I am officially off the low-carb diet, due to the attack of gout and other concerns. It did what it was supposed to do, though… I lost 9 pounds on it in 3 weeks. That rate is probably too aggressive, though.

The directions from my doctor(*) are to follow a low-calorie, low-fat diet. Which sort of leaves the door open to any number of diets. The deciding factor for me is that I want something that’s easy to figure out. That is, I want to be able to eat a sensible breakfast and lunch, and then instantly (or at least quickly) figure out what would be best for dinner in order to balance things out.

So, here are some options I’m thinking about (though if there’s something I’m not considering, please let me know!)

1. Dietary exchanges; 2. WW online; 3. Half-assed diet; and footnote (ha!) regarding gout

OK, there is now no doubt in my mind that what’s happening to my toe is gout. Last night, the pain was bad enough to wake me up, so I took more advil and went back to sleep. Today I took some alleve, which really did work for about 12 hours, and is now starting to wear off so I took another.

I’m going in to the doctor tomorrow morning at 9:45 (yes, saturday) so we’ll see what he has to say. He will probably say to keep taking the alleve and change my diet. Apparently, burning fat on the low-carb diet also contributes to uric acid in the blood, so that compounds the effect of eating more meats. I have been making sure to drink lots of water.

Damn it, I don’t want my body to fail me. That’s enough. At least wait until I’m 40 to start betraying me.

Also: ow.

Update, Saturday: Doctor says he agrees, it is probably gout. I have a script for Colchicine and another for Incomethacin (an NSAID like advil or alleve). Doctor also said it’s OK to stop taking Thiazide and to double up on the Lotensin to see if my BP comes back down. I also went for a blood test to confirm the uric acid level, and if uric acid is not high, we may have to look at other causes.

Slightly good news, the pain is a lot better today, back to Thursday level. I think Friday was the worst of it. I hope.

Good news… I have lost about 8 or 9 pounds, after being on the low-carb diet for a little over 3 weeks.

Bad news… I developed some excruciating pain in my big toe. I can’t think what I might have done to bruise or strain it. What does a painful toe have to do with my diet? Hopefully nothing, but it could be gout. According to wikipedia: Gout is a form of arthritis caused by the accumulation of uric acid crystals in joints. It is an immensely painful disease, which in most cases affects only one joint, most commonly the big toe.

I really hope I don’t have that I hope it’s just a sprained toe… but even if I do, changing to a more normal diet would probably correct it. i.e. it’s a blood chemistry thing, not an infection or cancer-type thing.

I don’t think I will stay on the low-carb plan much longer. I’m probably going to start looking into weight watchers. However, in other good news, I still don’t feel I have taxed my willpower much. I just need to decide what an appropriate diet is, for my goals, and I think executing it should be totally within my power.

The times that have been difficult in sticking to the diet have been going out to lunch with friends, or going to party-like functions where food is served. I think in those situations it would be a good idea to find one thing that I can eat, eat a small amount, and then eat something more appropriate when I get done.

Tonight we had esmerel, merlinofchaos, and da_zhuang around for dinner. Everything turned out well, I think. And, I think just about everything was low-carb, which was good for my diet. I probably had more food than I planned to, but I think I’ve done reasonably well the last week or so, so I’m not going to feel guilty.

Salad with arugulla, butter lettuce, radicchio, cucumbers, tomato, avocado, green onion.
Two salad dressings (soy-mayo and honey mustard) made with the homemade mayo. Merlin made the honey mustard… turned out good
Artichokes, a little tiny bit overdone but I don’t think anyone noticed.
Dipping sauce, about 3 parts mayo to 1 part vietnamese “chili garlic sauce” – this was a hit I think.
Meat, which I thought was filet mignon, but was probably some other loin cut. Salt, garlic, pepper. Broiled 5 min each side. (Supermarkets don’t seem to sell filet much anymore.)
Broccoli, steamed, which was probably overkill but I wanted something else in case the ‘chokes didn’t work.

We have cool friends. (p.s. dear klae: Love ya! Mean it!)

I believe I have lost roughly 3 pounds over the last 2 weeks. According to the medical-style scale downstairs, I currently weigh 255 with shoes on, 252 with shoes off. The same scale put me at 258 two weeks ago, and still at 258 one week ago. So, three pounds lighter or so.

On advice from a friend, I decided to “make the food boring and get it over with”. So, for the next couple weeks I will be on the “lunchmeat and salad” diet.

If you had asked me a month ago, I would have said that such a diet would drive me crazy. Strangely, I am not going crazy with craving stuff I can’t have. I don’t think I have really strained my willpower yet. It’s more of a logistical problem: most, if not all, of the foods I normally eat are now verboten, so I’m left with the puzzle of “what the hell do I eat?”
More diet stuff

I wrote down my foods but I won’t copy them all here. The short version is that I have been sticking to the low-carb diet (as described in Atkins “Induction phase”). It’s been a lot easier than I thought. I haven’t really been missing my bread, pasta or sugar. The real difficulty for me is finding interesting things to eat, but that is an intellectual and logistical problem for me, and not one that causes me much distress.

I haven’t lost any weight. If anything I added a pound, but it’s hard to tell, my weight fluctuates pretty widely. I have been between 252 and 257 all week.

I didn’t do much of any exercise since starting this diet 8 days ago, but I did the exercise bike yesterday and went up 25 flights of stairs today. Hopefully week 2 will show some progress, but I’m not overly concerned. I’m doing this more to get in tune with my body and adjust to a lower, but still moderate/normal carb intake, and losing weight this month is secondary.

Food entry