 hours. Then I strained the broth through a strainer, and put it in one-quart canning jars. I put it in the refrigerator overnight. The fat rises to the top of the jar and can be gotten out with a spoon or other kitchen implement.

The defatted broth goes into the freezer, except for one jar in the fridge for current use. The fat that you took out of the broth should be heated in a kettle and then put in an appropriate-sized canning jar. Refrigerate it overnight. At the bottom of the jar there will be a little broth. Make a hole in the fat with a knife, and allow the broth to drain from the fat. You can add the broth to your refrigerator jar of bone broth.

Chicken fat is known as schmaltz, and it is a lovely and delicious form of fat. Use it for cooking, for bulletproof beverages, and any other places where you might normally use butter.

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Feedback wanted:
Is it helpful to start the headline of every recipe post with Recipe: ? Or is it just annoying or weird? Please comment with your opinion!

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Fasting, day 4
I am on the 4th day of my fast today. I have done my HeavyHands walk with no trouble and more energy than usual. Yesterday, my third day, I had some mild hunger a couple of times. I usually banished it with a cup of plain tea. Finally in the evening I made myself a 'semi-bulletproof' tea, as allowed by Dr. Jason Fung in The Complete Guide to Fasting. It had 1/2 T(ablespoon) of MCT oil and 1/2 T of heavy cream. It wasn't as horrible tasting as I feared it would be, it was actually kind of GOOD. I feared my blood sugar today would pay the price, but it was 91 this morning. My weight was 187.0, so I lost a little weight.

Since I have read that the first 3 days of a fast are the hardest, and therefore if you fast three days you might as well continue on to 5 days, I have decided to go one more day after today, and resume eating on Saturday.

My big challenge today is that I'm going to visit my mom in the nearby town of Menominee, because I need to shop at a grocery store in Menominee to get some Amish-raised chicken and some Kerrygold butter, and I need to take some stuff to donate to Goodwill. My mom is uncertain about the fasting thing and may tempt me to get off the fast early. But I've got to stop doing what she tells me to do!

Losing 67 lbs on Keto, Fasting day 3

Yesterday I walked into the feed mill to buy chicken feed, and ahead of me in line there was a woman who probably weighed something like 320 pounds at least. She said something about having lost 5 pounds though she wanted to lose 200.

And something occurred to me. She probably looked at me and saw a not-so-fat person who probably wouldn't understand her weight struggles and would judge her for them. Because I'm not as fat as I used to be.

My peak weight was 255 lbs, or around that. I didn't weight myself much at my peak weight. I took the weight off first through low-carb, down to the 220 to 210 range, and there I plateaued.

Keto took me down to the 190 range, and now on my current fast, I found I weighed 188. I have not broke below 190 in years, maybe since I was in high school.

Sometimes it's hard to remember I'm not so fat anymore. I was buying 2X clothing for years, and now I am tossing it for XL sizes. I just had to order some new pants from Haband company because I was running out of jeans that fit and that hadn't been ripped by my cat, Eleanor. (She's got neurological problems and digs claws in when she jumps in my lap so she won't fall, and ripped a hole in my favorite properly-fitting jeans that expanded until the jeans had to be discarded.)

Fasting, Day 3
I have only recently done a fast that lasted 40 hours, and now I'm on a fast that has gone in to the third day. Dr. Jason Fung, author of The Complete Guide to Fasting (see sidebar, BUY THE BOOK!) allows home-made bone broth as a fasting fluid, and I had one cup the first day and two the second.

I felt no hunger the first day, which is why I fasted in the first place, and a little the second. When I feel a little hunger, I drink some tea and wait a while and the hunger passes. The bone broth helps, but I don't want to drink it too often because home-made bone broth has some fat in it and so some calories.

I have done my HeavyHands walking all three days, and actually felt more energetic than I had been. I have had chronic fatigue for years, and the keto diet helps some, but not as much as a fasting day helps. My blood sugars have been 94 and 111. And I'm getting caught up on dishwashing since I'm not dirtying new ones! (I don't have a working dishwasher.)

My New Facebook Group
Some of my author friends have been starting Facebook groups instead of author pages because Facebook pages are no longer very useful. I've decided to start a Facebook group for this blog, and will be posting new blog posts from this blog there.

I'm still working on setting the group up, but if you want to join, the group is at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/583596832037760/

Recipe: Keto Bulletproof Hot Chocolate

Bulletproof coffee is a thing. But as I can’t stand coffee, it’s not really a thing for me. Dr. Jason Fung in The Complete Guide to Fasting says you can make bulletproof tea. But I LIKE tea, and I am not sure I want to add fat to it if it ruins the flavor. So, Bulletproof Hot Chocolate.

I was inspired in this recipe by an old recipe for low-carb hot chocolate by Dr. Atkins. But that involved putting the ingredients in a pan and making the pan dirty. So I developed a recipe I could make directly in the mug. 

Keto Bulletproof Hot Chocolate

1 tsp. cacao powder (or ordinary grocery-store cocoa)

6-8 drops Sweetleaf brand liquid stevia (I’ve gone as low as 2-3 drops)

1/8 tsp. sea salt (I prefer pink Himalayan salt.)

Hot water to nearly fill mug

1/2 to 2 T. MCT oil (or coconut oil or butter)

1-2 T. heavy whipping cream, or coconut milk or unsweetened almond milk

WARNING: do not attempt to make this in a styrofoam cup. The MCT oil reacts badly to it. I use a ceramic mug, or a paper cup made to hold coffee.

Add the first 3 ingredients in to the mug. Fill with the hot water and stir. Add the oil and cream and stir some more. If the drink got too cool from adding the oil and cream, zap it in the microwave. Be sure and use a microwave-safe mug if you do that.

Dr. Jason Fung says in The Complete Guide to Fasting that you can have one bulletproof beverage on each fasting day. But in another place in the book he suggests the oil and cream component be way down on the fasting days— perhaps 1/2 T of each?

What is MCT oil? The MCT stands for medium-chain triglycerides, and it’s a component of coconut oil. The best component, and something that helps you get into ketosis and stay there. If you haven’t used MCT oil before, start with the smallest amount and work your way up.

This recipe is a great meal-substitute. It fills you up, and it’s not full of junk like a commercial meal-replacement ‘shake.’ Also, if you live or eat with family members who are concerned about your diet, this is something you can consume at the dinner table so your mom doesn’t worry that you are not eating.

Kitchen wisdom: T is the symbol for tablespoon, tsp is the symbol for teaspoon. There are three teaspoons in a tablespoon, and three tablespoons in 1/4 cup. There are 4 tablespoons in 1/3 cup. If you don’t have a measuring spoon marked 1/2 tablespoon, it is 1 1/2 teaspoons.  

Exercise for the Ketonian

‘Common sense’ on weight loss is the following: you have to exercise, preferably ‘at the gym,’ to ‘burn off calories.’ A more scientific approach, however, says you can’t outrun a bad diet, whether you call that diet ‘calories in, calories out’ or ‘eat less, move more.’ 

Some years ago while trying to lose weight, I tried walking every day for quite a distance on my rural road. I suppose I got a slight result. But it was at the cost of lots of time, and of the risk of wear-and-tear injuries to my joints from dragging my then-250 pound carcass down the roads. 

Now I am older, wiser in the science of diet, and am not worried about weight as much as I am reversing my diabetes and its complications. I know I don’t NEED to exercise for the keto diet to improve my health— I get better blood sugars every morning— or lose weight. But I’ve been feeling lousy for so long that I’m weaker and more out-of-shape than ever. I want to exercise for the right reason— to build up my muscles and get a little stronger.

I’m a lifelong walker, but I feel the need to add something to my walking workouts.  That something is ‘HeavyHands.’ HeavyHands is a system of exercising with special hand weights. You can use it with walking, ‘aerobic’ dance, and still exercises. By ‘pumping’ your HeavyHands weights while you walk, you are adding upper-body work to the workout your legs are getting from walking.

The HeavyHands system came out in the 1980s. Since I don’t have my original HeavyHands weights any more, I bought some on Ebay recently. The hand weights come with a strap so you don’t have to grip them so tightly. There is also a screw-off cap at either end of the hand weight, so you can screw-on additional weight amounts. I have the basic 1 pound weights, and additional weights are coming by mail.

For the past 2 days I have been walking out on my local road. My favorite route goes up and down hill and past some woods. The first day, I pumped my HeavyHands 1 pound weights as I walked. The next day, I started off with my 1 pounders, and had a 2 pound weight with me in a fanny pack. After warming up until the top of the big hill, I switched weights to the 2 pounds. I walked to the turn-around point and by then my arms were screaming for mercy, so I switched back to the 1 pounders for the balance of the walk.

I did the basic pump-and-walk mostly, but once in a while I did the arm motions ‘lateral flings’ and even ‘double ski poling’ without the usual footwork that go with that motion. I find that these more challenging arm motions actually energized me a bit when I was getting tired. 

For the winter months when walking on the road is out of the question, I can ‘dance’ in place in my house with the weights, or walk a path from my living room to my kitchen and back again.  That way I won’t get out-of-shape for the winter.

If you are thinking of trying HeavyHands yourself, besides the weights, which you can get second-hand on Ebay, you may want to buy one or the other of the ‘HeavyHands’ books by the creator of the exercise, Leonard Schwartz. The second book, ‘The HeavyHands Walking Book,’ is the more useful of the two, I think. And there are many YouTube videos that illustrate the HeavyHands exercises.

How about you? Is exercise a part of your Ketonian life? What forms of exercise do you favor? 

I'm not good at fasting yet

Recently I went back on strict Keto after a time period of regular daily cheating with carb-foods. Last Thursday was my 14th day on strict keto, and on impulse I decided to make it a fasting day. 

I have had little success in the past with fasting for 24 hours or more. I just got too hungry, and broke the fast short of the goal. But this time it went more easily. After days of strict keto with no carb-cheating, I didn’t have a big appetite any more. I was surprised at how hunger-free the day was.

Dr. Jason Fung, in ‘The Complete Guide to Fasting,’ allows home-made bone broth as an allowed fasting fluid. I happened to have some home-made bone broth in the freezer, so I thawed it out at heated up 2 cups, one at breakfast-time, one at lunch-time. I would have allowed myself a third serving near supper-time, but I wasn’t hungry and wasn’t in the mood to bother with it.

In previous attempts to fast, about 2 to three pm was my temptation time. I told myself I was so good fasting so far, I really deserved to get myself a little something to eat. Usually a little something meant potato chips or some other carb-poison. This time, I continued not feeling hungry throughout the day, into the evening, and even until the next morning.

I was even tempted to continue the fast during the next day, but decided to break the fast anyway since I could always start a fast again on another day. The next day’s results on my blood sugar was a 110, which contrasts to the 127s I had been getting before the fast, and the readings in the 200s I had been getting on my frequent-cheat routine. Blood sugars stayed lower in the following days when I was back on strict keto.

Another thing that helped was listening to an old episode from Jimmy Moore’s former podcast, ‘Fasting Talk.’ I downloaded a lot of podcasts from that series and it helped inspire me to stick with the fasting. But, as I’ve said, this time the fasting wasn’t any effort, and it was a relief not to have to do the chores of cooking for myself and cleaning up after. 

I think my frequent days of doing intermittent fasting, or ‘the no-breakfast plan’ was a big help. I was going 18-20 hours without food on a regular basis. Though when I went back on strict keto I did eat keto breakfasts, often a ‘bulletproof hot chocolate.’ 

Since I did not plan the fast, I hadn’t written down, for the Wednesday before my fasting Thursday, what time I quit eating for the day. I estimated it as about 6pm. When I added up the fasting time, it came to something like five minutes short of 40 hours of fasting. And all this without hunger or any desires for food!

I’m writing this now on Thursday the 12th of July, and I am once again beginning a fast. I felt good enough to do a long walk this morning (and got caught in a rainstorm I didn’t know was predicted), and I’m pretty confident I can keep fasting through today and perhaps through Friday as well. I can always eat the shrimp I planned to make for Friday on Saturday instead.

What about you, (the reader, assuming I have some/one)? Have you tried a full fasting day yet? How did it go?

Warning: If you are on diabetes meds, you MUST consult your doctor before going keto OR before fasting. You will probably need to reduce those meds. (I was lucky, my kidney doctor took me off all meds and said I could only use insulin, but never prescribed the insulin. So I’ve been using keto/fasting to sub for my diabetes meds.) 

Keto success means tracking your weight

In reading a book on another topic altogether, I learned it's hard to improve your habits if you don't track things. When it comes to healthy keto eating, weight is an important thing to track. Not the ONLY thing, though.

Since I'm on keto for weight loss as well as for diabetes control and treating my autism spectrum disorder, I like to track my weight daily. Not that I need to know every day. But when I plan on doing it once a week, it ends up being more like once every three months.

My old bathroom scale was a disaster for that. I kept it in the living room (bad move) because the light in my closet where I used to keep it doesn't work any more, and I was sick of needing a flashlight to weigh myself. But in the living room location the scale became a cat toy. A usually-dirty cat toy.

So I recently decided to buy myself a smarter scale--- one that syncs with my smart phone and one that also measures other stats like BMI and body fat percentage. My choice was the Etekcity Smart Fitness Scale model ESF17.  (This is my affliate link.)

You have to download an app to your smartphone, so this isn't a great choice if you don't own a smartphone. But it works on my cheap smartphone.

You have to bring your smartphone in with you when you weigh yourself each time. But that's a good thing. And even though the scale is in the unlighted closet, I don't need to use the flashlight since the scale's weight number shows up on my phone.

The scale is good for those on a budget since the price is $39. I imagine I'd have to pay about as much for an old-fashioned scale.

And one big help is that if you don't have the habit of writing down your weight every time, the scale's app tracks your numbers for you, and you can see your old numbers on a graph to see if you are making progress or the opposite.

Important: Keto (and fasting) isn't all about your weight numbers! Steadily improving your health is more important than quick weight loss. If you have gone from scary-bad blood sugar numbers to near-normal ones like I have, you know that there are benefits to keto and fasting that have nothing to do with anything a smart scale measures.

But in our weight-obsessed society, losing weight if you are 'overweight' is vitally important to your self-esteem. Tracking weight will help you fine-tune your keto. If a keto practice or food makes you gain or lose weight, you will know. And knowing what's going on is half the battle.

Why Low-Carb/Keto/LCHF is a Lifestyle, not a Diet

I believe it was Dr. Atkins who started off the idea of not talking about this way-of-eating as a diet. In popular usage, a ‘diet’ was something temporary. You went on a diet, lost weight, and then went off the diet. 

The problem is that we know that this cannot be just a temporary thing for us, even if we do lose weight. Weight gain was not our problems, just a symptom of a bigger thing called Insulin Resistance. Insulin Resistance is a disease that can cause many health problems— diabetes, kidney failure, Alzheimers Disease, as well as overweight/obesity.

The medicine for our disease does not come in a pill bottle. It’s eating in a way that doesn’t trigger our Insulin Resistance. And we can’t just do that for a little while. We have to keep it up for the rest of our lives.

And that’s hard when we live in a culture that doesn’t support our lifestyle. In our culture, eating processed food is the norm, and that means food that is stuffed with carbs. McDonald’s doesn’t make a living by selling meat— it sells buns, french fries, and soda pop, with a little bit of meat to flavor the buns. They are ‘drug pushers’ of an addictive drug: carbohydrates. And so they don’t want to start giving their customers an alternative menu item that meets Low-Carb or Keto standards.

The hard part of the Keto lifestyle for me is the cooking. Our culture actively discourages home cooking. How can the food processors make any money if we buy fresh meat and some fresh veggies and cook it up? And I live alone, which means that if I make most low-carb/keto recipes, I have to eat the same thing for days.

But I must adapt. I make the most simple/basic low carb meal— a serving of meat plus non-starchy veggies— in a simple way. I make a ‘bullet-proof’ beverage in the morning. I make my low-carb ‘breads’ and freeze some for later use.

And I’m thinking about the long term. What happens as I age and can’t do for myself any more? I need to simplify my eating life. Since one of my biggest problems with home-cooking is the cleaning up after, I am making plans to get a dishwasher, since my old one went defunct years ago and I’ve been hand-washing ever since.

One of the co-hosts on a Jimmy Moore podcast likes to call those of us on a keto lifestyle ‘ketonians.’ Like we were a separate foreign culture with different ways. That may be a helpful way to look at it. When we first learned that keto was the way to help our health problems, we joined the tribe. And we are going to stay in it until we die— because going out of the tribe and becoming a carbivore again will make us die quicker.