Or you may be wondering why I am not doing laundry instead of trying to engage in the daily discipline of writing because reading about my whip addiction was super lame.
I didn't publish yesterday after sitting down and writing. But it was on something technical, which took me down a rabbit hole. I realized my subject was important but needed quite a bit of time to organize and edit. I hit save and patted myself on the back for sitting down and doing the thing rather than whether I hit publish. That is my goal right now. Just sit down and write.
So it's Thursday, and I am happy to tell you that I am surviving the lack of heavy whipping cream just fine. I am also very thankful that the latest run into HEB with my husband didn't include him asking me if we needed to get whip and that he took me very seriously when I was very honest about how I was feeling physically and knew that I had a problem and needed to stop ingesting this.
It is a very powerful thing to have accountability, and when you are married, habits can be very intertwined. Having real support is important.
Now I also did something else a bit extreme the same day I gave up whip, which was I began fasting and accidentally did an almost 24 hour fast with a 1 hour eating window on Monday, and then I repeated this the last three days. When I do eat, I follow a healthy ketogenic plan that also always includes bone broth and tons of veggies. And no dairy.
Some of you eating the keto way may still be scratching your head over how to do this without dairy. I know those recipes have cheese on everything. It can be done. You just need some ideas. I promise to try to help with this.
One meal a day is also known as OMAD if you do any reading up on it and find the acronym and are wondering what it stands for. OMAD has always seemed a little elusive to me as a dedicated lifestyle, but I have to tell you that after you let a hunger pain wane, it will pass. I am actually having one right now as I am writing this, but I know it will leave eventually.
I was revisited the last few days with memories of when I began the Bone Broth Diet with its mini fast days full of cups of bone broth, which I could have now and probably should, but many times I am just doing stuff and don't think about it. It is an answer to the waves of hunger that is allowed and beneficial to health, but when I break my fasts, I am drinking my keto tomato Florentine soup which is made with bone broth, so I haven't worried too much.
Fasting has a lot of health benefits and is a powerful partner to ketogenic eating for health and weight loss and weight stability. I just want to say that if you go on the journey, it's one without end. You hear about the people who lost all kinds of weight on (any) diet only to gain it back: that is because they went back to eating the same things that got them into that mess to begin with. You can't do that, and it's not the diet's fault if that is what happens. It's YOURS. That is the cold, hard truth, and it's too important not to mention.
Now I do have this one friend whom I have known since the ninth grade, and she has always been and can still eat whatever she wants: she is an exception. And we can all be envious, but most of us can't do what she can, and that's okay.
I have never spent a day doing this that I felt hungry without being able to address it if I choose to in a healthy way. Fasting is not akin to suffering or starvation.
Fasting is very much about discipline, and honestly, if you can control what goes in your mouth (and what comes out!!) whether it's not eating OR what you do eat, that is a big deal. It means you can largely and positively impact your health.
So after three days of successful (if not accidental) OMAD, and my intent for now is to continue. If you have known me a long time, you might know I had 8 lbs left to lose last year when I stabilized and stopped working on dropping. We had a very stressful event happen in our family, and stress affects weight loss. We are in a much better place a year later, not stress free, but back to normal stress levels, and my goal has been to kick this process back off. My husband has a much easier time engaging in all this when I am leading the charge.
If you find yourself facing a major life event causing a lot of out of the ordinary stress, that is a time to dig into your routine, eat as healthy as you can, but not make losing weight the focus. Just stay stable and entrenched in your good habits. Don't start drinking heavy whip again like I did! Or whatever that thing is for you.
My husband and I both slide around on the scale in a window that gets really small--like 2 lbs--when we are very strict and expands to 5-7 pounds when we aren't. That is all water, friends. We don't sweat it. That isn't fat that is coming and going in what feels like a revolving door. Real losing is definitely an intensional process that involves a formula. Point: the scale didn't move the first day, but I dropped three pounds after the second day. I haven't weighed myself today yet and may not until tomorrow, but OMAD paired with keto should begin the loss process again. It really does work. And the first goal is to drop to the bottom of my window and then keep going onto new lost pounds.
So two more things and I will do something about the laundry:
When you do eat--anytime but especially with OMAD--your nutrition needs to be dense, high value foods with the correct macro ratios that look like 70-75% healthy fats, 20-25% protein, and 5% or less total carbohydrates to lose. If you are trying to be stable, you will need to work on how many carbs (total carbs - fiber) you can tolerate without gaining. I use my Fat Secret app to figure out what that one meal will be beforehand so that when it is time to eat, I go right to my fridge and know what I am pulling out. Planning is key, which leads me to my second point.
Your calories will naturally be reduced doing OMAD, but the goal is not really to go low calorie. The goal really is to get in 1200-1500 calories in that one meal, and it may take 1-2 hours to eat to get all of it in. I struggle with this part to get in enough calories, which is why I plan the meal beforehand. What you eat and how often will tell your body what fuel to burn, not just a lack of calories. I will review what I have been eating in a future post. Knowing what to eat to get your macros right takes practice! Use a tool like Fat Secret to help and take the guess work out of this part of the process.
Laundry calls, so may your day be blessed and one meal less, Nicole
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