#keto – tallgirltinysteps

2/19/23. Weird dreams with carbohydrates.

I have been eating low carb/keto for the past 5-7 weeks and I was trying the technique in the book “Carb Nite Solution” where you eat what you want one day a week. Well, two things. The first being, I dont think I am really losing much weight so that is disappointing. However, its the second reason that I need to stop/modify what I am doing.

After I eat carbs and dessert (on Saturday nights), I have the WEIRDEST dreams that night while I sleep. Last night, my two cats were in the parking lot of a furniture store. I kept picking them up to bring them home and they werent my cats. They looked similar to my cats but they werent my actual cats. Then, my husband was wandering around the parking lot with no sock on one foot. When I would ask him what he was doing, he would reply with “just trying to get comfortable.” It was sooooooooo weird. Also, I slept 10 hours last night AND fell asleep on the couch watching TV before bed.

I believe this blog should be honest so I am being honest. I am not sure if I am going to continue to follow this program. Here are the things I do know for sure.

I feel better with lower carb eating.
I think it is weird (and unhealthy) that you cant eat fruit on Keto.
I am not sure how sustainable a really strict diet is for me.
If this carb nite is causing weird dreams, what else is it doing to me?
However, It is nice to feel like I have a treat at the end of the week to look forward to.

So where do I go from here? Well, I made low carb lasagna with egg wraps (my new discovery!), I ate eggs for breakfast and I will eat a salad for lunch tomorrow and yogurt for breakfast. So, at this point, I am continuing to eat a lower carb diet. I am also “upping my steps” which I will post about next week.

To my 105 subscribers and 335 social followers…THANK YOU! You give me a reason to keep writing and for that, I am thankful.

Keto week 3 update-“Carb night solution”

I have been eating a lower carb diet for about 3 weeks now and I feel a lot better. I read a book called the Carb Nite Solution and his whole idea is to eat low carb all week and then have a “high carb” meal on one of the weekend nights. Then you get right back to eating low carb on Sunday morning.

I picked Saturday night and have done this 3 times so far. Results?

Wow.

First, I have eaten some REALLY good food on these Saturday nights.

Second, the food tastes super rich and delicious (much more so than it used to taste)

Third, it is starting to become fun to pick out my “Saturday night indulgence.” Last night was Steak Frites and Apple Crisp with Vanilla Ice Cream. Super yummy.

I will continue with this because I feel go0d and it is kind of fun right now. One disclaimer-I don’t eat as low carb as he recommends during the week. (He says to stay under 30). I stay under 50.

So what do I eat? Cheese sticks, nuts, caesar salads, Egg burritos with low carb tortillas, chicken, avocados. (Not a ton of variety but I feel pretty good and that was one of my goals for this)

Is it always easy? No. Some nights I am tired and would like to just eat something easy. It is especially hard when you are on the road. I had an Unwich from Jimmy Johns (a sandwich wrapped in lettuce leaves.). It was fine, not great.

However, my body doesn’t hurt as bad as normal so I am hoping that fewer carbs leads to less inflammation. We will continue to see.

To my 102 followers-I AM OVER 100! WOW! THANK YOU!. So which mode are you in right now? Burst mode (like I am with Keto) or tiny action mode? (going to talk about that in my next post.)

Have a great week!

1/7/23 Keto/low carb-one week down (how is it going???)

So, I hate to even mention this on this on my blog because this diet is more of a “burst” than tiny steps. Yes, leading up to starting the new way of eating was all tiny steps (more water, cut down on sugar, more steps, cut out chips, etc…) but the actual low carb diet itself is a maj0r “burst.” You have to go all the way to get into ketosis, and so you cant really tiny step your way there (there are other diets like weight watchers that are more conducive to tiny changes) but Keto/low carb is not one of them.

Why do I like a low carb diet? 1. It is easy as far as what you can/ can not eat. 2. It REALLY curbs my hunger. 3. It seems to provide me with more energy than other diets. 4. It brings down my cholesterol, sugar, and triglyceride numbers. (I have been able to avoid medications by eating this way)

Why don’t I like a low carb diet? IT IS NOT FUN-It is boring and repetitive and strict. It is difficult to eat with others (like if everyone is ordering pizza)

So…in order to make it more fun and hopefully stick to it long term, I am trying a technique called the carb nite solution. It is a book that professes you can eat low carb for 6.5 days and have what ever you want for dinner at the end of the week and it wont derail your progress. (I am picking Saturday night.) Tonight will be my first try at this. I will let you know how it goes.

Also, I am taking part in a lot of other bursts today such as deep cleaning the house (need to reset before school starts again Monday), taking down and putting away Christmas decor (including tree), washing all the laundry, towels, and bedding, washing the carpets (our cats like to dribble their food).

Today isnt really a tiny action day. It is a day of many bursts but it is a day I feel needs to happen every once in a while in order to have tiny actions work the other 99 percent of the time.

THANK YOU to my 99 followers-got a new one this morning so thank you to that person! Stay tiny my friends!

1/1/23. Happy New Year! Easing into Keto in a tiny action way.

I feel better when I dont eat a lot of carbohydrates. I just do. I also know that my “health numbers” are better when I eat a lower carbohydrate diet. Sooooooo…back to Keto I go. However, instead of jumping in with both feet (which is a real burst that burns out quickly), I am easing into it this time. Here are the steps I have taken or will be taking.

From Dec 10-28 I drank more water and got more steps in. That is all. Very tiny.
On Dec 27 I bought a magazine with a lot of good looking keto recipes.
On Dec 28, I went to the grocery store and bought eggs, cheese, meat, avocados, vegetables, nuts and seeds, etc…
On Dec 29 and 30, I made egg burritos with low carb tortilla shells in my sister’s air fryer (it is on loan from her to see if I want to purchase my own) and cut out the chips and cookies I had been eating a few days prior. I still ate some popcorn.
On Dec 31 I ordered a steak and asparagus for dinner. I had a glass of red wine and about 3 bites of peanut butter pie.

Today is Jan 1, 2023 and I KNOW that a ton of people start diets today and a ton of people burn out by February. I had an omelette for breakfast (no toast or potato) and am heading to the treadmill after writing this post. We are eating chicken for dinner. I have already had 3 glasses of water on top of my morning coffee. As you can see, I have been “starting this diet” for about 21 days now. Little tiny actions. I am ready for the next step of cutting out carbs.

I challenge you today to try something new-DONT start the new diet today. Start the tiny steps that will prepare you to start the new diet in a few weeks. Get yourself ready. Think of it like an adventure. Take the pressure off of today and of trying to be perfect. What are all the little itty bitty things you can do to get you ready for the better eating plan? I believe it will help you to not burn out and to stay the course. You cant go from 0 to 100 in 24 hours which is what almost everyone tries to do. You will flame out. Make this year different! Make this year a “tiny action year” and keep chugging along slowly.

To my 98 followers-THANK YOU! I hope you have a restful and inspiring start to the new year! Stay tiny!

October 30,2022 Maintenance is just as important as tiny steps

When working on achieving a goal, most of us want to make progress at it every day. We tend to become impatient and want things RIGHT NOW (Hello, Amazon!) However, maintaining progress is just as important so that we make keep charging ahead when we are able. We don’t want to wind up completely back at the start and lose all of our hard work!

I had a step goal of 10000 steps by November 6, 2022. I am holding steady at an average of 9000 steps per day. I could beat myself up and be discouraged. Instead, I am choosing to look at where I came from (7000 steps a day) and realize that I have held this number for a few weeks now. (I have even made it to 11000 on a couple days!) So, I am going to focus on maintaining it (I would try to increase it but right now, 9000 feels difficult for me so I want to wait until it feels a bit easier).

This maintenance is important. It is important to stay here and not slide back to 7000. or even 8000. It is important to not lose all of the hard work I have been putting in and the progress I have made.

A burst I have been working on is “no candy, sweets or desserts until Halloween.” Well, Halloween is tomorrow and I feel kind of “meh” about indulging in sweets tomorrow. I have felt pretty good the last 20 days and I am not sure that I want that to go away. There have been tempting moments but overall, it hasn’t been too bad. So, I may pick a day to indulge (Thursday night cheesecake factory) and then wait again until Thanksgiving.

Also, I may reduce how much bread I am eating. I am not ready to go full keto ( I love bread and missed it so much during my keto diet time). However, my husband suggested that maybe I could cut down how much I eat. So this week I will count all the pieces of bread I eat (chips and tortilla shells count) to evaluate where I should place my goal using tiny steps. For example, if I am eating 5 pieces a day, I will not reduce it down to zero but maybe reduce it to 3 instead? I will keep you posted on this.

To my 90 followers, THANK YOU! Have a great week!

July 21-week 2 update of no sugar

It is going better. I feel better. I had a couple of “slip ups” but for the most part, I am not eating sugar. No cookies, cakes, candy, pop, etc…

I don’t know if I have lost weight but I feel better.

I have more energy.

I feel like I have more control over my hunger.

I do still miss having “treats.”

I will continue.

I wish I had more insight for you right now but I don’t. As far as “diet” my breakfasts and lunches are manly low/no carb and then dinner is sometimes low carb and sometimes not.

Like Superman, sugar is my kryptonite. I have to stay away from it if I want to be my best self and have the energy needed for my life.

To my 86 followers, keep on keeping on! If you are in the part of the world that is having a heat wave right now, do as little as possible and survive. I mean it. Just do everything you can to get through it and think about working on yourself and your goals after the heat has passed.

April 8-just returned from Vegas and am still 3 weeks no sugar-kinda

Many of you know that I am a teacher and since my husband and I work in the same school district, we have the same Spring Break. We were going to just stay home and do things around the yard of the house we bought in November. However, Michigan weather decided it was going to be about 40 and snow the whole week. So we hopped on a plane to Vegas where it was 85 and sunny for the whole week. It was awesome!

Sugar update. I only ate sugar twice (it was vacation after all) and I didn’t finish the dessert either time. The first one was watching the NCAA title game and our restaurant had a skillet cookie with ice-cream. I only ate a quarter of it.

The second time was a really special restaurant that served banana gelato and Nutella filled donuts. ( I LOVE anything banana and I love Nutella).

Can I tell you something that makes me sad? Neither one was very good. I had waited all this time and was expecting them to be out of this world amazing and they weren’t really. I read a book on vacation that said “who will you be if you give up your story?” Who will I be if I, as a sugar addict, no longer eat sugar? I know to some of you this seems silly. But Vegas was different when I wasn’t searching for all the sugary treats I would eat. It was weird. Good weird, but weird.

Step update- DEFINITELY exceeded 8500 a day. Its Vegas and there is a t0n of walking. I have not tallied in today yet but the average is about 10,000 a day. And man was I pooped! I have to continue to walk and increase my strength. I will aim for 9000 this week (remember that Vegas was a “BURST” and I still need to increase my progress toward my goals in a tiny manner)

Challenge for next week is to continue to stay sugar free (not a huge thing at this point) and eat 1 day of NO CARBS. So totally KETO. And an average of 9000 daily steps. I will keep you posted!

To my 76 followers-THANK YOU! See you next week!

March 22, 2022-which mode are you in? Surviving, Tiny stepping, Bursting or Retreating?

Recently (on the treadmill actually) I was thinking about goals and working toward them and what a convoluted process it is and that led me to this post. I think we are always in 3 stages of something that we are experiencing (4 if you count retreating-but we are going to focus on the first 3)

Survive and Advance
Tiny steps forward
Bursts forward
Retreating-but we are trying to stay away from that for now.

So let’s take the goal of weight loss. We see a magazine article or diet book that promises “Lose 30 pounds in 30 days” and we get excited. We want to lose 30 pounds! And we can do it in 30 days-YES! So we start the diet, start working out and may even lose a couple pounds that first week. Then, we don’t lose weight in week 2 and we get frustrated. We keep trying the program and maybe lose 1-2 pounds in week 3 but then week 4 creeps up and we have lost nothing. We feel like a failure. We only lost a total of 4 pounds-we were supposed to lose THIRTY! So we give up, go to the grocery store, buy an entire bag of cookies and eat them all before we even get out of the parking lot. Thats just me? Oh ok (its ok-I know you have done it too and just don’t want to admit it) Then we retreat back into our old habits and ways until we try again to lose the weight.

We were in burst mode for 3o days and when our results were not as promised, we think we have failed.

In my opinion, every goal should be attacked in 3 ways and we should avoid #4 at all costs. But that is not how we currently do things. We “go burst or go home.”

So lets take the weight loss goal to start with. First, I survived the holidays/funerals/job change/house move/ etc…for last 10 months and only gained about 5ish pounds. Success! Next, I started taking a few tiny steps in the last couple of weeks like drinking more water, wearing my Fitbit to see how many steps I am averaging, and working on my sleep (supposed to help with weight loss). JUST this week (actually yesterday) I decided to cut out sugar for 30 days. It is a burst for sure but I am not doing ANYTHING ELSE differently with my diet, so it is also a bit of a tiny step to lead me back to the low carb lifestyle that I had been enjoying before my world exploded. The other tiny step I am working on is advancing my average steps for the week from 8100 to 8500.

I am not doing this for weight loss (although that would be an added bonus). Instead I want to feel better and stronger. I know that by cutting out sugar and increasing steps, those things will start to happen.

I will update you Sunday on how Week 1 went! To my 74 followers-what tiny step could you take this week toward a goal?

March 7-a week of failure. I must have tried to do too much.

This was a bad week. I’m actually amazed at how bad it was. It was as if all my tiny habits didn’t matter and I didn’t care. Usually, I can analyze what happened and pinpoint where I went wrong. Unfortunately, that isn’t possible this week.

Elliptical-I did 15 minutes one day and didn’t do any the rest of the week. I was either too tired or didn’t feel like it or ??? Maybe I pushed too hard too fast? This week I will go back to what is attainable. I’m not sure what that number will be. I will let you know next Sunday.

Health-I did part far away in the parking lot but that is about it.

Diet-I ate terribly. It was a keto fail. I can’t even call it keto. It was simply “eating whatever I wanted with no regard for anything else.” I wonder if it had something to do with changing up my breakfast.

Money-I did a great job with this. I was able to transfer some unspent money into my Las Vegas account for our upcoming trip. Im actually really happy about how I did with this.

Home-my bedroom was a mess all week

Mental-I struggled to read anything or care about trying to improve myself.

Other-I did compliment a person. But it didn’t feel like much.

Bursts-NONE

Missteps-THE ENTIRE WEEK as you saw above

Next steps. So here is the important part and here is where I feel like every article/blog post/book I ever read leaves me hanging. They don’t talk about this part. I understand why. It feels like failure. I feel like a failure. And yet, I have a choice. I can keep falling down this hole of self pity, apathy, and failure or I can start again. I choose to start again. Slow and tiny even though my heart wishes it could be fast and big. Slow and tiny is how I will get there.

So…next steps will be…

Elliptical-I will start with 1 minute and increase where I can

Health-I will go back to eating my cheese sticks for breakfast, salads for lunch and almonds for a snack. Dinner will be a challenge as always and I am working on that.

Money-I will save whatever amount (be it small or large) and transfer it to my Vegas account

Home-I actually am doing a load of laundry right now and I threw away some papers. I also put away a pile of clothes that had been sitting out for a while.

Mental-I am going to read for pleasure. If I stumble across a self help book that seems interesting, I will consider it.

Other-I am not sure what to put in this category. I did write a St Patricks Day card to my grandma and I am going home to see my parents next weekend.

February 22 Mother’s Birthday celebration

Feb 22

So last week little steps

10 min to 12 min of elliptical

Money-credit cards are still paid off. Sold some clothes for 38.00. Got a reimbursement check for 25.00. half is going to Vegas fund (6 weeks away) and half is going to Paris Olympics fund (3 years away)

Health-parked farther away in parking lot again-did elliptical 5 times this week Realized that I feel puffy even thought I am eating low carb/keto so need to rejigger my diet a bit (see post below about tiny habits in reverse)

Work-Wrote for blog many days this week but am not feeling any desire to work on fiction so did not work on that.

Home-pulled comforter up on bed, washed dishes out from lunch at school, did laundry. donated 3 bags of clothes that couldnt be sold and took 2 coolers back to my parents.

Tiny steps in reverse. I was eating handfuls of keto crunch for last 3 weeks. It’s keto. Must be fine. Well just like small steps in the right direction can help, small steps in the wrong direction are not helping. I feel puffy. As you know I don’t weigh myself. I have been eating keto and I feel as though it isn’t working. So going to be more purposeful with the keto crunch. Going to spread it on yogurt. Use it as a topping. See if that helps. Only packing my lunch with the essentials and no “back up food” in lunch or car. Except almonds.

Also going to be stricter on keto and reduce carbs down a bit more. I had been doing moderate carbs at dinner. Going to go lower carbs for dinner and see what happens.

Mental- read articles about rewards-am reading Drive by Daniel Pink right now. Its talking about motivation.

Other– goal was to compliment two people. Only complimented one. Will try again this week for two.

Bursts-had a burst to clean out my car. As soon as I dropped off the clothes to be sold, I wanted everything out of my car and cleaned. Car wash. (didn’t vaccuum-its winter in Michigan so no point). My car looks awesome but now my bedroom is a mess LOL.

Missteps

Didn’t have anything big this week but I feel puffy so I need to reevaluate how much keto crunch I am eating.

Next steps

Try for 13-15 min on elliptical (trying to prepare for Vegas and tennis season so I am pushing a little harder). Also need to lift weights. Arms are very weak.

Money-have a budget of 50.00 to get me through a short 3 day week. Going to eat food at home and only buy gas.

Health-bought my fancy chocolate bars. Allowed one per week from now until Vegas. I have 6 total in my cupboard. Goal is only 1 per week. Also cleaned out car so there is nothing but almonds to grab and snack on. Remember my tough time is 1-5 pm each day

Work-notes each day for the blog. Also asked to shadow some other teachers at school so I can work on becoming a better teacher. (they have agreed so need to find a time to book that)

Home-keep dishes out of sink and put away everything I brought in from my car.

Others: compliment 2 people this week.