I decided that I won't be looking at any of my numbers until Sunday, and right now, the only number I'll be concentrating on is weight—not blood pressure or blood sugar. I doubtless regained a few pounds after going a bit nuts all day today; I had Burger King for lunch, then I met my buddy Tom for a grilled Korean beef dinner (our server was an Indian guy who spoke Korean), after which we adjourned to Baskin Robbins right next door (we were in Jongno), where I chowed down on some chocolate mousse ice cream while talking with Tom about the world of self-publishing (Tom's working on a book about the history of Korean baseball, but he knows next to nothing about self-publishing).
I came home, got myself a huge bottle of Coke, and am chugging that down right now as I type this. Starting tomorrow, and for the next two months, I'll be on my Dr. Taylor austerity program—no more than 800 calories per day. With about 300 of those calories from diet shakes, that gives me 500 calories a day to play with. For the moment, that's a single Paris Baguette salad and two chicken breasts. This is more low-carb than keto (which is about high fat), and it's not particularly inspiring, but I'll be researching 500-calorie meals (there's apparently something called a 500-calorie diet, which frankly sounds scary), and we'll see how creative I can get. The old Twitter forced writers to get creative within a 140- or 160-character limit, so my new austerity is like Twitter, but with food. Dr. Taylor's suggestion is to stick to diet shakes and nutritious vegetables like leafy greens and cruciferous plants like broccoli and cauliflower. Also: multivitamins to cover the rest.
Essentially, this diet will force me into intermittent fasting as I'll be eating meals during a certain narrow window of time, then eating nothing the rest of the day. I've engaged in intermittent fasting before, but not very consistently or successfully. Now motivated by the very real prospect of death if I backslide, I think I'm going to be much more consistent. I'm trusting Dr. Taylor to be right that radical caloric restriction on his "Newcastle Diet" can lead to a reversal of diabetes, but we'll see in two months how things are going. In the meantime, my exercise calendar will have me ratcheting up my efforts at walking, stair climbing, core development, pushups, and pullups. All of that together ought to bring blood pressure down, along with blood sugar and other indicators of health.
So how has cheat day felt? Am I racked with guilt? Do I feel mentally more sluggish as the toxins of today's rampage ooze through my veins? Frankly, no. I know very well that today was a day of sin, but it will not be repeated for two months, and in fact, when I'm done with the two months, I doubt the next cheat day will be as much of an orgy of destruction as today was. I enjoyed myself today, but it wasn't a day of total bliss; if anything, it felt like a normal day, but one I won't be repeating anytime soon. However, as I look toward tomorrow and beyond, I do sort of dread the next two months. They're months I'm going to have to get through, months I'm going to have to endure. But I think I can do it. As I said a while back, the craving for junk doesn't really seem to be there anymore. Today was nice, and I don't regret it, but I'm not dying to do this again. I may already have gotten used to living in a quasi-keto or "dirty keto" manner. Call it low-carb. I get tired of saying "keto."
Anyway, onward!
UPDATE: 500-calorie low-carb, high fat salad.
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