DAY 7: 219.
My weight loss, although steady, has been a bit slower than I anticipated. I wanted to confirm I wasn't getting any extra sugar from other sources, like maybe a dressing on the Cobb salad I enjoyed. Checking for ketosis, means using a urine dip stick to measure how much ketones are in your urine. The more ketones, the more fat you are burning. If you were to cheat and consume more than the 20 grams carbohydrate, your body would move out of the fat burning mode for a day or so and consume those sugars you had eaten. That will slow the weight loss process down.
Fortunately I remain in moderate ketosis, so keep on with the low carb veggies and meats.
I wanted to recount a story about a group of four men who were all at least 50-100 lbs overweight. Eating 500 calories with the standard HCG was NOT an option. So I told them for breakfast eat eggs and bacon, and for lunch, and for dinner to go to a place like Sonny's real pit BBQ. Only eat the meat, no fries, cole slaw, or BBQ sauce. And they have all different types of meat to choose from. After doing this for a month, 3 of the four guys lost over 20 pounds in the month, and they felt great. The fourth actually gained 5 pounds. After "grilling" him on his menu selection at the BBQ pit, we uncovered that he had been drinking three or four ice teas with each meal....sweet tea! So you have to be careful when you go out. Best bet is to drink a whole bunch of water, although I don't think one beer a night ( low carb) would significantly slow the process of weight loss.
WHY DO I CHECK FOR KETONES IN MY URINE AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN? In the absence of adequate available stores of carbohydrates, our body turns to fat for its primary energy source. And that’s good! The reason this occurs is because our body will release insulin when we eat carbohydrates. Insulin is the primary mechanism by which fat is escorted into the cells, and it is virtually impossible for your body to use fat as fuel in the presence of insulin. In fact in the face of excessive stress, our elevated insulin levels will convert excess sugar in our blood stream into fat, which is then forced inside your belly as visceral fat (that’s the bad stuff that causes heart disease and diabetes). Low carbohydrate diets carefully control insulin by limiting its release. Since your body almost always turns to carbohydrates as its primary source of energy, in their absence your body will instead turn to fat as fuel, and the small amount of the insulin present allows your body to burn stored fat as fuel. This is known as being in ketosis, a term which your body is now burning fat, not carbohydrates for fuel. Now that’s really good for fat loss. So it is the presence of ketosis and lowered insulin levels which are some of the reasons the low carbohydrate diet really works.
