Friday, July 8, 2016

Keto 3: What I'm not eating

1. Added sugar. Right now, my sugar comes mostly from dairy and fruit.  This is a lot easier than I thought it would be, even with the myriad names for sugar. I steer clear of foods that have grams of sugar in them unless they are an unsweetened dairy product (like plain yogurt or plain cream cheese) or whole fruit. Some of the things I eat (Fluff Butter) have sweeteners (like Xylitol), as do some of the things that I drink (my precious diet Dr. Pepper, which has aspartame and they can pry from my cold, dead hands that will suddenly clench around their throats because I will come back from the dead to defend my Dr. Pepper… stay the hell away from my Dr. Pepper).

2. Flour. There has been only one exception to this rule. That was in a social situation. I enjoyed a couple of crackers with a cheese plate. They were good. I do think I would have been perfectly happy without them, though. I ate most of my cheese on its own. I will be looking at different vehicles for tasty things as I continue my experiment (slated to last four weeks).

3. In case it wasn’t obvious from the above, I don’t eat baked goods or cereal. Donut day at camp was a little bit rough. I didn’t eat any. I certainly could have had a donut. I could have had half of a donut, or a quarter of a donut. Doing so would have meant eating the whole donut. Friggin’ salt/fat/sugar ratio. Anyway, there is indeed room for baked goods and cereal in my diet, but I am now a lot more mindful of it. I think of it like furniture. If I find an armchair that I love, I need to think about whether or not it will fit in my living room. If it won’t, then it’s going to need to replace something. Am I willing to replace one of the chairs that I already have? If I replace my couch, will I have enough seating left? In short, no more mindless eating of pastries because they are there and they are easy.

4. Starches like rice and potatoes. In fact, I limit my underground veggies to the onion family and carrots for salad and stir fries. I haven’t had corn. I haven’t wanted corn. I have had a few “I want tater tots/fries” moments. They passed. I have cauliflower in my freezer to make fake potato-y things, but I haven’t actually missed them enough to pull it out. Maybe I’ll make some sort of Indian curry thing with it.

5. Trans fats. Nope. The good news is that this (along with items 1 and 2 from above) has eliminated most processed foods.

6. Stuff that I haven’t counted, measured, or recorded. This is definitely a harder habit to develop. Obviously, I don’t carry a scale or ruler around with me when I go out to eat, but I do measure everything that I make. I trim the bell peppers, weigh them, then chop them and add them to my recipe. Ditto the eggplant, onion, and tomato. Then I put the information into MyFitnessPal so I can figure out what the nutrition is per serving, which, again, I measure. (I use volume for serving size, of course. Trying to measure hot liquidy things could get awkward, and my countertops are already permanently gross.)

7. Shirataki noodles. Tried ‘em once, and couldn’t get more than a couple of bites down. Gross, and quite literally indigestible. Hard pass.


No comments:

Post a Comment