Keto: Week four

The toughest week so far. Cravings, low mood, and a high carb day.

I'm writing this a day late, at the start of week 5.

The stats

After four weeks on keto:

Stat	Starting	This week
Fasting blood sugars	6.8 mmol/L	4.8 mmol/L
Weight	246lb	235lb
Waist	49"	46"

Readings taken on 25 July 2024.

Thoughts and feelings

Honestly, this week has been rough. I've been craving carbs for the first time. I suspect this is due to where I'm at in my menstrual cycyle (the luteal phase can lead to increased hunger and cravings). In the end on Thursday (yesterday) I ate a bunch of carbs.

It's hard to unpick how much of my low mood was the carb craving vs gradually ramping up stress about unrelated life stuff (new job mainly) vs how much was just the luteal phase of my cycle (I do usually feel worse then).

The silver lining: despite having a high carb day, I didn't massively exceed my calorie limits. And I've found it easy to return to keto eating today. In the past, any diet failure was pretty much the end of the diet. This feels different. Of course today I am using up glycogen stores again, so we'll see how I feel once I'm back into ketosis.