Starting weight (7/15/08):  279.8
Friday:  264.6  Today:  264.0
Change today:  -0.6   Loss-so-far: 15.8 lbs.

I took a gamble last night and lost.  Oops.

I’ve been seeing, on Atkin’s products, that the “net carbs” figure was after subtracting something called “sugar alcohols.”  I hadn’t tried any of these products because, honestly, to me it looked too good to be true, it looked like cheating.  But last night I just wanted wanted wanted chocolate, so I took a gamble.

I ate three “sugar free” chocolate candies which were supposed to each have only one net carb.  Last night I did a test stick for ketosis and it was really vivid purple.  I thought maybe I’d be okay.  I looked up the whole sugar alcohol thing online when I got home (kinda like closing the barn door after the horse runs away) and learned that some people - some, not all! - some people metabolize sugar alcohols (which are technically neither sugars nor alcohols) just like real sugar.   Thing is, they metabolize the substances slower, so it just takes longer for the sugar reaction to happen.  In diabetics, this would cause a rise in blood sugar.  In people in ketosis, this would result, pretty quickly, in the loss of that state.

Apparently I’m in that lucky group of people because today I tested absolutely negative for ketosis.  Not even a hint of pink on that stick, much less purple. 

It’s all good.  It was something I had to learn on this journey, and now I know. 

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