last hurrah before the real diet

New Year, new you, yes? So they say. Once vacation is over, I've decided to hop back on the Newcastle diet, but I'll do it keto this time. When I first did the diet, I followed the doc's recommendation to add a diet shake to my caloric intake. This time, if I go keto, there will be no diet shake: too much sugar to be keto. Regular keto means no more than 50 g of carbs per day; strict keto drops that to 20 g.

One change, though, is that, to compensate for the keto-ness, I'm going to increase the caloric intake to 1000 calories (800 is kind of insane). In theory, that means I could eat four Paris Baguette salads per day (and nothing else). More likely, I'll stick to two salads and either chicken breasts or salmon (or maybe both!). Eggs might enter the mix as well.

Along with being keto, the diet will be OMAD (one meal a day). And with my newfound knowledge about kidneys and blood pressure, I'll do what I can to keep my kidneys from having to filter a bunch of crap every day. This probably means cutting down on diet drinks and going back to things like sparkling water. I might do the occasional diet drink, though, because I don't trust myself to go cold turkey. Some diet drinks are better than others: Coke Zero has no sugar and no calories, but something like the Tams fruit sodas all have some carbs, so use with caution.

With all that strictness coming up, I'll be having a two day "last hurrah" of sorts. Tomorrow, I'm going in to work for a few hours, then tomorrow evening, I'm meeting my buddy Tom for dinner at an Indo-Nepali place he likes (same place as where I went for his birthday). On Tuesday, I'll be making an apple pie with the ton of apples and pears I got as a standard gift from the hagweon. I expect that to get eaten up pretty quickly at the office. Also on Tuesday, I'll be chowing down on three real burgers; the ground beef will be a combination of skirt steak and Korean brisket (which is marbled through). Ought to be fun. And that'll be that for the naughtiness until sometime in the spring.

Meanwhile, I'll start walking again on the assumption that my left heel is all better now. Walking ought to burn a few calories. There'll be stairs training, too. There's also weight training, but I don't have a definite program for that yet. We'll see what I come up with.