Category: Phase 3

Now it’s time to obsess over the Justice League for a while. New travel article! Volleyball on Kits Beach!

Mutant Diet Phase 3 Day 105
It’s true. I’m fussier when cheat days come. In the past, it was any carb or sugar any time.

My cheat day started Friday night at the movie theatre where my son and I saw Spider-man Homecoming. Due to transit issues, I was late coming home and taking us to the movie, where I was stuck starving with limited choices at the concession stand. A rookie mistake for sure, but there’s only so much I can do.

Saturday morning, I was strict and for dinner we decided to enjoy the Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company. One thing about abstinence from sugar and carbs is that, when you do indulge, you can taste it. When you are in a permanent state of sugar-and-carbs, there’s no taste.

Today I have to get back on the horse. Blessedly I have supplies for next week and should be able to persevere.

Word of warning. To those doing an ultra low sugar-and-carb process, the feelings of discomfort seem to only ease slightly with practice. I am not enjoying any sort of euphoria or extra energy when I force my body into ketosis. It’s terrible. I have only a few hours before the wretched sensations start again.

If it weren’t for the cheat days, I would be unable to sustain this process. On Tuesday I should find out what a month’s worth of this process is worth to the scale.

Tonight’s the night. Spider-man Homecoming. I’ve started the push on my Computational Fluency site with this new post about persistence.

Mutant Diet Phase 3 Day 103
I took a break from cycling today because of some timing issues as well as the fact I am beat. I’m finding my energy levels are all over the map and my mental state is rough.

Up too late and up too early is a problem.

Strangely, I can’t decide whether to have my cheat day on Saturday or Sunday.

Therefore the must be something wrong with me.

This from Spider Island limited series. A recent post card campaign has landed in Central Newfoundland.

Mutant Diet Phase 3 Day 102
When you do this sort of diet/fitness program there’s a risk of becoming a zealot. To mitigate this risk, I am taking topics I find odd and simply presenting an argument.

Let’s take the concept of a calorie. In the diet context calorie has (at least for me) taken on a pejorative term. My mother, when she put me on a diet, had a little calorie counter book and if I ate something bad she would say “do you know how many calories are in that?” At the age I was at the time I was pretty sure I didn’t know and didn’t care.

Let’s use a normal definition of a calorie being the heat energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water through 1° C. What does this have to do with food? Well according to Scientific American (www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manufacturers/) what we see on food packages is a kilo calorie (capital C Calorie) which is the energy to raise 1000 grams of water one degree Celsius.

The article says that “The original method used to determine the number of kcals in a given food directly measured the energy it produced. The food was placed in a sealed container surrounded by water–an apparatus known as a bomb calorimeter.”

Today the food industry uses a system. “The Atwater system uses the average values of 4 Kcal/g for protein, 4 Kcal/g for carbohydrate, and 9 Kcal/g for fat. Alcohol is calculated at 7 Kcal/g. (These numbers were originally determined by burning and then averaging.)”

Things that Cause me to Go Hmmmm

• I doubt the human digestive system is anything like a bomb calorimeter
• If you put two people of the same height, weight and gender and give them the same diet for a week, I doubt the results would be the same
• 1000 Calories of sugar is not the same as 1000 Calories of kale

If you ride your stationary bicycle and burn 500 Calories, does that mean it’s OK to drink 500 calories of Coke? Somehow I think not.

I bought my tickets for Spider-man Homecoming on Friday. Field BC has good fossils.

Mutant Diet Phase 3 Day 101
I was reading about sugar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar) and I had thought it was a New World plant that went to Europe, but it seems that New Guinea may have been sugar’s hometown going into Asia first and then Captain Columbus

The reason I was looking this was the fact that sugar is not part of human evolution until relatively recently (8,000 years). With homo sapiens fossils being found that are older and older than we thought, I’m pretty convinced humans were not meant to eat much sugar.

Which kind of sucks. For most of us it’s an essential to life. Pity we’ve refined it as much as opium. Our prehistoric ancestors managed to survive without either.

The new Spider-man is in the theatres and now I have to find time to see it. Please take a look at my analysis of BC Ferries.

Mutant Diet Phase 3 Day 100
It’s Day 100 of a phase that was supposed to be 82 days. I figure I’ll run this until the August long weekend.

I’m back on ultra-low carb and I seem to adapt faster now that I’m on my 4th six-day stint. I do have the challenge of being short on supplies this week. And there’s no good time to go shopping.

Soon I see the chiropractor for the first time in ages. I’m hoping she can straighten out the crunchy parts of my lower back.

I think my only real request is for someone to tell the Burrard Bridge to stop getting longer every morning.

This panel from the Spiderverse series has two Spider-men referencing Andrew Garfield and Tobey MacGuire. I saw Garfield’s version last night on Netflix. Oak Bay near Victoria participated in my cheat days.

Mutant Diet Phase 3 Day 99
OK, so the cheat day was really two cheat days. I am feeling though today like I’m back in the meat-and-salad so let’s see what things will bring.

Travel is deadly for strict diets. I estimated the amount of prep prior to travelling to have ultra-low sugar-and-carb meals and it’s mad. The “eat what’s on your plate” rule is also a total bitch to counteract because you are either paying for the food or someone is treating you and you don’t want to be disrespectful. The only viable workaround is to minimize what bad stuff lands on your plate in the first place.

Anyway, back at it!

I remember this comic book cover as being a first back issue I bought at the Silver Snail in Toronto when it was on Queen West.

Mutant Diet Phase 3 Day 96
There’s not enough coffee for this headache. Oh yeah going to be earlier and not having a loud, hot apartment would help too.

I notice with this process of 6 days strict and 1 cheat day is that you become very picky about the food products with which you are willing to participate in a cheat. For example, Tim Bits were brought to work. Three weeks ago I would have thought, “Meh, one won’t hurt.” Now I’m thinking “Are you effing kidding? My cheat day isn’t until tomorrow and there’s no way I’m breaking it on such low quality stuff.”

Speaking of cheating, I needed to take a distraught child for a walk on Kits Beach and obtain ice cream from the gelato place. Ice cream has mental health benefits. Quick, someone do a study to prove it. Anyway, I thought about a full on cheat but I could only bring myself to steal a couple of tastes of aforementioned distraught child’s ice cream. I could tell it didn’t do much harm because my body was wanting food before bed, to which I politely told the cravings to go screw themselves.

You have to be compassionate some days, but reserve that for cheat days.

Lots of Spider people here. Count them faster with Computational Fluency.

Mutant Diet Phase 3 Day 95
“This is nuts.” I just said that, out loud, at my desk at work. It was in the context of how my head feels right now, despite some Tylenol, coffee and peanuts. (Speaking of nuts.)

One of the unexpected side-effects that I’m attributing to this ultra-low carb process is talking to myself out loud when I would normally not. I really, really have to curb this as it could be very embarrassing. Another unexpected side-effect is profound profanity. I’ve swearing like a British Sailor at a profanity competition. Coupled with talking to myself out loud, this is a bad combination.

I wonder if at the health food store they have any jars of Patience and Chill.

Spider-man and Luke Cage when he was trying to bring Spider-man to justice for Gwen Stacy’s death. Looks like the weather in Ottawa cleared up.

Mutant Diet Phase 3 Day 94
I feel like a single refried bean crushed under an unyielding boot.

Up too late and up too early. Not an optimum combination.

There has been a consistent trend in the range of 2:30 PM in the afternoon where I feel illogically hungry and fatigued. Yesterday’s 2:30 PM crunch time required a walk to a bank machine and a coffee. Normally my coffee is all done before noon. Prior to this ultra-low sugar/carb process I would medicate with a nut/sugar/chocolate combo of some sort.

Until yesterday I pretty much assumed this afternoon mess was all born from bad habits, feeling cheated or some other strictly mental process. But as I continue a rare third week of unprecedented self-discipline, I wonder … there might be more bio-chemistry to this 2:30 PM than can be explained by mere bad behaviour.

However, I have no idea what this might be.

Spider-man and Green Goblin from a famous comic because it dealt with *gasp* drugs and did not have a Comics Code approval. It another stunning day in Vancouver today.

Mutant Diet Phase 3 Day 93
Yikes. What happened to my morning? So far so good on the reactions to ultra-low sugar-and-carbs. What I’m wondering is if my body in plotting some kind of counter attack whereby it sucks sugar from the air or someplace in a desperate attempt to not use stored lard.

I was in the sun a lot at the pool and I’m wondering if I absorbed solar energy and my body’s using that instead of stored fat.

The bicycle was almost a dream to ride this morning with freshly tuned gears.