almost done with Week 8

Week 8 of the Newcastle Diet wraps up on Saturday. Two more weeks to go. I have no trouble confessing that I haven't always been faithful to the 800-calorie limit that the diet sets, but I always make up for the extra calories by doing plenty of exercise, whether we're talking about distance walking, stair work, or more recently, resistance training. This week, I'll be starting resistance training and stair work on Saturdays, along with doing my long walk that day, so that ought to help me continue to lose weight.

I can't believe I've stayed on this diet as long as I have. It's been quite a slog, yet strangely, physical hunger has been less of an issue than I thought it would be. I've rarely been physically hungry this whole time. Most of my cravings are psychological, not physical, and truth be told, as much as I've joked about ruining my blood sugar on cheat days, I'm no longer sure I want to go too overboard on the days I indulge myself. And as we look to the future, to life post-Newcastle, I've been making plans.  Here are some scattered, disjointed ideas.

1. Keto desserts can't be eaten every day, even if the desserts have no added sugar and are perfectly keto. So such desserts can only be eaten once, maybe twice maximum, per week. We've talked before about the danger of the cephalic response, in which the pancreas produces insulin as a reaction to perceived sweetness, promoting the storage of fat and increasing one's insulin resistance. Also: while keto desserts may be low in carbs, they can often be very high in calories, so they still have to be eaten in moderation. Another consideration is that, if I still plan to stop eating at lunchtime, then the desserts have to be transportable to the office so I can eat them at lunch. Either that, or desserts will simply be a Sunday thing.

2. Meal prep will involve plenty of salads, but with my calorie limit going up on the days I eat, I'll be able to make some decent salads with plenty of crumbled Gorgonzola, nuts, seeds, and crumbled bacon. Salads, taken as a whole, are not too calorie-dense, which makes them a good accompaniment for what will ultimately be the star of my future meals: meat.

3. Speaking of meat, I plan to make my own sausage, and to that end, one of the things I bought was pink curing salt. By itself, curing salt is actually poisonous, but when it interacts with meat, it changes the meat and becomes harmless. (One site said that you can think of it as the difference between roast pork and a ham—uncured versus cured.) That said, I looked closely at the ingredients list for curing salt and discovered it contains the enemy: sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate (among other chemicals). Remember when I wrote about not wanting to put "that chemical shit" in my sausages? I didn't realize that the curing salt would end up being the very enemy I was talking about. So I went online and looked up substitutes for curing salt, and pink Himalayan salt can apparently serve as a sort-of substitute for curing salt. That said, curing salt is used because it kills bacteria in the meat along with changing the meat's taste, so it may have some value. In other words, it's there for a reason. I'm going to compromise, therefore, and use a 50-50 mix of curing salt and Himalayan salt in my sausages so as to minimize the presence of that chemical shit. I have a bunch of Himalayan salt thanks to John McCrarey, who gave me a pack a couple years ago.

4. Probably the first fully keto meal I'm going to make for myself will be a pizza. I will grudgingly embrace fathead dough (which uses mozzarella cheese for structure, along with almond flour, eggs, and other ingredients), but I'm hopeful the pizza will turn out well. I can finally use the pepperoni I'd bought from Coupang a few weeks back.

5. While I won't foodblog all of my keto meals, I will likely blog some of them, especially if I decide to make something ambitious over the weekend. There are keto pies that look quite good, not to mention keto breads that aren't all eggy or made with fathead dough (which, as I said before, is really only good for pizza crust because it's so heavy). Take the term "pie" loosely, because one of the dishes I plan to make is keto shepherd's pie, using mashed cauliflower instead of mashed potatoes. I've done plenty of research on keto alternatives to normal food, and there's a lot out there that's promising, so expect pictures.

6. I've compiled a long list of places to visit on certain cheat days. Some readers wrote in with suggestions, but that list is only three or four items long, so to troll for more ideas, I looked to YouTube. Mike Chen's Korea-related videos have provided some fodder, and there are several Korean vloggers who simply visit a place, point their cameras at the food as it's being made and served, and help advertise the restaurants that way. Thanks to those videos, I now have a list that's over 50 items long, with lots of Korean buffets, street stalls, and night markets in the mix. Some of the restos are located outside of Seoul, as far away as Incheon to the west and Busan to the southeast. I won't visit these places on every cheat day; on certain cheat days, I'll cook myself a "normal" meal and eat that, possibly with guests, if anyone is willing to visit me.

It's getting late, and that's about all I can think of at the moment. I'm very happy that this diet is winding down, although I'm a bit apprehensive about what it'll be like to switch to full-on intermittent fasting and 24-hour fasting. Skipping whole days will encourage autophagy (where the body raids itself for energy), but there might be a psychological toll. Or I might just get used to the routine, as many before me have done. We'll soon know.

All this reminds me: I need to go buy a baguette holder. I've never baked a baguette of any sort before, keto or normal, but I saw a keto-baguette recipe that makes me want to try. I'll definitely be documenting that effort.