Week 6 Switching it Up

I found myself in a bad place during week 5. I was hungry and snacking way too much. I needed to get my eating and hunger under control, so I  switched things up during week 6.

I know that getting fat adapted can take some real discipline, and it was time. I decided to intermittent fast from 16-20 hrs every day, and eat 99% carnivore for 5 days.

Now before you freak out over the carnivore way of eating, let me explain it to you. I could eat meat, poultry, fish, eggs, cheese, cream, full-fat greek yogurt, butter, lard, beef tallow, etc. The 1% that wasn’t carnivore was seasonings, fresh garlic, and ginger.

The Good: I fit into a dress I loved, for Easter, and we had an amazing Keto meal. The charcuterie tray was beautiful and the roast lamb was scrumptious. My smaller jeans finally fit and I was having my own personal party when they zipped right up🎉. I lost a couple of pounds, and overall the week went well.

The Bad: Fasting is wonderful for healing fatty liver disease and insulin resistance, but I don’t particularly like it. Eating is a habit. I used to eat whether I felt hungry or not. I loved to snack even if it was on “good” stuff. Unfortunately, that’s greatly contributed to the mess I’m in. My fasting app keeps me on track, and accountable, when I just want to eat something. I snacked quite a bit the last couple of weeks, so I was hungrier this week. That’s one of the reasons I buckled down on fasting and carnivore.

The Ugly: I was having a rough couple of days this week. In the past my weight has come off rather quickly, but it’s taking it’s sweet time this go around. It’s really hard to encourage other people when you feel like you’re failing. I cried, and complained, and wanted to give up, but giving up isn’t a choice, unless I want to get sicker.

The lie: I am too tired to fight. If I just give into the urge to binge, I’ll feel better and just move on.

The truth: You can always fight. If you binge you may feel better for a few minutes, but then you’ll be consumed with guilt, feel ill, and defeat your goal of living a healthy life.

Now, I know that I’m not failing, but my “want results now” mentality is really hard to squash. Instagram has actually been a great encouragement to me. I’ve found others who are walking this journey with me. Some are much farther ahead, but we’re all pushing forward.
Keto_Ryan posted something this week that hit me square in the forehead. The weight isn’t always going to come off quickly. It took many years to make myself this unhealthy and it’s going to take some time for my body to heal.

It really got ugly Sunday afternoon. One of our relatives makes the most amazing dessert and gave us a bunch.

You know when you feel so compelled to eat something that you almost can’t physically resist? When resisting is so hard you have to hold back tears? When it feels like your heart is breaking because you can’t participate in a well loved family treat? When the smell makes your mouth water and you feel like crumbling beneath the desire to eat? I cannot fully express the overwhelming, heartbreaking, desperation I felt.

Would it have hurt me to have one little bite? Maybe, maybe not, but I wouldn’t have been able to stop at one bite. I’ve worked so hard and I can’t throw the next several days away over a couple pieces of pastry. I can’t willingly poison myself when I’m trying so hard to heal myself. The thought of developing diabetes and dying from liver disease is a good deterrent.

I started listening to The Diabetes Code by Dr. Jason Fung (Everyone needs to read this! I’ll buy you a copy if you can’t afford one. Seriously, read it!). Diabetes has been heavy on my mind. Not just for myself, but so many lives are being ruled and destroyed by this horrible illness. I know there are those whose bodies just don’t work right (Type 1 and accident related), but most diabetics are Type 2. Many times Type 2 diabetes is caused by lifestyle choices (What are you putting into your body?).

I learned that you can be insulin resistant 10-13 years before you ever have blood sugar issues. That would make me around 21 when I started becoming insulin resistant 😯! I also learned that if you have fatty liver even on a small level you have some insulin resistance.

Don’t let the doctors brush off your fatty liver as normal; it’s a big deal!

Our trip to Oklahoma was a real life object lesson.  In the middle of our flight there, an elderly lady had a medical emergency. She had diabetes and had a major blood sugar crash. As the flight attendants tried to keep her conscious, they kept shoving sugar in her face to get her blood sugar up, but not one person offered her any protein to follow it up. It was so sad to see this woman, who had only been on the flight for 45 minutes, completely fall apart because her diabetes was so uncontrolled.

Diabetes is such a common thing nowadays, that sometimes I don’t think we remember how absolutely horrible it actually is. People are losing limbs, having kidney failure, going blind, and dying from this horrible illness that could be improved, and in a lot of cases reversed, just by changing their diet.

Wouldn’t it be a revolution if doctors put their Type 2 diabetic patients on a low-carb, high-fat diet and watched them heal?

Let’s be part of turning the horrible health statistics around. Let’s do the hard thing and change our lifestyle!