Keto Grinder

I'm currently on Day 4 of a nine day cruise with Royal Caribbean.  This is a normal cruise and not a special "keto" cruise.  I have been on several cruises in the past, but they were all pre-keto and very carb laden.  I never turned down desert or bread previously.  Now I'm looking at the dining options through a new lens, with low-carb high-fat eating as the goal.  I'm also still practicing time restricted eating, eating only lunch and dinner.

I did a 3 day fast on prior to leaving including one day of airline travel.  My intent is not to fast again until after the vacation.  The last couple of days I've been struggling. I haven't intentionally eaten anything that isn't keto approved.  But I think there must be  some hidden carbs.  For example, one of my go to meals when I'm dining out is a burger with mayonnaise.   This gives me a low carb option with some extra fat.  However they used Heinz mayonnaise on the ship.  The third ingredient is corn …

The Minnesota Ketonians meetup group held our latest meetup on April 7, 2018.  Thanks to Brenda Zorn we were treated to an impromptu Facebook video drop-in by the 2 Keto Dudes, Carl Franklin and Richard Morris.  Carl and Richard were busy hosting a mini Ketofest in New London, Connecticut.  Given that most of us are fans of the podcast it was pretty cool to be able to interact with them.  We were able to say hello and Brenda mentioned we were just talking about the possibility of hosting our own mini Ketofest in the Minnesota area.

I'm really intrigued by the idea of helping others find and succeed at keto.  That's why I helped start the meetup group and part of the reason why I write this blog.  And if we could successfully pull off a mini Ketofest, that could potentially help many more people.  The more people hear of keto and the more mainstream it becomes, the more likely the people with metabolic syndrome will try the diet.  And they are the people that need to find the d…

I've been noticing how uneven the weight seems to be coming off of my body.  I'm around 235 pounds now, for about 160 pounds lost over all.  However I think my body looks quite different from the way it did as I was gaining weight.

The further away from the core of my body, the thinner I am.  My hands, forearms, and calves all look to be at about my ideal body fat.  As you move inward my upper arms and thighs have a little bit of fat (and some extra skin too) on them.  And once you get to my gut I have plenty of excess fat.

I've heard anecdotally that my body may re-balance over time.  I hope so, because I'd like to lose more of my belly fat.  I'm unsure how much is fat vs excess skin.  I'm also hoping my fasting will help promote autophagy which will reduce the amount of excess skin.  However, I'm unclear on whether the science supports either of these ideas.

This isn't an earth shattering revelation, but I thought it was an interesting anecdote.  We…

My wife remarked that it seems unfair that weight just falls off me like water off a ducks back while she has to fight to lose weight.  And she does have a point. I do believe there are differences between men and women when it comes to weight loss.  It seems to me that women's systems are more complex than men's and there are more hormones that need to be regulated.  However, it doesn't seem to me like my weight just falls off.  So I decided to look at some data.

This morning, April 1, 2018, I woke up at 233 pounds.  That makes a 164 pound loss from my starting weight of 397 pounds on November 1, 2016.  Over the 516 days on keto it is an average of 0.32 pounds per day or 2.2 pounds per week.  This falls inline with the common wisdom that a person can lose about 2 pounds a week in a healthy manner.

But sometimes it seems like I back track or lose weight very quickly, so I decided to look a little closer at the numbers.  I have recorded my weight almost every morning since …