Today I ate the delicious edamame quinoa salad (from Sprouts) leftover beet soup, turkey and cheese and then gourmet Sprouts meatballs for lunch.

The exciting part was the energy I now have throughout the day and I don't truly experience hunger anymore, maybe for a moment but after the first bite it's gone.

The more exciting thing is finding my mental self again. I've been on fast food and carbs for so long (about a year) that I had forgotten what it felt like to be this mentally there. Thoughts come quicker and make more sense, even creativity is flowing back more and more.

I had thought I needed therapy to cure this lull and self dislike but the self confidence is coming back too, without me actually looking any different.

Kicking Food Cravings

Today was brilliant. I woke up at 7 AM with a full pot of energy and it lasted for the entire day, even now it feels like there are hours left and usually I’ve been blinky eyes and stretchlady for the rest of this diet right about now. I had leftover beet and chicken soup, as well as mashed cauliflower, half an avocado and a turkey and cheese wrap for the day’s food. There were no cravings for carbs or sugar, or even food for that matter. I ate my dinner happily, without even being hungry for it but just knowing it was food time, and haven’t been hungry since, or really even thought about food. It finally feels like this diet is starting to work.

So it’s been hard to find a tea that doesn’t have sugar in it but that I don’t have to personally steep, and I found one at Sprouts, Tejava, and it’s delicious. If you haven’t tried unsweet tea before know that it can be a shocking and aggressive taste at first so please give it two or three chances.

For a good job self treat I had some dark chocolate (at least 60% cocoa) and after eating it I didn’t even want more, it’s as though food is losing it’s power to make me crave it or be controlled by it at all. I love this.

Oh, I also talked to my mom about the diet today and it turns out she’s on it too and is going to send me tons of information on it (apparently she’s been told a different way to go about the diet, such as you can (if you must) eat carbs right after you work out because they’ll burn off and...other stuff I can’t remember at the moment, I think she’s going to send me recipes...

tldr; the diet finally feels amazing

Time for BPC

Yesterday was my first day to work double shifts at work, meaning that all food had to be packed and there was no going back, (I live twenty two miles away, so home is never an option for lunch break). I made a large breakfast of two eggs and two pieces of bacon, but took Archer out (my dog) for his morning business and came back to half of it eaten by Texas (Brennan’s dog). More pissed than usual, as breakfast mattered today, I made my salad and glared at Texas every chance I got. I put a salad of roasted tomato, ham, roast beef, spinach, cabbage, feta cheese and olives together, then drizzled red wine vinaigrette (Annie’s) over it. On the side tupperware container there was mashed cauliflower leftovers. For drinkage I had tea with coconut oil in it. I've been wanting to get coconut oil for a while, as a lot of people recommend it and it’s in the newest health movement as a staple. It is recommended to put it in tea or coffee, but I didn’t have time to make hot tea and just threw it into my cold tea on hand, hoping that once it warmed I could shake it up into the tea…I was wrong. Turns out the tea or coffee has to be really hot or the oil just floats.

So I was thirsty and drank the green tea with coconut oil blobs on top, and it just tasted like coconut tea (surprisingly delicious really) and decided to just chew up a blog of coconut oil like tapioca pearls in boba tea. The taste was fantastic (sweet and yet buttery) and felt very full too, even the texture was the right amount of firm and chewy. Because of this full feeling (one I had been missing since the diet but for right after eating an avocado or hummus, and those don't taste nearly as good). I chewed a few blobs up and wound up eating two tablespoons of coconut oil in about two to three hours. Ruled.me recommends about two hours your first time while your body adjusts, as you'll be peeing a lot. This may have been fine if it were not for the sugar in the tea (probably too much for the diet, sorry) but the fullness did not feel good as it came with nausea, especially when I had to hold a baby against my stomach (at work).

The times I felt starving pretty much only occurred when I feared starving and having nothing to eat, pretty sure instinct just kicked in and said to eat now or die (like I’m a cavewoman whose man might soon die and I’ll be left to eat rocks or dirt/grass depending on my luck).

It turns out that I did not make a big enough salad (imagine one of those super small tupperware containers and that’s what it fit in). For some reason it seemed as though putting tons of shit in it would work….I was wrong. But! It’s a blog so I’m allowing bad grammar at times that it is convenient and or I just want to do so. But I did find this excellent juice bar that served up a delicious beet and kale juice (called energy boost which sounded perfect). I asked them if they had anything without carbs to eat and realized that I was now one of “those people” and very quickly flushed red. I wanted to back away saying nevermind I’m not hungry, but it was too late. He looked at me funny and said, “without carbs”? as though he didn’t know what carbs were. You would think a freaky health juice place knew how to deal with health freaks and their lingo, but I explained I just wanted something without bread or potatoes that wasn’t salad. He started to look frustrated at me for being so weird and not just eating bread so I threw out a suggestion...a sandwich just without the bread, and we both looked at each other with the same “no way” look and I said it would be boring, he agreed and we were on the same normal page. He wound up suggesting eggs and I spinach so I had eggs and spinach for $5. There was a really hard mental battle with the chocolate chip cookies at work, and I slipped and hit a cookie rock. I made a super tiny one and it honestly tasted gross and unsatisfying, plus the disappointment in myself left a gross aftertaste.

I should clarify that I work at a daycare and wind up making dinner for them: corn dogs, chicken nuggets, quesadillas, pizza, bagel bites or macaroni and cheese, without a tray of cookies. There are always leftovers that we're allowed to eat...it gets hard some days as I had the corn dogs before Keto..and one after, and they're delicious.

Overall though I did make it through the day without getting too hungry and even could have gone to sleep without eating, but wound up eating a sandwich (cheese for a "bun" and then ordering BBQ wings at 10 PM from Wingstop….oops.

Oddity I have noticed, my breath is tasting pretty bad, I read about this occurrence just yesterday, so it’s either a knowledge effect or I’m truly starting to enter Ketosis(apparently when the bad breath starts).

tldr; felt pretty full all day and didn’t feel faint again/more consistent energy

Keto Weakness

I had a headache in the morning but it was abated by water. I’m drinking more and more water every day but also getting more thirsty every day. Either eating this way makes you thirsty or my body is getting used to water and loving it so much it wants more. The second is probably the answer.

Other than the awesome dinner I just had handfuls of spinach, a yogurt and some ham with cheese and almond wrapped inside it for the beginning of the day eating. Oddly enough I felt weak often today, to the point of wanting to just lay down, it was really disappointing considering it felt like I was getting better and wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore since discovering the leafy greens and salt. Le sad face.

A decision was made to add some flavor and variety to what was becoming a really boring diet, (and to get my boyfriend more excited and less sad faced over this new food path). I made mashed cauliflower and beet and chicken soup. The soup was far more tedious work than imagined as beets are bitches to cut up. The recipe artist suggests getting small soft ones but I only read that after I had already bought three pretty large ones, they also stain your hands red. The mashed cauliflower was really easy to make and pretty delicious but needed more pepper than originally given.

Honestly, mashed cauliflower is smoother and has a better consistent texture to it than potatoes. You know how you reheat mashed potatoes and there’s always that cold bit to it? Or they are perfect heat and in five minutes it’s a cold plate of hard lost love? Cauliflower doesn’t do this, it’s just soothing and loves to be eaten.

tldr; felt really weak a lot of the day

Veggie Chips for the Almost WIn

So I finally got a bag of veggie chips (this was previously avoided due to fear of suckage),  Snikkidy eat your vegetables sea salt & lime veggie chips to be exact. At first my mouth was very excited by how much flavor they had to them and just wanted to nom nom away, but then they got pretty...well the flavors stuck to my mouth in a pushy manner my mouth did not appreciate. To make it worse I turn the bag over to read the ingredients (yes I know that should have been done at the market) and they went bean blend, dried potatoes...damn. I got so excited by the veggie chips and assumed that since they’re from Sprouts they would be perfect for me, and I might have avoided looking at carbs due to fear I couldn’t have them. It is time to just make kale chips and be done with it.

Today I was hungry all day, no matter how much I ate. When I was actually eating I was already thinking of what to eat next and when I “finished” for twenty minutes I would just think of what to eat for my next kitchen excursion. I think the problem was that I was sick of every option in the fridge and didn’t want to spend money on new food after just getting the chips, but this pretty much meant the meat, cheese, almonds, olives, and now hummus and veggie chips that I have been having since this started. It turns out that too much hummus can also make you feel pretty sick.

For dinner there was bacon and eggs (with cheese and spinach) then I went to sleep soon after. Overall I felt a bit fat but also more active than usual, it was an odd combination, but I didn’t want to work out and feel even more hungry.

tldr; ate a lot but never felt full, energy lasted all day

I read that you’re supposed to have a lot of dark leafy greens on this diet and apparently eat salt or drink vegetable broth since you need to keep your electrolytes up, it can help with the fatigue….wish I had known this sooner, but you should check out the website I learned this from as there’s a lot of good information, http://www.ruled.me/. He (website creator/cookbook maker) has a cookbook out, which you can find on his website, with a 30 day keto diet plan in it. I plan to do this once I can afford it. They look like amazing recipes but require ingredients I just don’t have yet.

Today I had a lot of spinach with ranch and even broccoli, (my least favorite vegetable until I was told to think of them as little trees), and ate salt. There was still a random weak spell around one but overall I felt better and more clear headed.

For dinner we had gourmet meatballs from Sprouts (no bread crumbs) with spinach and a slice of aged white cheddar cheese. I baked them with olive oil and the texture/juiciness was excellent. We had just worked out so Brennan was still hungry after (we just started, I lost a lot of energy near the end and when we got back nearly fell to the floor. I did yoga after to try and stretch away the wooziness but it was pretty hard to hold stretches and it made me slightly nauseous. Overall the feeling of working out on fat energy didn’t feel too different from carb energy, but I did get two and a half miles in and it was the first time.

tldr; ate spinach/salt and had some more energy and mental clarity

It was a day of dizzy spells and weakness, I desperately wanted to cave to carbs and just feel normal again. Don’t judge me please, I was at work and a lot of the reasoning was because I didn’t want to show any weakness to my employer or have to go home early. This test got worse when I was assigned kitchen duties for the evening, and we make fries, corn dogs, chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese and bagel bites, basically carb heaven.

On a sidenote, I have noticed that everything we have is carbs filled, the aforementioned plus cheerios, goldfish and pretzels. About two days ago we had a girl come in that was allergic to wheat and had mostly vegetables packed in her lunchbox. She was the most intelligent and relaxed child I have seen there, and even the most intelligent sounding/acting. How different would kids be if they stopped eating all of these carbs and had this sustaining fat energy? Kids might even have less symptoms of ADHD and be less hyper. I might care more than most people reading this though since I have to deal with their energy at such a constant rate throughout the week.

Instead of giving into carbland I ate my salad, turkey and cheese wrap, and came home to little hamburgers with melted cheese (breadless of course). We had the grass fed beef and it was succulent to the point I licked my lips after every bite. The cheese actually added a really nice layer of stickiness and flavor that I’ve never with bread on top of it.  

Today I also realized how much more you can taste your food without the bread in the way. Bread and potatoes just stifle taste, they generally need something added to have flavor anyways and we use so much of it to hold the food, i.e. quesadillas and sandwiches, that we have to make up for it with more meat or cheese or what have you. Bread also stifles the texture out of dishes. Think about when you eat a salad, how you can taste every single flavor even when you have lettuce in your mouth, and just how much you can feel the texture of every bit in it: cranberries, pecans, cheese, mushrooms and so much  more. Tomatoes both get a crunch and juice sploosh while eggs get their soft roundness to them, you don’t get nearly as many texture feelings when they’re in a sandwich or burger.

tldr; dizzy spells and realized food tastes better without the bread

So I’m a tea drinker, as in I know how to steep it and the right temperature and proper amount of time as well as care about the tea leaves being loose and fancy free. Because of this I have a lot of tea and drink a pot of it at a time. Usually this can make me feel a bit weak from caffeine overload until I drink enough water (apparently you should have three cups of water for every cup of caffeine). Today I just had the tea...bad idea. To absorb the tea weakness food wise (takes a bit for the water to reach me) I usually eat fries or whatever it is I used to just grab (I’m forgetting more and more what I ate before keto even though it wasn't that long ago), and for some reason fats did not have the exact same effect. Instead of the usual instant happiness I got from the carbs, I just felt nauseous from the fats and caffeine in my body. I sat down for at least thirty minutes but still felt gross when I stood up and it lasted a few hours. To guess it was probably due the body changes of fats plus the water and caffeine all at once, body overload.

For eating today there was eggs/bacon for breakfast, turkey and cheese wrap for lunch and stuffed crab with edamame and a quinoa salad on the side at dinnertime. I was hungry a lot today but didn’t want to overeat in case my body is just adjusting to the new ways and overeating might get me sick. On keto you're also supposed to eat until you're full and not over it, 80% full is the actual phrasing for it but who has a body calculator for percentage of fullness?

tldr; nauseous from fat and tea overload

Blah Day

Yesterday Brennan got sick and I made him my famous potatoes for the quick energy. It has been really hard to give up making these (as it’s one of the few dishes I consider signatures of mine, especially since I’ve experimented with it to the point it’s perfect). What you do is pour some oil into the pan and wait for it to get a bit warm, toss in about ¾ of an onion and let the slices glisten, then add the garlic. I add lots of onion because I love them but you can do less and it won’t take away from the magic. After that toss in the potatoes (chopped pretty small for thorough cooking) and chopped carrots. If you like crispy potatoes slice them as small as you can and just make sure they don't burn. Carrots and potatoes are the must haves but otherwise you can add squash, pepper, green beans, or okra. There are probably more veggies or food that you can try but those are my favorite. Once those have cooked on medium high for about fifteen minutes add about three tablespoons of red wine or a third of a cup of beer, dried basil, pepper, salt, 2 teaspoons of brown sugar and pecans. If you add too much brown sugar it can get sticky. Then, cover the pan and turn down the heat to medium low and let it all meld together for thirty minutes to an hour. This is the tricky part, you want all of it to cook at least thirty minutes without the wine/beer drying up because it can burn it, but you can’t add too much or it will just taste like alcohol. What I do is gently add oil when it gets close or maybe a bit of wine, but it’s just an experiment of taste or death at that point. So in the gist I cheated and ate my potatoes...and they were delicious.

After that I felt bad and really stuck to the diet the rest of the day with vegetables, a smoothie, and bacon/turkey. The potatoes gave me more energy than I'd had in a while and made Brennan feel loads better as well, (had been feeling weak and nauseous).

 tldr; cheated and then reconverted 

The thing I haven’t mentioned, up to this point, is that I’m getting my boyfriend, Brennan, to go on this adventure with me (I’ll be the flame princess since I have red hair and he can be Jake with his blonde hair). It’s a bit harder for him since he isn’t a health freak and has been eating far too much fast food ever since I’ve known him, and far before that. To get this diet started for him we attempted Dr. Oz's Two-Week Rapid Weight-Loss Plan and from it I kept the warm lemon water and fruit smoothie. The smoothie has helped him because it tends to fill you up for a while and tastes pretty good. If you try it make sure to put in the powder and flax seeds in at the end so they don’t get stuck in the blender (recipe is found through the link).

So today I had the smoothie, eggs with cheese, onion and bacon, then tried gluten free macaroni and cheese. It turns out that means rice noodles. So I get this all boiling like normal macaroni, and it looks normal until I pour it into the strainer. The noodles just deflated, basically went flat, and they stuck to the pan. I was disappointed with the initial visual but was hungry and willing to eat anything at that point, and they were the most edible thing in vicinity. The taste really wasn’t bad, almost delicious, but I began to feel sick halfway through and stopped eating them for a bit. After about ten minutes of sitting out they were cold and stuck together, so I tried to reheat them. Don’t reheat rice noodles...in fact just avoid rice noodles if you can.

I had a lot of moments throughout the day where I just felt weak and wanted to go to sleep, there were even a few blood rushes (where you get dizzy from standing up too fast and even see black squares sometimes, the are briefly overcome with an I want to faint right now feeling). Overall I’m not too excited by this diet right now.

tldr; blech food and blech feelings

Day Two in Keto Land

I wish I had more exciting news for the day but I really just avoided the breadzone and had Smashburger without the bun. Smashburger is the place I used a preparation for my entering into Keto land. Basically I took a week to eat potatoes and bread and cupcakes in a last meal type of way, making them taste even better, so I could tell the exact difference between bread and no bread. The burger is the avocado club and it tastes fantastic with bread, without it they think I don’t want the sauce either for some reason and the avocado was hard and watery...took the wind right out of my sails. So I cheated and ate fries in defiance...then felt really bad after.

Let’s just say my first day was definitely how the average person would do on this diet.

I’ll try harder I swear it.

The First Day's Adventure

So yesterday was...less fun than I thought it would be. I decided to just jump into this by cutting out sugar and bread and potatoes, which meant I had what was in my fridge...which was meat and cheese really. I went out and got avocados and spinach for snacks so that added but I still felt weak and hungry most of the day, except while I was eating.

Other than food I had a pot of green tea *happy slurping sounds*. Thankfully I didn't have work so the weakness only sucked when I got up for the TV remote or that quick run to Wally World.

tldr: felt weak and hungry

Thesis of my Keto Adventure

Hello lovely people. I am embarking on the latest health fad, not to lose weight (that might kill me as I'm a tiny person), but to lay the groundwork for my forever eating habits. I am a 5'3" 105 pound female that loves the feeling of being healthy. Since being little I stole the spinach from my brother's plate and ate anything my parent's said was good for me...it was weird, but because of this young oddity I can generally tell how what I eat affects me, both stomach fluctuation wise and the general bodily feeling it causes. The best feeling my body has gone through, up to this point, came from a week of eating mostly fruit with some cheese and meat thrown it, but apparently the keto diet wants you to avoid fruit since it has a lot of sugar in it. The hardest part will be getting rid of fruit as it generally gives me the most energy and I love the flavor of all of the fruit my mouth knows about.

My main little diet growing up was fruit and cheese with lunch meat, fish or steak. I did/do have a vice though, (even Superman has kryptonite), and that is potatoes. They taste fantastic baked, mashed, fried and even better with butter and bacon. Potato chips usually made my mouth the happiest and body the least happy from the sudden energy that quickly left and with it left acne.

In college I fell away from my healthy ways a bit as they were expensive and I didn't have a pot or...stove. I ate at the cafeteria or whatever place on campus had food I could swipe my ID for. I didn't really gain weight, since I went to the gym often, but definitely lost mental prowess and had a general sluggish attitude after a while, this feeling worsened as time passed. There was even a point I ate cupcakes every day as the cupcake shop was only a block away. If you live in Lubbock, TX though go there because they're amazing, Peace O' Cake is the place. Then some badass came out with The Choc'Late Mouse, which was this amazing hole in the wall (now it's a giant hole in the middle of the floor) restaurant that makes you feel like you're Paris at a very intimate coffee shop.  You walk in to cello or violin or jazz music playing gently, and then walk up to this bar where you are greeted by a sign with tons of mousse flavors (like key lime, rocky road and chocolate) that comes with a crust, which also had tons of varieties. They even have this decadent hot chocolate that's thick and smooth all at the same time. So...a lot of sugar entered me and barely waved goodbye before the next one.

So now I am 22 and want to get back to being healthy as well as establish my body into an eating plan that can last into the years I'm supposed to get fat. Keto sounds lovely because it cuts out carbohydrates, which is basically sugar, and replaces it with fats and protein. It honestly makes more sense than any other diet I have heard of (and I've never tried other diets because of that). The other main factor is reading about, and knowing, people that have been on this diet for years and still swear by it. From what I've seen of diets people usually only last a day to maybe two years and generally stick closer to the three weeks or less mark, it's like college but without far, far less good endings.

 The world has accepted that white bread is sugar and only good for quick energy bursts that leave you hungry and makes you fat, but still needs to accept grains and carbs are not the way to go. The problem is people just substituted white bread for wheat and moved on with their lives. Keto is harder, we have almond bread to live on but it's not made in mass amounts and found at a bakery just yet so it requires more work, and then tells us we can't have cupcakes.

From what I have read the weeks of switching from normal to keto diet causes fatigue and headaches and nausea...let's find out.

For some general Keto information check out Reddit's wiki faq