A day of joy

First of all that is EXACTLY the way I felt this morning when I weighed myself. I have lost 12 pounds in a little over a week. I am proud, and excited, and feeling more than a little circumspect about sharing very much. You see this is a long, complicated journey I’m on.

I am studying the ketogenic diet like I was going for a doctorate degree! Non-stop research, reading, watching youtube videos, and joining keto groups. I am taking in a lot of information and then intuitively inching my way through the days. People want to know what I’m doing, what I’m eating, and my head spins just trying to sort it all out. It’s all to the good, but I am, and have always been, a “seat of the pants” kind of gal meaning, in this instance, that I study and carry my keto book around with me and I’m doing all the right things as prescribed by the books and resources you will find online and elsewhere, but I am following Mark Sisson’s approach as outlined in his new book, The Keto Reset Diet: Reboot Your Metabolism in 21 Days and Burn Fat Forever, I have both the audio version from audible and the book from amazon and I am both reading and listening in tandem so that I can really take the material in. I am not going to read all kinds of books because everyone seems to have a slightly different approach. I did a lot of research into whom I would follow before I bought the book. Now I’m all in and just look up specific questions I need answers to online for a quick answer.

I am also researching recipes for keto on Pinterest which my therapist suggested and she told me that I could follow her and get recipes off her board and go from there. I do, however, want to be helpful so I will use this blog and this 365 day experiment to chart my course both because people are interested, and it helps me to record it. I I am not doing this to lay out my menus, recipes and everything little thing I am doing because this is such an individual journey. It took me a week of mornings just to try to figure out how to make my coffee without sugar and half in half, phew, I never thought I’d work out something I liked, but I have. I will share that in a moment. But still how you take your coffee, what works for you, is such an individual thing I don’t think any person will every come up with a “one size fits all” approach. Mine works for me.

I think it’s important for me to say, so perhaps people will relax a little, THAT I AM NOT NOW AND NEVER WILL BE A BORN AGAIN KETO KOOK OUT TO TURN EVERYONE ONTO KETO. I am simply doing this for me. Let me tell you why this is so important for me now. We all come to what we come to for our own reasons, and this is a little hard for me to put out there, but I think it might be helpful…

IN FULL DISCLOSURE: I am 63 years old, pre-diabetic, I have a whole host of mental health diagnoses, and there are other things common to aging and being overweight. I am on no medication for anything currently except my medications for my mental health conditions but I am taking a few supplements as have been recommended, the ones that made sense for me and my health in my life. Now the really hard stuff, sigh. I really struggled with whether or not to put this out there but I think showing where I started and tracking my journey might be helpful for people, so…

Two weeks ago when I went to my appointment with the P.A. who manages my meds I weighed 333 pounds. After just over a week working my way into keto I weighted 321 this morning. I was startled, and thrilled, and it was the affirmation I needed to keep on going but this is my Mount Everest and I am climbing it slowly, sensibly, and mindfully. My health care professionals and therapist are there to help me and support me, I am not out in left field doing this alone. I don’t recommend that. I think you need a good book, someone to talk to, and you need to keep your wits about you and not try to leap tall buildings with a single bound. I started off just eliminating all the culprits I knew were an important part of the keto diet — I’ll get to that in a minute — and I am being really strict with myself about this — I just gave my daughter two big tote bags of food from my house. My cupboards are emptying out. I am beginning, slowly, to buy the keto foods I will need. SLOWLY. I can’t afford to do everything at once inasmuch as I wish I could afford to do more and really set my kitchen up right, we do what we can. Also as a side note when you have this much to lose you are going to lose a little faster at the beginning especially with what were some pretty extreme change practically overnight.

WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING…

Again, in full disclosure, while I have never been a heavy drinker I really liked to have a glass of wine in the evenings, sometimes two, never more than that. So I went from a glass or two at night to none at all. I think this is having a big impact.

I cut out sugar completely, cut out wheat flours (I’ve ordered almond flour), all processed foods, grains, and most of the oils you already know are bad for you. (I will mainly use coconut oil, avocado oil, and olive oil. This is a great resource for oils.) I had to cut out fruit (for now) because of the high sugar content (I just bought Honey Crisp apples, a bag of clementines and the sweetest, most divine organic black seedless grapes anyone has ever eaten. That was last week before I knew better. I only ate a couple of the apples and a handful of the grapes but gave them all to my daughter. Eventually I will be able to have berries. Inotherwords I cut a whole LOT of things out all at once — I think my body kind of went “Holy, Mary, Mother of God, what the heck is going on?” — I have, as I’ve said, been having fun with “The Keto Flu” as my body starts detoxing — not bad, but not fun — and I have to tell you this is just a huge thing to do, it is not simply a diet, it is a whole lifestyle change, and at 63 I was pretty set in my ways.

THE BIG QUESTION…

Why now?

I wrote about going keto a week or so ago. My main impetus was not losing weight, although I needed to badly and it would be a major benefit, it was for my mental health. I shared, in that post, an article by a psychiatrist who lives on the ketogenic diet. She wrote about the amazing benefits of keto for mental health and neurological disorders. I have suffered from depression and myriad other things all my life. I wanted relief. I thought if this diet was going to help with that I was willing to make what were radical changes even though after decades of struggling with my weight I was basically pissy and angry just hearing the word “diet.” I had my back up about it. I would not have done this just to lose weight. That just didn’t work for me anymore. I felt, I’m ashamed to say, secretly hostile toward “health food nuts” and anyone who was successfully losing weight on whatever diet. I just didn’t want to hear it. And then a miracle occurred! (Let’s be honest, after 6 month of debilitating depression, and meds being changed right and left, a high dose of Prozac, pretty much the highest they prescribe, after inching up incrementally, kicked in.) And all of a sudden —

I FINALLY DECIDED THAT I WANTED TO LIVE! I woke up after having been almost dead to the world for a thousand years. I just simply decided that I wanted to live.

And now it is time to carry on. Day by day, moment by moment. When I know more, I’ll share more, I’ll give little progress reports. But I’m not about to turn this 365 Day Experiment or this blog into a “Keto Blog.” But by the same token it has become clear that this project of mine has turned into a huge experiment, not just searching for happiness, but for healing mind, body and spirit, and for looking for joy even in little moments. The book on Ikigai that I wrote about a couple of days ago came today. I will be seriously studying that too. This is a multifaceted experiment than will continue to unfold in sometimes surprising ways. That is okay, it’s how I will continue.

Finally, a number of people have asked me what I finally came up with in terms of my coffee, since I was pretty much addicted to coffee with half and half and sugar in the raw and now can’t have either (No milk products except for heavy cream and whole fat cheeses.) While I only have one big mug of coffee in the day it has long been my raison d’être for even getting up in the morning. This was the hardest thing of all. As I said, I experimented for a week, every morning something a little different, and finally, yesterday morning, I came up with something I actually found palatable (Note: I’m not singing like Maria in The Sound of Music over my coffee, but darn, I’m getting close!) I think I’ll call it —

Maitri’s Powerhouse Not Quite BulletProof, Keto Approved, High Octane Coffee…

When I say I “only have one cup of coffee in the morning” people who know me roll their eyes. My “cup” of coffee holds almost the full French Press of coffee. I use Starbucks French Roast whole bean coffee, grind the beans, heat the water, and let it steep for 4 minutes as per usual with a French Press. This is just about the strongest coffee you can have that is not straight up espresso. I also like my little Moka Pot but seldom use it. It makes REALLY strong coffee. It’s how they make it in Italy in homes. I cannot do any coffee pot that uses a paper filter. It removes all of the incredible oils that really make it taste like heaven and there are good things in there for you too. Okay, that’s the coffee.

Next I thought I would try “Bulletproof Coffee” which is really a name brand and they want you to use all of their products and they are expensive! Essentially bulletproof coffee is coffee with butter and MCT oil. Many people use coconut oil instead since coconut oil is about 62% MCT’s. (Let me just explain that I wanted to do the Bulletproof Coffee NOT because of their hype but because of a TedTalk video I watched where the woman giving the talk, a neonatologist, had nearly completely reversed her husband’s Alzheimer’s by giving him coconut oil several times a day.) The TedTalk was pulled. Too controversial. But there are tons of studies on MCT Oil and the brain. My brain needs help, hence my trying this.

But the thing is, you see, that it is very difficult — or it was for me anyway — to get the right proportions of butter and MCT or coconut oil because everybody’s cup size and taste are different. My mug is BIG so the 1 tsp of butter and 1 tsp of MCT oil in an 8 oz. cup just didn’t work for me. I added a little more of each, and then added a little more until I was all like, “Oh HELL NO,” and that’s when I read about Keto people putting heavy cream in their coffee because you can have that. I tried the heavy cream alone but that didn’t seem right either and I really wanted the benefits of the MCT/Coconut Oil. Yesterday I put MCT Oil AND Coconut Oil AND a bit of Heavy Cream in my coffee and I really did sort of sing a little. It was the first palatable coffee I’d had in a week, but I wasn’t through because I still wanted something sweet in my coffee, until I didn’t that is.

Yesterday I talked about ordering Swerve, the sweetener made from Erythritol, a natural substance, that Keto people rave about. It came late yesterday. I was SO excited. It is said to taste “just like sugar” with no aftertaste. So this morning I thought I had come to what would be the ultimate cup of coffee. I put in the coffee, the MCT Oil, the Coconut Oil, the Heavy Cream and some Swerve, dumped it all in the Bullet and frothed it up, almost giggled as I took my first sip — I was so excited — but after I took my first sip I was kind of — meh — it did seem to have an aftertaste to me. I was surprised that it didn’t measure up to yesterday’s coffee but yesterday’s is what I’m sticking with. And I can’t tell you how much MCT Oil, Coconut Oil, or Heavy Cream you put in because again cup sizes vary as does taste. Figure it to be like one of your grandmother’s recipes where she put down all the ingredients but not the amounts. You have to experiment and figure that out for yourself, IT IS AN ADVENTURE!

My Lord this turned out to be a long blog post. I do apologize. But I had a lot to say. They will rarely ever be this long (I think) but this is it for tonight. If you’re doing keto and are really happy with it please leave me comments, I love to hear what has been especially helpful for others. And if you have a super special way you make your coffee that would be keto approved, I’m all ears!

I think that’s enough for tonight. Are you still with me?