Slimming Sunday - IF Only

DD's salmon with rice, mine on sauteed beet leaves.
I admit I mixed the leftover rice with my greens after DD had finished.
(btw, DD had more salmon but she copes best with it in small portions)

Last Slimming Sunday was five weeks ago because we're posting only on the first Sunday of each month. It was my first time joining this linky and it helped to know that I was going to report back in a month. A month ago I wrote about Vegan Vs Keto. Read it if you haven't already - there are strong supporters of both types of diet. Proof of this was the first comment, a lengthy explanation of why I was wrong to favour the keto method.

In fact, athough I favoured keto over vegan, I didn't stick to it religiously. I ate my salads topped with either hard boiled eggs, tuna, sardines mackerel, salmon, herring, or cheese. I made dressings with vinaigrette, low-carb mayo, evoo and lemon juice, or tehina. Each salad was definitely a meal in itself and very filling. We didn't have bread at home as DD doesn't like bread anyway so that was one temptation less for me. However, I did eat a felafel in pitta with chips one day, I finished DD's pasta, rice or wheat based vegetarian sausages on other days, I occasionally had a Danish pastry with my coffee, and yesterday I had dessert after lunch. It was apple pudding and cream, how could I not?

On the other hand. I was religious about the Intermittent Fasting (IF). After a black coffee in the morning, I drink water, lemon water, or hot lemon-cider vinegar water only until well into the afternoon. I have been IFing for at least 16 hours a day and many times longer. I aim for one meal a day but often have to eat something little a couple of hours before just to see me through. The hunger only starts after about 16 hours of no eating. And I can ride it through if I'm busy in which case it goes away after an hour or so.

I lost 10 lbs (4.5 kg). So that's 10 lbs in the first 'month' (always the easiest in which to to lose), playing at keto (meaning I reduced carbs drastically but probably didn't reach a state of ketosis), and absolutely doing IF. It seems that IF on its own is enough to lose weight in the first month. This coming month, until the linky again in four weeks time, I'm going to be stricter about not eating carbs.

I did notice that on a day when I ate even a bowl of plain rice, the scales jumped up significantly the next morning. This corroborates reports that the weight goes back on quickly after a ketogenic diet. I accept that but I also believe that the way to go is low-carb for life.

The Slimming Sunday linky is with Michelle on Mummy from the Heart and co-hosted by Emma on Life According to Mrs Shilts. You can pop over to either of these blogs for other slimming posts for inspiration and encouragement.

Slimming Sunday - Vegans Vs Ketos

Vegetable Shakuka with eggs and cheese

My blogging friend Michelle from Mummy from the Heart, has been running a Linky called Slimming Sunday for about four months. I thought - great! I'll join that as soon as I have something significant to share. Sadly I'm still waiting. And I promised my real life friend Janet that I would stop writing about weight loss and just do it. Sorry Janet.

Added to that, this is not the post I should be writing today. The last few weeks of school were hectic with all the wrapping up activities, parties, reports, etc... I have about 10 posts backed up in my head and if I don't write about them soon they will become too historical for interest.

However and despite all of the above, here I am. Also because every so often I get asked on facebook how it's going. It wasn't going until yesterday. I was still at the stage of doing loads of research and not having the time to clear my mind and get it into the right place for this project. Every time I did make a good start, a party or a festival or a holiday or an invitation to dinner would open the flood gates and wash me back to the beginning. It was very frustrating.

About the research. There seem to be two camps with opposing views. On the one hand there are the vegans who advocate high carb (all whole grain and organic of course) and low fat but absolutely no animal products. I sympathize with this camp as I think veganism is the ethically correct way to go and it's certainly cheaper and more convenient to stock up on pasta, rice, couscous, oats, beans, etc... But the science doesn't add up. Carbs are just pre-glucose with little nutritional value. They keep you burning the glucose instead of burning your own body fat. They feed cancer cells, provoke insulin production until you have insulin overload and end up with a fatty liver, heart disease, and possibly Alzheimers. Go directly to type 2 diabetes, do not pass Go, do not collect a healthy old age (or even a healthy middle age).

On the other hand, you can find many testimonials that swear they have reached health Nirvana through high carb, low fat, veganism. I think some of them are too far in to back out gracefully having based their whole reputation on this theory. You'll have to do the reading/listening yourself and make up your own mind but it doesn't make sense to me. There is also some dodgy research behind it. For example Ancel Keys who showed that a high fat diet in 7 countries lead to heart disease. He conveniently left out the other 15 countries which he studied and that did not show this correlation. As a result a whole generation (us) have been brought up to fear fat and strive for a low fat diet while obesity has become epidemic. Something must be wrong.

The other camp is a combination of a ketogenic diet (to whatever degree you choose to follow it) and intermittent fasting. Just for the record, the keto diet is very low carb, moderate protein (so it's not Atkins) and loads of vegetables. To be fair, the vegans also advise loads of vegetables so that's the one thing we can all agree on.

Intermittent fasting is as little as no eating between meals to water fasts lasting several days. The most popular choices seem to be the 16 hours fasting/8 hours eating window per day or the 5 days eating:2 days very reduced calories. When I first brought this up a facebook friend commented - I bet your doctor didn't recommend fasting. I'd not spoken to my doctor about it specifically but when I did she actually said I should try to extend the fasting to 17 or even 19 hours a day.

Keto eating is not hard. Who doesn't like meat, fish, eggs, cheese, vegetables, and salad? The hard thing for me is giving up potatoes in any way, shape or form; and giving up the convenience of a sandwich as a meal on the go. And we choose not to have meat at home so that makes it even more difficult.

But I've never been a breakfast eater and I've always known that for me it's best not to eat at all than to try to eat moderately. So yesterday on July 1st, with 2 months of summer holidays ahead of us (although I am teaching a summer course but this is way less pressure than a full schedule), no festivals until mid-September, feeling relaxed and motivated, I ate between 2.30 pm (vegetable shakshuka with three eggs and covered in grated cheese and a small salad) and 5.30 pm (having finished a large salad bowl with tahina dressing).

The Slimming Sunday Linky is once a month so I'll report back about my progress on the first Sunday in August.