Day 3 — my IF keto journey
If you want to read about the first two days, find them here.
Weight: 76.4 kg.
State of mind: spaced out.
PMS has only been a big influence in my life in the last few years. Earlier I’d see the signs (pimples and overall tenderness of skin and muscle), but there was no pain, no excessive emotions, no depression.
Now it’s a whole other story. Based on my calendar, I’m 3 days before, but my calendar has a bad algorithm and it always predicts one day too early. I’m using the My calendar app, but I’m lazy, so I don’t add my moods and such, even though it could be a good chunk of data after several months and I may be able to visualize my cycle differently. If you try this, do let me know what you’ve observed.
Yesterday I was fine, maybe a bit uncoordinated, but today my PMS just hit me in the head with its usual depressive episode (that thankfully only lasts for three days if I’m careful to not eat any sweets), meaning that my mind is foggy, my eyes are closing, although I’m fine, not sleepy (I make a point out of getting enough sleep every night), my muscles feel somehow suspended. I did manage to go through day 2 of my 28 day “fitness” challenge of 10–20 minutes of intense exercise in the morning, to “get the juices flowing”. It was difficult, but the hopelessness of it all only hit me after finishing the exercises.
I know it’s just hormones and I can power through these few days, as always, so that I will try to do.
For lunch/main meal I brought with me some stew that I made yesterday. No hummus, it apparently contains tahini (sesame sauce) and I can’t stand crushed sesame. Whole sesame, sure, give me the whole vat. Milled sesame that looks like someone threw up after eating an excessive amount of mashed potatoes? No, thank you. Maybe there are other recipes out there, but for now we have enough food for two or three days (I don’t know how, but every time I cook chickpeas or other beans, I end up making half a pot because the ingredients just pile up).
The stew also contains a bit of pork, carrots, celery, parsnip, onions, tomato sauce, salt and spices. It’s so simple to make, just cut everything up, lightly fry the meat (or skip the meat) and saute the onions if you want to, then add the rest of the ingredients to the pot and add enough water to cover everything, bring to a boil and let simmer for 1.5–2 hours, testing to see when the chickpeas are done, if you like. I don’t have set proportions of vegetables, I just use more carrots than celery and parsnip together, two small onions or a big one, all in a kind of balance with the chickpeas and other ingredients that may be. I rarely use set quantities for anything that I cook, even for baking, but that’s what makes it fun for me.
Yesterday I also cut up a fresh white cabbage and “massaged” it with salt, then put it in a container and poured hot water over it, to hopefully make some pickled cabbage that actually is pickled, not like the last time when I waited three weeks for the pieces of red cabbage to ferment, but nothing happened. I may have to put this next to a radiator, so it gets a bit of heat to start fermenting.
If you’ve never tried pickling cabbage at home, just try with a small cabbage (around a kilo) and one spoonful of non iodized salt (I used sea salt, but back home I could find rock salt directly from the mine, which is better, in my opinion, as you are sure there is no iodine in there). It’s a lot of fun, it’s a tradition that I lovingly support because pickled cabbage is soooo good, especially with the kind of stew that I just made. Now I just need to wait for a few days and occasionally stir things up in the container. I don’t like the German version, sauerkraut, since it’s way too sour and it has caraway (which I don’t like). So home-made it is.
I’m feeling a bit better now. We’ll see later if anything changes.
After lunch, which also included one apple, things were going nicely for a few hours, then an intense hunger hit me out of nowhere. I prepared an omelet with 1.5 eggs, spring onions and mushrooms (and a tiny bit of gorgonzola) and had it with two crackers and some cottage cheese (a big spoonful), so that should have been enough, right? It wasn’t and I’m still hungry and I have no idea why, except PMS. The pain in my lower abdomen is back, not very intense, but constant. My fasting has just started and all I can think about is chocolate. But I can hold on until tomorrow. Then we’ll see. If I feel too bad and have to give up the keto until after my period, I’ll do that. No reason to kick myself in the gut just for getting the weight off quicker.
