#oneaday Day 365: A Year?

So, I've apparently been doing this daily post thing for a year! Actually, slightly more than that, because I looked back and it seems I started this on December 4th last year, so I've obviously buggered up the numbers somewhere. I'm not going through 365+ posts trying to fix that though, so, well, we'll call it a year from today, huh.

On this day last year, I was writing about how much pain I was in because of my hernia, and talking about losing some weight so I can hopefully get it treated. Unfortunately I haven't been able to make a ton of progress on that, because both Andie and I got pretty demotivated with Slimming World thanks to anxiety, stress and depression, so we both fell off the wagon pretty hard.

We have started a new diet, though, and we're going to see how this goes for us. We've decided to give the keto plan a go; this is a high-fat, low-carb diet where you deliberately put your body in a state known as "ketosis" — it's nothing scary, despite the frightening-sounding name; it just means that your body starts burning fat for energy rather than carbohydrates. And since most of the weight you carry around consists of energy stored as fat, that's exactly what you want your body to be doing if you want to lose weight.

I've had a go at low-carb diets before, specifically Atkins, but I didn't get on all that well with it. At least part of this was because I was trying to do it by myself at the time and, as they say, these things are always easier if you have someone to share the experience with. With both Andie and I working on the same diet, it's easier for both of us to be strict and keep to what we're supposed to be eating.

It's only been a couple of days so far, but I'm feeling like it's something I'll be able to do. One of the things I missed the most on Slimming World was the pleasure of fatty foods like nice cuts of meat, butter and that sort of thing. On the keto plan, those make up the majority of your food intake, so you can enjoy stuff like bacon, pork chops and the like without guilt — you just need to make sure that you complement them with appropriate, non-starchy (i.e. green) vegetables in order to make sure that you're getting enough fibre. And drink lots of water, obviously.

We've also learned of the questionable joy of chia pudding, which is a jar of milk with some chia seeds in it; leave it a little while and it goes goopy, roughly the consistency of tapioca or rice pudding, and can then be consumed for a surprisingly filling breakfast. You can add cocoa, vanilla essence and sugar-free syrup to make it actually taste of something, too; this is an ongoing experiment for us to see what works well.

Thankfully, we're spending Christmas at home by ourselves this year, so we can take complete control of our Christmas dinner and not be tempted by either of our respective mothers' excellent roast potatoes — verboten on keto — and hopefully still have something nice.

The one side effect is that for the first few days — and possibly a couple of weeks — you are a bit prone to something known as "keto flu" while your body adjusts to this "new" way of doing things. Consequently, it's a good idea not to overexert yourself, as you might find yourself a bit low on energy or feeling the "brain fog" a bit, so that probably means a temporary pause to my gym activities. Once I know I've set the appropriate dip switches in my body, though, I can get back to it — and supposedly, this diet is actually good for energy levels in the long term, so I should (hopefully) see improved performance.

We'll see. I know a few people who have had some success with this, so I'm intrigued to see if it actually works. And perhaps one day I'll have shed enough weight to actually get my guts put back in the place they're supposed to be. That would be nice!