Tyler Time and Sparkly Headgear

Sian, Nathan, and my darling grandson, Tyler, came up to visit us last Thursday. Nathan was unfortunately let go from his internship because they did not have any permanent job openings in his department, so he is in the process of finding another job. It's difficult because he's overqualified for just about every place that is currently hiring, so the kids took a break from that stress and came up to give us some Tyler time.

I had so much fun. Tyler and I took a little walk outside, played with fridge magnets, and spent quite a bit of time playing the piano, with Tyler very happy to wear the headphones. Nathan saw how much fun we were having at the piano and came over to document the moment.

I loved their visit, but I was exhausted when they left. Having babies is for the young people.

On Saturday, Elannah competed in the final events of the Miss [Our City] Pageant. Because of covid, parents were not allowed to be present, so the city did a Facebook livestream on the city's Facebook page from the new police station's commons room, where the final events were staged. That was actually really nice because it allowed any of our family members, no matter where they are in the world, to watch and cheer on Elannah, who did an absolutely fantastic job (and I say that with a mother's bias, yes, but she really did do a good job). The competition was really stiff this year, with ten very talented girls competing for the crown. 

In the end, Elannah was not crowned the new queen, but she was crowned as one of the two co-attendants. She was a little disappointed not to get the crown, but she was very gracious about it--and, after all, she ended up in the top three when seven other girls were disappointed not to get any crown or tiara. I'm proud of her. She worked hard--she practiced both her interview skills and her talent for hours and hours--and she doesn't think she could have done any better than she did, so she has no regrets. The young lady who was crowned queen is poised, elegant, and can sing like an angel; she and Elannah were in show choir together in high school and get along just fine. Elannah's co-attendant, who is intelligent and sweet, played a Bach violin piece with so much skill that my jaw dropped. She's also a lovely young woman, and she and Elannah have become friends during this competition. All this musical talent means that Elannah's co-attendant can play the violin while Elannah (an alto) and the queen (a soprano) sing the national anthem during their activities next week.

[Our City] Royalty, 2020. Elannah (on the left) was wearing some pretty tall platform heels here (she was as tall as I am with those shoes on, so she's standing about 5' 9"), and she looks like a giant compared to the other girls. Sadly, there will be no 4th of July or 24th of July parades this year, so they don't get to ride a float and show off their fancy dresses and sparkly headgear to parade-goers.

Another way in which I am proud of Elannah is that she went out of her way to try and be friendly with every one of the other girls. One of them in particular, Kate, has been competing in this pageant since Sophia was crowned a couple years ago, so this was Kate's third competition. Kate doesn't expect to win, but she enjoys the journey, and each year we have watched as she has become more poised and confident. Elannah made sure that Kate was always included in everything, and Elannah told me privately yesterday that she loved seeing how Kate blossomed with happiness and confidence when she felt like she was accepted and welcomed by the other girls. Elannah really enjoyed helping that happen.

After the pageant--which was held earlier in the afternoon than originally scheduled because of some planned protests--the three girls, their parents, the four city councilors and their spouses, and the mayor and her husband all headed over to one of the city councilor's houses for a BBQ. It was a small but enjoyable gathering. The town paper's photographer took a million photos of the girls before we finally got to chow down on pulled sweet pork sandwiches, baked beans, potato salad, chips, lemonade, and brownies for dessert. In truly Utah fashion, the food was blessed before we ate. I really enjoyed sitting at a table with Elannah, the mayor and her husband, and one of the city council members and his wife, who look very young (or am I just getting so old that just about anyone who looks to be anywhere near my oldest daughter's age seems like a baby?).

The mayor is a very down-to-earth woman. I've met her several times, and she loves my daughters so she feels like she knows me, but it took a couple times meeting her over the years before I realized she was the mayor. There is no air of self-importance or smarminess about her, and I really enjoyed our conversation during lunch. I asked her what it's like being the mayor, and she had some fun and interesting stories to tell. When we left, she gave me a hug, which we both realized too late was not exactly social distancing--not that many people in our city have been overly concerned with social distancing for the last few weeks.

With good food and good conversation, it was late evening before I knew it. We went home exhausted, and I made steak quesadillas for Husband and the boys (Husband had to go home from the BBQ because he didn't feel well, but lying down helped), and Elannah had some celebratory Taco Bell. Sophia was out of town with friends or she would have taken Elannah out to celebrate. I should have thought of that myself, actually, but I was so tired it didn't occur to me. Husband and I will probably take her out sometime next week when she has time, as this coming week is the busiest she'll be for the next year as [Our City] royalty, what with Independence Day on Saturday.

Update on my Keto Experience

While I do not plan on making this blog all about keto and intermittent fasting and weight loss (because there are plenty of people better equipped to talk about these things), I do want to share a few recipes that I and my family have really been enjoying. I'm down nine pounds right now on the scale, but I feel like my body composition has really begun to change. I have to tighten my belt by two extra notches, for instance, and my face is looking more thin.

I've also naturally fallen into more of a One Meal a Day (OMAD) or a 20/4 intermittent fasting (IF) schedule. There are two reasons for this, I think: first is that when I'm not eating high-carb, high-sugar foods, I don't get hungry every couple of hours, and by the time I'm truly hungry--about 2pm or 3pm--I'm ready to make an early dinner, eat it, and then have a small amount of seconds a little later if I feel I want it or just be done eating for the day; and second is that my stomach has shrunk, though I am making sure I get sufficient calories when I do eat so that I'm not wrecking my metabolism.

Sometimes I'll look at the clock and be surprised to realize it's already 3pm or 4pm and I still haven't eaten and am only now starting to feel hunger. It's just so much easier to fast when I'm not eating sugar. The couple of times I've allowed myself to have some sugary treat, I've ended up feeling pretty sick to my stomach, which just helps reinforce my avoidance of sugar. All my sugar cravings are gone, otherwise.

Cooking Keto

Cooking keto-friendly foods is often just about tweaking a recipe a little bit. Once you know which foods and ingredients to avoid and how to substitute for those ingredients, it's usually possible to take a normal recipe and change a few small things to make it keto (or high fat/low carb, at least).

Case in point is this Tuscan Beef in Wine Sauce served over Creamy Mashed Cauliflower, both recipes by Steve at SeriousKeto. We don't drink, so I used beef broth instead of wine for the Tuscan Beef (and while I know you can eventually cook the alcohol out of wine, it takes a very, very long time, and I didn't care to worry about it), but the recipe was still a five star winner. So dang good! And the mashed cauliflower was so creamy and delicious even though I merely mashed the boiled cauliflower with my potato masher and didn't use an immersion blender to fully blend it.

The other day, I wanted fried chicken, so I breaded the chicken breast cutlets I had using this recipe by Makinze Gore, and then fried the breaded chicken in coconut oil on my stove instead of oven baking it, and served it with the spicy mayo. I fried the chicken because I wanted more fat in the recipe, as it was my only meal of the day, and I also love how the breading becomes so crisp and tender when it's fried. It was such a huge hit with the family that they begged me to make it again, which I did last night.

I always have a bag of pork rinds in my pantry for breading purposes, and when I have my food processor out, I'll just grind up the bag of pork rinds and store them in the fridge to make future meal prep easier.

Keto Breads and Baked Goods

There aren't really any keto substitutes for baked goods like breads. I mean, there are good keto baked goods recipes, but you cannot expect keto breads to taste exactly like the originals. Almond and coconut flours and other non-gluten and non-grain flours do not act like gluten flours, and they simply cannot produce the same results. If you can set aside your expectations of being able to chow down on fluffy, risen breads and baked treats that are indistinguishable from the high-carb originals, you'll get along fine. Commercial keto breads are kind of nasty, in my opinion, and I don't believe they are all that keto anyway. They're certainly expensive (a single loaf will run you at least $6), and the manufacturers are geniuses for taking advantage of the growing keto market, but they're still not very yummy. Better to make your own.

You don't want to eat even keto breads every day for every meal, but I love them as a treat every once in a while. This low-carb cheddar-garlic bread from KetoConnect cooked in a mug is really good, and with only four net carbs (subtract the grams of fiber from the total carbohydrates to get net carbs), you can still have a sandwich and be keto! I slice the finished bread into four slices and either share or store two of them or hog them all as the bread for a couple sandwiches or as a serving of bread for a meal.

Also good are keto mug cakes when you really want a dessert after your meal. I usually douse mine with heavy cream right in the mug before eating them. Husband and I will often make one and split it because they're so filling.

In conclusion, it's easy for me to imagine being able to eat this way at least 85-90% of the time for the rest of my life. I'm certainly hoping I'll eventually take off all the weight I want to, but I already feel a lot better.

Thanks for listening!

How I Do Keto and Intermittent Fasting

Seagulls are migratory. Duh. Please disregard my recent post re: missing seagulls. Feeling dumb. Maybe I only think of the gulls when they aren't around, which leads me to believe that they've left permanently. Although I swear I haven't seen this many in years, it could all be my faulty perception. I've been seeing flocks of them in parking lots again, so either they've migrated into town right on schedule or my writing about them brought them back. Probably the former. Otherwise, we live in the Matrix.

...though that might not be such a crazy thing to say right now, what with the way the world is going currently.

So, dear reader, last Saturday Husband and I began eating keto again in earnest. He's not been feeling right lately, and there's always the worry that the leukemia will come back, as it's right around that ten-year mark where the doctors said it might come back again. His blood pressure has been high, as well, but taking blood pressure medication often makes him feel really off. Therefore, the best thing to do is to eat right and lose weight, which tends to solve a lot of health problems with very few (if any!) negative side effects.

Me, I'm just fat and hating it. I'm not curvy, I'm not pleasantly plump, I'm not "more to love." I'm just fat.

Fortunately, initial results have been swift. In the last six days, I've lost seven pounds, and Husband has lost five! I know that, for me, the first ten pounds or so is water weight and not actual fat, but I know that eating this way is helping my body get fat adapted, which will allow me to start burning fat in a few days--albeit at a slower rate than this first week. Seeing the scale drop so quickly, though, helps me to keep at it so that I develop new habits. My waistbands are a lot less snug and far more comfortable right now.

We're doing a combination of dirty keto and intermittent fasting. This has proven to be the best for me because it's a very natural way for me to eat. I'm not a fan of eating breakfast (though I love breakfast-for-dinner), and I hate grazing on tiny meals or snacks all day. I would rather eat a lot and feel really full in one or two meals than have six or seven small meals from the moment I wake up to the time I go to sleep.

Having said that, eating very small meals with carefully balanced proportions of fat, protein, and carbs every two-and-a-half to three hours (plus a regular meal once a day) did help me lose fifty pounds (23 kg, or 3.5 stone) a couple years ago, so it's not like it doesn't work. I have nothing but respect and gratitude for the wonderful woman, Linnea, who got me onto that and supported me both monetarily and emotionally during that time. But I can't sustain that way of eating for the rest of my life. It was so hard after the first couple of months. I was often just so hungry! Plus, the products for that particular program are really expensive, I hate the taste of most of them, and I simply cannot justify spending that much money on just my own food every month. I decided the only way to sustain my own weight loss and weight management going forward was to learn how to do it while eating real food and to quit fighting against my natural instincts.

Eating multiple small meals a day works really well for my MIL, however. She's had her gall bladder removed, and frequent small meals feels better for her. If she eats the same foods that I do, she also loses weight. So I'm not saying eating frequently is the wrong way. It's just the wrong way for me.

Here's what I do (and I've done this before, which is why I can tell you about it as if I know it will work. Because it works for me. Even if I'm starting over once again because I got tired and lazy the last time):

I don't eat before noon--and often not before two o'clock--and the only thing I have before my first meal is water (plain or flavored), herbal teas, and a can of diet soda (yes, I know it's terrible, but I'm only going to tackle one addiction at a time right now. Plus, being able to look forward to a frosty ginger and lime diet Coke keeps me on track.). When I do eat, I scarf down plenty of the foods on my to-eat list. I don't count calories, I don't weigh my food, and I don't count my macros right now (I will later, when I'm closer to my goal weight). I eat until I'm comfortably full, which, as I go along, has been easier to gauge as my body isn't being flooded with sugar and, which suppresses my ability to tell when I'm full. I find I'm eating less now than I was a week ago but still feeling satisfied.

Within my eating window--which can be eight hours one day and six hours the next, whatever I feel like doing--I have two meals. Sometimes I'll do just one really big meal for the day if that's what I feel like (or if time gets away from me). After my last meal, I don't eat anything until the next day.

I love stuffing myself, which is why I've become overweight, because I stuffed myself with the wrong foods; but, again, I don't feel the need to try and fix that about myself if it means I have to force myself to eat in a way that is unnatural for me and that I can't sustain. If intermittent fasting with one or two very pleasingly adequate meals works for both my psyche and my body, why try to force myself into eating patterns that just don't work for me?

People freak out when you say the words "intermittent fasting," as if you're going to starve yourself and wreck your metabolism. It's what Science has currently told us to think, even if Science keeps changing...its? their?...mind about food in drastic ways over the decades.

Everyone fasts if they quit eating at, say, seven at night, and then not eating until seven the next morning. That's twelve hours right there, even if you were sleeping through most of that time. That's still fasting! And yet, people freak out if you say you fast every day for at least sixteen hours. A 16/8 intermittent fasting day (where you fast for sixteen hours from your last meal and have an eating window of eight hours) is basically just skipping breakfast. And no, skipping breakfast is not a bad thing, contrary to the currently popular opinion.

Some people combine intermittent fasting with alternate-day fasting, where they go every other day with no food at all and do really well with both weight loss and the healing of many types of health issues due to chronic inflammation, diabetes, and more. I'll probably try alternate day fasting in the future, just to see if it helps me get over a plateau or if I feel better when I do it that way.

Not everyone should fast, but for many people, intermittent fasting is beneficial.

The bottom line is, weight loss is all about keeping your insulin levels low as long as possible in the day. Intermittent fasting helps keep your insulin levels low for most of the 24-hour day and allows your body to adapt to burning body and dietary fat for fuel instead of relying on constant glucose injections from sugary and high-carb, low nutrient foods.

While some people don't worry about what foods they eat during their daily meal or meals while intermittent fasting and still see positive results, I prefer to combine intermittent fasting with a keto diet. I can't control myself when I'm eating sugary, high-carb, low nutrient foods. I have no discipline at all in that situation. Eating HFLC (High Fat/Low Carb) or keto (dirty keto, in my case) helps me stay on track.

I avoid:
~sugar and simple carbs.
~grains.
~legumes (for now).
~starchy vegetables (in the future, I will allow myself a little more of these).
~hydrogenated fats like vegetable oils.
~snacking between meals.

I eat:
~tons of non-starchy veggies. I try to eat at least four or five cups of veggies with each meal, both raw and cooked. If I'm only eating one meal, I try to get at least seven cups of veggies, though it gets hard to stuff it all into my belly along with my protein, which is why it might take me a couple hours to get through a meal if I eat only one meal in a day (OMAD).
~adequate protein. You don't need a huge amount of protein to keep you feeling satiated and give you energy. For one meal, I'll have a serving of meat that's about the size and thickness of my palm, though I'm not really measuring. I stop eating when I'm full. But if I want another slice of bacon, I'll eat another slice of bacon! Fight me!
~good fats. I don't eat spoonfuls of coconut oil or anything, but I cook my foods in moderate amounts of avocado oil, coconut oil, butter, lard, or bacon fat, and I never use vegetable oils. I also use heavy cream in my herbal tea if I've already broken my fast. If I have a salad, I use a fatty dressing like bleu cheese, if I want; or I make my own vinaigrette with extra virgin olive oil, whatever vinegar tickles my fancy, and some dried herbs. I do not avoid cheese, even if I don't overdue my consumption. I needs me some feta on my salad! Good fats give me energy and help me feel satiated for hours and hours at a time.
~sugar substitutes like monk fruit, stevia, erythritol, xylitol, etc. that won't spike my blood sugar.
~keto versions of baked goods that use almond or coconut flour and sugar substitutes, such as Fathead Dough (which is absolutely amazing as a pizza crust and tastes almost like the real thing). I limit even the keto versions of desserts, however, as those are always a little higher in carbs. My sugar cravings have pretty much disappeared now, so I'm not dying for dessert anyway.

I'm feeling really good right now. I always do when I eat this way. My only problem with keeping this up is that eating well requires a lot of preparation and planning, and if I don't do the planning, it's a little too easy to start eating like crap again, which inevitably leads to rapid weight gain for my middle-aged, peri-menopausal, hormone fluctuating body. Having Husband fully on board--and Sophia and Elannah, as well, who frequently eat keto--really helps. Husband's health is very important to me, and that gives me motivation to keep going even when I would probably start slipping on my own.

I'll let you know how it goes. Please pray for me. I'm not always strong.