JJanet

My body loves all this keto food! My skin is SO clear, my hair is SO shiny and smooth… I am just in awe of how my body is responding to the change in my diet! As a bit of an experiment, I am seeing how my body responds to intermittent fasting (IF). What I am doing is just having my evening meal between 6-8, and fasting until the next evening. Because the keto foods are so calorie dense, I am able to eat my daily calories (minus small deficit) within that short time period. This is day 3, and here are some pros and cons that I have experienced so far:

PROS:

- REDUCED HUNGER! I am SO much less hungry having one meal a day as opposed to the 4-6 I would have on an average day! If I ever missed one of my smaller, more frequent meals, I would turn into a raging, angry beast! So I never thought this sort of eating would be sustainable, but the lack of hunger is nothing short of a miracle!

- The prep work!! OMG!!! The dishes, pans, pots, tupperware, cooking, cleaning… SLASHED! I LOVE IT!

CONS:

- I get dizzy when I stand up too quickly - I have always had this problem, but it seems to be a greater issue with the fasting.

- I don’t eat as many veggies as I would like (2 cups/day versus 6 cups) because of their volume to calorie ratio. I am thinking of cooking up my spinach so it’s not quite as filling. Anyone have a good spinach recipe for me?

That’s it for now. I am planning on doing IF for the next 3.5 weeks. Whenever I have a social obligation, I will move the eating window to whenever the event takes place! I’m interested to see how my body composition and strength responds to these changes in eating windows, as well as the Keto.

I am supplementing with the following:

- Xtend

- Orange Triad Multivitamin/Joint Support/Digestive Enzymes

- Fish Oil

- Krill Oil

If anyone has ever experiemented with IF, I would love to hear about your experience, both positive and negative!

HIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!! Life kept me on my toes for the past little while. I had to really prioritize my life and decide what I could expend my energy on, and with how completely ADDICTING I find this site, I had to cut it from my list. But I missed it and missed YOU (you know who you guys are! *big awkward asian hug*). I will try and peek in on your lives.

I must renege on a goal I had previously stated I would do at the end of August - the one about putting up a full progress picture. LOL. Yes yes, roll your eyes at me. I haven’t pushed myself hard enough in my workouts, and when I look at myself, I do NOT see progress. So NO PROGRESS PICTURE! But, I am making some changes so I can expect different results! I am doing a keto (SKD) style diet right now. The macro breakdown of this diet is 65f/30p/5c. Mine is slightly modified to allow for more cruciferous vegetables, so it’s more like 60f/25f/15c. My carb sources are spinach, green beans, brocolli, and the minimal amounts from eggs, hard/soft cheeses, and other miscellaneous contributors.

It’s been 10 days since I started this diet, and I LOVE IT!!!!!!! I have TONS of energy! I don’t crave carbs at ALL! Which is a HUGE thing for me because words cannot describe how much I simply ADORE my CHO’s! I am also finding it MUCH easier to eat socially  without feeling like a leper. WOOHOO! I will be eating this way at least until the end of October - possibly longer depending on how I feel. Some people do carb-ups on this diet (12-36 hour period where you fill up on carbs). I’m still on the fence about this, so until I see a ‘need’ for it, I’m just going to continue with the macros that I have. Sooooo… maybe a progress picture at the end of October. Maybe I’ll have actual PROGRESS to show by then!

I’d love to hear from anyone who has also gone through a similar type of diet and what sorts of results/experiences they had!

I am stressed right now. I want to eat emotionally to comfort myself tonight. Is there a way to eat emotionally in a healthy way? Or is it always unhealthy to emotionally eat?

I don’t want to blog about the particular reasons I am stressed. They won’t make sense here and will require more explanation than I am willing to give. But. I’m stressed. I know this moment will pass, and I’ll be over this issue in the future, but it just really sucks right now.

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?p=184616351#post184616351

Check out this contest!! As far as I’m concerned, they’re ALL winners for making and posting a video clip of themselves like that! But I am rooting for one meanie in particular.

Okay, I’m a big cheater. :p I don’t want to take a full progress shot! And I don’t think I want to take it in a week, either! I look pretty much like that last bikini shot I took in April. I cannot BEAR to call it ‘progress’ when it is more of a ‘regress’! LOL!!!! So I cheated. Here’s my quad.

My forearm is getting that tell-tale hollowed out look when I am leaning out. Yay? I wish it would take the fat off of my STOMACH instead of my already skinny forearms. LOL! I am only a few pounds away from when I was my leanest in early April, but it definitely looks different this time around. I thought I added some muscle to my frame so I was anticipating looking more musclar at a slightly higher weight, but for some reason, it looks like I have even LESS than I did that first time! I see this particularly in my abs. Eh. I’m not going to worry too much about it because I know I am eating right, I geared my workouts towards leaning out, and all other areas of fitness are in line with my goals, so onwards I go! No room for hesitations or second guessing now!

I did something really tough yesterday. I wrote an email to my sister and brother in law, and aired out some of my grievances with them that I had been keeping in for a few years. It was sooooo hard to press the send button. But send it, I did. And I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. That is, until I saw their reply this morning. It was something along the lines of, "We got your email. We are thinking of how to respond to you. Later."

Ugggh. That was SO not the response I was hoping for. This is my first real confrontation with my family, and I feel SO much anxiety over it, it’s not even funny!!! I am crossing my fingers that a week from now, I will look back on this and think of how awesome it was for me to do something that is so out of my comfort zone. I wish it was next week already, and I could be away from all this tension…

I’ve been taking a lot of classes at the gym lately to help with the cardio minutes (so that I can smoke bull-dogz in our cardio contest! hehehe!), and I’ve really been enjoying the spinning classes. It’s a fun way to make 60 minutes pass by in a flash, and forces me to work in intervals instead of my usual steady state sessions. But damn, sitting on that seat makes for a sore tush. At the end of today’s class, there were a few women standing by their bikes, discussing how wearing biking shorts alleviates a bit of the discomfort, and I asked one of them where she got the bike shorts she had on…

… and it turned out that she was not wearing any bike shorts.

She was really offended at my assumption. Yes, yes, ass, u, me.

Oops.

She hissed out, "I’m NOT wearing biking shorts. This", while gesturing towards her butt, "is EXACTLY why I’m GOING to these classes!". She sent me a glare that had me wishing I could blend into the walls, and she and her friend sent me one last withering glance before they left.

LOL. I felt SUPER horrible. But LMAO!! Why do I say the dumbest things to people?

My fellow bloggers! I can’t believe May is already here! My goal for this month is to make a combined total of 40 workouts with this Bloke’s help! I tracked the exact number of days I was at the gym for the past few months and decided I needed the numbers to be higher and more consistent! So we’ll see how this goes! My diet has been sorta kinda clean. But not really. Okay, it’s sucked the big turd since I got back from Vegas. ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT, if I must be completely honest. It sucked for ALL of April. *cringes*. Hehehehehe. But that’s changing now! May WILL be a month of GREAT nutrition.

Maybe.

I was talking to one of my closest friends. She lives abroad so our phone conversations are far and few in between because of the time difference. But anyway, we were gabbing like girls do, and I was marveling to her how NICE I think people are! For example, it was raining earlier, and I didn’t bring an umbrella (I never do - it doesn’t really bother me when I get a bit wet!), but this guy who was in the front area of the gym went out of his way to walk me to my car covering me with his umbrella. HOW NICE is that? So I was telling her that sometimes it amazes me how kind people are.

She rolled her eyes at me. (I COULD TELL!!!) And she was like, “Don’t be so intentionally stupid, Janet. He probably had NO kind intentions whatsoever, and was probably using it as an opportunity to talk to you and get to know you better.”

EH. So I ROLLED my eyes right back at her (And I know SHE could tell, too! Hehehe!), and said that I wasn’t about to assume that any time a guy did something kind for me, it was because he found me attractive. How stuck on myself would I be to assume that? It reminded me of fair Pixi’s entry about the dude and the email and stuff. I mean, I’m not a complete idiot, and sometimes they make it clear that they are interested in me, but other times when it’s just kind gestures like that, to me, that’s just human kindness.

It makes me wonder how hesitent people must be to do something kind for somebody else because their intentions will be misunderstood. For instance, I have taken to smiling at people all the time these days. Men, women, children. Men almost always smile back. Women seem to smile back about half the time, and the other half of the time, they turn away and avoid me. Children always smile back or glance away shyly, but I notice their mothers often seem to think I have other intentions or something! Sheesh, people! It’s just a smile!

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. A kind gesture is JUST a kind gesture. I would prefer to think people are good and kind rather than think they are interested in me. Does that make me intentionally stupid? Who knows. I’m just going to keep smiling.

I am a Whole Foods Junkie. There is little I enjoy more than heading into this wonderful little market and getting lost in the beautiful and vast array of organic and wholesome products. I have come across three products in the last week that are worth mentioning.

My first one: Z Sweet

It is an artificial sweetner called Erythritol that is in the sugar alcohol family. If you ever indulged in a cup or two of some ice cream sweetened with sugar alcohols like sorbitol or maltitol, you’re probably already familiar with the effects of such a seemingly carefree treat! That’s right. Gas. Horrible. Wretched. Putrid. Gas. And if you took a third helping… God help you. Not that I would know anything about this or anything.

*Darts eyes*.

Yes, my friends! Sugar alcohols are the only sweetners that I have ever tasted that mimic the taste of sugar closely enough for me to be fooled! But they also contain a decent calorie punch, and the gastronomical effects it had on me was definitely NOT worth the sweet treat. But Erythritol is different! It is one of the few sugar alcohols that do not carry those horrible side effects as it digests in a different way than its other relatives. Better than that, it TASTES like sugar!! It completely ROCKS in the few things I have put it in… the one exception to this being hot chocolate. It tasted really foul in there, for some reason. So if you ever on the lookout for a new ingredient to bring some sweetness into your food, I highly recommend Zsweet!

 My next product: Xanthan Gum

I completely adore all of Bob’s Red Mill’s product line! But this one was a new one for me! Xanthan gum is a polysaccharide (a multi-stranded sugar unit) that is used to thicken liquids. I LOVE this one because it has 35 calories per spoon, and all of it’s calories come from dietary fibre! YAY!! No more corn starch or flours for me! I have been successful with using it in a few soups and shakes, but be careful! A little goes a LONG way! Definitely a buy-again in my books!

The third one was something I thought would replace the salt in my diet: Nu-Salt.

It has the flavor of salt, the texture of salt, all without the SODIUM of salt! It is a Potassium Chloride instead of a Sodium Chloride. Sounds too good to be true, yes??!!

Umm. YESSSS!!!!

It is vile. VILE I SAY. I had to throw out all the chicken that I made that I trustingly sprinkled with my new best friend. HORRIBLE. AVOID AT ALL COSTS. In a salt survey, it is the only salt (or salt substitute) that scored a negative 1.02 out of a possible 10 points.

LOL!!

Soooo… I know I don’t have the best track record with recommending good recipes. LOL! But I made some low-carb waffles that were just delicious to a carb-deprived person like myself! I am not a HUGE chocolate person, but  I had a zazzle for it and came up with:

Chocolate Raspberry Waffles

- 1 scoop of ON Vanilla Casein, 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder, 2 tablespoons of Ghiradelli unsweetened ground cocoa, 4 egg whites, and enough water to make it the appropriate waffle-like batter.

It made 12 mini-waffles, and 6 was enough for me! I mixed 1/4 cup of sugar free syrup with some raspeberries, drizzled it over it, and YUM! I sneakingly fed it to an unknowing friend to get their unbiased opinion. It got a resounding "YUM!" from them. They had no idea it had no flour in it!

The macros for 12 mini waffles comes out to: 250 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, 9 grams of carbs, and 49 grams of protein!! If you make the raspberry syrup, throw in another 50 cals.

And a picture of my masterpiece.