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.

dingbat AOC Is At It Again

With a dark and dreary Saturday morning the hounds and I once again started our day off late. I guess it can officially be called our new routine, with everything shifting about an hour later than normal. Late night reading is equating to getting up later. At least it was warm this morning, low 40's and that rain in the forecast never showed up. So much for 100% chances I guess. I forgot until I was a few photos in today, the camera was set on 'automatic' instead of my usual 'manual'.

It was another night of interrupted sleep with some of the strangest dreams. I was happy to finally get up and see things were normal and not weird, if you know what I mean. It was also going to be a test today, a huge test in a way. I was out of granulated sugar. I normally have a couple of teaspoons per my 12oz cup of coffee (2 cups per day). Yet, there was no way I was starting the day off without coffee ... I'd drink it black.

I was needing to make a trip to the grocery story today, so that list was on top of my thoughts as Stella and I walked in the field. For some serious initial weight loss I was thinking of going strictly Keto and stay within their limits for daily carb intake. That is hard with sugar for coffee, a banana, an apple or even a cup of blueberries in a day.

I decided that before I would go to the store I'd look back through the websites I had bookmarked months ago when I was looking into the Keto Diet. The fact of the matter is I need a change in diet ideas even though I eat what most would consider healthy. I can't eat "just a little" carbs because even a little knocks me out for those afternoon siestas. I know those periods of low energy are carb related based on my tests of eating different foods. I don't feel as good as I think I could feel.

So with that in mind, my goal was to get in and out of the Super Walmart grocery section without any pasta nor a new small bag of granulated sugar. No bananas. No Mangoes. White or Sweet Potatoes? No. No yogurt either due it causing indigestion.

Some of my shopping list would be the same as in a steak or two, fresh wild caught salmon, chicken thighs and breasts with the skin. No yogurt this time but the larger container of cottage cheese. Veggies would be about the same as I always buy. So it would be interesting to see if I could make it home with my new shopping list.

Although it was nice and warm and I was pretty sure Stella would not attempt any breakouts from her bedroom 'jail' this morning. I wasn't more than a few miles west of town when rain drops started hitting my windshield. That light rain never stopped. It was doing that when I took my siesta a little past 1:30pm and was still coming down as I wrote this, after 4pm. So the afternoon walk was cancelled.\

I did stop at the library on the way to the store. I picked up two books that looked interesting but after a reading a few pages of each before my siesta, I had a feeling I had made a mistake and I wasn't sure I'd finish either.

Now the book about Steve Job's, that I was reading late into the early morning hours last night, is very interesting. Not so much about him but more about all the high tech development in Silicon Valley, where he grew up. Yes, even as a youngster, he had an amazing mind but I was totally unaware of the massive build up of companies in that area in the early 1970s. Very interesting

That path you see Stella walking on, along the edge of the gully, is made by deer traffic. It will curl to the right, around that bush up ahead. While I walked in new territory with heavy thick grass, I could feel just how wet and saturated the field was.

After I made the final turn home, she was way to the left of me. I had let her do whatever she wanted as I walked along the back edge of the field. She did finally head my direction, turn on the path and head home with me. It was really quiet this morning with no wind, no sounds of birds and warm enough where gloves were not needed. I had a feeling not much was going to happen. Enough stuff to blog about ??? Maybe not.

She strolled at a pretty steady pace once she made the final turn home.

I didn't read a lot of news this morning. I didn't even glance through my Flipboard account for new things to read but I did catch this little gem. While the news was focused on Bernie's socialist background, where he said "breadlines are good" .... our favorite "dingbat AOC" was letting the Democratic establishment know .... drum roll ..... "We're In Charge" ....

I wonder if she realizes just how many journalist jobs she saved these past two months after her arrival in D.C. ?? She will give them enough material these next two years or more, not only will they keep their jobs but I am sure a few new books have been started as an idea.

I want you to know your tax dollars ... yes yours ... are being well spent. She put her staff on a minimum salary of $52,000 per .... even the gofer that delivers that "grande" Starbucks she always has in her hand. Of course $52K per year doesn't go to far living in D.C. She is so stupid that in a way it's scary. Stupid people follow stupid leaders which lead to stupid election winners and stupid decisions.

I know its way to early to pay to any attention to political polls this time of year or so far in advance of the 2020 election but that really is just around the corner. It just drags on because it will be nonstop news coverage of every little thing said or done by whom.

A couple of other tidbits show that this campaign may make this one even uglier than 2016. We have one candidate telling her staff years ago to clean her comb ... hair comb??? Of course. Everybody needs a clean hair comb ... especially after you have used it to eat salad. ????  Really ???? Is that Presidential material ?

I've done a LOT of wild things in my life but I don't recall ever eating my salad with my hair comb. Even when I was drunk and stupid in Encenada or Tijuana, I didn't do anything that gross.

Ms Harris couldn't seem to remember her vicious tweet that people have copied into an image before she deleted it. I didn't and don't have it, but it was racially slanted when she heard Jussie's original story of being attacked at 2am in the Windy City during the Polar Vortex. She looked confused when asked, even glancing back at her staff for an answer, she didn't seem to remember that vicious tweet she had made on her verified account. Is she really Presidential material ?

As you can see by these few examples, the longer the campaign goes the uglier it will get. It will not be about their plans or platforms they are running on. We will hear more about what kind of underwear they are wearing, whether they smoked dope in college, how many private planes they fly or luxury homes they live in. At no time will we hear of any plan on how to pay for these fantasies they are going to run on.

The last time I checked, hospitals and doctors are not free. Someone has to pay.

I am more interested in seeing some big name people from a few years ago be brought before a judge or jury and end up in jail where they belong. We know that will never happen. Not only are we on a different pay scale than they are, but we have different laws than them. They are always covered when the shit hits the fan, we are not.

Is Hillary still drinking and stumbling around the house? I'd like to see her return to the 2020 campaign just for shits and giggles.

I see I'm slowly waking up here in the early evening in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.  :)