Keto Fool

I've been following a keto diet for the past four months and I've never felt better.

It's been an amazing revelation about food, specifically carbs, and the effect it has on my mental and physical health. BUT, it's had no carbs.  Like none.  Okay, 20g a day--which is equivalent to a 1/2 cup of strawberries.  This has been difficult.  Not without its rewards, but difficult.  So when I went to Cleveland for a week, it felt like it was time to stop feeling so terrible about "cheating" on carbs and for the first time in a long time, I just accepted that I was going to eat a bunch of bread and sugar and I was going to love it. 

And I did.

I always do.  It's like the best energy wrapped inside a hug wrapped inside a firework display.  Especially after months of little to no sugar, bread, refined grains, anything truly delicious in the deep and creepy but mystifying depths of my soul--it was heaven.  Life cereal has never tasted so much like the world's best, most decadent dessert. Except what I've built physically for the past four months--a well-oiled fat burning machine (sort of)--doth protesteth.  While I was unregretfully eating potato chips, doritos, and puff pastry danish (DELICIOUS), I had a constant, throbbing, often skull-splitting headache of epic proportions.  So, I was also on a cocktail of advil and...well...okay, not so much a cocktail as just advil religiously every couple hours.  But I persevered and hit all the carb niches including white rice, bread, refined carbs, refined sugar, and whatever else you got that has any of the above.  And I gave myself permission to do it; the challenge is not in giving permission but returning to the original plan.

So on my way back from Carbland Cleveland I started listening to the No Sugarcoating Podcast, a pairing of Leann Vogel of HealthfulPursuit.com and Amber of amberapproved.ca.  I've whole-heartedly given myself over to HealthfulPursuit and the brand of Keto that Leann prescribes there, a very female friendly, "let's not lose your hair" version of keto that recognizes the importance of hormone balance in all of this no-carb mess...something missing from a lot of my other favorites in the paleo and keto world.

I was mesmerized for 6 hours listening to what was a little group therapy, a little love and pep talk, a little bit technical how-to, and just generally awesomeness.  It made me realize I need to get that podcast regularly.  It also made me realize that, in a lot of ways, I've been going about this all wrong.  Of course.

But I wouldn't have if I had known. 

There's so much out there about dieting: crash dieting, keto dieting, low-carb, paleo, macros, no-macros, keto-macros...the list goes on forever.  In the 1950s, if you wanted to lose weight you cut out Manhattan's one day a week and stood on the machine with the belt that jiggled your belly away.  Today if you want to lose weight you have to be a metabolism ninja, an endrocrinologist, a guru of macro-nutrient effects and counter-effects.  You have to know what phytoestrogens are (although that spelling looks not right).  I find myself wishing I'd paid closer attention in biology-cum-anatomy in high school when we went over the adrenal glands and the importance of the thyroid.

It's a lot.

And in many ways, I've been a keto fool.  But what I'm realizing is that I learn something new everyday and that I would've loved (and still would love) to see someone talking about all of this when I was obsessively researching all of this...and still do.  Maybe that's something I can do.

A little humor.  A little "naturally found" knowledge...via Google.  A little bit of product review...a little bit of cautionary tale with a little bit of humor.

Since I've tried everything and stuck with almost nothing...maybe that's the story I have to tell.

Why do I keep looking for a good ending when what I really love is the story about how we got there?

Clearer Vision

Oh summer.

The time for me to rue the weather and count the days until fall.

Wait. No.  That doesn't sound right. 

I regularly feel about summer like I feel about going to the dentist; that is to say, not excited about it's inevitability.  BUT, if I think hard, there are many, many good things I can point to in my life--pivotal points, even--that should make summer a welcome guest.  So, it's with this spirit that I've actively tried to talk myself into embracing summer and seeing what happens.

And it's worked. A lot of good things coalesced into a time and space that really hinted that something transformative is happening.  I'm no longer on the cusp...things are moving...and I'd be good to stay out of its way and just let the magic happen.

One of these things tingling back to life is a sense of creativity, which in a world of analysis, is often relegated to about 8 kahuna on the list of kahunas.  It gets smashed and trampled in the "hard" world of logic.  But all that might be illogical is not bad.  There cannot be a yang without a yin if you know what I mean.  What's hard to remember is that creativity needs practice to be cultivated just like anything else.  Once I started practicing again, bang there it was with all of its colors and conflicting, nonsensical dimensions.  And life got much more colorful.  And hopeful.  Light and air became regular visitors again.

So while I've been essentially meditating on creativity, I've been simultaneously, consequently thinking to myself, "What do I want this life of mine to be?" I'm always flabbergasted to hear that people don't ask themselves this question, like, every hour or so...like I have my whole life.  But how interesting the response I found when in the realm of the creative.  Whole new answers appeared that I have never considered.  I became unburdened by some of the old stand-by constraints.  My gray cells were working with a new...spark. 

And here's what I was thinking about just today as I was walking home from the car I have to park about a mile away to ensure its safety, "I don't just want to be balanced.  Balanced implies you're already full.  I want to be full first.  Full of the best things I can imagine.  And if I'm careful along the way, full should be balanced."

I'm not sure where that came from but it was new for me.  I want to be full...but what that means for me is probably not what that means for you.  Maybe it is.  But we'll only know after I find out what it means for me.  This felt like an invitation from something either deep within or far, far outside of me to seize the power I have to determine what full means: in my lifestyle, in my career, in my family, in my body.

This gave me the idea to maybe restructure this blog a bit.  I often find I reflect on things that tend toward topics all too similar but vague.  Perhaps the only nod I'll give to my analytical self is my need to quantify and record; a challenge to get specific.  

I think that's what I'm going to do.  I'm going to reflect and write and sometimes record things along those 4 categories...honoring whatever surfaces at whatever time and not purposely working hard to keep things even or equally distributed.  Let's see where that takes me.

I think about these things all the time.  It's maybe time to start writing them down.  So as to be full.