i peed on a stick

No, no, no, no. It was not a pregnancy test. No need to alert the National Inquirer, the New England Journal of Medicine, or the Pope. It was a Ketostix(tm). Ketostik? Don't know the singular. Anyway, I bought some because I am a geek and I wanted to see proof that I am in ketosis. That is, that I have used up all my glycogen stores and am now burning fat and nothing but fat. Both yesterday evening and this morning, my stix turned a nice light-to-medium purple, so I am!

As you know, if you have been following along, I love these "my body is a science experiment" deals. If I didn't know that I'm burning fat from the stix, the fact that my clothes are looser, the fact that the scale has moved downward, or the fact that all I *do* is pee, I think I would still know because my whole body feels warmer. It is the strangest thing. It's as if I can actually feel my metabolism ratcheting up. I don't know how else to describe it.

The other thing I have been doing, weight loss-wise, for the past few days is "IF" (intermittent fasting), in particular a variant called Fast-5. I had never actually heard of any of this until just this week, when I came upon it on the interwebz. Of course. Anyway, the mechanics of the Fast-5 are this: basically you do all your eating for the day in a five hour window of your choosing, then fast on just non- or low caloric beverages for 19 hours until your next window. When I read that, I was like Oh! That's sort of mostly what my body wants anyway. As any of you who know me in real life know, I very rarely eat breakfast other than coffee or tea with cream, and if I do eat food in the morning, I am just starving all day. And if I am very busy, or occupied with other things, I can easily go well into the afternoon without eating. But I like a nice hearty dinner, and I like to be able to snack in the evening and/or have a glass of wine as I'm relaxing and winding down, and I like to be able to have a drink or two in the evening if I go out.

All my life I have listened to the "experts" tell me that you must eat breakfast, you should have several small meals a day, eating at night before bed is bad bad bad. But when I eat like that, I just want to eat more and more. The Fast-5 people will tell you that that is because when you're eating small amounts all day, you keep having insulin releases, your blood sugar is bouncing up and down, so you are hungry and often craving carbs. They would suggest that even a brief fast of nineteen hours is enough to kick you over into ketosis, get your body burning fat, keep your blood sugar much more stable, and confer a whole bunch of other benefits I won't go into. If I am reading them right, I also think they imply that you can go into ketosis doing this even eating a moderate amount of carbs. I do not know whether the science behind this is sound, since every single study you read about weight and nutrition contradicts some other one. But I do know it struck a chord for me, because I have always said I'm just not hungry until I eat for the first time in a day.

So I've been trying this since Wednesday and it's been pretty easy, especially since I read a whole bunch of people saying it's fine to use some cream in your coffee, that it doesn't disrupt the fast. The hardest part has been keeping my calories up. In the eating window I've given myself, 5-10pm, it's really hard for me to ingest more than 800-1000 calories, especially not eating crap. I might need to pick a couple days a week not to follow it, so I can calorie cycle.

Anyway, that's my new thing. That and peeing on a stick. You wish your life was as exciting as mine.

xoxo