193 lb this morning, and my waist is now 37".  I'm eating about 1.75 lb of meat per day, mostly beef, and I'm only drinking water and tea.  My exercise is minimal but steady: pull ups and dips 1 day a week, and 30-45 minutes of cardio two other days, widely spaced.  I'm behind on my goal for this month, but I'm losing steadily at this point, so I'm hoping to be caught up by February or March.

Sunday, I was treated to a meal out at a nice Japanese restaurant, so I had some divergence for the salad and miso soup I was given.  Unfortunately, the ribeye was served covered in a sweet sauce I really could have done without.  I'm starting to really appreciate the subtle flavors of beef, and all I could taste was something that made me think of candy.  It's entirely possible that there was relatively little sugar in the sauce, but in eliminating it from my regular diet, I've likely become overly sensitive to it.  In any event, it doesn't appear to have slowed my weight loss.  I'm going to try and make it through the next week with stricter adherence and see how that goes.  I'm also going to have to be more careful at restaurants.  "Just bring me the meat.  Cook it -- a little -- put on a plate, do nothing else, and bring it to me."

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 10:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've been keeping VLC (Very Low Carb) or ZC (Zero Carb) pretty well, but I'm still drinking a fair amount of coffee (1-3 cups a day) and I've been adding heavy cream on some days.  Cream has very small amounts of carbohydrate, even without it the taste is sweet enough that it may still be provoking a rise in my insulin level, similarly to a diet soda.

Also, the "experts" are all over the place on caffeine.  Some studies say it raises blood sugar and thus insulin, others say it raises blood sugar but blocks insulin, and still others say it does neither but does make cells more responsive to insulin.  Since nearly all of evolutionary history occurred in the absence of coffee -- indeed, in the absence of hot beverages in general -- I'm going to play it safe and just quit it as well.

I'm unsure about whether to keep drinking tea.  I have tons of tea laying around, and I mostly drink it iced, and it's basically just water with leaf residue in it, no fire necessary, so I may hang onto it for now and see how I feel going forward.

And yes, this means my diet has now narrowed to meat, water, tea, and the occasional piece of broccoli I'm offered at a restaurant.  I'll let you know if scurvy actually sets in, or the Eskimos are really onto something.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 03:34 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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195 lb this morning, so no.  That puts me about 5 lb behind the pace I was hoping to set.  Given Christmas 1, 2, and 3, though, 5 lb behind at this point isn't too bad.  I've also still got 5 more months to catch up.  Waist size is unchanged at 38".

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 10:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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198 lb this morning. On a hunch, I've been keeping to a more-or-less zero carbohydrate diet for the past couple of weeks. I'm eating about 1.5 to 2 lb of meat a day, and pretty much nothing else, and the weight loss is steady. Anyone who remembers my Meat Week experiment, which dismally failed on day 5, might wonder how I'm managing this time around. I'm actually doing much better. I'm not craving sweets or breads, no headaches or nausea, I actually feel excellent. The difference this time might simply be that I took my time getting down to this level of carbohydrate intake, getting past the withdrawal from bread and milk opioids well before I went fully carnivorous*.  The idea that I can lose weight while eating 2 lb of beef every day sounds ludicrous, but it's working.  I'm also not sure if cutting back seriously on intake would improve matters, but I'll experiment a bit this week.

Why experiment?  Well, 2 lb of beef a day is somewhat expensive, minimally $4.50 a day if all I eat is ground chuck, $8-10 a day if I have my preferred steak for dinner (I basically don't eat lunch any more, I'm not hungry enough to bother).  Further, if I can lose faster by eating 1 or 1.5 lb a day, while simultaneously saving some cash, I probably should.  I'm concerned I may simply end up hungry a lot of the time, and part of what's made this so easy is that I haven't felt deprived at all.  If I keep losing 2 lb/week, that's probably fine.  Slightly less than I'd hoped to average, but I'll take it if it stays effortless.

*Side note, so long as I'm eating this way, I'm technically a hypercarnivore, which sounds cool enough to inspire a t-shirt.

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Can be found here, courtesy of the US FedGov. If you've paid US taxes, you paid to make it, may as well use it.

H/T to Freeman Hunt.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 02:22 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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200 lb this morning.  Both halves of my extended family celebrated Christmas over the Jan 2-3 weekend, so there were a number of indulgences -- baked by beloved family members, I might add -- from which I just couldn't completely abstain.  Fortunately, it looks like going to zero carbohydrates in the days since has corrected any damage.  Yeah, zero.  Just meat and some heavy whipping cream in my coffee for this Monday and Tuesday.

I didn't weigh myself at all in the week between, but my belt notch fluctuated up and then back down.  I don't know if I'm back on track soon enough to hit 190 by Jan 21, but since I have no more holiday celebrations to contend with, it's at least possible.

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