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Well, here we are two weeks into the new year and I haven't posted on my blog. Sorry about that! We've been traveling all over the place now that the entire family is fully vaccinated. It's been wonderful, especially for the kids, to see relatives and friends again. Like so many people, I had some trouble maintaining my waistline during the lockdown. As you might remember, I lost 60 pounds in 2019 through intermittent and extended fasting and the keto diet. I was working with a doctor on my fasting, but sadly the combination of the pandemic and the presidential election seemed to drive him crazy. He was assigning more and more extreme fasts and I started losing hair and re-gaining weight. He's now doing week-long dry fasts and stuff so I can no longer recommend him. Instead I returned to my old stand-by, the original Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution book from 1972. This is the book that taught me how to feed my son after he was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. I didn't want to cook different foods for everyone so we switched the whole family to his plan. Nowadays we would call this the Keto diet. After a couple months, my teenagers' acne cleared up completely and my youngest son, whose pediatrician was on the bring of prescribing immune-suppressing medicine for his eczema, saw the eczema and the mouth sores from which he suffered, completely clear up. It was obvious this was an optimal diet for everyone's health, not just for controlling diabetes. And my son's A1C went down to 6.5 and his sugars were totally flat, which is textbook-perfect diabetes control!

​A couple weeks before Christmas my diabetic son took a new job as a geneticist and moved out and I'm afraid we had a carbohydrate festival until after New Years. And almost immediately, my weight shot up and my kids' acne and mouth sores and eczema came roaring right back. Atkins was right when he said you should consider excess weight as a lifelong chronic disease. As soon as you stop treating it you go right back to gaining. I whole-heartedly recommend that book! It's pretty easy to find online and at thrift stores.  

A new popular form of fasting is the PMSF, or Protein Modified Sparing Fast, and I noticed the original first week of the original Atkins diet matches the macro percentages for that fast perfectly: 30% Protein, 65% Fat, and 5% Carbohydrate. Just reduce the calories to around 800 to induce fasting autophagy. PMSF is not a new invention, despite what many influencers claim. Dr. Atkins called it a "Fat Fast" and was prescribing it to his patients back in the 1960s. The diet mimics the influence of fasting without the spike in cortisol and malnutrition or muscle loss many people experience with dry or water fasts. After just four days of PMSF following Atkins' first week diet I was in deep ketosis and lost 2.5 inches off my waist! Our scale broke partway through lockdown and I never replaced it so I am using measurements to track my progress. One note: I am allergic to a large number of fruits and vegetables, including iceberg lettuce, so I did not eat the daily salads Atkins adds to his diet. It's a pity because I love iceberg lettuce! 

Atkins' reason for adding the lettuce to his diet is the lack of crunchiness in the texture of pretty much all keto foods. It is something you will come to miss pretty quickly. I remedied this for my family with my Keto Copycat Cheez-Its recipe. Cheez-Its are my favorite snack and I missed them terribly, but my recipe tastes just like the real thing! The annoying thing about making the original version is the requirement, if you want true Cheez-It crunch, of aging the cheese. My husband figured out a genius hack, however: you can "age" the cheese in a dehydrator! We just put the Gouda slices on parchment paper and dry for 9 hours at 125 degrees. These are great plain to snack on and are also a terrific replacement for crackers and flatbreads and chips to eat with pimento cheese or dip.

The dehydrator was my husband's Christmas present because he loves making jerky, but we've used it pretty much constantly to make Cheez-Its! I'm so glad he figured it out because I can make 200 individual crackers and they'll be gone in two days! Now I can just dry the cheese overnight or all day and it's ready to bake. I just wish the dehydrator didn't take up so much room in my kitchen! 

So, that's where I've been, just dieting and turning my son's bedroom into a new office and guest room. I am selling the incredible amount of stuff he left behind and doesn't want. I have all kinds of video games and consoles and other gaming stuff for sale, as well as a ton of clothes. A lot of the clothes are brand new because he outgrew them before he ever had a chance to wear them. You can link to all my shops from the Home page to purchase these. I am listing new stuff daily! I have so many new dolls to restore and customize, but it will have to wait until I finish the re-decorating. I hope your year is off to a wonderful start!