Keto-Vision
I’ve developed Keto-Vision lately. At just about two and a half years since going low-carb, I’ve been able to stick to my diet with very few cheat days. The result has been the loss of a few hairs, the gain of a few wrinkles, the loss of almost all of my clothes and the gain of a mostly-new wardrobe. (The clothes my boys couldn’t or didn’t wear actually fit me!).
It’s taken quite a toll on my will-power, yet I manage to persevere. This isn’t was is in no small part to my wife, Nikki. When my blood work showed my blood sugars getting high and my physician wanting to start me on Metphormin, she was adamant that I was not going to take that medicine. Being the strong willed man that I am… the king of my castle… the ruler of my domain… I said “yes dear”. Seriously though, I didn’t want to take any more medicine and I knew that I needed to watch what I was eating and make better choices. What I didn’t know was that living on brown rice, beans, corn, baked potatoes, and brown bread was getting me anywhere. I was already drinking 1/2 cut or unsweetened tea. I researched and looked for ways to help cut not only my blood sugar but my hypercholesterolemia as well. It runs in my family – high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
A bit of research on the subject led me to several articles by Dr. Atkins, and other researches from across the pond in the United Kingdom (England). There were multiple references to how our food pyramid was inverted and that if we looked, quite a bit of the research on diets and exercise were funded by the companies that made cholesterol and diabetic medications. Quite an eye opener eh?
After reading through much of the published research I also found some online references to the diets that were prescribed for before the 1950’s. They included such non-sensical instructions as limiting your carbohydrate intake – breads, sugars, rice, noodles, potatoes. How silly they were. No wonder we couldn’t get a grip on the high cholesterol and diabetes rates back before the second World War… oh wait. We didn’t have those epidemics of fat and obesity, high blood sugar, high cholesterol and such back in those days. People actually ate fat, butter, cream, and such and limited their rice, bread, noodles and sugar. Most people didn’t drink sweet tea, sugar in their coffee, etc.. I began to look at meal plans and found that I could do this.
All the meat, eggs, cheese, and butter you want. That’s how it all started for me. That’s how I lost a lot of my weight – supplementing these with salad for roughage so it would all “push through”, if you know what I mean. I know that you’re supposed to actually limit the amount of cheese you eat due to the carbs, but it was working for me. That and increase the amount of plain water you take in to help flush everything out, or you’ll get constipated and headaches from drying out inside.
It had the effect of letting the employees at the ice-cream parlor have all the ice cream they want… because they eventually get sick of it and could care less about it in the end. Same for me. I do not crave burgers, steak, chicken, cheese, eggs, bacon, sausage, turkey, etc. etc.. like I had.
Funny thing though, I do crave a good salad with just a bit of cheese and maybe a little meat and tomato at times. Otherwise, its just food for sustenance. That reminds me of a magnet that used to be on my Aunt Lois’s refrigerator. It said “Eat to Live. Don’t Live to Eat.” I think I’m finally there… even though I do crave pancakes on occasion, and I’ve discovered Cracker Barrel, Waffle House, and I-Hop have sugar free syrup. Though I usually only have the low-carb pancakes at home and seldom treat myself to any more than once a year.
Bon Appetite!
