187.8 Lost a Pound

I weigh 187.8 today. I lost a pound yesterday. I walked half a mile. Exercise is an ingredient in my weight loss, but diet is the key ingredient. I am now fully into ketosis again, which is why I am losing a pound a day once again. I am scheduled to stay in ketosis until this coming Friday, which will end my two weeks on the diet. Dr Tarnower clearly and adamantly says not to stay on the diet for more than two weeks.

I do know people who live their entire lives in ketosis. They have type two diabetes, and ketosis controls it. They eat almost no carbohydrates, getting all their calories from protein and fat. I joined their Facebook group, thinking that I was on a low carbohydrate diet, too. Um, no. My diet is low carb but it is also low fat. I did not fit in well with these folks!

Here is what I ate yesterday and still managed to lose a pound:

Winter breakfast: 1 cup Special K with dried berries in it, 1 cup soy milk, black unsweetened coffee

Lunch: 1 cup raw carrot sticks dipped in half a cup of parmesan/spinach/artichoke dip, Diet Coke

New Dinner: three deviled eggs made with just mustard and relish no mayo, 1 cup steamed broccoli, caffeine-free diet soda

Ketosis

Weight: Still 200. I did not lose my pound yesterday. Just keeping the weight off is not enough right now. :( Looking back on what I ate in the past and still lost my pound, I guess the dinner I had yesterday has to be just for keep trim eating, and not for the two-week stretches that I am trying to lose a pound a day. [Edited to add: At this point, I was using a mechanical scale that only registered a pound or more of weight loss.]

I would love to stay in ketosis longer than two weeks at a time and lose the weight more quickly, but Dr. Tarnower tells us several times in his book not to do this, and so I don't. I have recently done some research online about ketosis. From what I have read, it is dangerous for the liver if you stay in that metabolic state too long. Interestingly, I also read that low carbohydrate diets were the primary treatment for diabetes throughout the 19th century. They avoid the diabetic state, rather than trying to manage the diabetic state.

Scarsdale is a low-fat diet, in addition to being a low-carb diet. It does allow carbohydrates from fruit and encourages us to eat lots of vegetables, especially leafy green vegetables, so I think Scarsdale is much healthier than other low-carb diets that are high in fat.

Yesterday, I ate:

My usual breakfast of 1 cup Special K, 1 cup vanilla soy milk, 1/2 cup cut-up strawberries and three cups of coffee, black and unsweetened

A lunch of one cup raw carrot sticks with 1/2 cup parmesan / artichoke / spinach dip from Costco

My dinner, which I think is what disallowed me to lose my pound yesterday, is one of my favorite recipes that I made up: low carb fajitas. As I said earlier, I guess I have to reserve this for my keep-trim eating weeks and not use it during weeks when I am trying to lose my pound a day.

Edited months later to add:

Actually, half a cup is way too much Parmesan spinach dip. Two tablespoons are one serving. It has way too much sodium in it to eat half a cup in one day! I probably retained a pound of water from eating all that spinach dip in one day.