Changing My Diet

Starting in January of this year, I made an effort to eat less carbohydrates with the hope of losing weight. For a few months I mostly just limited the big carbs such as bread, pasta, potatoes, and rice. I must confess that I wasn’t very strict but still lost about 10 pounds.

My wife, Barbara, was also going “low carb” but she was focusing on getting into ketosis. I measured the ketones a few times, using the urine ketone strips, but didn’t see a color change and concluded that this ketosis stuff didn’t work for me.

During this time Barbara was also measuring her morning blood glucose. One day I decided to measure mine and was shocked to see a number above 140 mg/dl, a number suggesting I had diabetes! This was the wake up call I needed to start doing more research and changing my lifestyle.

I started recording my carbohydrate intake and cutting it to less than 20g/day. I soon found that the low carb diet I thought I was on was not low enough. I was probably eating between 50-100g/day.

After a week on my new very low carb diet, I achieved a low level of ketones.

It has now been about 5 weeks now and I am still keeping the carbs below 20 grams and trying to get 80% of my calories from fat. I’ve lost an additional 8 pounds (from 222 to 214 pounds)! But more importantly, I have a much better understanding of nutrition and metabolism than I did a month ago.

I hope to continue this new low carb high fat lifestyle and to post about my progress and share information along the way.