Eons have passed since our last informational entry which is an eternity in the blogosphere. As a high school teacher I am at last on summer vacation with some time on my hands to return to this place we have put together to encourage others to research and evaluate their lifestyles and make healthy, educated choices. I have been told that it is madness to move during a school year as a teacher. Well, Tim and I purchased a home and moved at the end of February. Life is wonderful! Or at least it should be considering we now have a place to do as we want to with gardening and hosting international friends. Two weeks prior to our move Tim was hit by a car while riding his bike through a parking lot at a bike race. The driver simply did not look before backing up in the crowded lot. Needless to say, his RIGHT hand was dislocated and broken and surgery ensued a week before our move. Eight weeks later the 3 pins came out and at ten weeks his cast came off. He's been in rehab to get his hand fully functional again and we are still mopping up all the medical bills and his bicycle replacement, etc. So, thus, the reason we have not posted sooner. On the bright side, we love our home and things are returning to normal. We are back on the road again... This month, I left the mid forties for the late forties, and I love it! My focus for this entry is about listening to your body by actively thinking about why you might feel the way you feel or why you are encountering symptoms you might be encountering. Now that Tim and I have been in nutritional ketosis for 11 months, here are some things that have transpired in my own learning about managing this state of life. In our last info blog Tim wrote about niacin. We both stopped taking it every day after we started getting phantom flushes. Phantom flushes are flushes that felt the same as a niacin flush but we had not taken any in hours. Tim used it again to detox off pain medication after surgery and it is a great supplement for various other detoxification needs. One of the biggest things that I have noticed is that my weight has become very stable. It is so stable that I now wonder if this is just where I'm going to be the rest of my life. In my life I've never had the luxury of weighing the same day after day, it has always shifted by pounds. This has completely stopped! I'm sitting at 143 ish and I am usually up or down within a pound. I reached a point in March where I was not feeling really wonderful anymore and decided to try some changes. I started adding more carbohydrates back into my diet based on feelings. I know, no emotional eating. I'm talking about physical feelings. I was having a hard time with recovery after riding. I began to notice that it took about 3-4 days for me to recover instead of feeling great the next day after my 40+ mile rides. I learned to recognize when my glycogen stores were low and this lead me to eat raisins or a slice of toast immediately after a longer ride. Now I can do those longer rides and feel ready to ride again the next day, but it seems to take a slice of toast or dried fruit to get my glycogen stores back to full. If I had a performance study done I would know where to keep my heart rate in order not to tap those stores and only burn fat. Tim can thrive on half the amount of carbs that I seem to require. Listening to your body is absolutely essential! There is a blood test I am thinking about that helps you find your optimal carb level which can range from 25 grams to 100 grams per day. I am feeling great again at about 75-80 grams per day and my weight is the same, which I know from experience, if the additional carbs were a bad idea, I'd be going up with my weight. Another reason for me to increase my carbs is that some of the things that I have done to manage other areas of my life needed to return. This last spring my allergies were very terrible, some of the worst I have experienced in my life. I decided to bring back the yogurt and local honey which control allergies for me and I've had no more problems. This means 9 grams of carbs from yogurt and 10 grams from the teaspoon of honey, but I feel great and I'm not taking allergy drugs, plus my weight is the same. I need to update my "what I eat" page. After taking a nutrition class this last semester I learned that I need more variety, so I'm working on that over this summer. Of course my diet was "bad" for my class assignment which made it easy for me to complete the assignment created for self-evaluation of your own nutrition. I also learned a great deal on sanitation and keeping the kitchen sanitized, another area to up my game in. Stay posted, we are going to be working on catching up here. In previous musings here, I wondered if having more fats in the body (not on the body) circulating through the skin was giving us sun protection because we noticed that we were suddenly getting sunburned less shortly after switching to high fats in our diets. You can see the initial results in our 3 month picture. To our surprise, there was an article published about this very thing! Here's the link to the article: http://www.foodrenegade.com/should-you-use-sunscreen/ . In my photo pictured here you will notice my funny tan lines. Well, tested out what my sun endurance is now by riding in the late morning to early afternoon for 2 to 2.5 hours without any sunscreen just to see how long it would take for me to burn. I had a slight burn at the 3 hour mark! Thus my funny tan lines. This is simply amazing because before changing our diets I would have the same pink in 20-30 minutes! My additional musing about Vitamin D is in the works for my next blood test. I have had tremendous trouble getting my Vitamin D levels in the normal range for several years. Vitamin D deficiency leads to osteoporosis which runs in my family and every case was preceded by chronic low Vitamin D. I live in a very sunny place and people all over my city, myself included, have low Vitamin D. Stay posted for those results along with my other blood numbers. Hopefully by now you understand that a lifestyle of nutritional ketosis is very individualized and its essential that each person learns to listen to their own body. The photograph above was taken of me today, 11 months of this lifestyle, I'm sure you can see the difference for yourself between me at the beginning, at 3 months, to now. I weigh the same as I did at 3 months in but I'm so much smaller. I'm stronger and faster on my bike (remember you can follow us on Strava.com, it's free). Here's wishing you a healthy and vibrant summer stay tuned in... Lynette
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AuthorsTim & Lynette Jenné are learners first and foremost. We love to ask "why?" We question the status quo. We also love to research and find answers for ourselves. As parents of four adult children, we've learned a few things along the way that may be helpful to others. We love to live & eat clean, simple lives. Archives
July 2015
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