Week 6 Summary

Day 45, Feast Day #24

I finished off Week 6 of fasting. I have dropped one more pound for a total of 14 lbs lost over the last 45 days. Finally the freaking scale moved after 18 days of a plateau. I think it helped I didn't go out to eat with friends during the week, and therefore I drank a lot less calories in the forms of wine and beer. Here are the numbers:

Calories
Week 1: 1,437 kcal or 76% of baseline calories
Week 2: 1,938 kcal or 102% of baseline calories
Week 3: 1,680 kcal or 89% of baseline calories
Week 4: 2,196 kcal or 116% of baseline calories
Week 5: 1,829 kcal or 96% of baseline calories
Week 6: 1,531 kcal or 81% of baseline calories

While ADFing: 1768 kcal or 93% of baseline calories
Baseline Days: 1,896 kcal

All Feast Days: 2,942 kcal or 155% of baseline calories
All Fast Days*: 477 kcal or 25% of baseline calories

For reference
Week 1: 4 fast days, 3 feast days
Week 2: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 3: 3 fast days*, 4 feast days
Week 4: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 5: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 6: 4 fast days, 3 feast days
*Includes faux-fast day that was my mama's birthday dinner.

I feel like I am back on track with this diet now that most of the birthday festivities have passed. It was good to finally see the fourth fast day in my week to be honest. I have become very accustomed to alternating between the up days and down days and just don't get as hungry nowadays. On yesterday's fast day I ended up not eating all of my allowed calories because I had so many chores and other tasks to catch up on. I finally ate around 5 p.m. when Zach was cooking some of the Amylu chicken sausages for his dinner and I finally took a break from laundry, emails, finances, organizing my life calendar, etc. to make a salad for myself.

I am still not happy with the amount of sugar I have been eating (I am my own worst critic). Although I consumed 30% less sugar this past week than my baseline, it is still not what I was aiming for. We had bought a huge amount of strawberries at Costco, so a lot of the sugars were from fruit at least.

Also, this week was my highest so far in average potassium consumed. I think I seriously need to plan my entire eating schedule around potassium if I am ever going to average the recommended amount. This past week I only averaged about 44% of the DRV, which is up from where it was. Once our avocados ripen, that should help boost those potassium numbers. 

I ended up getting a Charley horse in the early hours on Saturday morning despite my increased consumption of potassium. I haven't had a leg cramp like that in years, so I looked back at my food diary and my potassium or calcium weren't low that day, I actually met my calcium needs. It might have just been hormonal or some other fluke. Maybe it was the result of the wedding day nightmares I have been having. I think I need to keep a bottle of tonic water in the house. The quinine in tonic water is shown to lower the incidence of muscle cramps. I luckily like tonic water, although it is better with the gin and lime.

Zach and I also discussed working on cutting more of the wheat and sugar from our diet and eating more "Paleo" or "primal." We are going to work on using up the grains and processed foods we already have, since we don't want to waste money or food, and then just try not to buy more. I have to do some more research in to how primal we want to eat, since like ADF, everyone seems to have a different Paleo rules they follow. I also frankly want to do a bunch more research on the "caveman" diet itself. I am curious about this diet since I have read a lot of people having success with not only losing weight on it, but fixing their own gastrointestinal problems.

Meanwhile, I am working on compiling a list of the science papers I have been citing on a new tab for this blog. I haven't had as much spare time as I had anticipated, but hopefully I will get that done soon.