Friday night at the SOB is never a SOBering experience. Mary joined me for yesterday’s performance, and for some reason known only to her, she decided to drink shots of tequila. It didn’t end well. Near the conclusion of the event, a guy sitting on the other side of me motioned toward Mary and said, “You better check on your girl.” When I turned around, I saw that she had vomited all the free-finger foods she had consumed. To her credit, she cleaned up the mess as best as she could with napkins. Someone came with a mop, and I hustled her out of there. It was still a little embarrassing, but at least this time, I wasn’t the source of the problem. We took a trike home, and she wasn’t acting drunk. She washed her clothes in my bathroom while I made us smoothies. We watched an episode of Lucifer together, then went to bed.
Dessert this morning was also quite satisfying.
As usual, Friday started with a group hike. No one had any better ideas, so I opted to lead us on a Naugsol valley excursion. It was a very hot day, and there was little shade along the way. I kept reminding myself that I’d be complaining about the rain soon enough. I made it back home with just over 7K under my belt.
That was pretty much my day. We’ll see what happens next.
Food looks good! Eat nothing but meat, and suddenly, you’re on the carnivore diet! But you’d have to cut out the beer as well and switch to water or unsweetened coffee/tea.
Another nice walk. Maybe make all your walks a minimum of 8K (take a break on Sundays) to get that blood sugar down.
What works for me on the low carb diet is that you don’t have to feel hungry–it’s more about what you eat rather than how much. Big steak, no potato works for me!
Yeah, I’m trying to up my daily step count. Had to push myself to go the distance yesterday, but I did it. I already take Tuesday off from walking–shopping day!
What works for me on the low carb diet is that you don’t have to feel hungry–it’s more about what you eat rather than how much.
This is an interesting point, and it’s true to some extent. But if you go low-carb or keto, you do still have to watch your caloric intake. CICO (calories in, calories out) is still a thing, as I’ve discussed over at my blog. I doubt you’ll be like me and eat yourself silly (I have the self-control of a hungry dog when it comes to food), but set your upper limit at around 2000 calories (which is where it’s probably at right now).
How many meals a day do you eat? If you incorporate intermittent fasting into your lifestyle, you can eat lunch and dinner within a 6- or 8-hour window—say noon and 6 p.m.—then fast the rest of the time. Any dessert you’d eat would be within that window as well (e.g., a dessert following hard on the heels of lunch). By eating only twice a day, your insulin spikes only twice a day. Minimizing insulin spikes is a major goal.
Of course, with your alcohol consumption (liquid bread!), intermittent fasting probably won’t be a thing for you. If, however, you really want to get serious about lowering blood sugar, you’ll need to reduce the frequency of nutritional intake (ingesting any food/drink = insulin spikes). Maybe instead of intermittent fasting, you work out how many times a night you’re in a bar consuming alcohol, then just do X – 1 of that. It’s difficult and annoying to change lifestyle habits, but mathematically speaking, something has to give.
Or, if that’s too painful a prospect for you, Dr. Vallicella (the philosopher whose blog I read) has an interesting suggestion that I think is medically justifiable: instead of cutting things out of your life, add new things into it, like the aforementioned extra walking. That might actually be a better strategy than fasting. You’ll burn more calories that way and partially solve the mathematical problem of CICO.
Whatever you do, good luck as always.
PS: “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” is a myth. Every expert I’ve watched on YouTube says this. If you can manage to skip breakfast, you’ll be doing yourself a favor. And there’s no need to skip it seven days a week. Skip it twice a week at first, just to build a habit. Expand from there as you get used to doing without.
Thanks for the advice, Kevin. I’m hoping some modest changes will suffice. I am pushing myself to add some additional steps, even when my body is crying out for me to stop (it’s been really hot lately, even the locals are complaining).
I was hungry this morning and that box of raisin bran on top of the fridge seemed to be calling to me. I resisted and grabbed a jar of dill pickle slices instead. A couple of those satiated the hunger and then I took my walk to avoid further temptation.
My plan as of now is to drink beer every other day. Not saying I won’t visit the bars on the beerless days, but I’ll no carb gin with soda water on those occasions. Anyway, we’ll see how that works out for me.