I’m just back in from my run, thought I’d bang out a quick blog post before I move on with the remainder of my evening.

Tonight is a good night for running. It’s not perfect, but, the air isn’t as thick as it was the last two runs, and it’s also a nice temperature, so the run wasn’t immediately miserable. There was also the plus that my stomach wasn’t bothering me this time around. So by all measures it was my best run yet, though time-wise it was only slightly faster than the first run. I did a better job of moderating my pace and so I spent more time “running” (actual runners should read this “jogging”) and less time walking. Obviously the running was at a bit of a slower pace, thus accounting for the only slightly faster time.

Here’s a bit of a running allegory that crossed my mind as I was running. So on the route I run, there are lots of inclines and declines. The thing that I was noticing was that, a lot of time, when I was on an incline, I was feeling like I really needed to stop. But, if I pushed through it, shortly after I started the decline, I’d start to feel like I could continue, only to repeat again, a bunch of times. Now, I did reach a point where I had to start walking for a bit, but, I definitely made it further than if I had just stopped the first time I felt like I needed to.

Are you ready for it? Here comes some allegory. The same sort of thing is true in working toward any goal. You’ll have the tough periods of incline, when you don’t think you can do it anymore. And it’s easy to throw in the towel. But you just have to remember the decline that’s ahead. Then you can coast, and rest, and recover… ok, so you don’t actually coast when you are running… this is becoming more of a biking metaphor. Come to think of it that allegory was really more of a metaphor.

Well, whatever it is, that’s what I have to say to you.

See you on 23!

I’ve made it to the end of the third week, with no cheating at all! I was just having a conversation this morning about how going this long without sugar (and carbs) seemed like it was going to be a lot harder than it actually has been. I’m not going to say that I don’t want to eat carbs and sugar, because well… I kinda do. However, I’m just keeping my goals in mind, and I know sticking to this plan is going to deliver some results.

I still have over 2 months to go here though, so it’s still a long road ahead.

Tomorrow is Monday, which means I’ll be going for a run. At night again. My stomach issues seem to have passed, so, I don’t think it should be a problem. Now, I do think there are thunder storms in the forecast, and so, just as before, I will say this. I am committed to running tomorrow night, so if it’s raining, even a downpour, I will do it. However, lightning and the like will keep me inside (and it will be postponed to Tuesday).

Anyway, Akima is pestering me to go outside, so I guess I’ll end this here so I can take her for a walk.

Twenty days in. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been doing this awhile. Sometimes it seems like it’s gone by pretty fast so far. Right now it feels a bit more like the latter, and that before I know it I’ll be at the end of the first month. I’m 2/9 of the way through this, that’s pretty significant.

I will say, the closer I get to this 30 day mark, when I am allowed to have a cheat day, the more I feel like I really won’t need it. I think I’d really like to be able to say I did the whole 90 days without any cheats, in fact. Now, I won’t change my rules or my commitments until after this 90 day period is over, but, the cheat days were always optional with the hope that I might not use them.

I’ve already started to think about what I might do after the 90 days have passed though. For one, I think in the short term, I might continue this a bit longer. I’m thinking maybe take it through Thanksgiving- that being the first day I’ll eat off diet. I’m looking forward to those mashed potatoes. Beyond that, it will somewhat depend on where I stand weight / health-wise. But, I do need to make sure that I eat differently in the future than the method of eating which got me here. I’m still a few pounds over the weight I told myself I’d never let myself be again several years ago. I never got back to my heaviest weight – but I let myself get too close to that before I got serious about this again.

So, the longer-term plan will be one of two things. 1- I could just follow the rules for keto. There’s a lot of things I could eat on keto that I’m not letting myself eat right now. Cheese being the one I most want to have. But, there are definite downsides to keto… with no cheat days, that means beer is basically out. Speaking of, 20 days is probably the longest I’ve gone without a beer in years. Anyway, 2- I could do slow carb again. Now, slow carb would also introduce a lot of things that I am not letting myself have currently. And on top of that, one day a week I could indulge in whatever I want. Whichever one I chose, it probably wouldn’t be a forever thing, but it would be a gradual step toward trying to find what my new normal will be.

Anyway, I won’t go on about anything the happened today – turns out I had plenty so say today.

Twenty-One tomorrow!

Here we are at nineteen. It’s the third Friday of the diet, making it the third time I’ve had to resist free bagels at work. And today it was worse, because while typically the bagels disappear by around 11, today there were still several sitting there even when I was headed home. But, fret not, I resisted them.

Aside from that, I mentioned yesterday that my stomach was still feeling a bit finicky. That has continued through today – I’ve felt a bit on the sick side all day… mostly stomach stuff. I skipped breakfast and had very little for lunch. Had a decent sized meal for dinner (double meat salad at chipotle). Hopefully things improve here tomorrow – we’ll see. I’m also really tired today, but that’s probably because I didn’t sleep very soundly last night… I woke up a bunch of times.

I also mentioned yesterday that I wanted to widen the bounds of these posts a bit. I’m working on some ideas to roll out sometime during the next 71 days, but for now, I’m going to just add in (optionally, not necessarily on every post) something that has to do with my day… whether that be a conversation I had, or a podcast I listened to, or a movie I watched, or… whatever.

Hopefully that will spice things up here a little. And keep me from having any really short completely pointless posts.

But this one is long enough, and so without further ado, I will end it. See you on twenty.

Here we are at eighteen. Thursday. Exciting.

So tonight is to be my 2nd run. It’s going to suck. No, really. My stomach is feeling really finicky at the moment, and I hope I can get a semi-decent run in, but I am pretty sure I’m going to feel miserable. But I’m going to do it. Why? Well, because tomorrow I’m going to feel better about myself if I do run than if I don’t. And also, I can’t do it tomorrow, because I don’t think I’m going to have time. So it has to be tonight. Very shortly after I post this.

Additionally, I’m working on a plan to try something new with my daily posts… I really don’t think I’m far off from posting something like:

“Day eighteen. I ate some food. Nothing I’m not allowed to. Yep. Diet. See ya.”

And then the next day will be the same but incrememented by one 😉

So, I want to try to widen the boundaries a bit to give me more to work with. Maybe I’ll talk about that some more tomorrow.

See you on Nineteen.

Alright, another day down… still a lot more to go!

There’s not much to report, really. Just more of the same – still surprised at how little it seems I am  able to eat on this diet – I get full pretty quickly.

Tomorrow night will be my 2nd run of the week, and the final one for this week. Next week I will probably add in a 3rd on the weekend. Again, just trying to do things somewhat gradually. I’ll stick with 3 times a week for a few weeks probably before I up it to 4, and I don’t think I’m going to try for more than that.

That’s it for tonight.

“Two words that changed my life – if you have to make a big decision in the marathon, whether or not you want to keep going or stop – and those words are ‘Remember tomorrow, remember tomorrow.’ You want to drop out of the race at mile 18 ’cause you’re tired? Cool. Remember how you are going to feel tomorrow when someone asks you how you did.”
-Jesse Itzler

Normally I would find two more quotes before writing and posting this, but, I don’t think that’s necessary. Also, it’s kind of late, so it might be a choice between posting this tonight or not.

Jesse Itzler is someone I had never heard of before catching him on the Rubin Report the other day. However, he’s done quite a lot of cool and interesting things (I’ll let you google it if you’re interested, or you could listen to the podcast… I think he recently did Rogan as well, though I didn’t listen to that one). I’m quite interested to check out his most recent book, Living With the Monks.

One of the things that he mentioned in the podcast was his mantra to “Remember tomorrow”. Any time you are going to make a split second decision, stop, and remind yourself to remember tomorrow. How will you feel about the decision then? Should I put off writing that story I’ve been ‘working on’ for a year now? Should I eat this pint of ice cream? Should I yell at this guy who did something I didn’t like? Should I get super drunk and go crazy? Remember tomorrow. How will you feel about your decision then?

It’s one of those simple things that of course you should know, but I know that I’ve not always been mindful of. But I think it’s helpful. Even before hearing the quote, the past few weeks I’ve been trying to keep in mind that I need to be making decisions based more on the long-term than the short-term. It’s more abstract thinking about it that way though, so I think this more concrete way of thinking about it may be helpful. The thought can also be extrapolated into more long-term. Remember next week, remember next month, remember next year… how will I feel then about the decisions that I made now?

I know a thing that I’ve been frustrating myself with for a long time now is  that I rarely sit down to write. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been doing the daily blogs for my diet. Sure, they’re generally super boring and forced, but it hopefully will create a habit that I will maintain of sitting down to dump out a blog, even if it is utter crap. In addition to not writing enough, I also don’t read enough. And so for that I gave myself a new rule yesterday, and we’ll see how it goes. The rule is this: Every day, sit down, open a book, and read at least one word. One word is easy. No matter how tired I am, I can do it. And blowing away the expectation is also easy… if I read a whole chapter I’ve far and away outdone the requirement. Hopefully it is about creating a habit. And honestly, if I have the book in my hand and I’m sitting down, I’m probably going to read more than just one word.

I don’t want to pile on too much at once, but in another week or two, I am going to make the same rule for myself in regard to writing, specifically in regard to working on book that I’ve been very sporadically working on. Sit down in front of my laptop, open the document, and write at least one word. If it doesn’t work, maybe I’ll increase the word amount, but I really think that just getting myself into the habit of setting myself up to do it will naturally lead to actually doing it.

Remember tomorrow, so that you can have no regrets when it arrives.

Another day, another chicken eaten.

I had concerns that the day after the run I might be super hungry – that didn’t turn out to be the case. I’m still finding that the portions that I’m eating are considerably less than I would have had before, even if the meal isn’t any different than a meal I would have had before. I have heard it said that sugar and other sweeteners increase your appetite, so I guess probably my complete avoidance of those things is a likely contributor. I am finding that, while I do get a little hungry by around meal time, I tend to be forcing myself to eat a bit more than I feel like I want to. And I don’t mean I feel “full”, I just, don’t feel like I need to eat anymore. But I think that I still need to eat more because it doesn’t seem like I’ve eaten that much.

When I did slow carb in the past, I’d generally have days when I was EXTREMELY hungry, and I just couldn’t wait until the next weekly cheat day came along. Aside from the first few days of this diet when I was feeling kind of miserable, I haven’t really felt a desire to cheat on it. I feel like I could go on quite awhile. While I’m not going to commit to foregoing the cheat days I said I could have, I do feel at this moment like I could go the full 90 days without a cheat day. We’ll see, there’s still plenty of days left for me to start feeling differently.

It finally arrived! The day of the first run. If I had to describe it in one word, that word would be: underwhelming.

Of course, I am not limited to one word, so here are the details. About a mile and a half into the 3 miles, I just felt physically exhausted. I was breathing heavy, but I didn’t feel completely out of breath. Since the latter is usually what I feel moreso than the former, I’m thinking the diet is the major contributor to why the run was so rough. It’s definitely the first time I’ve ever done a run while in ketosis, and so I’m thinking my body isn’t used to it. I’ve done zero research into running while on ketosis, so, I don’t really even know if it’s advisable. Maybe I’ll look into it and see if there are any tips out there. Beyond that, it was humid and hot, and the last time I had been on a run was about 2 months ago (which was actually more recent than I thought, but, my Nike+ running app is unlikely to make up a run that didn’t happen). So, I probably only ran about 55-60% of the 3 miles in total… I tried to run again a few times after the halfway point, but I didn’t make it too far before slowing to a walk.

Mentally I felt very energized today, and now that it’s been a couple hours since the run, I feel that way again… but, still physically tired. Diet is going strong, actually I wasn’t able to eat all that much at lunch, and even the amount I did eat was kind of forced down because I wanted to have the calories for the run.

The bad thing about the run going the way it did is that I’m less likely to feel like running next time, and so, I’m just going to go ahead and commit to a run on Thursday.  It will be hot again, but I’m going to try to mitigate that by doing a night run. It’s not supposed to rain, but even if it does, I am still going to run, and if I don’t, you should publicly shame me for it… haha. Perhaps the fear of that will make sure I carry through.

See you on Day Sixteen.

So here we are at the end of the 2nd week. Things are still going well. No cheats at all, and tomorrow will be the first day of running – hoping that doesn’t throw things off, exercise has a tendency to make one hungry, so I need to make sure to have enough of the right kinds of food so that I don’t go after the wrong kinds of food.

Also, I had mentioned before that the ketosis test strips had been difficult to read all of last week. At this point, they’re definitely saying I’m in ketosis, so I think that’s a good thing. I’m not feeling anything but good, so hopefully I can just keep this going.