I stopped low-carbing for a couple of days while I fought off a cold. It didn’t matter much, because my appetite dropped to around zero.

Anyway, Sandra again commented this evening that I look thinner. Thinner, even, than the thinner she thought I looked when last she looked and said I looked thinner. Or something like that. It’s possible my medication has kicked in already. I’m not quite better yet. Regardless, this morning I tipped the scales at 181, which is the lowest my weight has been in almost 2 years. I’m only down by 10 pounds from my pre-Thanksgiving high of 191, and I’m nowhere near my fighting-trim goal of 165, but hey, if Sandra thinks I look thinner, and if the line is graphing downward as it moves to the right, I won’t complain.

My energy levels have been waaay up, too. I chart my sleep patterns, and sure enough, I’m back to the point where I can get by on five or six hours of sleep for a few days, and then catch up with one night’s eight plus a nap. It’s nice.

I’ve still got a jelly-belly, though. I know there’s a hard-core six-pack hiding behind it, but the tops of those cans haven’t seen the light of day in DECADES. I doubt I’ll be able to get below 10% body-fat, which is pretty much where I’d have to be for Lake Lipid to recede far enough that my abs are visible. I mean, that’s a place reserved for people who TRAIN. I don’t train. I run on the treadmill long enough that I don’t have to feel guilty when I quit working out and sit in the hot tub instead.

And now I’m hungry. It’s probably too close to Christmas, and my mandated holiday diet break for me to try to fire up the ketone engine again, but it’s also probably a bad idea to take that as license to binge. There’s egg-nog in the fridge, but I think I’ll have a bowl of oatmeal instead.

–Howard