HIS ---- WOW! you just glided right into maintenance there, like it was just another day! Nope, just won't do... needs a big celebration


We're all looking forward to hearing about the wedding, hope all the last minute stuff goes smoothly!

mama - What a scary day! I'm so glad you were able to manoeuvre your way out of those close calls! I grew up in northern Ontario, pretty much learned to drive in snow, but you're absolutely right, every year there are those idjuts that don't have a clue!
Sorry the scale didn't move. but it sounds like you're holding water, so it'll be down again soon! hang in there!

Linda - Yesterday, I tried on an outfit I think I'm going to wear to a party in a couple of weeks, annual Christmas get together, out of town, lots of people who haven't seen me in a year. I took a picture of myself, and I looked fine, but nope, I'm not where I want to be yet! So the point of that is, you are the only one who knows if you look and feel like you've reached goal. I know I don't intend to stop early, and then 3 months from now, regret that I didn't keep going till I was happy.

My official WI this morning, down 2, but that was over 2 weeks (I missed last week). So my usual 1lb/week. GRRRR... I so want to speed this up a bit.
I talked to my coach about boot camp, she said I could try it, that my body could just be in a rut, needed to shake things up a bit. So, no dinner protein, 4 packets instead of 3 (suggested 2 restricted/2 un.) Lots of veggies.
BUT no more than 3 days.
She also said another thing I could try adding some extra protein in place of a packet (not at the same time as boot camp)
So I'm going to do both, I did one day of boot camp yesterday, going to do one more today, maybe tomorrow too, and see what happens.
Maybe on the weekend, I'll lose a packet and add some protein for a couple of days.

I do have to say though, I am finally below 150 (hello 140's!! )
and my inches went down some from 2 weeks ago, so I know I'm still losing, but this last stretch just seems to be dragging sooo sloooowly. Maybe because the end of the year is so close, and I was hoping to be done by then (I won't). Still, like I said, I'm not done till I'm done!

Blue!!!! Congrats on entering a new decade!!!

Ro - thinking about you...hopefully just really busy after the holidays.

Frawnie - I know you have limited internet now but sending thoughts to you also

Kay - how's it going?

It's December!! Sounds like you all did pretty well with Thanksgiving! Of course a pound here of there, but that will be gone in no time.

I did not stay OP, I had planned all along to have a small taste of everything. I had one plate, very small portions, and skipped the stuffing. I did go for a slice of pie, but I ended up feeling ishy and not eating it.

My monday weigh in was down a pound for the week of thanksgiving, and today I was even down another .3 lbs so I am happy with that.

I have derailed (or maybe overshot) my Christmas goal- odds of losing 10.1 lbs in 25 days is pretty far reaching, but I am going to really buckle down and try to be diligent and see where I land. Even 179 would be great.

With all this diet business and keeping myself busy, I have all the Christmas decorations up inside and out, shopping done (except gift cards that will go out with Xmas cards) cards ordered, and everything wrapped and under the tree. I am usually still shopping on Christmas eve, lol, so this is totally out of character. Anyways, I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season!

Blue- I am waiting for the day to finally get out of the 150's- CONGRATS!

Blue - Congrats on the 140's.

Thanks for the thoughts, Beth. I have been busy, a little sick, a diet regression and rethinking some things (tied into a bit with the extracts and such).

I had a bit of a diet slip on Sunday and fasted yesterday. I know the source of this which was delayed frustration over 3 weeks of low losses. Plus, the blood measurements for the nutritional ketosis have been bothering me - if you recall I had been measuring periodically for months this 2nd go around and the best reading I had was .6, just barely in NK but usually just below at .4. This has been bothering me and we chalked it up to a faulty device. Coincidentally, I ordered Keto Clarity as a Christmas present and wound up reading much of it.

The bottom line is that I am going to alter what I am doing to get the last 12 pounds off. I'm going to switch to a higher fat and lower protein. I had cravings on Sunday and the book says if that is happening while following a keto diet, it is because your body is in need of fats. So, I am going to lower my protein intake to about 80 grams a day (from 100-130) and increase my fat intake so that I'm still at 800-900 calories a day. I am going to monitor both my bg and bk. According to the author of the book, the exact thing happened to him as me and he realized he was consuming too much protein. Within 4 days, his NK was 1.0 and within a week 1.8. So, for the next week, I am doing the same thing and going to measure. I will also note if whether consuming the zero calorie items are having an adverse effect in week 2.
I just ordered more strips of both but I think this is what I need. This will tell me how carb sensitive and how protein sensitive I am.

jenny - you're so close, at your next WI you'll be there too
and then we can celebrate together

Ro - there is a good forum for low carb'ers - http://forum.lowcarber.org/index.php?

You would probably find some good information and recipes to help you meet the new macros.

I personally know I've done well with a low carb diet, but want to give the science of IP a decent chance to see if I am going to be able to maintain around 100g net

Hey Everyone! I hope you all enjoyed your holiday. It sounds like everyone is making great progress!

HIS & Beth - BIG grats on maintenance!

Blue - Super grats to you for hitting the next decade!

Linda - Grats to you for starting C25K! I hope that you enjoy it

Livin - Even more grats for beginning to phase off!

Sending encouraging thoughts to everyone else!

Ro - I've been interested in the LCHF approach as well. The week prior to thanksgiving I was actually drinking ~cup of cashew milk for a few days and I found that it helped with my head 'fog'. I may continue to do that on days where my fat is pretty low. This is just adding a bit more fat of course, I think I will try to stick with IP protocol until the losses become more stubborn. Definitely interested to hear your progress with it!

My willpower through Thanksgiving was rewarded with a 4.2lb loss, finally putting me in the 140's! The week prior I was +0.2 so that was discouraging. I guess my body was just hanging on to things since ~2/wk has been normal so far. I went through all of this effort to make a nice compliant meal and it was so disappointing! After this and breaking the next decade, I let myself order roast pork/broccoli from my fav chinese take out. I didn't ask what the thin brown sauce was comprised of, secretly hoping its just soy/ginger or something. I tried not to let everything soak in it much...it was still sooo good!

I tried to pick up some new pants during the black friday sales and was disappointed again! How can it be that i've lost almost 40lbs and am still the same pants size (12) . I can put the next size down on and zip etc, they were still doing that wrinkling thing under my butt indicating they were too tight though lol. And I was worried I might lose my butt during IP...I guess it will take more than that! I've been measuring since the beginning so I know that I've lost inches, idk strange.

Anyway, i've developed a cold of some sorts and am taking antibiotics. I also blew through LITERALLY an entire bag of sugar free cough drops today. I'm just going to suppose that because of that/meds/chinese food brown sauce, that I won't see a loss this week. Still hoping to be surprised though

Have a good night everyone!

Thanks for the link, Beth. I am not going too crazy nor varying that much from what I was already doing with IP - just changing up the macros a bit. And, I did add 2 new foods which are ghee and cheddar cheese. I don't plan on adding anything else in to get to goal. I just want more fat intake and less protein intake and see what happens with my blood ketones to see if I get more into nutritional ketosis (NK).

So, because of Sunday, I measured 0.1 bk at 4:30 today so I know I am starting out of ketosis. I know that my bk readings since August have fluctuated between 0.3 - 0.6.
I will check in a couple of days and see where I am at and I suspect I will be at 1.0 or so.

I then plan to up my protein intake by 10 g to see what that does to my bk. I have also reduced my total carbs to be under 20 g. I read that if you are carb sensitive, then the same thing would happen due to too much protein as that triggers gluconeogenesis. This will give me a clear indicator of just how carb sensitive I am.

So, today, I did the following:
B = 1/2 Quest Cookie
L = IP chicken soup with 2 c cauliflower
S = 1/2 Quest Cookie
D = 4 oz Angus Burger with 1 slice of cheddar cheese with 4 tsp olive oil over romaine lettuce

This equaled 781 cal 84 g protein (43%) 43 g Fat (50%) 13 g carb (7%)

Tomorrow, I will do the following:
B = 2 eggs scrambled with 3 tsp Ghee with 1/2 Quest bread with 1 tsp Ghee
L = IP chicken soup with 2 c cauliflower
D = 4 oz turkey with 2 c zucchini with 2 tsp olive oil
Macros = 792 cal 83 g protein (42%) 43 g fat (48%) 19 g carb (10%)
I know I should have higher fat but I haven't had a chance to plan this through so I think this is a good start. I'll determine my satiety and measure my bk at the end of the day tomorrow (I read that your bk is higher in the evening so I plan to measure then, 4 hours after last meal).

I don't think this is all that different from IP - it is just that I need to replace the protein calories and that comes from fat.

I think what I have learned is that instead of having a whole Quest cookie as 1 meal, I will cut the cookie in half and treat it as 2. This is good from a protein perspective but too few calories so I'll have to replace with fat. That will mostly come from Ghee or Olive Oil for me. I have some more research to do but this gets me started - I need to find more low protein, no carb, high fat food sources. I'll give this a week and if I don't see a big difference in bk then I'll seek additional help as I can't ignore the bk readings given the keto book I read.

I have never understood why IP does not accept ghee/butter or coconut oil as a fat source nor why cheeses are not allowed.

I'll keep you posted...
If nothing else, this is preparing me even that much more for maintenance as I made up my mind a while ago that I wanted to be lower carb long term. This will help me figure out exactly what that means.

Blue Congratulations!!!! Great job!! So happy for you!!!! We want pictures of you rockin that outfit!!!! Oh, you are going to look smashing!
Ro What do you have for measuring your keto level? Thank you for sharing the information you have here. Though, for me, it's overwhelming-because I haven't had a chance to absorb it, and I am not where you and Beth are yet, it's so educational for me. I want to learn and know EVERYTHING that I can. Thank yo thank you thank you!
Livinhow's it going?
Kayala THAT was my frustration through the 1st close to 45 lbs! It took FORfreekinEVER to move down in sizes. I'm probably legit in a size 10 now- my tops are medium. I have to buy bottims so I am kind of hanging on to my 12's and walking around in baggie drawers...
Jaimie Congrats on the loss and VERY impressed with your achievemants- both diet related and Christmas related. Just looked at the calendar and I better get off my butt!!!
Beth Thanks for sharing the "scale" with me. This morning I am 132.4 - so yes, my typical overthinking of things I am sure.....I cannot thank you enough for your wisdom! You are such an amazing wealth of knowledge here- as many are- I have been learning so much!!! My scale does the body fat %, muscle mass, bone and water- though I know it's not quite as accurate as a medical environment (<-that is the HARDEST word for me to remember how to spell-oy!) I wish I had had it in the beginning and I am going to get the starting numbers if they have them from the clinic- though I think that I asked for that once shortly after I got the scale and was told theirs didn't measure that- though I may have asked wrong. I have decided that I am going to have to channel my "inner Beth" and make a spreadsheet to track these things so I can see trends.
HIS Thinking of you and the upcoming wedding. I hope that things are going smoothly! Can't wait to see pictures of you, and your daughter too!!
Ok friends- time to get things going here - Happy Wednesday one and all!!!

Linda - I am using the Precision Xtra device that measures both glucose and ketones; although, originally I only ordered the ketone test strips so that was all I was measuring. I am going to switch to include both glucose and ketones. They say that your glucose should go back to where it was after consuming a meal within 2 hours if you did not absorb carbs/extra carb sensitive so that is what I will be checking for in addition to the ketone level. The bottom line is that the book says that you cannot know for sure you are in ketosis if you are not measuring. And, I have felt that my fat loss has stalled for a while and with not getting measured by my coach as I dropped him for the most part, I just want to ensure I am truly in ketosis. It could be that my body has just become very efficient as I have done P1 12 out of last 16 months, but I'll know for sure through this testing. Plus, because I have been having cravings, they say that is due to your body needing fat and seeing how I already had a Vitamin D3 deficiency due to the inability to absorb the Vitamin D I was getting due to too little fat, I don't want to make the same mistakes I made when I got to this point the first time when all my blood readings got out of whack. Both my doctor and the book said that you need to listen to your body and that cravings indicate you need more fat.

So, an update on me...I felt "skinny" this morning so I decided to jump on the scale this morning. I didn't weigh on Monday, my usual day, because it was TOM and because of my cheat on Sunday. Anyways, I got into the next decade. I lost 1.6 pounds since last Monday so that puts me at 11.2 pounds from goal, but it feels so good to be in the 170's knowing that my goal is just one decade away! I didn't mention what also sort of set me off was that when I went to the doctor last Wednesday, they weighed me and the scale showed a 5 lb gain. I knew I had TOM upcoming and I weighed with my jacket, shoes, etc on but after 3 bad weeks of losses plus that, I just was beyond frustrated. I am ready for the final push and thinking that more fat may just be what my metabolism needs to push me there a bit more quickly. We'll see. So far, I haven't found much literature on low calorie ketogenic diets as they all say that if you are eating high fat you don't need to count calories but given that I want to ensure a deficit, I am counting and still very low calorie comparatively speaking.

I did read in the book that consuming artificial sweeteners does not stall weight loss. They say that in some individuals they can cause cravings that lead to increase uptick in calorie consumption that stalls weight loss. But, given that I didn't have an uptick in calories those 3 weeks, I am not worried about that any longer. I am just trying to give my body a change-up to get me to transition without cravings as quickly as possible. I know there is a not a tight association between ketone level and weight loss (ie, just because you are in ketosis does not mean you'll lose weight) but with the calorie deficit, I know that any additional losses I will have will be from fat. It is a good experiment on myself to teach me about my sensitivities for long-term success if nothing else. My first doctor's criticism of the clinics that administer IP is that they take a cookie cutter approach to everyone and do not make individual adjustments (like working out or in this case, the possibility that people are more carb/protein sensitive). I'll share what I discover.

I apologize for not giving individual congratulations and encouragement to everyone, but the clock is my master today, and until Sunday. I love to read your reports and know we're all making progress, in one way or another.

It's interesting how many of us have needed extra fat beyond what the protocol allows.

I have to run in the cold this morning, because I've got so much to do later today. And all the assorted family members are rolling in today, including my little 11 month old grandson, whom I haven't seen in 3 months.

Last night my son moved all his furniture and clothes over the house where he and his soon-to-be-wife will be living, and before he left, he gave me a big hug and told me, "Thank you for everything you're doing for us." He's my baby and the kid who is most like me, so while I love his fiancee, Saturday will be bittersweet.

Diet related: I've been in maintenance for 2 days, and both days I've lost weight. I wouldn't mind trending downward another 5 pounds, but if I do, I'll have to take a closer look at my calories and figure out what's going on, because by all my calculations, I'm eating enough for my activity level.

Ro - I found this an interesting conversation among some of the long-time maintainers on the low carb forum: http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=470275
there is / was a big controversy years ago regarding mixing low-carb, low fat, and low calorie (lets be real, that is basically what IP is - my net carbs never went above 30 in P1)
but now there seems to be a movement towards high fat, low(er) calorie, as the fat satiates you & in turn, lessens cravings and makes you feel full(er).

I find it very interesting IP doesn't support a more low carb lifestyle going forward - but like I said, the science behind the program claims to be able to reset the pancreas and help with insulin resistance.
One thing I've discovered off the bat is that me & bananas still don't mix. I had 1/2 of one pre-race last Sunday, but used the energy...had another 1/2 yesterday with my oatmeal in a jar and was starving by 11:00am! My bg was fine - and generally OIAJ (with lower GI berries) has kept me full well past noon most days.
I am thrilled my bg has stabilized in the 90's now

Kay - CONGRATS - great post-TG loss!!! Don't fret too much about the sizes - I am 5'6.5" & was able to wear 14's comfortably into the mid-160's and then suddenly (165 - 155) slid through 12's, 10's...and have settled into 8's and 6's (150 - 145)

Linda - lol - took me awhile to get on track with the spreadsheeting was having a bit of a back & forth over on the P2-P4 facebook page about tracking in P4...I think it's really important when starting out to keep an eye on how food are effecting us...obviously there are varying opinions about this - to each their own. Tracking helped me lose weight and I believe will help me keep it off

HIS - oh, I know you will enjoy having that little guy around Sounds like so much EXTRA joy, love, and happiness the next couple days
So jealous of your P4 losses

Yesterday I was "zen", today I am getting a little uncomfortable with the continuous uptick on the scale. I was 148 this morning Top end of the 3# range...

So what makes no sense is my daily k/cal average for the last 7 days, NOT accounting for exercise, is 1,672 - my BMR is 1,690 (39, sedentary, maintain current weight)...and when you do account for exercise, my k/cal average drops to 1,148 - my net calories over the last month has been the same..gross has gone up about 200 k/cal this week (from 1,400 average)- this is the difference with the avocado / P3 breakfast / combat bar for snack.

I don't believe I am over-accounting for my exercise - I am using the MFP calculations, not the treadmill / elliptical (those are higher)

One train of thought is that I am not eating enough - but right now I am scared to add too many more k/cals because, what if...

...I am over accounting for exercise. Even after IP, my metabolism may still be shot

...3rd theory - I haven't had TOM in 75 days. I went to bed and crashed at right after Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer last night. My uterus feels like someone is ringing out the bottom half...but I am having no other 'normal' PMS symptoms (my chest usually gets very tender) and my body did this in October & November - a day or 2 of symptoms, but no actual TOM

I feel so d@m! FAT today too

Ugh!!!!! I haven't even had an indulgence yet!!!!!!!!!!! (ok, maybe this IS PMS... )

If I am up again tomorrow / TOM doesn't look to be the issue, I am going to drop back and do a P2 day, accounting for my 3.5 miles of training tomorrow.

Destony the scale was down a little this morning. I don't know if I should attribute the lemon water to that or the boot camp. Either way I'll take it.

Beth I am in the Midwest. We've been very lucky to really not have any snow up until this point!

Also - no inches lost and no change in clothing either. My thighs refuse to loose (I'm pear shaped). Mind you, I need to wear a belt; no one needs to see Butt Crack Mac.

On the weight gain - I hate to say it, but could you be pregnant??

HIS good luck with all the final wedding preparations!

I'm envious of everyone's progress! I know I'll get there eventually, it just feels like slow motion.

mama -

- no, not pregnant. I have a Mirena IUD and so normally only have a couple TOM's per year...estrogen is stored in fat cells, so as I lost weight, it messed with my hormones and I actually HAD real, regular (& painful) periods March - September.
Also, I just had a physical / urinalysis 11/13

So, we'll see - I just went back and reread some awesome responses I got in the maintainers group and feel a little more at peace.