So I decided to just go for it… I figured what have I got to lose by trying? I'm really glad that I've only been working six hours a day because the scheduling is somewhat daunting. 50 grams of protein is a LOT of meat. I mentioned the reset to a couple of friends and they were stunned at the thought of eating that much protein for breakfast. One commented that's the RDA for the entire day! 🙂  My plan worked out pretty good. For dinner – when I need to work the next day – I always cook an extra portion so that I have leftovers for lunch. So I just cooked enough to have leftovers for breakfast and lunch. But I staggered the meals because the thought of eating one kind of meat three meals in a row was not appealing. On Sunday night I made steak, Monday night chicken thighs, Tuesday, hamburgers, Wednesday steak again. So my protein for my meals looked like this. I haven't figured out the carbohydrate part yet, because I guess I secretly would like to lose at least 30 more pounds… Dr. Kruse says limit your carbs to 25 grams or less daily, but I don't know if this is net carbs, or straight carbs. And I have never counted carbs, so I don't have any inkling how much the various veggies are. I know beets, carrots, peas and winter squash are high so I know to avoid those unless I'm measuring… so I have been eating lettuce, broccoli and zucchini squash in sparing amounts because I haven't had time to figure out how much I can have in one day. Basically it's all meat and fat for breakfast, lunch has been meat, fats and veggies, and supper has been meat, veggies/ferments and fats.

Sunday night – steak

Monday breakfast: leftover roast chicken; lunch: don't recall; dinner: grilled chicken thighs

Tuesday breakfast:  leftover steak; lunch: leftover chicken thighs; dinner: grilled burgers

Wednesday breakfast: leftover chicken thighs; lunch: leftover grilled burgers; dinner: steak

Thursday breakfast: leftover grilled burger; lunch: leftover steak; dinner: roasted chicken

I slept really wonderfully last weekend, getting to sleep by 10pm each night and staying in bed until 8:00 the next morning. Tuesday at work was pretty stressful – to the point I had to “stress dose”. Three incidents happened, a slight confrontation with my boss (always stressful no matter how small, a confrontation is a confrontation), a personal situation and then my doctor's office called about 2pm and asked if I would be available to talk to the other doctor in the office between 4pm and 4:30pm. Yes, I told them I would be available, then I stressed out waiting for the call. I will tell you about that another time. Remind me if it seems I've forgotten! 🙂

So I had four days of great sleep, and I started the Leptin Reset on Monday and I had this huge burst of energy on Monday early evening and I haven't felt an energy burst like this in months! I swept the kitchen floor, washed three loads of dishes, wiped the counters and the stove, dried and put away all the dishes, vacuumed the living room floor – which was a disaster since no one else here knows how to run the vacuum… at any rate, I was pretty excited to feel that much ambition and energy and it really gave me a boost in wanting to continue on and try the reset.

But then Tuesday was stressful at work and I got to sleep just after 10pm, but woke around 2am, hungry. I believe this to be a cortisol issue. I finally got up at 2:45 and had half a grilled burger with some butter and a glass of water with salt and apple cider vinegar. I was able to get back to sleep for a few more hours but had much difficulty getting out of bed to get ready for work. That caused Wednesday to be stressful, just because I was so tired. Even though my boss said to make my own hours, there's a limit to how flexible I can be and arrived at work at 9am (that's late enough!). And then I ended up staying at work until 5pm! But the last hour was spent talking with a coworker, catching up. I got home just after six, which left me only an hour to cook and eat!

I got to sleep around 10:30 on Wednesday night, and awoke at 3:15 and could not sleep, woke up hungry. I'm not supposed to “snack” so I just laid there, not feeling very hungry anyway… and really not too excited about the fact that breakfast was a huge grilled burger. I'm supposed to eat within 30 minutes of rising and so I finally decided to throw in the towel and get the day started at 4:45. I went right into the kitchen, heated up the burger and sat down to eat it and took my vitamins, and ended up feeling nauseated. I really didn't feel like eating, partly because I felt so exhausted, but I'm supposed to… so I did. Thankfully the nausea passed fairly quickly. I got to work at 7am, and I left at 3pm.

I'm pretty sure I got just my 24 hours, maybe 25. I'll have to figure it out later.

After work on Thursday I went to Costco because I had to buy stamps for work, and also to upgrade my phone. Actually my son will get the upgrade phone, and I'll take his “old” one. His is just a few weeks “old” so I will be pretty happy with it, I'm sure.

While at Costco, I had to deal with some feelings coming up about this new eating plan. Costco's bakery was making cinnamon [affiliate link] something or others… the smell was intoxicating. Now usually I'll just tell myself that I can go right home and make almond flour [affiliate link] cookies with cinnamon, or cupcakes with cinnamon, or heck I can probably find a coconut flour [affiliate link] or almond flour cinnamon roll. But now that I'm keen on doing this leptin reset, I can't assure myself with that. Well, I suppose I could go off the leptin reset, but it's only a short period of time that I am asking myself to abstain and then I can go back to full GAPS. My plan is to try this leptin reset for the 6-8 weeks that Dr. Kruse suggests. I will reassess at that time and see how it's going. If I'm making improvements, maybe I'll continue. At any rate, 2 months is NOTHING if I can accomplish this feat and reset my body to acting normal about food again! Dr. Kruse says when you are leptin resistant calories count, when you are leptin sensitive they don't. My body used to be “normal” about food before I had my children, so it would be awesome to get it normal about food again and I think it's worth the commitment.

So yeah, having some feelings to deal with… feeling sorry for myself that I can't have GAPS legal “goodies”. I went through that in the first months of GAPS, not being able to have SAD goodies, so it's kind of icky feeling this again. But I keep telling myself, maybe this will just be two months. And of course I feel sad about the holidays! Why am I doing this to myself again! I started GAPS December 6th two years ago. But this is going to be even rougher. At our staff Christmas party, if I'm still doing this leptin reset, I won't even be able to bring GAPS legal baked goodies, and I won't be able to eat fruit. Those are my “fun” treats that I get to have, but not this year, not if I follow through. Furthermore, since I can only eat within certain time frames… I guess I will have to find out what time the food eating will commence and then get up and eat breakfast four hours earlier… so much planning. At least they are all used to my weirdness by now. LOL.

Aside from the food feelings… I have noticed that the 50 grams of protein for breakfast effectively kills any cravings whatsoever, so that is pretty great. On just plain full GAPS I didn't have what I would call cravings, but more like thoughts of having things I know I should probably avoid. For example, it seems if I eat fruit for several days in a row I begin to start feeling like I'm sinking into depression.

I've been able to go the four to five hours recommended between meals (I've actually been okay to do this for some time after starting on GAPS), and have also managed to eat dinner by 7pm each night. Dr. Kruse says you set yourself back some horrid amount of days, like 14 to 16 days, if you mess up. So wow. That's a lot of time wasted. On Thursday since I'd eaten breakfast by 5:15, lunch could have been eaten at 10:15, but I knew I wanted to go to Costco afterwards, and dinner would have been 3:15, which would have been right when I was at Costco, so I opted to wait to eat until 12:15 and I was able to make it without eating for seven hours! And then I was late getting home and luckily my husband put two chickens in the oven to roast so dinner was pretty much ready to eat when I got home. I warmed up some leftover zucchini squash and I also had five slices of salami (cheat because it has nitrates) and two pieces of prosciutto (which I got for deep discount prices at a food clearance mart), and a pickle (also not really GAPS legal since it was commercially prepared). But I wanted something special with dinner, a couple of treats, hence the pickle and deli meats.

Oh, and about Costco again and food feelings… three years ago a trip to Costco meant one of their huge gooey pieces of pizza, or the Berry Berry Yogurt Sundae, or something else from the fast food section. Lately when I go it's after work, I'm hungry and so I rationalize that the salami is an okay treat. But I couldn't have that today, because I'm not supposed to snack! So that was a bit disappointing, but I lived through to tell the story! 🙂

The whole not snacking deal is not hard with the protein from breakfast, but there's the habitual snacking that I find myself doing that has been a bit of a challenge to curb.

Okay, I think I had better cut this short. Thank you so much for sticking around to the end. Hugs to you all. Starlene