180.2 (10:30am)

Today will be my 5th day that I have been back on track. I am hopeful that I am past the worst cravings. I have taken 2 diphenhydramine per day for the last 4 days. I have been taking 1 in the morning with my morning coffee at 11am and 1 in the afternoon at 3:30 - 4:00 pm. That seems to be working pretty well. I am still white knuckling it for a little while each evening from around 8-10 pm, but they are helping enough that I think they are well worth the trouble I have going to sleep each night (as well as the expense). I think I might continue taking them for at least another couple days. I want to be 100% firmly in ketosis and not wavering in my commitment. I had to many false starts of "getting back on plan" from the end of December through the first half of January to take this lightly. I was kinda getting scared that I wouldn't be able to do it. I want to remember that when I am tempted to have an off-plan meal (non-ketogenic) in the future. It can provoke a lot of mental and physical suffering getting back into ketosis. I have done so well this past year and it really just is NOT WORTH IT.

Yesterday I tried something new (although just a twist on something I have been doing in the past). I have these little 2 oz plastic salad dressing containers and lids that you can get at the restaurant supply. I melted 20 grams of sugar free chocolate wafers (I get this in the bulk bins at Winco) melted with 5 grams of butter. I stir that up after it's been microwaved to the melting point, then stir in 10 grams of non-sweetened dehydrated coconut. It comes to 192 calories and is very good. It is like a commercial candy bar, but doesn't seem to be too triggering. The nice thing is that they don't require refrigeration, so I will be able to take them with me when we are working out and about in the next month or two. I made up 10 servings last night and put them all in a ziplock in my refrigerator so they are ready to grab and go in the coming weeks. I also think I will do up some little containers of raw almonds that are pre-measured out like that as well. Having stuff ready to go is such a big part of making this food plan work. When you come in from a long exhausting day of manual work out in the cold it is VERY easy to go off plan because you don't want to hassle with figuring something out to eat. I've found that things like this are not a "meal", but they can give you something to eat until you can calm yourself down and wait a little bit to make a proper ketogenic meal. I think a lot of us who have been obese in the past really struggle with extreme hunger in a different way than normal weighted people who have never been obese. I guess that makes a lot of sense because obesity is really a dis-function of one's own fat burning. I hope/pray that with time, my body will increase it's ability to readily switch to fat burning. I DO think this has improved... I am not sure if it is more a result of the regular lower insulin levels, the increased sensitivity to my own insulin for the weight-loss that I've already had, or an increased number of mitochondria.

So, things are looking up. I am really happy to be back down to 180.2 and am focusing on getting under 175.0 pounds. 5.4 pounds to go! That is super exciting.