Overcoming

I have been doing really well staying on track recently. I am a salad eating gal when we go out to eat, I am eating zucchini "noodles" instead of pasta for our family dinners, and eating my chicken curry without rice like a champ. Last week I decided to do a 36 hour fast. I wanted to see what my glucose and ketones did. My ketones hit their highest (.7, not that impressive) at 19 hours and just stayed put the rest of the following 17 hours. My glucose dipped into the 80's but came back up in the hour before eating. Before I did this fast, I watched a Mindy Pelz video amd she said you will know you are in ketosis when you have more energy and stop feeling hungry. Somewhere around 19 hours I stopped feeling hungry. To be fair, my stomach only growls a little here and there before that, but there was definitely a point where I noticed that I stopped thinking about food. Before I broke my fast, I was considering extending it to 48 hours, but I will admit I was frustrated with my readings not being better, so I just ate and went on with life. I did eat a few crackers later last week, when I had a horrible bout of vertigo that made me so very nauseated, and crackers were the only thing I could even fathom letting past my lips. So this past weekend I did have one meal off plan, some potstickers and dumplings with a small serving of rice. The store we shop had a BOGO sale on them and my whole family likes that meal. Other than those 6 crackers that day, I had been so well on track for 2 weeks so I just enjoyed the meal and got right back on track. I still have bigtime cravings in the week before my period is supposed to come. I really badly wanted chips, so instead I made some crispy cheese, where you microwave cheese until past the point of melted, until it starts to brown and becomes crisp like a cracker or chip. It's delicious and keto approved. I was happy I didn't give into my craving, but found a substitute, it satisfied me and silenced the cravings. Late last week we got news about Blizzard Elsa. It started out earlier in the week with them predicting 4-8 inches of snow over the weekend. By Thursday, they were saying it would be a historic storm and prepare to be shut in your house without power for days. Knowing the storm was coming made my anxiety soar and I really wanted to eat all the comfort foods and drink alcohol to boot. Instead, I ordered a different salad and added bacon to it. It didn't make my anxiety lessen, but neither would eating poorly. Fortunately, we had all the supplies we needed for the blizzard and we didn't buy any snacks or junk food, so other than the dumplings, the food was on track. As hard as this winter has been, and as much as Wisconsinites are known for being tough in the face of winter weather, this storm was the craziest one I have ever seen. The guesstimates are somewhere between 28-32 inches of snow, though its really hard to measure because we had wind gusts over 40 miles per hour, so it made snow drifts much higher than if it fell straight down. Here is a look at the tunnel my husband made on our sidewalk today. You may have to zoom in.For reference, he is 5'10" and you can see the snow banks are up to his shoulders.

Like most places, his work was closed yesterday and today because they couldn't get the parking lots cleaned up in time. So he was out there killing himself while I worked. He spent a total of 5 hours shoveling the sidewalk and driveway the past 2 days. Fortunately, my son helped him. Then I tackled cracking up some ice, clearing out the window wells and making some paths through the yard for my dog to have a place to go potty. It's going to warm up this week and rain, oh what a mess this will be! I am going to do my absolute best not to complain one iota this summer, even if it gets brutally hot and sticky, this winter has just been so taxing on me. I am happy we are almost done with it. I think Franklin (my dog) is too. He was so confused about where to go to try and go potty because everywhere he turned was a massive snow banks taller than him. LOL. So that was a big test of my anxiety, and I am happy to say I stuck to my guns. I wanted to make sure that 36 hour fast wasn't for nothing, so that helped me stay on track. I think my weight is fairly stable at 175. I like to weigh on Thursdays, so I will see in a few days. I am mostly doing yoga/stretching for my workouts with an occasional pilates/core workout thrown in. Today I shoveled for 45 minutes and I will be feeling that for the next few days! I am thinking of doing a 48 hour fast next week. 36 was quite doable, I know I could have continued, but I want to build up to 48, then 72 eventually. I just have to time it right so these PMS cravings to eat everything in site aren't a factor. Before this big storm, we were having spring-like weather and I was getting out for extra walks with my dog in the afternoon, so I think when the nicer weather comes back, I will try and make a habit of that again. It's good for both of us. Other than that, there's not much new to report. Hope everyone stayed safe from the crazy weather all over the country last weekend!