Juicing failure, long absence and Ketogenic diet

I know I've neglected the blog for far too long.   I plan on trying to do a weekly posting, but don't hold your breath.

Juicing update:
Juicing would have probably worked for me, but the time needed to create juice was a problem for me.  The juices were delicious and very nutritious.  The breville juicer is excellent and easy to use.  Cleaning took up the majority of my time.  I tried the Soja Mighty greens juice.  It is pretty good.  I replaced 2 meals a day with it and was doing good.  But using this juice became cost prohibitive.

Fast forward to June 16th:
I found myself back up to 296 lbs.   I now was on blood pressure medicine and my fasting blood glucose levels were in the pre diabetic range.  I started to get despirate.  As luck or fate would have it, my best friend had been cutting out carbs and adding lots of fat to his diet.  While not as low carb as the Ketogenic diet, he cut his carbs to under 100g.  He went from around 248lbs to 230-ish, if not lower, in one month!  After much investigation, I decided to give this a try. 

Ketogenic Diet:
I started a low carb, high fat diet on June 18th.  At first I tried to keep my net carbs under 40g and I had success.  Within the first month I was down 16lbs. 280lbs.  The strangest thing about this diet was I was never hungry and my energy levels were really level.  A combination going into ketosis and the reduced calories from not eating because of lach of hunger, worked well for me.

Mid July I found myself stalled in my weight loss.   I decided that I needed to work at no more than 20g of net carbs per day.  This is no easy task as many vegetables can quickly exceed that amount.   I did my best and the weight continued to fall off, though at a reduced rate.

Today:
I find myself at 274.5lbs, 21.5lbs lower than when I started.  My waist has gone from 52" to 49".  I plan on continuing this diet/lifestyle change.   My short term goal is to break 250lbs. with a long term goal of breaking 200lbs.  One pleasant side effect of losing all this weight will be dropping my blood preasure meds and kicking my reliance on a CPAP machine at night. 

My friend who started me on this journey is now 214lbs.  I can only imagine in my wildest dreams what 60 less pounds will feel like. 

We have convinced another friend to give this a try.  I'm hoping that he has great success.  

On a side note:  Another friend informed up that they did this same diet several years ago with great success.  But sadly without a more permanent lifestyle change, they gained much of the weight back. 

My plan is to never to go back to consuming the mass quantities of carbs I used to. 

More later. 

Update and thoughts about Juicing.

Started tracking my weight.  Was 290 last week at 288 today. 


Been also tracking my food on Sparkpeople.com.  While I have not been good about what I eat all the time, it's a good habit to get into.  My toughest time of the day is Dinner and evening snacking.  I need to focus on doing the right thing during those times.


Watched two documentaries about Juice fasting. 


Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, follows a 60 day Juice fast that Joe Cross did while crossing the US.  Very inspirational and informative.   The second half of this shows where someone Joe met during the documentary contacted him for help.  The guy was morbidly obese at 420-some lbs.  The guy had some fantastic results eventually losing over 200 lbs over time.  Joe offers guided plans on his website along with several books. 


Super Juice Me - The Big Juice Experiment, this one follows 8 people chosen by Jason Vale to participate in a 28 day juice fast at a retreat.  Each person had their own set of health issues and most struggled with being overweight.  It was very interesting seeing the people go through the first few days of withdrawal and detox.  Over all they all did very well and were far healthier than when they started.  Jason also offers several books.


Watching these caused me to think about adding juice to my diet with the possibility of doing a juice fast of some sort if I found that I liked the juice.   I started out looking for a juice bar locally, almost all the ones I found were not juicing they were making smoothies, which while healthy was different than juicing in how quickly the nutrients get absorbed into your system.  I did find two places that had juice.   The first was the local Whole Foods, technically not a juice bar they create cold pressed juice mixes each morning.  Typically 5-6 different drinks at a cost of $6.99 and $7.99.  They are created using organic fruits and vegetables.   I've tried 3 different blends and have liked the taste of all 3.  Only one with pineapple juice messed with my stomach. The second juice bar was an actual juice bar in our local Earth Fair market.  Only problem is they are closing the store this month and the juice bar was already shutdown.


This has led me to start looking for a home juicer as buying from Whole Foods was going to be too expensive.   I'm currently looking into two Breville models.   The JE98XL is a two speed juicer, one speed for softer fruits and veggies and the other for harder ones.  Just started looking at the BJE510XL.  This has the same base features of the 98XL but has 5 speeds, which will allow me to get the most juice from the fruits and veggies that are neither soft nor hard but in the middle speeds.


EBAY is proving to be troublesome with getting a good used one at a decent price.   New ones are there and their prices are reasonable.  But I've also found that the manufacture sells remanufactured ones for about what I've seen used ones go for.  Bed Bath and Beyond carries them but even with a 20% off one item coupon it doesn't beat any of the prices I have found elsewhere.  Avoid going to Kohls as the Breville juicers are excluded from any of their special deals.  Had a 30% off one item coupon but couldn't use it. 


Will update later after I get the juicer and give a review along with first impressions of using it to supplement my diet. 

Ups and downs, getting back to basics.

It's been a while since I even considered posting on the blog.  Been busy and not being good when it comes to eating healthy or exercising.  My weight stayed pretty steady around 260 for the longest time. 


Then in 2015 I was diagnosed with Sleep Apnea and had a bout of duodenitis.  Well right after getting my CPAP machine I started gaining weight like crazy.  Ten pounds in the first 2 weeks.   I hadn't really changed my eating habits, the only thing I could think of was my body was storing the food more efficiently or it was running more efficient needing less energy to operate. 


Fast forward to 2016.  I've broken 290 lbs. (currently at 286), I am very unhappy with my current state and absolutely want to avoid breaking 300.  I'm going to rededicate myself to exercise and watching what I eat.  I'm going to lower the amount of carbs I eat and work towards losing 20 lbs. at a time.  The long term goal of getting to 200 or losing 50 lbs. was not motivating me.  If I work in smaller steps, I hope each mini-goal will be easier to accomplish. 


I do not plan on updating the blog page with regular updates on my progress like before, but will from time to time post my thoughts and what works and is not working. 


I've had a Fitbit Charge HR for 9 months now.  While I really don't use the heart rate monitor it's a nice added feature.  Overall I'm very happy with it and even have connected with friends to challenge each other to make our goals and even compete for step king or queen.  

Weekly update.

Went out of town on business for 10 days and missed an update.  Bad 10 days as I ate out all the time.

Missed Report
Weight: 265.0 (up 4 lb.)


Current Weight: 263.0 (down 2 lb.)
Waist: 49" (down .25") 

Update

Weekly update.

Was very very bad food-wise on Friday and Saturday, but the week ended up being a good one.

Current Weight: 261.0 (Down 1.6 lb.)