Deconstruction of everything. And diet stuff.

When someone says deconstruction most people think the taking down of.  Today, deconstruction is also used as a term in the christian community in regards to those examining their faith.  Most often it is a process of removing piece by piece everything you've been taught and once believed to be true and finding out for yourself.  In a hope to either reconstruct or learn about what you think you know.  If you were to deconstruct a building, it's most likely because you intend to learn about how it was built or because you hope to reuse some of the structure.  Demolition is just knocking everything over and rebuilding with all new materials or just not building again at all.

This isn't just buildings and faith.  It's everything.  I'm going down the faith deconstruction road if that hasn't been obvious enough.  

One of those areas of deconstruction is diet.  I've always been intrigued with how the body works and used the food we put into it.  But I've never been smart enough to really fully grasp it.  Last monday I started following a Ketogenic Diet.  ****IT'S AT THIS POINT I THINK I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT BUT I MIGHT BE WRONG***** It's high fat, moderate protein and low/no carbs.  Here is my take in a nutshell.  We eat bread and sugar.  A lot of it.  These are all filled with carbs.  When we don't use the carbs we store them as fat.  We eat so much carbs that we can't burn them all.  That's why America is mostly overweight people.  Our bodies use carbs first when needing fuel for energy.  Even if you use up all your carbs in your system, your body won't automatically switch to the reserve fat stores.  It takes weeks or months to transition into using fat stores.  If you keep stuffing your face with carbs, you'll never get to the fat stores.  Unless you exercise 7 days a week for an hour or two a day.  I did this once.  I was also self employed, had no kids, lots of free time and followed a ridiculously low calorie diet.  I lost 37 lbs in 3 months.  Guess what?  It all came back.  This type of diet is simply not sustainable.   

Back to Keto.  This diet makes sense to me.  I wish I would have started 3 months ago when some other friends did.  I'd be fat adapted for this years spring/summer activities.  The goal of this diet is to enter Ketosis, which is the process of creating ketones for your body to use for energy.  This energy comes from your fat stores or your fat that you consume.   Fat is not bad.  It's only bad you eat it with at shit ton of carbs.  Which most people do.  The carbs are used first the fat is just stored away.   Yesterday I started tracking my intake.  I ate about 2000 calories, 161 grams of protein, 141.5 fat grams and 7 grams of carbs.  This was in 4 slices of bacon, coffee and heavy cream, almonds, pork roast, sunflower seeds, cheese, ribeye steak and salad with caesar dressing.  And about 7 huge pickles.  I also went on a 5 mile bike ride pulling a 100 pound trailer and was moderately active most of the day.   I feel great. 

For the past several months I've been waking up hungry.  But the past few days....I haven't.  It's weird.  Usually it gets me out of bed in the morning.  I'd eat a bagel with cream cheese while writing.  And then another one with the kids when they woke up.  My day would have started with so many carbs!!!!  They keep you hungry!!!   

I don't have all the answers to this diet.  I've listened to enough podcasts on the topic and read enough blogs to convince me that it's pretty legit.  There are many other benefits as well.  

Sunday night I tipped the scales at 220.  This morning, 211.  I know some of that is water weight.  But that water is no longer needed in my inflamed body.  That's a good water loss.  But I'm drinking more water this week than I ever have in my life.  We're talking 100 oz. a day.    

Mark Sisson has a great episode on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast about this.  

Matt Carter has a podcast called Break it Down which I listen to every episode of, and episode 70 he interviews a keto expert.  

Oh...and fruit isn't the greatest diet food either.  

But if you have a diet and nutrition program that works for you and you get results, awesome.  There are multiple ways to stay healthy.  This is just one.  And it seems like this is best diet for me.  I've got 26% body fat percentage.  I could probably run for months using just what I have in my body already.