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December 20, 2002

My Day, the Rollercoaster

Ugh.

Starts out fair. I'm nauseas from the change in my diet. I have no appetite whatsoever, which normally would be a good thing...except here in Atkins land, where the goal is 2000 calories and 20g. carbs/day.

Finally get up, after Keith brings me a breakfast of bacon and eggs (again). We head out to visit a friend in the hospital but get a call as we're out the door that he's been discharged. Yay! So, we change our plans a bit and head out to run errands.

Cranky car time, as the two of us are totally feeling the emotional element of changing our diets. We snapped at each other and acted like brats over stupid stuff, but we survived it.

Did several errands, including the market, where we spent $100 on the tiniest cart of food I've ever seen for that amount. Steak is pricey. Spices and seasonings are WAY pricey. I guess I got spoiled on the low low cost of high-carb foods.

Started feeling really ill while at the market. Any time I stood still for more than a few seconds, I got nauseas. And then I started doing a big hot flash sort of sweat like some menopausal freak of nature. Keith assured me that this was an indication of my body's shifting metabolic process. Instead of burning the sugars and carbs in my stomach, my body is burning its stored fat. Let's hope so!

Anyway, came home and had a series of happy successes, making easy recipes from one of the many low-carb eating websites. I entered my meals into the amazing calorie/carb calculator on another of those great websites and felt like a goddess of low-carb living. I checked my urine with KetoStix and learned that I am, in fact, WAY in ketosis, which is exactly where I'm supposed to be.

Now, all through this, I ended up being in a better mental state about feeling ill, realizing that it was just my body adjusting...which is a good thing.

Then, after a dinner time kitchen disaster that I did not let get to me (I blame it on insufficient instructions for the newbie cook that I am in the recipe itself, coupled with the fact that I am not yet intuitive enough to know how to make up for lack of info), I decided to move forward with another recipe and have a different dinner than I'd planned. Yum!

And then I entered its ingredients into the carb counter. Insert dramatic, suspenseful music. Yup. I doubled the carb count I'm to shoot for each day, during induction. Now, Keith assures me that, even with this higher carb day, I'm still at a lower carb level than I would've been on my pre-Atkins days (when I ate very little food...all of it carb-dense). So, I'm blogging now to try and remind myself of the whole day, not just that last little bit. My own "letter to myself" pep talk.

Okay, here's the thing: I've been emailed by several people who've read my blog and who want to know more about Atkins. Here are links to the sites that have been a great help to me:

Low Carb Eating
Low Carb Luxury
Calorie King (I actually like this one for looking up calorie and carb counts restaurant foods...it will floor you how much some of your "lite" favorites have)
Low Carb
Atkins Friends
Suzanne's (the cheapest place I've found for the Atkins Advantage bars)
Fit Day (home of the awesome daily counter/goal analysis tools)

There are shopping lists, recipe ideas, etc. But here's the MAIN thing for INDUCTION (first two weeks, minimum...and possibly as much as the first six months, if you can stand it): no more than 20 grams of carbs per day.

Basically, for induction: no bread, no sugar, no white anything (no potatoes, rice, flour, etc.) and no fruit. That part's hard for me, as I had become a smoothie junky in the past few months.

Anyway, there are a kajillion sites out there, but these are the ones that have helped me the most. I spent a lot of time doing research on Atkins before choosing it (three months of research...really)! And there are other low-carb plans: Carbohydrate Addict's Lifestyle Program, The Zone, Caveman-Eating, you name it. But Atkins is the grandpa of them all...and between Mr. Atkins and Mr. Pilates, I am following the old boys around faithfully.

Enough with the diet stuff!

In other news, it's raining again in Hollywood. El Niño is back in action. Keith's play opened tonight and he feels really good about how it went. I'm very proud of him. He has an audition Saturday for an excellent role in what looks to be an exceptional grad film at USC...and he's almost out of his first round of headshots. Time for more! That's pretty quick. The book has been selling steadily. We're getting several sales from the website, an ad, promotional pushes we've done, and word of mouth each week. Can't wait to see what happens when the book is officially in stores next month!

The kitties are good. They're spending extra cuddle time with me, which is so sweet, seeing as I'm mopey right now. I miss Mom a bunch, but I also am healing. It's all part of the process. I've hung holiday cards and photos up on the walls as our holiday decorations. So festive! And a tradition Mom and I always did. She would wait until I came home from college, even, so that I could climb on a chair and hang cards up on the beams in the den.

Oh! Looks like Orphans' Christmas is on after all! Yay! Keith will do the turkey again this year and we'll gather (as many Christians as Jews) in a festive "LA family" kind of way that has become very special to me. I truly enjoy my time spent with the family I've chosen.

Okay, a few more things to do and then to bed. Big day tomorrow and I'm happy going into the night that will lead to it. And that's the best anyone can ask for, isn't it?
--
Bon

"Welcome to the humiliating world of professional writing." - Homer J. Simpson, food critic, to Lisa, his ghost writer

Posted by bonnie at December 20, 2002 12:36 AM