The Mind-Numbing Stupidity Of A Near Anticlimactic Week 1. / Weigh-In Day

I never said I was a rocket scientist. I mean, I’ve only been at this a week. Mistakes are bound to happen, right? Bumps in the road are only to be expected. Yadda yadda yadda…

So…dear reader, just what was it that allowed me to screw-up so astronomically? Well, maths really. That and basic common sense. Was I misjudging the number of calories in a salad? Was I forgetting to add up the carbs in my beverages? Or was I failing to work out the net number of carbs in a protein bar?

No, it was none of those things. It was something even more basic and stupid than any of the above. I just…forgot how numbers worked. As in, remembering that stones are divided into 14 pounds which are divided into 16 ounces. Somehow, somewhere between trying to convert ‘stones + pounds’ into just pounds, I miscalculated what my actual weight has been for the past couple of weeks. So, when it came to updating my stats on the forum, it said I’d actually gained weight.

Now I know what some of you are possibly thinking:

“This dumb broad here just doesn’t wanna admit that she ate her own body-weight in cake last week and that made her gain.”

Which, you’re totally welcome to think. But I can’t quite imagine why I’d bother to go to all the trouble of creating this blog if I wasn’t planning to at least try to lay off the Krispy Kreme for a bit. As it is, I’ve been a good girl all week and my total weight loss was 6 pounds – which is more than I was hoping for after already dropping weight after just swapping out sugary drinks – and I’m thankfully able to know this because I still have the little note I made on my PC notepad saying that when I started last Monday I was 18 stone 11lbs: today I am 18 stone 5lbs. So a 6 pound loss. Yay me!

It’s a very American thing to discuss one’s weight in terms of total pounds, but here in the UK people either use the newer EU standard metric system of kilos (which I am NEVER going to get my head around using) or the old school combo of stones/pounds/ounces. I was attempting to convert my weight from stones & pounds (which is how my scale measures me) to just pounds to be able to track things on there, but alas I am a moron, who can’t even use a calculator to figure shit out. Literally, can’t even.

So, I’m not entirely sure what my initial starting weight was. I can’t remember what the scale said and I only have my weight from the beginning of last week – as I began induction – to work from. So I’ll alter the stats in the side-bar as well as in the ‘Fat Stats’ page, to show me starting from thereon in. And hopefully, as time plods along, I’ll manage to keep track of things a bit better…as well as in the right direction.

As for the loss? Well I’m happy with it. I’m halfway through the mandatory induction period for Atkins, but I’m probably going to stay at consuming no more than 20 carbs a day, for a good while anyway. I’m getting used to not being preoccupied with thoughts of what to eat – although the other half is probably a bit frustrated with my forgetting that he needs to eat too. Things got so bad the other day he had to resort to making himself a Pot Noodle! Yuk! I need to be a better woman to that long suffering man of mine.

Other than that, there’s not much more to report on. I’ve been acquiring various books on Keto, food, nutrition, supplements etc and I know I need to update the ‘Bookishness’ page on here so y’all can follow along with whatever I’m reading, but the last few days haven’t really left me in a very ‘task-oriented’ state of mind, lol. It was great to smoke a bit of weed while it lasted – the pain in my lower back basically disappeared for two days – but there’s no way I can spend my entire life in a haze like that. My brain is foggy enough as it is.

And the last thing I need is forget how numbers work. Again.

Blue

Bestaved Indifference

“How will satiety and idleness be staved off when designer sex, drugs and violence no longer sell? ~ John Gray“

Well I don’t have any answers with regards to idleness, but when it comes to ‘satiety’, I think I’ve found the answer. (And before anyone tries to say that ‘bestaved’ isn’t a real word, it is; albeit a somewhat antiquated one that might not turn up in your basic bitch internet dictionary, but its a real word nonetheless. And besides, you’re not my real dad and you can’t tell me what to do. This is my blog. I can use whatever words I want.)

Where was I? Oh yeah. The ‘satiety’ thing. Turns out if you want to stave off your inner starvo when trying to shift some weight, then going low-carb (20g max per day) is probably the way to do it. Bearing in mind however, that ‘satiety’ is the word I’m using here, rather than ‘satisfaction’. Because this weird absence of appetite is neither a ‘negative’ nor a ‘positive’ sensation. It’s…indifference. Sure, for many people the lack of a grumbling stomach, the disappearance of cravings and their ability to go for hours no longer completely preoccupied by thoughts of food, are probably all things that they would equate with being a ‘positive’ side-effect of a low-carb way of eating. But the sensation itself? It’s weird. Emptyish. Devoid of any real feelings that one can judge it by. It’s pure indifference.

Today is Day 4. I got up at about 9.00pm and the only thing I was interested in was coffee and water – no change there. But I knew I had to eat at some point (and I had the other half to feed too) so I tried to think about what I could throw together for dinner. The refrigerator and the freezer were both full of options, but what did I want? Want? I wanted nothing. It’s not that I was particularly opposed to consuming something, just that I literally didn’t care what it was. Chicken? Sure. Sausage? If you say so. Gammon? Whatever.

“Like, who is this chick and what did you do with the real Blue?“

Okay, so my complete hatred of cooking, prepping, handling food altogether hadn’t evaporated (I had to touch raw chicken breasts yesterday and the experience left me so traumatised I thought I might need therapy) just the part of my brain which normally gives me some sort of feedback any time I try to figure out what to have for dinner. This time last week, if you’d asked me what I wanted, I would have ‘ummed’ and ‘ahhed’ over what sounded the most ‘satisfying’ – and if by the end of the meal ‘satiety’ hadn’t been achieved, I’d have been off to rummage around in the cupboards to see what else might appeal to me. But not tonight, Joséphine. No ma’am.

This isn’t like when you’re sick and the mere thought of food makes you want to heave, or the only thing you can keep down in your poor delicate stomach is some chicken soup or hot sweet tea. No, that would be the ‘disgust’ response. Or ‘repulsion’. That’s a ‘negative’ sensation. This new state of being is neither ‘positive’ nor ‘negative’. It’s 100% indifference. And it’s really, really…blah.

In fact I literally just had to stop and think hard about what exactly I did end up having for dinner – despite having eaten only 30 minutes ago. It’d had that little impact upon me. (For those who care about such trivialities, I had a 2 egg omelette with brocolli & cheese, two pork sausages and 2 grilled Portobello mushrooms. Don’t ask me if I enjoyed it though, because I really didn’t pay any attention to how it tasted. I just ate what was on my plate, like a good little girl.)

So was I ‘satisfied’ with my meal? Well, no; not really. Not because there was anything wrong with it, but because there had been no desire to consume beforehand and no enjoyment experienced during consumption. There had been no comestible itch that had needed scratching, hence the lack of any subsequent postprandial ‘satisfaction’. Eating has become a mechanical process that means nothing to me. In fact, if anything, it’s a bit of an inconvenience. Why do I have to deal with all that crap in the kitchen, when I’m not even hungry and I don’t even enjoy the results? Again, it’s not unpleasant to eat, I’m just totally indifferent to the whole process.

How long is this going to last? I’m assuming this means I’m now in ketosis, so this apathy for consumption could continue on until I come back out of it. Is that right? Is that a good thing? I have no idea. I don’t really feel anything about it. It’s a bit like if you’ve ever had to take a strong anti-depressant or anti-psychotic meds and they stops you from feeling much of anything, good or bad. Those medications keep you on a flatlined, even keel of psychological numbness. This ketosis thing, feels a bit like that, only it’s reserved entirely for the suppressing of appetite. (I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that serotonin is manufactured in the gut. Does ketosis play around with that in some way? Or am I just pontificating a bunch of nonsense at this point? Probably the latter.)

But you hear often of patients who intentionally stop taking their lithium or whatnot, because whilst it stabilises their mania and depression, they hate how it feels to…well…just not feel anymore. As a species we aren’t supposed to exist in a state of ‘bestaved indifference’. We are beings, constantly in flux, with our feelings and emotions tied in to our instincts and reactions to the environment around us. Australopithecus Afarensis wouldn’t have survived long enough to beget his Homo Habilius descendants, if he’d just floated around sub-Saharan Africa in a state of existential apathy, not caring if he ate or not; unconcerned with the basic desire to survive, thrive and reproduce. AA was no existentialist (at least not in the postmodern philosophical way we think of today) but neither was he a nihilist: there might not have been some inherent, larger essential meaning to life apparent to him, but there was some spark, some essence within him which propelled him forward, ever adapting to the world around him. Learning how to survive in an uncultivated, harsh environment, seeking out food & shelter and acting on the most base reproductive urges…that was what allowed for the successful continuation of his genes. Despite the danger and suffering that beset his brief existence.

I know I’m getting way off track with all this philosophical gubbins, but this ‘bestaved indifference’ within me has just gotten me thinking about what is normal; what is desirable. And what it means to be human. To be human is to suffer, which is probably why this sudden sense of apathy towards food feels strange. It goes against everything we’re taught about willpower, self-discipline and vigilance when embarking upon an attempt to lose weight. It’s not supposed to be like this, right? It’s supposed to be a struggle. Isn’t that where part of the sense of achievement comes from? From enduring that suffering and coming out the other side a better person? I know I’m only on Day 4, but the change is quite something. And if this is how it’s going to be for the foreseeable future, I’m not even sure I know how I feel about that.

It’s not good, it’s not bad…but it’s definitely different.

Blue

Time Moves A Little Differently Here

It’s coming upon 2am. The start of Wednesday. Tuesday was technically day 2 of induction and I’m not gonna lie…I slept through just about all of it, lol. Now, lest you be tempted to think

“Who does this lazy madam think she is, laying about all day?”

I must just emphasise the fact that (just like every other psychotic witch out there claims) I’m really not like the other girls! *insert joke about r/nicegirls here*

I don’t mean I’m interesting or beautiful or cool or edgy or clever or special. I mean I am all those things (duh) but that’s not what I’m referring to when I say I’m a bit different. I mean, neither my body nor my day-to-day existence are anywhere near normal. Yeah, yeah, I know that “normal is just a setting on a dishwasher”, but to labour the cliché a little more…if ya’ll are all dishwashers, well honey, I’m one of those other weird appliances you see advertised on cable TV after midnight, and upon purchasing relegate to a dark space under the sink, never to be retrieved again. Guys, I’m the brother-clucking, Veggetti Spiralizer of the blogging world!

Okay, okay…enough with the shtick. I know that I’m by no means the only person with health complaints – and I’m certainly nowhere near as bad off as some poor folks out there, but I do have some rather annoying, painful, ailments that mean sometimes I just gotta take my meds, head back to bed and take the ‘L’ for the day. Which is exactly how Tuesday played out for me. I’m used to just randomly waking up and finding myself barely able to move, so yesterday wasn’t exactly a big deal, but it did get me wondering if this particular flare-up had perhaps been triggered by my body trying to move into ketosis.

“Ketosis? Already? How is that even POSSIBLE?”

Now I’ve done Atkins briefly before and I remember those three days of gradually more irksome tiredness, tetchiness and all-out desperation to alleviate the headaches with anything carbohydrate based. And I also remember that on day four I woke up with absolutely zero appetite. I had to force myself to eat. Which is exactly how I felt upon getting up earlier at 11pm. (See what I mean about not being normal? I sleep for loooooong periods of time, wake up at random hours and pretty much just let my pain & mobility levels dictate what I’ll be able to do during those waking hours.)

I originally woke up at about 3pm and just shuffled about between the bathroom and living room and kitchen; taking meds, using my nasal spray gulping back loads of water – man was I thirsty – and realising that I wasn’t going to be running any marathons today, slunk back into the bedroom to sleep another 7 hours. (I dreamed I was stuck at a family Christmas get-together and couldn’t get out to buy some low-carb protein bars, funnily enough.)

And now? Well it’s 2am on a very early Wednesday morning. For me, the beginning of day 3; but I haven’t eaten for about 20 hours, I still have absolutely no appetite and I’m going to have to force myself to eat something or I worry that my body is going to go into starvation mode. Or will it? Because I know that technically this is me just moving into day 3, but because of my ability to give Sleeping Beauty a run for her money, when I first started induction upon rising at 00.00 on Monday, I’d already gone about 16 hours since my last meal. So I’m more like 64 hours into induction by now. Aren’t I? I don’t know if that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work, but then like I said earlier: I’m not like the other girls!

“Could my body really be moving into ketosis already?”

I’m not sure. So I’ve eaten something to see what happens. Normally, once I start eating, THAT’S when my insatiable appetite usually kicks in. Monday was insane. No matter how many times I ate in that 24 hour period, my body kept on telling me it needed more. I’m used to not being able to know when I’m truly satisfied and eating to the point of bloated discomfort, but this was different. My carb-starved brain was doing everything it could to try and force me to feed it something sugary. But today? There’s none of that. I’ve eaten a can of tuna, a 20g piece of cheese and a cherry tomato. It felt weird to be eating when I didn’t feel like I wanted anything and when I stopped eating…nothing. No ravenous fire in my belly demanding more. No junkie-esque cravings filling my every waking moment with thoughts of chocolate, cake and freshly baked bread. Nothing.

Okay. So maybe this IS it. Maybe I really have started to burn my own body fat for fuel. Although, I can’t imagine I burn that much off, languishing in my bed the whole day. I’ll take it though. Headaches gone, cravings gone, appetite gone. But man do I ever have a monster thirst for water going on! I’m sure I read on the forum that some people developed a hitherto unknown raging thirst as they were in induction, so I’ll just keep on chugging. Keep on keeping on.

Here’s hoping my inner carbohydrate addict doesn’t rear its ugly head again any time soon.

Blue