Kickstarting a New Ketogenic Phase

Hello.
I'm a husband, a dad, and addicted to carbs.

A few years ago, I tried the ketogenic diet. In 4 months I lost almost 40 lbs.

Then, autumn hit, and my mom started baking, and my resolve was dissolved in a flurry of butter cookies. I told myself "We'll just do a modified keto diet, just a few carbs added back in for fun." That was 60 lbs ago.

Since then, I've had some drastic events happen in my life. I contracted meningeoencephalitis which hospitalized me for 9 days. It left me with PTSD and some other harder to define mental deficits. I also, in the course of figuring out how my brain had changed due to that sickness, learned that I am bipolar. Looking back into my past, I can see the peaks and valleys of my manic-depressive cycle,  and my illness triggered the disorder to get an order of magnitude worse.

I'm medicated now, using Seroquel each day, so the effects of my bipolar disorder are less drastic, but it's also not been helpful for my willpower, for whatever reason. I tried just dropping candy from my life, and made it 21 days before I had cake. Then I made it a further 20 days - I didn't lose any weight while off sugar, so I became very disillusioned with the process - before I just quit and went back to my old habits.

I'm currently on the upwards side of 285 lbs. This is the heaviest I've been in my life. I feel it, physically, every minute of the day.

I get winded just tying my shoes.
I can't play physical games with my kids because I get too tired, or my lumbar goes out of whack.
If the zombie apocalypse happens, I'm bait.

So, I'm researching, and I'm planning, two things I barely did last time. Lack of variety was my undoing last time, so I won't make that same mistake.

Something else I didn't do last time was secure the support of my family. I started a diet that wasn't suitable for my wife or kids. This time, I want to have family-friendly menu choices that only require minor adjustments for me, and are still yummy and nutritious for my kids.

After making some lists, some menu plans, and purchasing the right foods for our kitchen, it'll be off again, seeking ketosis.

Anxiety Attacks and Failed Willpower Throws

First things first: I failed my willpower throws all week last week. I ate sugar in mass quantities at work and at home. I did not go to the gym at all last week - which I justified each day with a challenging website build going on, and high stress levels over all.

Money was tight due to an attempted debit card sort of ID theft that threw stuff off, and poor planning, and a 2.5 week pay period because of how paydays fall compared to business days, etc. All told, we were scraping the bottoms of barrels we didn't ever want to touch.

Work was tough due to a new project requiring technical coding of stuff that I've never done before. Lots of Google and Stack Overflow searches there.

And, finally, my anxiety is getting the best of me during stressful times like this. It's causing insomnia and all of the subsets of issues that come with that. I'm averaging less than 5 hours of sleep per night, which is worrying me because lack of sleep is probably a prime contributor to the illness I got that caused this anxiety.

This morning I realized that the biggest knee-jello thoughts are when I think of the fact that I was feeling poorly, went to check into the hospital, and woke up 5 days later with no memory of anything in between those two events. The idea of feeling semi-ok, then waking up full of needles, catheters, and surrounded by family, and having only defeated the odds of dying by a narrow margin, terrifies me. I can't even watch shows that have hospital scenes without my legs feeling like pins-and-needles. (SPOILERS for watchers of "Wayward Pines": every time someone wakes up in the Wayward Pines hospital after an "accident" and I know it's centuries later, it just makes me feel like curling up in a ball somewhere).

I lost 5 days of my life to an illness. 5 days of my kids growing. 5 days of living with my wife. 5 days, just gone to the oblivion of heavy sedatives. But, more than that, I lost control of my mind and body, the only thing I can reliably count on most of the time. The idea that some of my brain might have changed, and I can't even tell, terrifies me every day.

It was only pneumonia and meningeal encephalitis. I survived, through medical science and caring hospital staff. I still have my facilities as far as I can tell, and I still have my family. But, now fear is a much larger component in my day-to-day life, and that's foreign to me.

I'm rambling, time to stop.

050 Breaking it Down

It's been a week since my last post.

I've been hovering at 269 for a while now, and it's pretty depressing, but I'm not doing enough to change it, which is also depressing.

Two nights ago I really started to be annoyed at the fact that I can't just get up and jog, trot, or do anything much more than walk, on the spur of the moment. I used to be able to break into a light run, or even sprint, at will, now I feel like my spine would fall out of my butt and my shins would immediately degrade into splints. I really miss the ease of being able to jog across the street when the crossing signal starts to flash. I find myself having jealous pangs every time I watch an actor break into an easy run.

So, yesterday I took the kids and wife to a running shoe store to get fitted properly for some good shoes. We went to Sole Sports Running Zone, a Phoenix-specific store, and were really pleased with Micaela's attentiveness and knowledge. I'm not putting up this information as an ad, by the way, just informational in case you decide to try them out.

They did video analysis of our running (ok, brisk walk) to see how our pronation was. I had self-diagnosed with over-pronating a couple of years ago, and the video confirmed it. My wife is actually almost perfectly neutral. We each tried on several pair of shoes, different brands and stability levels, I settled on a Mizuno Inspire 8, my wife got something unpronouncable in Nike. We also got some non-cotton socks to go with our new shoes.

My intention is to go out and run/jog/trot/speedwalk around the block at night after the kids are in bed. I failed to try last night, for which I have several excuses, none very valid.

This morning, my weight on the scale is 267.0. Time to get back to business of getting that number down again.

037 267.0

Still paying the price of slacking off for the last week and a half. 267 is a disappointing number, even though it's still 11 pounds lower than I started. I had hoped to be down 16 pounds by now at 2 pounds per week average.

Still, down is better than up.

Keep 

Calm 

and 

Count 

Calories 

...or something.

036 A New Hope

Yesterday started a new dedication to getting back on track.

Then I went out to the bar with my wife - one of the very common things we used to do that has become extremely rare - and had 2 Guinness. We've become teetotalers since the kids were born, it's quite sad.

After the bar, I was starving since I didn't eat dinner before the kids went to bed, so I stopped at Jack-in-the-box. Sourdough Jack burgers are my cryptonite right now. And curly fries.

So, went over the calorie budget, but it was worth it.

I can't believe I have a hangover after 2 beers, though...

028 to 035 - Slacking Off and Giving In

Ever since I took a simple comment personally on Facebook, one that wasn't at all out of place, but just rubbed me wrong, I've lost a lot of motivation.

I talked myself out of logging food. I haven't been drinking nearly enough water. I have been more sedentary than usual. I even hid the feed for the weight loss group my sister-in-law runs on Facebook so that I wouldn't need to watch all of their successes and such.

Then, yesterday was Superbowl, and I started indulging in Bad Things even the night before: Entenmen's donuts, Pringles with sour cream ranch dip, and several pints of beer. Plus eggs and waffles and bacon and sausage, etc.

I've gained back 4 pounds since the last week in January.

Time to get back on the wagon. Fire up the LoseIt app and get to work.

024 Maintaining

My mantra seems to be: not enough water yesterday, finished under calories, didn't do enough exercise.

Gotta change that somehow.

Errata from yesterday: Typo'd the weight. Wrote 256.6 when it should have been 265.6. I didn't suddenly lose 12 pounds.

Calories: -1054
Burned: 3065
Steps: 2281
H2O: 52 oz
Weight: 265.6

023 Making Progress it Seems

My sister-in-law said something the other day that made a bit of sense to me. She said that she was eating too few calories for too many days in a row, and needed to break the budget to surprise her metabolism for a minute.

Based on that, I decided to say yes to a hamburger from Jack-in-the-box last night. Just a sourdough cheeseburger with bacon, and a small curly fries, that's all. I broke my budget by less than 100 calories, but got it back in burned calories from my steps during the day.

I felt like I'd splurged and eaten an entire weeks's worth of fast food in that one sitting. How perspective changes.

Calories: -340
Burned: 3078
Steps: 2038
H2O: 72 oz
Weight: 256.6

022 Still Going in the Right Direction

Weight still going down, even though I didn't drink enough water yesterday and had 2 sandwiches near midnight.

Calories: -26
Burned: 2528
Steps: 2868
H2O: 48 oz
Weight: 267.4

021 In the Hunt

Nothing super exciting happened. I spent the day stressing about some online assessment tests I had to take for possible job placement. Ended up exceeding their expectations, so that's good. Interview went well.

Finished the day with about 50% of my calories left, so I blew them on some whole wheat waffles around midnight - I was starving!

Calories: -753
Burned: 3080
Steps: 1634
H2O: 20 oz
Weight: 267.6

019 H2Oh-No

Still having trouble with water intake. I just don't like the (lack of) taste of it, and powdered flavorants (made up that word) just trigger my IBS. Maybe some lemon would help...

Calories: -709
Burned: 2488
Steps: 2743
H2O: 20 oz
Weight: 269.0

018 A No Care Day

Spent the afternoon with my family looking at books.

First we went to the local public library. Pretty disappointing selection of computer and technology books, and their new categorization scheme, organizing by subject, left much to be desired when looking for something as specific as web development books.

Then we went to a Cracker Barrel for lunch. I wasn't impressed by their food, but my wife has been craving fried okra, which is nearly impossible to find here in Phoenix. I was highly annoyed that you're forced to go through their retail store full of candy and breakables at toddler-height in order to get to the restaurant. Then the menu was just meh to me. Generic schlock that you would expect from any Applebee's or their ilk. I had a 1/2 pound bacon cheeseburger, and I have no idea how many calories I consumed between that and the "steak fries".

Then we hit up Barnes and Noble. I got a book on HTML5 and CSS3, and a magazine from the UK with "22 Projects" to try out using HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc. The book I was really looking for, "HTML5 for Masterminds" wasn't there, but the one I got is pretty high up on my list of books I wanted after that. The kids each got a book, but my wife didn't look at anything for herself. She's going to go spend some time there alone today.

After that, I get to take down the xmas lights. Yay.

I don't have any numbers to report from yesterday, but my weight, which is still 268.0.