Day Whatever: The Beginning

Well, technically this isn't the beginning - the real beginning was September thru October. This is more like a new beginning. Actually, in all fairness, I have been back at it for almost a week now. So technically, it's more like the middle of the new beginning. Or rather, somewhere in the initial phase of the new beginning, or re-beginning, if you will.

Whatever. A little history first.

My name is Nick White, and I, like everyone else, have a weight problem. In the middle of August last year, I weighed in at 300 lbs, plus a pound or two, following a week-long vacation to a quiet beach on Lake Michigan where nothing can be done but eat and drink beer all day. Well, swimming and tennis come into play much of the time, but none of this even comes close to offsetting the calorie intake. Thus, every year, I gain 5-10 lbs by the time I return home. By the end of this one, the scale giggled at me as it read, for the first time in my life, 300 pounds.

Three hundred pounds.

I had finally reached the peak (or trough, in reality) toward which I'd been working for the last 6 years. Only a combination of sloth, gluttony, and alcoholism could have done this. I had attempted diets throughout my weight gain, but only one, before all of this - when I was 16 - was successful.

At that point in my life, I felt that 239 was just too damn much, and over the following year I watched what I ate everyday, playing it day by day, just as the Red Sox played things during their dramatic comeback on the Yanks earlier that year, and before I knew it, I was down to 204 lbs - the lowest I had weighed since before I stopped growing. But toward the end of high school, a combination of weight lifting and apathy towards dieting had me back up in the 230's. My first year of college ultimately ended up insignificant - in fact, I lost a few pounds. But the following years were something to behold. 25 lbs (to 255) my sophomore year, 20 lbs my junior year (to 275), 10 lbs my senior year (to 285), and 15 more the following year, had me up to the self esteem-crushing, reality-checking mammoth weight of THREE HUNDRED POUNDS.

So that was the final straw. Well, fast forward a few months and today, I am 269. 30+ pounds down, 70 more to go. Ideally, I'd like to get below 200, even into the 180's if possible, but I might just be too buff by then to accomplish such a feat. But that is another story. I have been hovering around 270 for about 3 months now, having been on and off my diet sporadically for excursions, birthdays, and holidays. As a result of this, I have not lost more than a few pounds since October. Well, now it is the end of January and I have nothing to look forward to for the next 2-3 months. This uneventful stretch of time will, with any luck (although it's not really luck), pave my way to success.

The diet is simple, but difficult to maintain. Limit carbs to no more than 50g everyday, aiming for less than 20g for good measure, as I have read to do. Atkins is its popular name, South Beach is also a thing, but the general term is a ketogenic diet. High fat, adequate protein, low carbohydrate. It's that simple.

But is it, really? We all know that bread, cereal, and pasta contain heinous quantities of carbohydrates, so those immediately go out the window. For most people, initially this seems like all the fun foods. Well, you're half right. But there is still a plethora of dishes that remains available and actually healthy for keto dieters, so long as your meats are balanced with fibrous veggies, low-sugar fruits, seeds, and nuts. It's quite a restrictive diet and requires lots of label reading, counting, and research, but the results are worth it (those first 30 lbs were out of my body well in just over a month and a half, done with minimal exercise). However, the diet is not even that simple; staving off of foods high in carbohydrates or otherwise restricted by the keto diet requires that basically everything you ingest be researched by you before consumption, to make sure that it is not carbohydrate rich. And this is seldom black and white - for example, I just discovered today that onions are not quite acceptable.  ONIONS! Which I use in like... everything. Well, a whole onion is about 14g, so if you use one or two slices you won't be a total failure, just know that it adds up quickly. Also know that any significant mistakes or cheat days could throw your body off and take a few days to get back on track.

But let's be realistic here, no vegetable is a bad thing, even for a ketoer. The way I see it, if your mistake is pizza, shame on you! If your mistake is a vegetable, don't pull your hair out.

Okay, so now we're familiar with what the hell is going on with this diet. Somewhat. I'll probably get more into that later. I'm not really sure what this blog will turn into, maybe just a journal of my thoughts as I lose some weight. Who knows. For now, you've been informed of my main goal here. Oh, I'm also training for the Olympics. Until next time!