Yesterday, I started IF and I was almost successful. After my zoom canasta game with my friends, I decided I needed to cook the ground beef in my fridge before it spoiled. I had two pounds and two recipes in mind. First, I love taco salad and could literally eat it every day, so I made some taco meat.

Next, I had been meaning to try to make one of my late husband’s specialties: Tex-mex goulash. So, I did. It calls for corn and black beans, but I skipped that. My soy black beans haven’t arrived from Amazon yet. Tomato juice is the carbiest element of the recipe at 10 grams per cup, but when the calories are divided by serving, I don’t think it’s too bad. This made a huge pot, so I’m guessing at least 6 servings. It’s not the lowest-carb meal I’ve made, but at ~13 grams of carbs, and paired with a salad, it will be a nice meal during the week.

I bagged up the taco meat to add to the rest of the taco salad ingredients later. But here’s where my IF failed on the first day. I couldn’t resist eating a bowl of the goulash. I had eaten in an 8-hour window (11-7) and that only included eggs for breakfast and a quesadilla for dinner, so I was well under my carb and calorie count for the day, but I was a little disappointed that I didn’t stay inside the 8-hour window by eating this snack so late at night. Today is another day!

Tex-Mex Goulash (My keto-friendly version contains no corn and no black beans)

After the usual breakfast at the diner, I headed off to work. I only needed to work until 1:30 because I worked late a couple of days this week. Rick called and offered to take me to Bonefish Grill for lunch to make up for a “bad vacation weekend” as he called it. It’s true, Thanksgiving Day/birthday was great fun, but driving up north and back in two days, followed by an upper respiratory ailment did make for a short and awful vacation.

But I digress. We stopped by the Apple store to pick up a new battery for my Macbook, then headed to Bonefish Grill. We were both very hungry since breakfast was at 7:30 am. I am not a fish lover, but I do really really like their shrimp tacos. Unfortunately, the sign on the door said they opened at 4!

What to do? Well, if you read the title of the blog, you know the answer. Brandon has been telling me that Mongolian Barbecue is a great place to eat on keto, since they now labeled all their sauces with nutritional content plus offer lettuce for wraps in place of tortillas. We decided to check it out.

I loaded up my bowl with chicken, shrimp, onion slices, and mushrooms. Brandon recommended the Asian black bean sauce. I know beans have carbs, but the label says 1 gram of carbs per ounce. Sounded good to me! I added a bit of garlic and waited for the griller to do his work.

It was very very very good. It was one of my favorite keto dinners to date! Rick liked his alot too. I went for seconds, and didn’t change a thing. It was spicy, nutritious, and delicious. We didn’t take the waiter up on the offer to take a full dish home in a carryout container for only $2.49. I was full and it didn’t appeal to me, but the next day, I rued that decision. It would have made a cheap and delicious leftover meal on Saturday at home. Oh well. Next time.

I do have to say, the only spoiler was trying to roll up a lettuce wrap around a portion of my meal. It was just too soggy to handle. I ate the meal with a fork and ignored the lettuce altogether. I also ignored the bowl of rice. I know it is deceivingly delicious looking. In reality, I didn’t need it as filler to detract from my flavorful dish.

All in all, I would say this is in my top five low carb keto meal choices when eating out. In fact, if I could find that Asian black bean sauce, I would cook this at home in our wok at least once a week. So far, I have scoured Amazon.com and other sites, but many of them have similar looking sauces without any nutritional info. I’ll keep searching.

Today weight loss: 35 pounds

Wow! Today’s weigh in made me very very happy. It isn’t a record in terms of amount lost – I haven’t weighed in 3 weeks, so a pound a week average isn’t really exciting. However, this weight loss is significant in many other respects.

First, nine days ago was the 6th month “anniversary” of starting the keto plan. I haven’t weighed since then, so I didn’t know what my 6-month loss was. Now I know: 35 pounds. That averages to nearly 6 pounds a month, which means that in one year I could be down 70 pounds, a very significant life change – and change in my body, how I feel about myself, how my clothes fit, and how much more healthy I am.

I also had certain weight loss benchmarks in my head, and today I surpassed one. Being down 35 pounds means the plan works, and it works for me. This is the most weight I have lost in years. Low-fat diets, high-fiber diets, just cutting calories, exercising more…all great ideas, but NONE OF THESE worked for me! KETO WORKS!

Yesterday’s eating journal:

I worked at my desk at home all day on the new software going out.

• Breakfast was yogurt
• Lunch was leftover sloppy joe from the freezer, no bun, topped with onions, a little cheese, and mustard
• Dinner was at the local diner – 1/2 flaming cheese appetizer, and  a gyro without the pita
• Snack – half a hamburger patty from Rick’s leftover patty melt
• Late night snack – 2 squares of choc/peanut butter

I’m beginning to wonder if the flaming cheese is keto-friendly. Maybe it depends on the restaurant, but yesterday’s cheese looked like it had a bit of breading on it. I’ll have to keep this little treat to a minimum.

Breakfast was yogurt, lunch was 2 beddar cheddars.

It’s been really hot this week…in the 90’s. I have missed swimming due to work, our business, etc. etc. Yesterday, I finally got some swimming time. Because I wanted to head straight to the pool, I certainly didn’t want to take time to cook. We picked up a chicken shawarma pizza to go. I ATE THE CRUST. Oh, that was bad. I hope I don’t see the repercussions next weigh-in. I did, however, drink low-carb beer with it. Is this tantamount to people who eat a Whopper with a Diet Coke? LOL

Saturday morning started at the diner. I had a cheese and onion omelet with sour cream and a side of bacon.

Afterwards, we picked up supplies at Home Depot, then worked on the house for a while.

Lunch was a burrito/no tortilla at Del Taco.

I’m writing this a week later, and I can’t remember what I had for dinner!

Dinner

After being sick for 4 days, I decided to go easy on myself yesterday. I still didn’t have much of an appetite, so I skipped breakfast.

I spent the morning doing taxes, wrapping up and sending ebay items, and running errands. After that, I had a brunch of….a taco and an enchilada. Yes, I decided to have a real taco, with a real shell, and an enchilada to boot! I skipped on the rice and beans. I just felt like going rogue and forgetting about keto for one more day.

I know it’s playing with fire, but I feel that I’m in control of this plan enough to take a cheat meal a little more often. I plan to do the keto diet for one full year (or more) before being at my goal, and I think being ill and out of it for a few days on a not-so-vacation-like vacation awoke me to the fact that I don’t need to be so regimental about the whole plan.

We worked on installing molding in the rental house, then called it a day. For dinner, I ate the leftover taco from my lunch. I skipped dessert. All in all, it was a bad day in terms of nutrition–not because I went off keto, but because I ate way too little. I’ll get back on track tomorrow.

Typical morning at work. It was busy as all get out and every time I started back to the kitchen to heat my eggs, I was interrupted.  The result was I still hadn’t eaten by noon.

Rick was coming by work to drop off the truck and ride his bike back home. I asked him to pick me up something for brunch, because the eggs had lost their luster.

I check out Wendy’s online and lo and behold, they have some customization options. After selecting the item you want from the food menu, look for nutritional information. On that page, is a button that says “personalize it.” I was able to remove the bun and honey mustard sauce from the grilled chicken sandwich and see that the results made the meal only 3 grams of carbs. I personalized a side salad to go with it, and submitted my order to Rick, the carryout delivery guy.

Rick picked up and delivered, and the results were very satisfying. Although I rarely eat there, I’ve always thought Wendy’s chicken breasts were very big and moist, and it was just as good without the bun. I was just happy to outsmart the fast-food carb monster once again.

I had dinner plans with my friend Shelly. We met at Red Robin, where I had the guacamole cheeseburger again. This time, I didn’t ask for a lettuce bun. The concept was great, but the guac tends to smoosh around between the lettuce leaves. I opted for the side salad instead of bottomless fries again. As usual, they were tempting me from Shelly’s plate across the table. I ate about an inch off of the end of one. That was enough.

As I contemplate what to add to a potential cheat day menu, steak fries become a great possibility. Those, and perhaps pasta, are the only things I can’t successfully replicate in a low-carb option.

Dessert was chocolate mousse.

Is it two or three weeks to make a habit? I’ve definitely gotten the hang of this by the beginning of the 8th week! I’m getting into the habit of always planning ahead. I have a few low carb snacks or meals made ahead, and Rick makes sure that there are all the vegetables and other ingredients I need on hand all the time. Restaurants are no problem, because most have either a burger option, a grilled chicken option, or a salad available on the menu.

Brandon and I were discussing having a keto cheat day, and it is honestly so ingrained in me to avoid carbs, that I don’t know if I can do it! What would I choose? What do I miss the most? Maybe a pasta meal? Some cake? I get a little tense thinking about it. I don’t want to waste 24 hours of weight loss. I’ll have to research this idea some more and mull it all over.

Yesterday started with the usual breakfast of eggs/cheese/sausage. Lunch was 2 Beddar Cheddar sausages with some almonds a couple of hours later.

I was really really hungry at the end of the day. I was supposed to meet my friend Shelly for dinner, so we opted for Five Guys Burgers and Fries. I had been there before and the bacon cheese burger with some grilled onions was really filling and satisfying.

I met her at 7pm, but she was called away due to a scheduling mix up at work. I took my bun-less burger home, and it was just as good as I remembered from a month ago. I seriously doubt the necessity for a bun with a burger at this point in my keto career.

Evening snack was chocolate mousse. I was about 5 grams under my carb goal for the day. Maybe because I was so low, I was hungry again in a couple of hours. I ate one leftover Carbquik cheesy biscuit and it worked like a charm on my hunger.

Given the evidence, I am greatly annoyed that people still consider fat unhealthy. There are no documented adverse affects of a high fat diet when carbs are removed. It is mostly hearsay and pontification of supposed experts.

That’s from Diary of an Unknown Physicist

I have had a few people comment that the high fat and high cholesterol of this diet are dangerous. This is only one man’s experiment, but there are others online that confirm fat isn’t bad.