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I tried to make a keto-friendly angel food cake today, figuring that I could substitute the white flour and sugar with almond flour and Splenda, respectively.  The recipe called for the relatively low-carb cocoa powder and I set to getting the foam to rise.  Using just my arm, that took quite a bit of time and my forearms were screaming after a few minutes.  I worked the foam to soft peaks, a bit below what I should have and folded in the appropriate ingredients.  I popped the pan in the oven and 35 minutes later was met with a eggy, chocolatey, failed keto donut.

The result had the density of an omelet and the fluffiness of a devil’s food cake.  The bottom was a gelatinous cloud of sweet eggs and after learning that Splenda wasn’t zero carb, I learned it had eight grams of net carbs per slice, 40% of your daily allowance.

My host loved it.

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I was happy that I had access to a treadmill and about three miles into a run I had a funny taste in my mouth like I was sucking on a penny. My urine smelled like dinosaur sweat and my body odor had changed character. I had entered ketosis and had the discolored ketosis reagent test strip to prove it. The test strips were nice as a way of saying “yes, you’re doing this correctly” and I’m glad we had gotten them.

So what does ketosis feel like? These were my initial impressions:

  • The first day I tried it, I felt a distinct weakness for about an hour. This was my blood sugar passing below some level but I didn’t experience that weakness again.
  • My water consumption more than doubled as my kidneys needed a lot of help to flush out ketones.
  • My urine seemed to have a fine film to it link of like the sheen of a puddle with a drop of oil in it.
  • My weight hadn’t changed. Nor did I expect it to considering this was only day three of the diet.

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A year or so ago, I gave a friend my stash of XXXL blue oxford shirts. I visited him tonight and he was wearing one. They aged well and look good on him. I hope they never look good on me again. Midway through the conversation, I started talking about success with a ketogenic diet and he seemed interesting. We talked about food substitutions and how to get nutrients as well as some pitfalls like me learning how sugary cocktail sauce is. We talked about what it’s like to be a large person and he railed at people who are annoyed when sharing public transit with him. He made the observation that “when I sit next to someone, we’re both crowded” and I don’t think most people recognize this reciprocity. It seems neither wholly wrong nor wholly right to blame the larger party but there’s no convenient way to communicate that middle ground.

I hope he gives low carb a try and that it works. If so, the baby blue oxfords that served me so well and then him will pass on again and maybe serve someone else. I picture wrapping them up with a few typed pages on keto and they making their way across the country making large men look a little bit nicer on their way to becoming thinner people.

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When traveling, I set up a command base, here it was in a kitchen and I had the benefit of sun-drenched mornings as I scanned for work. My search pattern had expanded to include New York City and DC and I found a few new options there. I also added internships to my search and spent the day tweaking my resume and trying to look not-quite-too-good-to-be-true.

Dinner that evening had keto “mashed potatoes” which consists of mashed cauliflower and cream cheese. It wasn’t quite there but I could see how the two were related.

The evening snack was guacamole served with bits of bacon on top. I had used spinach as the base but found that strips of bacon done crispier than I prefer served as perfectly reasonable chip substitutes. Bacon instead of potato chips. This I could endure.

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A friend and I were trying a ketogenic/very low-carb diet and I quickly learned that starting a new diet that tracks uncommon macronutrients is an exercise in container twirling. Barbecue sauce is high sugar as is ketchup. Some light salad dressings are problematic in addition to whole classes of foods.

We purchased deeply of cheese, pepperoni, sour cream, cream cheese, seafood, bacon, and other meats with broccoli and spinach as our greens of choice. It was expensive, or so I thought, until I returned and realized the enormous quantity of food I had purchased. My normal purchasing pattern is “what will I need to stock my kitchen” rather than “what will I need to last me the x days until I go food shopping” which can result in overbuying and spoilage if one doesn’t eat enough.

Dinner that evening was buttered chicken thighs and dessert was a fist full of almonds. Our snack was pepperoni and cream cheese. To dieting.

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I drove 10 hours for the opportunity to pull into someone’s garage. I couldn’t be happier.

I went to a party this evening with a fusillade of fireworks. These were all store-bought but in sufficient quantity even these can impress.

[flickr album=72157631509822174 num=5 size=Thumbnail]

Photographing fireworks is an exercise in timing and framing. I have a few nice shots of starbursts but without some sort of reference, they look flat. I have a few incredibly sharp pictures of flower pots, but the sky looks like a field of blue-black ink when adjusted to be bright. The camera’s autofocus wasn’t fast enough to contend with the explosions so I pegged it to infinity and backed off a little. Photography is one of the few places where I can refer to something as “close enough to infinity” and I smile at that.

I collapsed that evening in a too hot room and slept very very well.

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Julia had a few people over her new house in the wake of The Firing of the Temps and Mike and I joined. Her new place was reasonably large and largely devoid of dead bodies despite her concerns. The house had ample space for both books and secrets. On top of this, it had a trampoline and a pool, things I both very much enjoyed at past points in my life.

The trampoline was enticing and was rimmed with rust as salt rims a margarita glass. Some of the springs were broken and it wasn’t quite level but I was bouncing happily soon enough and, by the end of the evening, almost able to do a 360 in the air. Mike also took to the trampoline but beyond him, no one else. Trampolines normally have maximum weight limits and these are functional limits. I remember using a trampoline rated at 250 lbs at a time when I was. My butt hit the ground with each bounce. This one was a 325 lb trampoline and with practice I’d be able to do somersaults.

The pool was a pond of disappointment. I had loved pools as my ponderous size wasn’t held against me in them and the amount of exertion I could put forth was infinitely variable from a deadman’s float to swimming laps. But this joy was now gone. Apparently, I no longer float. I had to tread water just to keep my head up and even when inhaling fully, my head would still go under. Walking around on the bottom was novel but now I needed floatation to simply tool about.

Sure, I had regained the trampoline, but at what cost?

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Randy and Kelly Booz invited me out to the St. Michael’s Fair in Tullytown. It was a fair with a wide assortment of fried food and my standard prayer that there were yet to be any STDs that had gone airborne. Should aerosolized syphilis someday be discovered I’m confident I have met its patient zero.

Randy and Kelly were there with their sidekicks Chris and Jess and with Caleb as special guest. The night was hot and I consumed neither rides nor food, but I did take advantage of the soft lighting that comes from omnipresent bulbs.

From 2012-07-05 St. Michael's Fair

Fairs and I have a long history of getting along. The last I attended was on Thanksgivinga few years ago and fairs were the first place I had seen rock candy, those combination umbrella hats, a biplane, and rubber band guns. This fair had no such charm. I would be elsewhere soon.

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Today was my first day of non-temporary unemployment as an adult since… ever. I had a theoretical stream of payments in the form of unemployment and a few thousand dollars in savings that have come from me saving for an abdomenoplasty but it appears that frugality would be the watchword of my near future.

It was 10am, I had woken up earlier than I often did for work. Max didn’t know I was jobless, the cat didn’t know I was jobless. Most of my friends had no functional idea that I was jobless except my sudden free schedule.

I set myself a goal that I’d apply for at least five positions per week in a successively wider geographic region. I also set myself a limit of two social engagements per week until that application quota had been met. I cancelled a few recurring subscriptions like Audible, and made a leisurely lunch.

I was unemployed and wasn’t dead. Here we go.