Amazing Keto Results

Yes it's only been 6 days since I decided to get 'serious' about cutting carbs. I pulled a Keto grocery list from my files last week and went shopping. There wasn't a lot of difference in what I bought except a few important things were not bought. Things like pasta, oatmeal, sugar, nothing in a package. For a while now I have been eating steak, chicken with the skin on it and salmon. That did not change this week.

Also these numbers are honest numbers. I never cheat when taking my weight or measurements, something I have been doing every month since I retired in April 2015 while escaping from all the soda machines, fast foods and Friday morning pastries.

I also followed Paleo's owner carb limit instead of the low 20g limit by Keto standards. He raised it to 50g per day. My spreadsheet shows me after six days of eating I am averaging 41g of carbs per day. That's good enough for me and a HUGE difference than just a few weeks ago.

Since first thing last Saturday morning to first thing this morning (after the hounds were fed), I've lost 5 pounds !!! I also lost 2" around my stomach. Yes, hard to believe but I'm only comparing what I wrote down last Saturday morning when I felt fat. I know this will not be the normal weekly loss. I know that a lot of it may be just water weight. Yet, the numbers don't lie.

Some slight differences that may have been a factor in this much change ... no sugar in my coffee until Wednesday morning but yesterday and this morning's coffee was back to black, no sugar. No plate full of pasta. No double portions of cooked oatmeal with sugar added for breakfast or a snack. No sugar added to my 1c of frozen berries. No David's organic bread with butter and jam. No bananas or apples. No almonds.

I did finish the book I was reading about a family of four taking a year off from any kind of sugar, with a few days scattered where they could cheat on that plan. Bottom line that after that year they returned to eating foods with sugar in it but at the same time they stayed away from a lot of the foods that contain sugar, especially fructose. Fresh fruit is almost all fructose but with the fiber and micronutrients the fruit has, she said that would balance out the fructose and it would be okay to eat fresh fruit. But they did not and no longer drink any kind of fruit juice.

She found that using dextrose was a great healthy substitute for sugar when she baked cookies, cakes or pies. She did have some good recipes at the end of her book. I will not be so strict but at the same time I will not be eating french fries with ketchup or even plain french fries. I have been craving burritos lately though.  :)

As you will see, Stella decided the longer she walked, climbing that 47' of elevation, the path was getting wetter and she didn't like getting her paws wet. She spent most of the walk next to the path but not on the path after this next photo.

After finishing that book about no sugar, I went back to reading the 600+ page book about Steve Jobs. It was past midnight but I was still wide awake and didn't want to watch tv. It's a long read basically with lots of information and a smaller font so I am only up to his senior year in high school. It was amazing what he was doing with electronics while growing up.

Stella had a little energy this morning. It was a very warm 31° this morning with no wind and a high of 43° by this afternoon. I hope to get some photos of Heidi this afternoon since she has been hibernating the past few days after the temperatures dropped into the 30's.

While she sits in the same spot every walk to scratch herself, I try to get as far in front of her as possible with hopes of getting some photos of her running. No running today though, just a little trot that turned into a walk.

Still maintaining her walk just to the side of the path.

At the bottom of the very gradual hill, the bath feels dryer, so she moved back on it to finish out the walk. As you can see she isn't in a hurry to get home. She is never in a hurry unless she is being fed breakfast, then she sprints around the Mini Cooper from the field, to come back inside.

When I told her "I have to go buy dog food", she stopped and looked at me. I had said that magic word that always gets a response from her ... "food".

I kept reminding her I had "to go" and that is one of two "go's" she will respond to ... when I tell her I have to go buy dog food or I have to buy groceries, lately when she hears that she will go straight to the bedroom and lies on the floor waiting for me to shut the door. I like that habit and I hope she keeps that one.

Today I only shut the door and did not use the cord to tie between door knobs to prevent her from breaking out of the bedroom and escaping. When I returned from the dog food purchase, the bedroom door was still shut and the door knob on the inside was dry ... so she had not tried to open the bedroom door while I was gone.

Looking at my blogs a year ago, we had about as much rain as we have had this year. A couple of inches over our average but the floods of a few weeks ago were taking place now in 2018. The field to the south of me was completely under water. So some things never change. I still think we have had a pretty mild winter here in 'the tropics' this year.

After updating all of my spreadsheets this morning because some of them are updated monthly on the 1st of every month, I see that I am going to have to do some driving this summer. Otherwise at my current pace I will drive less than 3,000 miles for the year.

I saw an interview last night on tv with a scientist that had studied windmills and solar panels for the main source of energy. He was involved with the $150 billion dollar investment that Obama passed out to study those two possible energy sources a few years ago. This scientist said the same thing an engineer at work told me 6 years ago when I asked him about all the windmills I had seen up by Lafayette IN near I-65 and Hwy 431.

Neither solar panels or windmills are efficient enough to supply the USA with full-time energy. He was the second scientist I have heard this month say, "even if the solar panels were efficient enough, there is not enough available land in the USA to build the solar panel farms needed to produce the electricity required by the country." On average the sun shines and the wind blows only 40% of the time across the USA. That percentage is an overall average.

I read something very interesting this morning and I will link that article here. It explained why all of a sudden Michael Cohen has turned against Donald Trump. The reason is something we have not heard on the news or in the online news but it is not surprising. Read through the whole article.

Along with my change in diet, weight and size of my stomach I have been completing a lot of my Mahjong games under 3 minutes. For those games that I don't, I am still completing them between 3:15 and 3:45.  There are a few games that I cannot get any lower than they are, in the three minute fifty seconds range. It just shows you how exciting some of my afternoons are. My goal is to get all 160 games finished under 3 minutes. When I started a few years ago I was trying to get them under 7 minutes.

I am proclaiming right now, my 2019 "to do" list will be the #2 priority this spring and summer, right behind the hounds at #1. So as a warning, my blog posts will most likely be posted around 8pm eastern time once the weather warms up for me to be outside working.

I see I am going to get my junk mail today in the mail from what I see on the USPS email they send. They scan what they are going to deliver. Most of the time I mark my name and address out with a black permanent marker and toss it in the recycling bin but one of them I will call about.

It's a new internet service being offered in my area. I'll find out if they service my location, many offers do not. This offer is unlimited data, faster download speeds and ~$60 cheaper per month. That sounds great to me. That would almost be good enough to pay the hefty fee to break my contract with HughesNet Gen 5 Satellite service.

Well that is it for this morning. I'll hopefully post some  photos of Heidi's day later tonight.

It's warming up and sunny this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.