30-Day Cleanse - Day 2

Only the second day, and three pounds lost and a significant development in my fitness recovery!

This morning, the scale moved for the first time in... months. I pretty much had given up every morning on ever seeing that small line move down, so you can imagine my surprise when my 170 lbs dropped to 167. Surely just water weight, but still makes me feel good. Also, can you lose water weight if you've already lost water weight? I lost a good 10 pounds right away when I started my ketogenic diet. It was awesome. Then I lost 10 more. Then I lost 3 pant sizes. I've been stalled for the last three months.

In fact, let's jot down some personal background information: I started a new job in December, right when my weight loss and inches were REALLY on a roll. This was problematic because my old job in retail required walking - a LOT of walking. A lot of physical activity, heavy lifting etc. (Oh how I don't miss logistics.) I estimate that I was probably, on a low side, walking five miles a day, five times a week. Which brings me to now, at my desk job where I just... sit. I love it, but now I understand why fitness and going to
the gym and finding ways to be active are so important for so many people. Keto is amazing, but not magic, after all.

First, I needed to cut down on my total energy intake since my energy output was dramatically less.  So... I gained weight as I kept trying to find my caloric sweet-spot - that area that still provides nutrition and satiety while still using more energy that you intake. I finally found it, and it was not good. I stopped gaining weight when I ate around 800-900 calories a day. Yeah. That little. I wasn't particularly hungry or anything, which is good because that means by body was getting what it needed to function, but I honestly think I missed my nutrition in there. I track my meals on MyFitnessPal, and so many of the vitamin macros were left empty and unfulfilled. I think while my body was calorically satisfied, it was nutrient deficient.

I figured that since I didn't want to eat that little, I would try to get more nutritious and wholesome food in my body and find a different avenue to expend more energy and replace my built-in retail workout that I formerly used. So I started working out, or at least trying to. However, I found that I couldn't work out much because my body's recovery was so slow. Last weekend, I took a five minute barely run to the local park and my leg and thigh muscles hurt for four days. How can I continue to work out when my muscles are already repairing themselves and it hurts to walk?

So... back to nutrition again. I took a pretty spontaneous approach and called my friend who introduced me to this program. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. Can't hurt to try. (Literally. The company offers a 30 day money back guarantee, even for open and used products.) If it doesn't work for me, I have no qualms returning the products. The money instead can go to my new "out of $50,000 of debt in two years plan."

The point of the story is that I worked out last night, and stopped early after about 15 minutes, fully expecting to be hurting for days and trying to minimize the pain (remember last weekend I took a five minute run and it hurt for days). I work up this morning pain-free. Pain-free! Muscles not hurting, no cramps, nothing! I figured that it might gradually start hurting later... nope. The most I've felt is a gentle tug when I stretched down that reminded me of my intense thigh-squatting workout from last night.

So some pretty positive results just in Day 2. Let's see how the rest of this goes.