It’s been a month since the last diet update. I’ve been doing pretty well. I started in April doing what would be considered an extremely low-carb ketogenic diet in the last month. The weight is somewhat steadily coming off now, and I’m starting to get a little better on ignoring the scale while still getting on it every day.

I mentioned the ketogenic diet, and I went all-in on the diet for the last four weeks. I’ve been following a subreddit which has a lot of people trying out the same thing, discussing recipes and how to stay on the diet, and what is possible to eat and the science behind all of it. I’m doing it in combiantion with keeping track on my calories, which is pretty easy to do. One of the major advantages to eating a lot of protein is that I’m not hungry nearly as often anymore. I’m usually having a some type of breakfast meat and eggs in the morning, about 500 calories with real butter, and then I have a snack or two at lunchtime at work, then a big dinner and maybe a snack. This keeps me within the 1800 calories which I have set for myself.

I’ve been good with the exercise, although it’s cut back from last year, I’m slowly ramping up the time. I’m normally doing 40 minutes and a little more - 42 or 43. I like to walk on the treadmill machine which lets me watch an hour long TV show while I’m exercising and complete it without the commercials. I would like to start working out more outside than I have been, especially because it is much warmer outside nowadays. I’m more likely to go farther and also maybe start running some, which is something I’m seriously considering for May or June.

I took a couple of cheat days, once on my birthday, and once in the last week. The birthday one was of course planned out, and I went all out getting donuts in the morning and wonderful homemade cake that I couldn’t stay away from for the next three days. It seemed like I took a very long time to recover from it, more than a week over my trend line. After being back on track, I went another 16 days between my cheat days and I broke down in the middle of the week, after there was a lot of days in a row where I was condidering taking the day as a cheat.

I think the cheat days are important because they’re keeping me on task. They also remind me that there are a lot of things that I want to eat that I shouldn’t really eat and that aren’t that great. I tell myself that I’m going to go overboard on the cheat days, but I usually don’t. Now it’s actually just kindof strange because I am on the low-carb things, I’m considering things like grilled cheese and pizza as cheat day treats, because they are so high in carbs. Even on the cheat days I’m finding myself keeping moderation, because I don’t want to have cheat day food around on the days after - for example I’m not going to buy a big package of cookies because it’s almost impossible for me to eat them all on one day, and just a single cookie is enough to get me out of my diet parameters in the days after.

One more thing is that I haven’t been doing the practice days. They’re not compatible with the low-carb diet, because eating “normal” will constitute having some normal amount of carbs, which will make my body stop burning fat for energy. I think that I might take a look into it after I meet my long-term goal.

The last thirty days show me doing fairly well on the scale. Most of the days are under the line. You can clearly see the days after the birthday and the more recent cheat days where I went over, they are the only one over the trend. I am happy with my progress here. It says that I should be cutting about 200 calories out of my diet, but I am not really comfortable with cutting that much more out right now. The weekly loss doesn’t look as good as last month, but I don’t mind.

The year to date looks wondeerful to me. Mostly green, and the trend line is basically straight. It’s interesting to note that there hasn’t been a really big change in my slope over the whole thing, especially since I was using two different diet plans in this. I am wondering if by the end of May I will be able to see some type of difference in the two diets.

My goal in the short term is still 250, although I will most likely move the chains to 240 when I get there, because I want to be able to say that I lost 100 pounds. When I get to there, I will re-evaluate and see how I feel. I’m wondering if I can take a breather for a month or two and focus on maintaining the weight. If I can maintain it, then I will feel a lot better about what I’ve been doing in the last year and a half. When I meet my 240 goal, I promise before and after pics.