Ok, so I’m going to take a step back from baking and re-direct my focus to cooking for a minute. Every week I start out by prepping different meals that will be healthy and low carb, but also will do well as leftovers. That way I can have quick lunches or dinners on days when I don’t have time to cook. I love experimenting with all of the different low carb recipes I was finding online, or making up on my own. I would take the recipes and plug them into the My Fitness Pal app to make sure I was hitting my macros.

But let me back up a few paces. So I first started looking into the keto diet/low carb diets back in September of 2018. I had spent the 4 months prior to that teaching myself how to bake amazing desserts, pastries, cookies, and bread, all of which I was sampling. But on top of that, I was eating like crap. So in an effort to save money and to try to get healthy, I stopped eating fast food. I still went out to dinner with friends, but only when nicer restaurants were involved so I could enjoy a tasty salad, or salmon. The next step was to start learning how to cook low carb. This meant eating out less which helped in sticking with the diet.

Another motivating factor was my doctor using the term “pre-diabetes” with me a few years ago and some of my older family members being diagnosed with diabetes because they didn’t take care of themselves. So I figured, why not try to make some adjustments now when I’m younger. Well, it was a good idea in theory. So, for the last four months, I’ve been eating little to no carbs, and bulking up on my fats and proteins. However, I was mainly looking at the carb count and making sure that it stayed under my daily/weekly goal. I was not necessarily paying attention to my fat intake. This last week I had my yearly physical and blood work done to see how things were going.

As it turns out, overall, not so well. The good thing news was I lost 10 lbs. and kept it off the entire four months (which included some holiday treats). But here’s the bad news: my blood sugar was within normal limits (only by one point), and my cholesterol was hella high. Like alarmingly high. But that makes sense, right? 75% of my diet everyday is supposed to be comprised of fats. The doctor pointed out that this puts me at high risk for coronary artery disease. Guess what else runs in my family? Heart disease. Now remember, this diet is not about losing weight. It is about being healthy, and it is proving not to be so healthy for me at this moment, despite the weight loss.

So I’m trying to re-work this diet to figure out how to eat low carb, and not have high cholesterol. I know some of you are thinking, “why not just cut out all of the fat?” Well, the biggest appeal of this diet once I started was the fact that I was not hungry or constantly snacking. Fats fill you up faster than carbs do, so I was only eating the standard three meals a day. So after a lot of reflection, here are some things this diet has taught me and things that I’m going to hold onto as I re-work this monster:

• Continue to cut out carbs like cereal, pasta, breads, and pizza.
• Replace said carbs with carbs in vegetables like sweet potatoes, green beans, and also with fruits.
• Continue eating all the greens I want and try to incorporate salads into more meals.
• Switch fats to low fats like in cheese and heavy cream. In fact, I’m going to try switching out the heavy cream for half and half.
• Switch out certain recipes that use eggs and try using egg beaters. Not for everything though.
• Eat less fatty meats like ground beef and bacon.
• I drink Fairlife milk which has lower carbs and lower fat content. I went from drinking a gallon of 2% milk a week to drinking a half gallon of the Fairlife milk every three weeks. That is a huge improvement for me.
• Stop drinking Starbucks. My typical Starbucks drink has 55 g of sugar in it, and I was drinking at least one a day! That’s practically your whole limit for sugar for the day if you’re on a regular diet. Woof.

I recognize that this diet has failed me, or maybe I failed at the diet. But I’m going to push to get to where I need to be. My doctor reminded me that my sugar and cholesterol levels looked like this back in 2015. Then in 2016, when I had the blood work done again, my numbers were perfect. So what was different between those two years? In 2016, I had just gotten out of a relationship, so I was eating out/drinking far less, and I was exercising a lot in an effort not to be a complete sad-sack after the break up. What are the differences between 2018 and 2016? My diet was a lot better in 2018 (minus the fats), but I’m not exercising at all right now.

So I’ll be working to get exercise into my daily/weekly routine. Back in 2016, I was walking 1-2 miles everyday because I literally had nothing to do after work. Now, I am super busy with life and family that I don’t have time to just go and wander around campus for a few hours. But surely I can find 30 minutes to get to the gym and get on that exercise bike. Maybe lift a few weights. Have any of you had set backs in your diets or health endeavors? I hope you know you can achieve your goals, and don’t let the set backs keep you down. -Jen