I didn't notice the thread had continued.
I decided not to go down the grinder route - I will at some point find a butcher bigger than my local one. I'll ask him to grind up some sirloin and a few other cuts to see if it's better than the minced steak I get from supermarkets.
The keto diet is partly for weight loss, partly for other health reasons which I won't go into on the forums. They're chronic and minor.
The diet seemed appealing because I work well with black and white. I gave up smoking last year and decided if I could do that I could do anything. Sadly I also put on some weight and towards the end of last year I was hospitalised twice due to health problems. The end result was that I was fat going into 2010, and ended it too fat for my own liking... so diet time. Ketonic diets are reported to have other benefits, for example in epilepsy.
I do feel different on it, my teeth are cleaner, I seem to have more energy, but I'm more tired - it's not clean cut which way I feel, sometimes it's a bit of both. I certainly am not as "regular" as I used to be, and the volume has far decreased.
Tomorrow is day 14, and I'm really quite fed up with it. I'm considering switching to a low GI diet to see if I can stand that better than this. It's ok when I'm at home, but at work I'm quite restricted. There's only a microwave. There is a staff restaurant, but there's carbs in everything they sell other than at breakfast.
The diet works for me in the same way that giving up smoking did. I just tell myself there's a clear line that I won't cross. I tell everybody I know, friend, family, workmates that I'm going on it, so that I'd have a lot of embarassing "Well it didn't work" to tell people if I don't stick to it.
I don't think I could stick to a diet where I "eat healthy" or have a certain number of points to spend, or undereat. The ability to eat as much as I want is a good thing on this diet, I don't think I am eating a great deal, but if I wasn't able to eat then I'd really, really want to.
The whole principle of the diet though is to eat healthier overall by moving to low GI stuff. I educated myself quite well on diets and how we process our foods etc. I'm not diabetic, but low GI seems the way to go. We certainly did not evolve with refined foods. Easy carbs are pretty much all from refined grains or refined sugar, although that does miss out potatoes.
So I'll follow the diet carefully at the keto stage as long as I can comfortably. I think that might be Wednesday this week. At that point I'll make a decision if I switch to something less restrictive, or continue on the keto. I suspect on Wednesday I will not feel like eating crisps or bread or the like. I think I'd feel like I was wasting the effort I've put in so far.
Edit : What I mean to say is that this is the drastic step to see if I can lose a big chunk of weight before I settle on a sensible diet that allows me to live properly, go out for a meal if I like, have the odd McDonalds, but overall eat properly rather than badly. So I'll go from a horribly carb rich diet, to a near zero carb diet, and finally to a sustained healthy lowish carb diet avoiding high GI foods with the occasional exception.
