OK, 3-4 weeks have passed now, since eating normally. What has happened?
BMI has gone up to 22.5 - weight seems to have stabilised with a 1 kg increase. I keep a close eye on this.
My waist is still hanging in there with only a 1 cm increase - the waist height ratio still the same at .45. I would like to maintain this, but I don't know if this is possible. We shall see!
My tummy has had the biggest change, which makes sense, as my hip/belly size had been affected the most by the low-food regime. It has increased by 2 cm.
Muscles very defined on my legs and arms, due to heavy lifting and the being leaner thing. (I once lived with a body builder and did a bit of body building in my youth, so I do get the fact that less body fat brings out the muscle definition rather nicely.)
During Xmas party festivities, I am lean enough still that women are asking me for weight loss tips. I understand that the desire to be slim is a big thing for many women - I don't bother telling them for me it's about health, not an aesthetic thing - falling on deaf ears and all that. I talk about low carbing, and mention that I need to be so low-carb and higher healthy fat I am a keto eater.
My walking is completely back to normal, so I feel much happier about being back out pounding on the pavement and up and down dale. I am still doing heavy lifting every day. I did plan to do scheduled two day a week low-food intake - but I have needed the energy from normal food intake in order to prepare for the family Summer Solstice/Xmas get together which I am hosting. Instead I have kept up with the window-of-eating thing, and don't eat in the morning. Close to the solstice weather and lots of chores and things to do means later dinners al fresco the way often happens, but in 5-6 months time I will be able to keep it eating within 8 hours without problem. Post Xmas day I will low-cal/low-food a couple of days a week, as planned. I should be able to slip them in without family noticing, I hope. I was wondering if doing the VLCD so close to Xmas would affect things, and yes, it does. I meant to begin one month earlier, but family considerations interfered. One day in the future, I remind my adult children - they will be hosting Xmas and me and Herr Svea just need to pack a wee bag and the xmas presents and go to their houses for a feast they have prepared in a house they have tidied and cleaned, prepared yard etc etc. I look forward to those days! And then I can do low-food intake regimes - oh just whenever! But that time is not now, and doesn't seem to be on the horizon for some years.
Oh yes. I am now calling a VLCD 'a low-food-intake regime' rather than focus on the word calories. I am soooooo not a calorie oriented person normally.
I also look at the counting calories merely as a method or technique to ensure you eat little enough food for the twin cycle reversal back to normal/insulin reduction/fat cell overhauling to do its thing. A different way of looking at it, talking about it, but it works for me.
And for me, when/if my HBA1c creeps up - I see doing a low-food-intake regime as a definite ongoing treatment option. It's so hard and drastic (to give over two months of your life to having low energy and an otherwise unhealthy focus on eating unnaturally small amounts) - that it is something I would only consider every three or four years. But yes, sadly for me, with my level of carbohydrate intolerance, I do believe that will be necessary to stay out of being diabetes-proper level of BG dysregulation. My ultimate goal here is to keep off kidney damage and breakdown - ie the kidney dialysis 'thing'. (Which is the biggie with SIRDs, apparently, according to our friends at Lund University who studied this different kinds of diabetes thing.) And of course - my cardio vascular health ticking along by being fit and active, and muscles doing their thing and working well. This is the plan in any case.