Pierogies, Night Sweats, and Hibernation
April 2018 — about ten months in
Let me tell you how my winter went, because it wasn't a clean little before-and-after photo.
Over the holidays I ran our stall breaker plan on myself. And it worked. I made really good progress (live 10000000_149408835851410_6283943522378711040_n [11:03]). The whole idea of stall breaker is that everything on your plate has a reason to be there: lean protein, vegetables, nothing just along for the ride. So I optimized. I made every bite earn its spot.
Here's what nobody puts in the success post: I got a little scale-obsessed. When every item on the plate has to justify itself, you lose the piece of bacon you grab because you're hungry and it's there. I missed that. I missed pork rinds, which, nutritionally, have almost no business in a keto diet. They're not a complete protein, they don't count toward anything, they're just the most accessible crunchy thing on earth. It was mostly what I called mouth pleasure, and mouth pleasure is a big part of the pleasure in life. Eating is fun. When you take food off somebody's plate, they get mad. Take food off your dog's plate and see how much that dog still loves you.
Then came the season
Between the holidays, my birthday, New Year's, the Penn State bowl game and the Eagles' playoff run, I was taking cheats here and there, and when the Eagles went to the Super Bowl, I ate pierogies (live 10000000_149408835851410_6283943522378711040_n [20:41]). I love pierogies. I know they're a Pittsburgh thing, but there's a lot of German influence all over Pennsylvania and there are plenty of pierogies in Philly too. I was at a place that had them. I ate them. Pierogies are super not keto.
They messed with me for a day or two. That's the part I want you to hear: going in and out of ketosis wasn't free. Each time, I'd get the acetone stuff again: the keto sweats, night sweats, keto breath. So come January I had to do a little reintroduction phase on myself, like I was a beginner again.
Hibernating on purpose
By April I'd been around the group less, and some of you noticed. I told you why on the broadcast: I was hibernating. Planning the year. Charting what I wanted to prioritize, what I was going to let go, and trying to get organized before I actually started executing (live 10000000_149408835851410_6283943522378711040_n [21:29]).
And while I was doing that, being super strict with my meal plan wasn't helping me. So I made a decision. I wasn't going to diet hard. I was going to hold my weight and re-establish really solid ketosis. I stopped looking at the scale. I didn't care if I gained a few pounds, because I knew that once I was well fat-adapted and settled back in, my hunger would drop off and bringing the calories down would be easy again.
So yeah, I'd eat a quick and dirty meal at work. I'd described one test meal on an earlier broadcast: two burgers, cheese, mayo. Not a lot of greens, and not a meal that moves the scale in the direction I wanted. But it was keto, and it kept the insulin side of things where I wanted it. And for those of you who don't know me, the insulin side is why I'm here at all. What brought me to keto was some pre-diabetic warning signs, not a beach body (live 10000000_149408835851410_6283943522378711040_n [22:33]).
The other stuff on my plate
I'll be honest about one more thing, because I said it on camera. I deal with a little bit of manic depression, and I have strategies to cope with it (live 10000000_149408835851410_6283943522378711040_n [38:05]). One of them is the spiral notebook. I write down every obligation I have, group them, number them, and rewrite the list. The point isn't the to-do list. The point is seeing how many commitments I already have, because I'm a happy-go-lucky guy and I'll say "oh yeah, sure" to anything, and then the people who rely on me get pushed to the back burner.
So before taking on anything new, I was closing out the old stuff: wrapping up loose ends for old business clients, handing people their files, getting all those shadows put away "in the attic," so I could come back to KetoDick with a clear head. Hibernation wasn't me quitting. It was me cleaning the house before I moved into it.
What "works for me" should mean
The whole broadcast that day was about the phrase it works for me. Usually when I hear it, it's covering for nonsense. Somebody ate a high-fat, low-protein version of keto, the scale moved, and "it works for me." Okay, but did you lose muscle? You don't know.
But there's a version of "works for me" that I do believe in. It's not about your metabolism being a special snowflake. It's about style. Some people can eat the same five foods every day and be happy. Some people think oatmeal tastes like death gruel. Some people have the budget for fancy groceries and some people are doing keto out of a Walmart. "What works for you" should be about how you adapt the diet to your culture and your behaviour, not about how the macros work (live 10000000_149408835851410_6283943522378711040_n [13:13]).
Stall breaker worked on paper. It also made me a little scale-obsessed, missing pork rinds. A plan only works if it fits the person who has to live it. That winter, the person living it needed a break, some pierogies, and a notebook.
What I'd tell you now
Pick the plan you'll actually stay on, because the big trials mostly say the same thing. In DIETFITS, 609 adults on a healthy low-fat or a healthy low-carb diet for 12 months lost 5.3 kg and 6.0 kg, and the difference wasn't significant (doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.0245). In an early trial with 63 adults, low-carb was ahead at 3 and 6 months, the gap was gone by 12 months, and a lot of people dropped out of both groups (doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa022207). Sticking with it is the hard part. Also: if "scale obsession" sounds familiar, and especially if you have any history of disordered eating, bring your doctor or therapist in before you tighten anything up (guide: eating-disorder history). Measuring without the scale is in non-scale victories, and the plan I'm talking about is in breaking a stall. By June I'd find out what life off keto actually felt like (188, and back to 200).
The full broadcast: “It Works for Me”: what that should mean on keto.
Earlier: Water in the kitchen · Later: A black eye and a fight plan