Diet Day 20
Won't know today of any weight loss. It's the weekend and they're home, the scale is in their bathroom.  Next trip to Walmart I"m definitely getting one for my bathroom.  What I do notice is that my love handles are shrinking at an incredible rate.  Those ever growing bulges have reversed and are starting to disappear.  I am in now wise saying I am suddenly skinny, but progress, especially visible progress, is extremely motivating.

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Okay long interval lol.  I ended up driving over to Longview to switch trucks.  I wasn't even going to think about dealing with that at 4:00 am. First and foremost, I have no idea if this truck even works. They were saying the battery switch had been turned off. Second, it would take time to get my stuff out of my truck and transfer it over to the temp truck. Third, inspecting the "new" truck and seeing if it's at least relatively clean, which it kind of was.  Bunch of stuff on the floor but nothing compressed air wouldn't blow out the doors. 

However, the truck wouldn't move when I put it into gear.  I tried releasing the brakes several times before it finally let go.  It had been sitting a while, the dude that switched over to our division hadn't even driven a single load of ethylene out of the plant.  I guess a "part time" person counting the days until he can retire, ie: hit whatever SS age he's shooting for.  Very much not a fan of getting moved around from one truck to another.   A lot of drivers don't like it, its called slip seating when you aren't in an assigned truck and can end up in a different truck every time you show up to work.


Whatever the case, I got that ordeal over with and talked with a much longer term driver in the company.  We got onto talk of the keto diet - he needs it drastically.  Besides the fact that he's probably around 350 to 400 pounds, he also has diabetes, which keto works miracles on.  At least from numerous articles I have read.  I would seriously try a diet like this if I had diabetes for the heck of it, just to see if it would do anything.  The only harm is going through the initial phases of hell you have to go through to get your body adapted.  That is self inflicted harm lol.  He asked what website, I just told him to google keto diet.  You'll find info all over the web.  Research it yourself, everything I"ve read says it can even reverse diabetes.

I basically tried to talk him into at least trying the diet.  He's got nothing to lose and everything to gain. He's obese, heading towards an early grave.  I didn't say that, we just all know obesity leads to all kinds of health problems and pretty much kills people younger than the life they could have lived.  I'm surprised he passes the med exam in that condition.  He's diabetic that a detriment in itself.  He was interested.  He's 65 years old, doesn't drink at least, helpful but certainly doesn't eliminate the risks of being obese. 

Well anyway, I left there and headed home.  Got to a grocery store and decided to buy a roast for the road tomorrow.  I'm doing that in the crock pot.

I've got tomatoes, avocados, mushrooms in the crockpot with the roast and a bag of salad mix, including very low carb italian seasoning.  I've still got some bread left from the last batch, that is a pretty good filler actually, not the greatest bread but it's edible.  Take some cheese bars and almonds.  That pretty much covers dinners and snacks, I need to figure something out for a quick breakfast and a small lunch. Hmm just found some great ideas on a keto page, but I'd have to go back to the store.  I rushed in and out of the grocery store earlier to get that roast and get it cooking so I could have it ready to go for the morning.  Bacon, cheese blocks, turkey roll up - in either cream cheese or sour cream,  almonds, I think I could open up a roll of ground chuck and make some hamburgers replete with spices - and nothing else.  Lol. 

Nothing else new here. Leaves dropping like crazy off of trees, no sense in even trying to clean up that mess until the trees are mostly barren. Otherwise, you're raking up an entire yard ... only to rake it up again...and again....and screw that. Oh yes, I have my breakfast lunch and dinners planned, but yes, a trip back to the store is unfortunately necessary. I thought one trip out would be enough. 

Day 19 diet.  I'm amazed I've even made it this far.
Found some Atkin diet shakes at the grocery store yesterday, the only one low enough in carbs was the vanilla version at 4% carbs so I got those.  Drank one earlier and it was quite filling actually. Full of fat too, lots of protein, pretty much what you want.

But before that, I weighed myself.  Down to 211 pounds. That's a 16 pound drop since I started this thing 19 days ago. That is amazing results if I do say so myself.  Far better than anything I expected.  whether that kind of drop will continue remains to be seen.  So far I have yet to cheat on this diet.

This isn't just about wanting to look better or even feel better or vanity purposes.  My career requires a body mass below some certain point, I'll have to look it up.  But the fatter you get, the closer you get to that line and the closer you get to being disqualified.  And some companies including mine will require you to take a sleep test for sleep apnea after your neck line goes over whatever amount of inches.

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Like 14 hours later lol.  My keto breathalyzer came in, I figured to do that than these test strips.  You just blow into the thing and it tells you where you're at. I'm in moderate range, which their card says is ideal for fat burning.  They don't seem to think you want it in the extreme range.  I dunno, but the diet is working, I can say that.  Whether it's because of ketosis or because of low caloric intake or likely a combination of the two, I had to move my belt another rung down to hold my pants up on me.

My pants are literally just falling off me with no resistance from my body at all now.  The thing that is incredible, at least to me, about that is the fact that they were so tight before I started this diet, I was facing having to go out and buy the next size up.  I've only been in 35's for maybe 6 months, if that tells you how fast I was gaining weight and fat.  I might even try getting back into my 34's, at least see where I'm at.  Well heck, out of curiosity sake I'm going to try right now.

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle.  I actually fit into these things.  Just at the edge of it, but not uncomfortable or too tight.  I couldn't even get these things on before I started this diet.  Just amazing how fast this is working.  I do wonder if there are plateaus tho. Most diets you run into a plateau and you have to figure out something else to do.  I thought I had run into one but the next day the scaled showed dramatic change that was quite surprising. 

Anyway, just got off the phone with mom.  She wanted to know what I wanted to eat when down there.   I reiterated to her again that I wasn't going to be following this diet down there.  I just don't see it possible with going around visiting people and Thanksgiving dinner and all that.  I can definitely watch my caloric intake of whatever I'm eating tho. She suggested that I would probably be surprised at how I might take the diet into consideration when eating even if not following it for 5 days. We just picked the wrong time of year to start this diet. If we had started 6 months ago we'd probably be at our ideal weight and stopping for a few days wouldn't be an issue.

I guess the part I don't like about going back is that my middle brother may or may not be there.  I had the discussion with mom.  She tried to tell me "it will all work out".  Mother, you know how he is, he's started shit with me at previous holiday events, what makes you think he won't start now? Especially after that melt down the last time I talked to him?  Well Thanksgiving is going to be held at mom's house, she said she'd stop it if he starts it.  I'll be ready to call the police, frankly.  He got so heated up the last time that I figured if I had been present with him he would have taken some pot shots at me.  I'm not going to get into a fistfight with my brother, that's juvenile garbage. I'd defend myself, but I certainly wouldn't even think about taking the first blow or even wanting to get into such an altercation.  I'd just as soon not go if he's going to be there, but mom needs my help to get the dinner ready. She is getting up there in age and freely admits that she doesn't have the energy she used to.  She's still in good shape tho.  I'll help her cook the turkey and get set up for everything and take everything down again.

But, I'm probably going to go have some beers with an old friend at his house in Tempe.  I haven't had a beer in a month now,  I'm not really sure I should even be doing that lol.  Probably go straight to my head and make me drunk in 2 beers haha.  Mom wants me to drive her truck instead of taking Uber, but in the case of my friend's house, I'll be taking Uber.  Just in case that happens.  No need to get into trouble driving.  I don't plan or even want to get drunk, but it doesn't take much to get to the limit. You see, I don't know if they count commercial driver's license against you even if you're driving your personal vehicle or not?  In a Commercial vehicle, the limit is .04%. In AZ for regular drivers it's double that.  I think you could possibly get to .04% in less than 2 beers. I dunno, but I'm not taking the risk. I've looked to try and find that info and have never found a definitive answer.

Anyway, that will be my visit for the year.  Christmas will either be spent here or on the road. Not sure which.  I kind of agreed to Christmas driving if I could have Thanksgiving off.  It wouldn't surprise me to be out on the road on Christmas Day or Eve for that matter.  I don't want to but I don't want to do a Christmas with family.  That almost never ends well and it's just not worth it.  Thanksgiving is a major holiday but not like Christmas, people get together on the day of Thanksgiving but there isn't usually any family visiting or such for it. 

Well that's it. I made a Keto pizza yesterday which tasted like crap, I took a few bites of it and threw the thing into the trash can. That was the spaghetti squash crust.  No crust to it, it was water and gross.  Just yuck. Today, I tried this FatHead pizza crust recipe that is taking the internet by storm, or so every site says anyway.  I tried making the crust with both almond and coconut flour, almond flour won out hands down. 

Well this day is over for me. 

Apparently my days of bulging out more and more are over. At least as long as I stay on this diet.  I kinda felt it was cheating to weigh myself in the morning - sleeping all night long,  no food or beverage intake - beverages definitely being the factor that increase your weight during the day.

But, this morning, I weighed myself and it was down another 4 pounds from the lowest I had seen it.  I then looked up "best time to weigh yourself" and every single thing I read said the most accurate will actually BE in the morning, after you empty your bladder and before you eat and drink anything. That was very concerting. It also said to be consistent and weigh yourself at the same time every day, if you are going to weigh yourself.

Further info said that people that weigh themselves frequently while dieting are more likely to lose the weight and keep on track than those that don't.  Well, I have to weigh myself out of the curiosity factor of eating lots of fat, almost zero carbs and lots of protein as well.  Some veggies - can't forget the veggies. 

In fact, today I'm going to use the other spaghetti squash that we have sitting there and going to waste and try making a pizza crust out of it.

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It literally took me 3 minutes to vote.  I went in, showed my ID, they gave me the ballot, it had a place to mark straight line voting,  I filled in Republican, that was it.  All done, vote is in, I did my civic duty. I mean it was so easy that seeing these people complaining how hard it is to vote is -- dumb.  They don't vote because they are too lazy or whatever other reasons, I don't give such people any ear if they are complaining about the politics of the land but couldn't be bothered to vote to make that change they want.  Or at least voice their opinion through the ballot. 

Went to Kroger's, got the rest of the stuff to make this weird pizza, lol. I'll try any of these recipes once. If they're good, it's a repeat.  If not, well, just keep trying.  I also got the stuff to make the Keto version of beef stroganoff tonight for dinner. Nope, no noodles, sorry Charley.  But, my favorite part of Stroganoff is the creamy beef mixture, I'm good with that, make extra cause everyone is blooming hungry by the time dinner gets around. 

Now to motivate myself to go out to the kitchen and start the pizza stuff.  I'll get to it.  It's not even noon yet, tho I haven't eaten anything today and I'm starving.  I haven't eaten cause' I just haven't gotten around to it not because I don't want to eat lol.   I think I'll make a cheese omellette to tide me over.  Oh yes, a recipe with some cream cheese, some herbs and a little cheese.  Sounds great. 

It's very motivating to see a scale showing me at a weight that I haven't been at in over a year and a half.  Utterly amazing actually.  My gut is slowly shrinking and my size 35 waist jeans are now starting to get loose - and here I was 3 weeks ago discussing having to go up to size 36.  I'd like to get back down to 32, but 33 would work.

But, since i haven't eaten and I"m still sick, I have exhausted my energy banks and will have to take a nap. 

Okay, not to overload this blog with posts, but this took me by surprise.
James - this dude loves his after work beers. Not judging him at all, I don't really care what anyone does with their body, I mean I do  but I can't control people's habits and everyone needs to find their own way.  So today, when he came home with protein powder for those shakes, I started wondering what he is up to. Most people don't do that stuff unless they are working out - and I mean weightlifting type of working out. 

Sure enough, he said he's getting out his weights and is going to start working out again.  People get on these kicks, I get it, he's been doing the keto diet - but - he's also been drinking his beers. He still lost a bunch of weight already, mostly because it's low calorie diet and he has a very physical job. 

But to hear him say today he has quit drinking altogether? Okay, that was shocking lol. I'ts one thing to start drinking protein shakes, it takes it to an entirely different level to stop drinking and start working out.  This 3 way thing we have going here is exactly what is needed. Everyone motivating each other to rise up to new levels and take it another step. 

So, Taylor and I have gym memberships we don't use - $10 a month, no contract - we are going to start going after we get over this sickness crap. She got this first and I caught it from being around her apparently.  I can't do physical anything like that right now.  She's a couple days ahead of me on thick coughing crap and she's still hacking away. 

I'm not going too long with this one. Just developments.  If we're going to lose the fat, I already knew at some point we were going to have to up the game to working out.  I don't even feel like I need to go all gung ho to start. Just get into the habit and let it work it's way back into my system. 

Well so much for the tenant thing working out.
The young guy - 23 years old I think - decided to leave without giving notice.  He paid his first month but left me hanging.  You know, you ask people to give you at least a couple weeks advance notice before they leave - and sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.  This one didn't. Found this out yesterday - he told Rene he was moving out and- moved out.  Well, I have a new ad running, hopefully it won't take long to find someone else.

Meanwhile, I pretty much blew up after finding out the reason they didn't fix the cruise control is because there is "nothing wrong with it", according to the shop supervisor.  No one bothered to call me or ask me about it, I gave the mechanic detailed info about what it's doing.  It comes on, it goes off. It's mostly on but sometimes all the warning lights go off and it works fine.  Make sure they know that in case the lights are all off.

He didn't do jack squat.  Didn't give a shit about it, either.
After finding that out, I texted my manager: Ryan just informed me that they aren't going to do anything about that excessive beeping noise and that there is nothing wrong with the cruise control.  I guess I have a decision I have to make..

She texted back later and said she would find some other option to deal with this.  In my view, this is too little, too late. I've had enough of this shit.  It's been going on since I got into that truck some 8 or 9 months ago.  I've been writing it up and asking to have it fixed that entire time.  My year with this company is up in 8 days.  I'm at the very least going to see what opportunities might be out there. A driver from Gen X said they pay 75k per year with no weekend work and make a lot more if you will work weekends.  Gen X is just another cryogenic hauling company.  There's a couple other companies but I'm not really interested in them, their drivers are never really all that happy.

No job is perfect, I keep telling myself with this one. Perhaps, but there is a point where you have to say enough.  I'm right at that point.  I told the mechanic I'm not driving that truck until it's fixed.  So, we'll see what happens here.

And home.  I'm exhausted, out of it. I slept 7 hours last night but it feels like I didn't sleep at all.  Still sick, still not feeling too great. I thought on Monday I was already getting better - which I really did feel better, but that went away quickly.  So just resting the rest of the day, no idea about work but I am going to start perusing open jobs on the internet as soon as I'm done with this post. 

Which I might as well, this one is long enough. 

Day 16 of diet.
I weighed myself at the Love's truckstop I was at this morning before leaving there.
119.
Weight fluctuating all over the place. I was fully clothed and had on a heavy coat tho.
Cold to me is anything below 60 degrees.  I have numerous friends that say cold doesn't start until well below freezing.  No, that's freezing, beyond cold, lol.  I guess that's what I get for living in the South.  The thing is, my weight is fluctuating well below where I started.  I figured I would see a good weight drop at first and then it would slow down.

I got up to the plant here in Mapleton and had a first thrown at me: there's another truck ahead of you it will be a "minute".

Yea, I know what that means. At least 2 or 3 hours.  I went back to the truck and fell back asleep for an hour and a half.  Now I'm just sitting here waiting.

These longer trips always get me to thinking about buying some land somewhere. I see beautiful properties for sale with 30, 50 100 and more acres and even some listing the prices and very reasonable considering wooded land with open areas as well.  Of course, non of  it is anywhere near where I live and not really in my thought of, yes I'll try to buy here.

I also saw a house for sale by owner locally.  It is a 3 bedroom house, very large and has 3 bathrooms, perfect for renting.  I gave it some thought, actually.  I have the down payment at only 4k, but the monthly payments are too high.  $1,100.  To be able to afford a place like that for rent to own purposes it would have to have 4 bedrooms or the monthly payment would have to be around $800.  And, since it's out in the boonies, it would probably be hardly to find tenants for it.  About the time we get to a year done on that lease on the house I'm renting, I'm going to be looking for a rent to own possibility and get out of that place.  There's no upside to renting in my view of it.

Well in this case there was to help a friend, who is helping herself in this situation by taking care of a lot of stuff that I really don't have time for.  And she's coming to the understanding that a light footprint is what is needed in terms of electric and gas and water consumption.  I don't want to take any losses on it now that all 3 rooms are rented out.  I was eating over $200 per month on it, but I had agreed to it in exchange for her watching the dogs while I"m gone.

This has actually worked out much more favorably to my benefit, getting Donny out of there.  I think he thought it would fail and I would get stuck holding the responsibility for it. I was of the thought that housing is always need regardless of where you live, there must be people who want to rent rooms.  I wasn't mistaken. Not a large number of them but they are here.  It was a bit nerve wracking at first once I had the understanding he was actually leaving and needed to find 2 tenants, but, it's worked out so far.

I had trouble going to sleep last night.  The cough medicine wasn't working on the runny nose business and it kept me awake.  I'm not sure when I got to sleep but I woke up a few hours later and I never was able to get back to sleep. 3am, I just got up and got moving, dreading the day because of the lack of sleep and being sick.  I just plowed through everything and got it done, got to the yard and thankfully, the fourth trailer she had assigned me had no issues with it. I'm quite curious as to who pulled their tractor out from under that trailer and pulled their airlines out with it and the other one that was crashed but not reported and yet another that she said had an issue with that I never bothered to look at. 

Anyway, the first load, at least, always goes quickly . I was in and out of there in 2 hours and 15 minutes.  I stopped at a truck stop just down the road from the plant, got a black coffee  - no cream or sugar - and headed down the highway.  I had a goal to get about  600 miles to the Flying J.  I was so sleepy, but if I were to stop and take  a nap, it wouldn't have worked out to make it that far because down the line I'd have to stop again to reset my 8 hours.  I pushed through it and finally woke up a few hours later. 

300 miles later I got to take my break - I slept for 30 minutes after fueling and felt better.  In fact, I really started feeling much better.  It was kind of strange. Like better than I've felt in a long time, even tho I'm sick with this head and chest cold. The runny nose stuff started to disappear today, that was fast.  Usually that junk goes on for days and days.  The coughing also subsided. I'm not going to credit this diet, I dunno how eating differently would help fix a cold, but it does seem odd.  I've never had a cold start to subside that fast in my entire life.  It's not gone tho, not at all, just very much lightened up.  

Well, I got to the Flying J exit but I still had time on the clock. Up the road is TA truckstop and further up is Love's  I figured for sure the TA, I would have plenty of time to get there, but I really wanted to get to the Love's - I have credits for enough free showers to last me a long time.  I got to the TA and my logging device showed I hast enough time to get to the Love's plus 5 minutes. Okay,that's kind of risky. If anything happens on the highway or it take any time at all to find a parking spot, I'm going over hours and then a bit of trouble comes my way.  

I got here - the Loves in Hamel, Illinois, with that 5 minute window.  Got stuck behind trucks sitting there waiting. I'm looking at that clock wind down, the trucks finally move, I get to a parking spot but now I have to wait for yet another truck to back into another space.  Ugh!  I finally get my turn and walaah - I had all of 2 minutes remaining on that clock. I got my paperwork done and headed straight for the store, got into a shower and stayed there for at least 30 minutes with it on extra hot.  Breathing in that steam really helps with coughing. It always has for me. 

After that, into the truck, out with the low carb dinner. That was cut up Romaine lettuce, a chicken breast and a slice of almond meal bread.  Not as bad as it sounds, the bread that is lol.  Low carbs is the key.  

Anyway, I really wanted to drive out my hours today because it was still so early in the day. When I ran out of hours - that's 11 hours of driving - it was 6:15.  That's so early.  I'll have to sit here until around 5 am, which is when I'l get up, get a cuppa free coffee, fill up the truck and get up to the plant.  Really very glad tho that I made it well out of Saint Louis and won't have to fool with that traffic in the morning.  

Anyway, fatigue is finally setting in.  17 hours later and getting that little amount of sleep, it should be lol. I'm actually hopeful that the plant will say no, we can't unload today, go get a hotel as they have told me at this particular place so many times before.  I need the money to make up for all that time off.  But, it won't be the end of my world either if it's unloaded tomorrow and I drive 600 miles back towards home and get the trip over with before noon on Wednesday.  I'm going to want to be sent right back out tho. Well I don't want to, lol, I just need to make up for lost time.  Plus I just shelled out 300 plus for round trip ticket to Phoenix, plus I'll have expenses there such as numerous Uber rides everywhere, taking some folks out to eat, stuff like that.  I may ditch the diet while I'm there and restart when I get back. It's kind of hard to follow this kind of diet when eating out. 

I don't think it will be near as hard to get back into Ketosis now that my body is starting to adjust to it as it did this first time.  It's really not my first choice to stop the diet, but I think it's going to be way too much trouble.  It's hard enough doing it in the truck on the road, but I am able to prepare meals in advance and stuff  the refrigerator in here full of it.  I have plenty of food in there to last me 4 days, not worried about that at all.  

There are, of course, temptations, such as walking into the truck stop and seeing all kinds of food and a fast food restaurant. I brushed it off and got out of there quickly after I was done with the shower. 

Well, I"m tired. Time to go to sleep. 

Interesting trip.  Full fledged sick at the moment, head and chest cold.  I still have a bunch of stuff leftover from the last time I had this junk, most notably this killer cough syrup (no codeine, just really effective stuff) so I'm using that to see if I an knock it out versus going to the Doc.  Of course, I always say this and always end up at the urgent care clinic perhaps I should just go. Last time they gave me a steroid shot and inhaler - the inhaler ran out last night and of course I can't just give myself a steroid shot.  Probably money well spent.  Yup, I'll probably go now that I think of it.

I have to get up at 3 am tomorrow morning.  I already know it's going to be along, hellish day.  It's 620 miles from the plant to the truck stop I now normally stop at for the night when I'm making this trip, so lots of driving, cold and getting up am equals hell on wheels.  Not to mention I'm going to have to figure out 3 or 4 days worth of eating and have that ready to go.  I most certainly can't eat truckstop food on this diet.  It wouldn't hurt met if I never ate truckstop food again. Probably at least 50% of the reason I gained all this fat so quickly. 

Anyway, I'm going to Mapleton, Illinois again, that's the place that more often than not, you get there and they can't unload you and you go take a night at a company paid hotel. Wouldn't bother me a bit to get up there and spend some recovery time in a hotel.  And get paid detention pay for it.  Not going to count on it tho.  If it happens, great, if it doesn't, not so great, considering illness.

Anyway, I drove almost the entire route yesterday. Started at my house - I was only driving the trator up there no trailer, drove the 344 miiles up there, got the trailer, immediately turned around and headed back. Felt like hell all day long.  I made it within 30 miles of the yard before I rant out of drive time. I had like 20 minutes left on the clock but there was no way I was going to make it back before the clock ran out.  Now, if I had started at the yard instead of my house, I would have had enough time.  I didn't know that when I did that yesterday, but no big deal, I was ready to stop driving.  I got into the sleeper bed and stayed there 10-1/2 hours before I forced myself to get up and drive out the rest of the miles. 

Now, when I got to the yard, I unhooked from that trailer and hooked up to the one I'm taking Monday morning.  I then got out, hooked up air lines and did a walk around.  Whoever pulled that trailer last apparently was trying to get away with a fast one.  He/she had smashed the trailer into something, bent the bumper with the lights in it and destroyed the lighting (brake, turn signals and running lights ) on the right side.  How the heck do you do damage like that and just try to get away with it?

So I took a pic and sent it to my manager. I had nothing to do with this and I'm not getting blamed for something I didn't do. She gave me another trailer to hook to. So, I uncoupled everything, pulled out from underneath that trailer and hooked up to another one.  When  I got out to go hook up the airlines, I found that someone had pulled out from that trailer and obviously forgot to detach their airlines. How do I know this? Well, their glad handle was still attached to one of them on the trailer - with the air hose obviously pulled off and on the other one, the glad handle had ripped out of the unit and destroyed it.  That was unusual.  Usually the airline rips off.  To see the trailer glad handle ripped out of there and stripping the threads? Never saw that before.  So now I'm taking more pics and sending them to my manager, who at first said she knew about it.

Huh? If she knew, why did she have me hook up to it? Then she texted again and said, Oh.

Lol, she gave me yet another trailer to hook to - but the interval between me texting her and her texting me back on the second trailer was too long, I had left the yard. I can only hope there isn't anything wrong with it in the morning.  Alright, I just looked up the weather up there, it's going to be 38 degrees in the morning. I'm taking thermals with me as well. My extra heavy winter jacket is already in the truck as are my gloves and other apparel, just need the thermals.  Of course, that will help my cold!

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Okay.  Got into a discussion with my manager. She texted me yet again, don't take the 3rd trailer she gave me to take, take yet another one!

I didn't bother to ask what was wrong with it.  I'm assuming we have hired some piss poor drivers that probably need to go. It's one thing to make a mistake, have an accident, whatever, it takes it to a much different level that you didn't report it.  Most trucking companies nowadays give you an assigned truck. Not true at all with trailers.  You very much have to inspect a trailer before moving it an inch.  Anything with it and especially damage, you take pics and you report it, again, before you ever move that thing. It's called covering your ass.  I've been dumped with someone else's screwups in the past, well they tried to dump it on me.  But I did learn that if you don't want to take the blame, document it with pics and contacting supervisor immediately.  I don't care what time of the day or night it is, if you don't, the company will very likely blame you and that's a ding on your record with them.

Let's say in the case of those broken airlines that the driver pulled out from under the trailer without unhooking them, which he/she obviously did unknowingly and drove off. Still going to count against them.  If you report it, tho, it's not as bad.  I'll tell ya right now, if I screw something up, I"m reporting it the instant it happens, with pics, big I'm sorry attached to it, now what?  Usually pulling out like that and breaking airlines is not a big deal, every shop in America has brand new lines for just such occasions waiting to be installed. Or you can purchase them yourself if you want to "get away with it" and just eat the cost.  I would do that if it were me.  But in this case?  The entire glad handle yanked out with it, much different problem. Much worse problem.

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Okay, I just bought airfare to Phoenix.  I'll be visiting for 5 days.  I haven't even asked my mom or son, I'm just doing it.  I'll contact them and see if I can come up with an itinerary.  I'm also wanting to visit one of my old best friends.  I've already got a standing invite, tho I dunno around the holidays.  It's just time to go back, visit, say hi and leave.

I wanted to leave out of local airport but the ticket prices were outrageous.  Tack on $25 each way per back - American Airlines and you have a hefty price tag.  I'll be finding parking fare in advance at the airport or parking facilities nearby and flying out of Dallas. Saved almost $200 doing that. I didn't want to drive to Dallas but I just couldn't find it within myself to shell out that much extra money just for the convenience of leaving locally. It's 158 miles, 2 hours or less (at the speed I drive).  I'll arrive in Phoenix at around 11:30 am, that was the other thing. I hate redeye flights and willing to pay extra at this point in my life to just fly normal daytime hours.  I'll have to get up early, but I won't have to stay at a hotel overnight and bear even more cost.  Phoenix has both Lyft and Uber, I'll be using one of those services to get around. 

I won't need to stay at a hotel but honestly? I'd love to spend a night at the Marriot Resort & Spa in Scottsdale. Been there twice and it's like a slice of heaven. Yes, pricey.  Just thinking about it at the moment.  Nix that idea. $250 for one night. Last time I was there it was $137. I'd pay that but definitely not $250 for one nights stay, that's ridiculous.

After this trip, my sites will be on a much longer trip. Longer as in distance, not time spent.  I'm looking to either get over seas or head over to hawaii.  Alaska would be nice too. 

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A nice long nap, got up, made food for the road, pretty much ready to go.  Still in ketosis, I'm hardly eating any carbs at all.  Just have to see how much weight I might lose in another week or two.  It was time to get away from truckstop food regardless.  Very unhealthy.  Some of it very tasty, but it's full of calories and everything to make a body nice and fat.  The future of trucking is quite uncertain.  I don't see many lean or even average truck drivers any more.  Most of them are obese or on their way there.  The feds have BMI standards now.  One of our drivers is facing losing his med card if he doesn't do something about it - which he stated he's a fat old man and not changing his ways. 

Another has some level of whatever for diabetes in his system that is too high by our company's standards.  If he can't get that down he is also going to lose his job.  Eventually you'll start seeing these stories in the news as the driver shortage grows. 

Well, time to get ready for bed. 3:00 am isn't exactly day break stuff,.

So, I contacted my manager.  Is the truck done yet?
She calls me, she thinks another driver will be able to take me to get it from the yard to the facility where it's at.
10 minutes later, she calls again, no-one's available, I'll have to take you myself.
Blew my dinner plans. I had a roast that was done but I was going to make low carb bread with it and homemade bbq sauce also low carb, yea that didn't happen.

Oh wait, I skipped a part.  She also told me on the first phone call that there was no work available this weekend.  Dozens of orders had been cancelled due to shut down plants.  There are 3 loads on Monday - yeah I'll take one of those.  She listed off a short run, a medium run and a way too long run that I didn't want. 6 or 7 days out on the road, no thanks. I want this run to count for next paycheck, Mapleton run wouldn't have me back until well after Thursday ,which is the last day to turn in work for the pay period.

The run I took is Mapleton, the place that more often than not gives me detention time and overnight stays in a hotel.  That would be nice right about now

Anyway, she looked at me and said, do you think you can run up to Oklahoma, pick up a trailer and bring it back here and still be able to do the Monday run?  Absolutely.  So, I got the weekend covered with some work. It pays the same regardless of the fact that I am driving the tractor only up there and pulling back an empty trailer.  Net loss for the company but the trailer is needed for a run to Palm, PA on Monday, that's the run I didn't want.

I decided to just drive the tractor home since I'm leaving early tomorrow morning and no sense in having to drive to the yard.  My manager said to start the trip form the truck repair shop, so that actually adds some miles, which is fine by me.

I'm not feeling very well tho.  Whatever I'm getting started yesterday with me clearing my throat and now, it's lung congestion and I also just feel kinda crappy.  But I can't afford any more time off. I'm taking this run up there and if I have to stop a few times and nap, I will.

Day 12 on diet.

No noticeable change in weight.  I check once a day, sometimes twice, once in the morning  and then again at night.  

The real deal is it appears I'm getting deeper into Ketosis.  As for carbs, I haven't cheated on this diet at all.  For calories? I've had a few additional snacks here and there, but stuff that is less than 200 calories and either no carbs or very low carbs and really hardly doing that at all.  Last night was an exception when I had a teaspoon of Almond Butter - a substitute for peanut butter. 

I gave up on looking for birth certificate yesterday, not altogether but I got started on the greenhouse project.  I can say that the directions were rather useless.  The frame kept falling over, I was starting to get - upset - with this setup.  I ended up coming up with my own plan to put the thing up and was successful after I did that.  However, before I went off on my own "instruction manual", I had tried fully 3 times in a span of a couple of hours trying to put the blooming thing up per the manual instructions. Fail, fail, fail.  

I'm likely not going to put the cover over the frame today.  The reason being that I am very likely going out on the road tomorrow - that truck better be done, it's been 10 days now - I want to be around at least a couple of days if possible to make sure there aren't any issues.  Of course, that may not happen anytime soon since I've been off so much, I'm going to push to get my share of road time in.  I got paid today - it's bi-weekly pay - and it was a much better paycheck than I expected.  If I can get the next 6 days worth on the road, I will have at least something on my next paycheck and including taking 30 hours of paid leave time.  I hated to do that, but it's I can't be having a half paycheck if at all possible. I'd like to find out how much it will be paid out at as well.

My manager isn't really good at answering questions like that.  She's overworked, I get that, but she should know what the pay is based on and how much that pay should be or find out.  Instead, well, "I think it's based on how much you've made thus far". That didn't answer my question at all.  What does that mean?  An average weekly amount?  That would be a decent amount if so.  I'll leave that to speculation land.

It's been raining here a lot, my firewood is soaked. It takes a couple hours to get a good fire going.  I mean, you have to have good coals going to dry out and then burn wet wood.  Plus, the remaining wood I have is rotting. I really got burned on that last load of firewood. Their claims of it being seasoned was a bald faced lie. But, they threw in a bunch of really old wood with it and some huge logs that weren't split and had already started to rot.  I got somewhere near a cord of wood, but I really got ripped off on that deal.  So, in looking for another cord of wood, I specifically asked a person selling split firewood on Facebook marketplace if his wood was seasoned and how long? He replied, oh yes, definitely seasoned, for two months!

This is what I'm referring to.  These people don't know anything what they are talking about.  Ask them if it's a full cord and the dimensions? Yes, a full cord! Then they cite dimensions that are anything but a full cord in measurement - or - they are cutting the wood at 18 or 16 inches and therefore you are being shorted a full 6 or 8 inches per piece of wood.  Add up a hundred or hundreds of pieces? Yea, that's getting shorted pretty good. At $190 and up per cord, that's pretty expensive for being shorted on the goods.  I'm just looking around until I find someone that actually knows firewood and is selling it in actual, full cords of wood. Yes, I'm on the road alot but in the winter, I'm sitting out back if I"m not doing anything else and enjoying a nice hot fire in the pit. 

So there it is. One of my credit card accounts already showed all this "negativity" on my credit score. It shows me using over 50% of available credit. That will change to 100% available credit as soon as the card companies report all of it.  Amazingly, my score didn't go down but a few points with this loan. Weird.  I'm guessing/hoping that they view this loan as just that, a loan with a definitive end date and not an open credit line and that all of this available credit on my cards is a separate thing.  That is what has been holding my credit back plus the late payments on the mortgage.  That's hurting my score as well. That was going on two  years ago now? Or longer?  I'll have to look but it's at least 3 years I think before all of that starts dropping off. I had thought it was dropping off one at a time per month, but that turned out to be a false hope. I'm hoping for all of them to increase my credit line, that will help even more.  

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Spent the morning going through boxes. No longer a "find the birth certificate" only thing, now it's just going through stuff and chucking a lot of it.  Not everything tho. Some Christmas cards from dad.  Other little notes and things.  Old clothes, stuff I don't fit into. Throwing out the "bad" stuff but keeping some of it in hopes I may eventually fit back into them. 2 sizes down from what I'm at now.  Which would basically mean losing all those extra 30 plus pounds and slimming up quite a bit.  I remain hopeful.  

No word about the truck yet.  It's 1 pm, so I'm going to contact my manager soon and find out what's going on.  I fully expect to get sent out for the weekend.  If that doesn't happen it should only be because the truck for some reason isn't done  yet, not because there is no work. After being off this long I should have precedence at the top of the list for a good run.  

Since I was asked, the reason I need my birth certificate is for future reference only. I just want to find it and get it in a place where I know where it will be.  If I needed it right now for some reason?  I'd have no clue.  But basically, the only foreseeable need I have for it is to renew my CDL, possibly my concealed carry permit, that's years off from now.  It's still annoying me that I lost it - or put it somewhere I can't find it - and can't find it even after spending a couple of hours now digging through all kinds of stuff looking for it.

So now, I'm just getting rid of old papers that I no longer need. Actually, I'm putting them in a plastic bag and will use it to help start fires.  We don't get a newspaper here, starting fires is kind of an ordeal without paper or cardboard.  Everything is wet, twigs, branches, the actual split wood. Getting one going is pretty difficult without paper.

Diet day 11.  At 220 this morning. Weight fluctuating all over the place, but coming up to nowhere near what it was when I first started this at almost 227 pounds.  I really need to go into full ketosis - it gets up to mid level and fluctuate down from there during the day. I'm not going to concern myself with the lack of full ketosis yet.  There's a lot of material on the web about this type of diet and I've been reading through alot of it.  No one expects to lose 30 plus pounds overnight or even in a month, as long as it's going down even a little I'm good with it. 

Today I got up early.  I've been off work for quite a while now.  It was a welcome vacation even if I've done much of nothing - mostly due to the fact that I've had little energy. That seems to be coming back, which is a good thing because I fully expect to go back to work on Saturday and I really need it to be a longer run to help offset what I've lost in this time off. 

My searches for cheap airfare to go home for a couple of days resulted in the cheapest airfare being around $450.  It didn't seem worth that much money for a few days worth of travel plus all the other expenses that would have been involved, so I decided to start looking around Thanksgiving time.  Very good pricing still available, I'm asking my manager if I can get some time off.  Not that I want to lose even more time, but I need to see mom and my son.  Visit some friends, look at the house, maybe some other things I have in mind. 

Meanwhile, a trip to Walmart is in order. I have old pics that mom gave me of dogs and me and various things from childhood.  I want to get picture books to preserve them in. They're still in great shape, thankfully, I was a bit errant and lazy on dealing with them when I first got them. Irreplaceable.  A few of them of a dog I had way back when named Jethro.  He was a cool doggy.  Not a Great Dane, I forget what his breed was, gonna have to think about that a minute, I got him from a friend that had a female that had lots of puppies. 

And Rene's coffee maker broke. I don't mind helping her here and there.  She lives on a fixed income and it's not very much money.  She pays her rent faithfully at least.  But little things like a coffee maker? She doesn't have money to replace that.  I can get on for less than $20 at Walmart.  I need more dog food as well. It used to be I could get a better price on automatic shipments through Chewy or Petco, but that price keeps going up and up, a little more than Walmart now. 

 I've been reading how to heat a greenhouse during the winter. I don't want to use electricity, we're not talking heating as in 70 degrees at night, just enough to keep any plants alive and certainly from freezing over.  There's a few ideas I will be incorporating such as barrels of water that absorb heat during the day and give it off during the night.  And bubble wrap apparently helps. Just line the inside of the walls of the green house.  I actually have a huge roll of that as it stands. 

Actually there are fuel heaters that would be nice, but this greenhouse is a temporary type of structure, not a permanent one. There are also solar heaters and underground natural heaters. All nice and fine but that's a project I would love to do if I ever get acreage somewhere and have the room to build a larger, permanent version and can build a pond environment inside of it along with all kinds of flowers and shrubs, maybe even vegetable plants. 

Things that cross my mind and stick to it.  Lol.

Decided to get up early today. 6:30 isn't that early to some people, however, work is looming and I will likely be getting up early for it and up all day long. 

Welll, the day isn't getting any younger.  A final cup of Keurig's - was drinking McDonald's version this morning - and then off to Walmart.

Diet Day 10.
Was at 217 this morning.  No more losses but I'm not going to worry about that unless it stays that way - or goes back up.
I am very hungry today.  Yesterday I wasn't hungry at all and had to force myself to eat, today I could eat a couple of ribeyes and think nothing of it.
I didn't do that, of course, tho steak is allowed on the diet, not much steak, too many calories.  Instead I ate a muffin this morning with my coffee with heavy cream and the rest of the mushrooms from yesterday and a brat link.  It was very tasty but after consuming it I was - and still am - quite hungry. 

And thirsty. Drinking lots of water. I would be afraid to go look at my weight right now after drinking 5 glasses of water/coffee/tea.  I'm doing a detox tea, one large cup every day.  Now I'm adding MCT oil - tho it comes in a powder - because most of the keto diets say it really helps.  Brain energy, easily digestible, can help to higher the ketosis level and fuel for exercising among other claims being made on numerous sites that pretty much are all saying the same thing.  So I'm adding a little to my drinks and on top of food a few times a day.  I dunno if that's made me hungrier or just the fact that I haven't been eating that many calories on a daily basis.

Anyway, my green house showed up.  Big box, heavy.  Got it out back, opened up and - found no instruction manual. Just a single piece of paper that identifies the parts and how many of each you should have. Wonderful  Well I at least inventoried the parts and it's all there, that was a good thing. I spent some time trying to find an instruction manual online and finally found it, printed it and ready to go.

Excepting it's raining.  I'm not getting wet to put this thing up.  Try again tomorrow. I do have a fire going out there, the wood is wet but using the cardboard from the green house box got some nice coals going and eventually the fire got going nicely. 

But, today is all about bombs being sent to CNN, Clinton, Obama, Holder and whoever else.  I think Cuomo and one was found in the Congressional mail center.  None of them went off, lots and lots of speculation as to who what and why.  CNN predictably blaming Trump for "escalating" hositilies - which I found laughable.  You have Hillary saying the left can't be civil until they are voted back into power, Holder saying kick them when they're low, Maxine saying her infamous words of pushing back and harassing cabinet members and spartacus (Corey Booker) making whatever stupid statement he made.  And they want to blame this on Trump. Let's spread the blame alllll around, shall we? 

And of course we have the gigantic caravan that's heading this way  -tho reports say it will take a month of walking for them to get here and more reports saying their feet are sore and they may run out of steam long before they make it clear up here.  Now here's the fun part: the closest border entry is Matamoros and you guessed it: Brownsville.  No one is saying they are heading there, but that's the closest one, the place I go down to frequently.  I dunno, but Brownsville would be, IMO, the worst place to come through.  There is literally BP every where and they patrol the highway going north up and down for about 70 miles worth?  I mean, they are a major presence.

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Well, I got the "problem" with Directv figured out. The extra $45?  Someone over there watching Biking blondes of sun, Hawaiian babes of whatever and 2 other pay per views that didn't specify what it was.  Yeah, no.  I immediately called Directv, got all that shut off and shut down the movie channels except for one block. 

Of course, that meant ... calling Directv. The lady in the Philippines?  No thanks.  I explained to her twice what I wanted done and she still didn't understand, ok, just give me your manager.  15 minutes later, the supervisor gets on the phone with the same results.  I give up.  Cancel the service.  What?  CANCEL THE SERVICE.  Oh, well we'll have to switch you over to the loyalty department to do that.  GOOD, MAYBE I'LL GET TO SPEAK TO AN AMERICAN IN AMERICA. 

Well that took care of the problem.  I didn't ask for freebies, I haven't been with them on that account that long. Maybe 4 months.  The lady removed access for anyone to order anything off the remotes, topped it off by putting it at a penny limit - in case they did figure out how to, they maximum amount they can spend is one cent.  She got rid of the movie channels except Showtime.  That's what Rene wanted with promise to pay for it for I'm not paying for movie channels and then, as an extra added bonus...well the lady got off the phone for a few minutes ..... she gave me $5 off for Showtime for 6 months and credited my account for the full amount for the nude showcasing of women. 

Again, I didn't ask for any of that, she offered it and I gleefully accepted it.  The Directv bill is now cut by $50 and no possibility of any more of this lewd nonsense. Sorry, I don't watch stuff like that, just not my cup of tea. Not to mention an expensive habit at $10.99 a pop - on my dime.  Amazing that dude would even do shit like that. I was going to demand him pay it back but since Directv credited my account for that crap I will refrain.

So there it is. 

My greenhouse?  Dragged that thing out back, took everything out and....no instruction manual.  I mean seriously, there are all these parts.  There was one sheet that showed what the parts are and how many you should have, so at least I did an inventory and found it's all there.  Found the manual on line, printed it and - it started raining. Has been raining ever since.  Maybe tomorrow if the rain stops. 

Had a nice hot fire going tho.  The coals are so hot that even the rain isn't phasing it, hours later it's still going strong.  But I've had enough of that for one day so that can smolder out. 

Diet Day 9.
I feel like a pile of death every morning.
It's terribly hard to get out of bed.  I still have
headaches, but only in the morning now. It's better than headaches all day long as was the case for the first 6 or 7 days of this diet.  The only good thing about the truck still being in the shop - and never hearing back from the mechanic  about when it's going to be done - is that I don't have to do anything.  That's a really good thing because right now? Even when the headache passes, once I start doing anything, I get drained of energy quickly.  I'm just holding fast to the sites that say it can take weeks for your body to adapt to feeding off fat instead of sugar intake.

Ok. Paid off all my credit cards, added up to more than I originally thought.  Almost 9k instead of the around 8k I thought it was at.  That's 9 accounts. Well 2 of them are credit accounts, one at Fingerhut - which I only owed a few hundred dollars and Paypal - which I had racked up 1k in debt.  I actually use Paypal all the time but I don't use the credit option anymore. I always opt to pay out of my bank account - now anyway.  I won't be able to put as much towards the care credit/dental card as I wanted, but it's fine.  I didn't expect that one to get paid down that fast anyway.  I owe them $5,100, I figured a couple years to pay that off when I got into that.

At least I had $1,500 paid by insurance and paid around $600 cash when I had all this stuff done.  The bad part is there is still other work I need done to my teeth, but the worst of it is done.  The bottom front teeth are all pushing together and are chipped. I think they can do that laminate bonding on there, no crowns needed.  Well let me put it this way, I'm not putting crowns on them regardless. They aren't that bad and I have no need to get another 4k or so in debt to get them fixed.  I will probably stay at this company until next year now that I've made it this far and use the next $1,500 to get all of that done.

Anyway, it feels good to have all those cards paid off.  A thing I used to hate every month because I didn't want to do auto pay on them.  I set this loan up for auto pay so I don't have to remember it.  In fact, almost everything I have going in terms of bills and payments is all set up on autopay now. There is simply too much of it to try and keep track of.

Now, I need to write down all my expenses.  The bank helps me with a generic version of that tho, it shows how much I've paid and how much I've deposited.
\
Now it's sit back and wait time. It should go something like: Credit score dive - 10k loan added to everything else.  I bet my score tanks to poor area, who knows but that's my bet.  Then, after credit cards finally report all of this, it will show all of my available credit - available.  No use of them at all.  That will at least bring my score up to where it is now, but I'm willing to bet it will go higher.  The random factor is whether the 10k loan, even after the credit card companies have reported, will still hold me back.  I don't think so, because it's going to show 100% of my available credit being available.  That's a very good thing in the eyes of creditors and credit scoring.

This is a gamble, but not really.  I am in no more debt than I was with the balances on the card and I'm paying a lower interest rate.  If I can get my score up into good range, I'll get another loan to pay off this loan and have lower monthly payments and pay less net interest at the end of the loan. Same with the SUV.  They refinance vehicle loans nowadays, if I could get my score up high enough it would be worth it.  Take 3 grand off of interest payments by the end of the loan? Heck ya.

Enough of that.  I weighed in at 215 pounds this morning. A bit shocking.  Weight dropping off as if I were taking a blade to my fat and cutting it off in small chunks every day.  I'm thinking of going and getting a new scale, I just don't trust that thing. I'd like 2 scales, one to back the other one up. If they are close in their weight then I will trust that they are somewhere in the ballpark of actual weight.

It's just strange that all of a sudden my weight is dropping that fast.  If that scale is correct, I'm down almost 12 pounds in 9 days.

And here: "The extreme carb restriction is often accompanied by adverse side effects. Commonly known as the "keto flu," the transition may cause a period of fatigue, weakness, lightheadedness, "brain fog," headaches, irritability, muscle cramps, and nausea."

Yes to all of that! Ugh. Well I don't have muscle cramps and maybe a little nausea but not too bad. Everything else? In high doses.  

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Okay.  The truck won't be done until Friday. I decided to take some comp time.  I'm not sure how that's going to hit next month when I'm supposed to get a full year's worth dumped into my account.  Wait and see but I've been off too long, I need to supplement it at least a bit.

I asked my manager about having too many drivers. She said she had sent some back  - those are drivers that have been sent here to cover the increase of work we had, they came from other divisions.  Plants have been cancelling orders - that happens all the time but sometimes it occurs that several will happen at the same time. These plants that use ethylene shut down rather frequently. They get all kinds of issues and the entire plant is shut until it's fixed. 

Anyway, bedtime.

This will be a short one.
I finally found my passport.
It was literally in front of my face.
A pile of papers I had placed into a cubby hole in a storage unit, right there in front of me.
I saw that USPS envelope sitting there and I thought, THIS is IT? RIGHT HERE?  I opened it up and sure enough, there it was.
Next time I am in Brownsville and have a detention opportunity I may very well cross the border.
Haven't done it in decades.  Feels kind of scary cause of the sites I've read about going into Matamoros. Stay in certain areas.

Well, when we used to go over there as missionaries, we didn't go alone.  There was always at least 2 people and often times 5 or 6 or more.  It was really just some of us that wanted to go over, find the needy people living in the cardboard shacks with dirt floors etc.  and give away food, blankets, warm clothing for the winter, whatever we had. 

And I am finally in ketosis.  I've been doing some work around the house and exerting energy, I skipped lunch, only had the muffin for breakfast and finnnnnnally it turned purple.  It's in the mediocre range of it, but it's FAR better than nothing.  All this time.  8 days of this diet and finally. 

Now to find my birth certificate.  I'm guessing it's in the same pile as the passport.  I got a bit excited finding my passport so I stopped searching lol.

So I did it.
I took out a 10k loan to pay off credit card debt.
Well how much debt do you have? Actually more than that, because I put 6 grand on the card that pays for the dental work.  I think I have around 14k worth of debt accumulated in credit card debt.
I've been wanting a loan that pays off this stuff in one fell swoop at lower interest rate instead of trying to pay down one card at a time.

Goldman Sachs helped me out with that.  I wasn't even looking for one when I stumbled across it, but after looking at it it's a really great deal.  No origination fees, no fees of any kind really to get the loan going.  The interest rate and the length of the loan are what attracted me.  I'll be paying 9 points less in average interest rate and I'll pay it off a year earlier than if I were to try to pay them off one at a time, which is what I have been doing but it's going at an abysmally slow rate.  I'm making a lot more money now, I don't rely on credit cards for anything excepting I used Care Credit to do the dental work. 

That needed to be done. It had been needing to be done.  My front teeth were gross. I had no idea how bad they looked until I saw the close up pics the dentist took of them before and after.  I mean, they were really bad.  What this loan enables me to do is pay off all of my credit card debt except the secure care, which I should be able to apply almost 2 grand of it towards. Note that the entire amount I'm getting is going to credit card debt, not toys or anything else. If I do anything else with it, it defeats the purpose and then I'm losing money on the deal.

So I'm kind of excited about that. I had to pay them off any way about it, this makes more sense.  It won't affect my net monthly output, it's literally the same.  Well no, it's less because I was making more than minimum payments on most of my cards.  And I can do the same on this loan without any prepayment penalties and anything over applied to interest. So I am going to try to pay $100 more every month. 

I don't have any temptations to use those cards, either.  I haven't been using them at all. I take that back, ATT has one card on file to make the monthly payment, but I always transfer that much over to that account every month to eliminate any interest.  I am much more disciplined on credit card use now simply by fact of making a lot more money, I don't need to use them.  But, some of these cards have rewards for purchases on them and I intend on doing some shopping on them on a monthly basis and then paying off balances before they accrue any interest.  Shopping as in stuff I would be doing anyway, such as fuel and groceries.  This what my mom has been doing forever and she gets pretty good rewards added up over time.  But then again, she is FAR better with money management than me. Perhaps because she worked in a bank in earlier times but probably the aftermath of the Great Depression.

Seems like people that went through that are much more frugal and expenditure conscious than the rest of us for the most part.  Of course, that and my mother is on a fixed income. Not that she's poor but she lives off of her monthly income and tries not to go over that at all.    I think my greatest learning experience with debt was going cash only for an entire year.  Actually I think it was a little longer than that.  That was the experiment I did with having no credit cards excepting a prepaid one to pay online bills.  I had to pay for everything by check or cash.  You learn a lot about yourself and your spending habits when you do something like that and you keep a daily tracker of what you are spending on everything.

Really changed my spending habits for life - except - that last job where I was going broke because of extremely low pow.  It was probably a God-send that they installed an arrogant, angry, egotistical manager to run the place that had frequent outbursts of rage over stupid stuff.  And took it out on everyone.  Literally bring a crowd of people together and ream everyone for one person's mistake versus taking that person aside and calmly discussing the situation with them. It was the prybar that finally unearthed my roots from that place and got me the hell out of there. I have no regrets.  I only miss the physical exertion of the job and home every day and no weekend work.  The physical exertion part I'm paying in terms of fat the home daily stuff I have learned to live with.

I don't like it, but I am tolerating it for the time being.  I will definitely be at 2-1/2 times the annual income by the end of this year if paychecks stay relatively the same as they currently are.  I'm already at more than double what I was making there for an entire year with 5 or 6 more paychecks to go this year. We're paid bi-weekly. 

Actually the truck is still in the shop and no word when it's going to be done, but I'm really hoping today. I need a good 3 day run to get on this next paycheck.  I get paid this week but I'm looking to the next paycheck after that.  Oops, I'm wrong. I'll be paying for this lack of work both this paycheck on Friiday and next paycheck 3 Friday from now unless she really gets m rolling.  Gonna have to suck it up and ask her to keep me busy to make up for 6 days off so far. 

My credit score is going to tank the first month and then hopefully go up beyond what it is now the month after after all the cards report that the principle amounts are paid off. Actually that may take a few months.  I'm fine with the tanking because I am confident it will actually go up. This is an installment loan, not revolving open credit.  And after I pay down these cards and keep them at zero balance, over time, they will increase my credit limit which will further help my credit score.  This move is not just to pay off cards, it's also an attempt to increase my credit score. 

I would love to be able to refinance my vehicle loan to a lower interest payment.  I have only made 2 or 3 payments on it so it wouldn't be a net loss versus if I had been paying for 3 or more years on it. The payment on it is pretty low tho, not really complaining about that but every little bit helps.  The gas bill is going to go way up here and my account is on that bill to pay it.  So I'm trying to bring other monthly expenses down to equalize it.  But, my monthly expenses in Phoenix are fixing to go way down.  Electric use will be cut in half - no cooling and water use goes way down - no watering plants.  That will help substantially in and of itself. 

Okay, onto the diet. Day 8. I got on the scale this morning and it showed 218 pounds.  I mean, how do you lose 6 pounds overnight?  A little googling and it's water weight.  I am drinking large quantities of water and some tea and of course my daily coffee.  My head was aching this morning when I woke up - 10 hours after going to sleep.  I was shocked to look at the clock this morning and see it at 10:00 am.  I mean, I woke up in the middle of the night for a trip to the bathroom but then I went back to sleep and didn't wake up again until the phone rang. No telling how much longer I would have slept if someone hadn't called.

But, getting up and moving around, dealing with dogs, getting a cuppa took care of that head aching.  I'd like to have hoped it would have gone away by now, but everything I've read is that this isn't abnormal.  Plow ahead.  Breakfast was almost nothing  - a biscuit made out of almond flour. Tasty but hardly filling.  Lunch will be a bit better.  This "new" diet we are doing is actually even less calories than what we were consuming.  I think down to around 1,000 calories per day.  That's not much for a 6 foot 2 tall person weighing in currently at 220 pounds.  But hey, if I'm not going to go into ketosis, at least I know my caloric intake is down which will hopefully have the same effect. 

Yesterday? I built the first fire of the cool season.  It was nice. I have some large logs I need to burn through that are starting to rot.  It took a while to get a hot fire going, but after I did get those nice hot coals I put a huge one on there and it's still smoldering out there this morning. Oops, it's not morning anymore. 

Well, I have things to get done.

Day 7 on diet.
Still not in ketosis.
I have been following the diet closely, rest assured I'm hardly eating any carbs at all.
They say it could take up to 7 days I think it was, to get into ketosis, well day 7 is here.
Haven't checked it yet tho.  There's a lot of cooking in this diet, way more than anything we
were doing here previously.  I've been doing most of the cooking since I've been home, but I'm ready to take a break from it.  I spent this morning making breakfast and lunch, it's their turn to
put out and make dinner and tomorrow's meals.  Or I'll help, lol, but doing it all gets old. 

That's a lot of what I've done today, I have other things to do such as tidying up my room and going through some boxes to see if I can find what on  earth I did with my passport and birth certificate.  I certainly do not want to go through all of that again, especially the ordeal of getting a birth certificate. They don't make it easy.  I suppose they shouldn't but it certainly motivates me to find it.  I can't believe I didn't just leave it in a place where I could easily find it when I was moving from one to another.  I assuredly put it in a "safe" space so it wouldn't get damaged, but that was too safe a space.  I am pretty sure I stuffed my birth certificate in an envelope with other important papers - but so far all of those envelopes have turned out no show. 

I'm sure I'll find both of them eventually and then I'm going to put it where I know I will find it and put it on a computer file names Passport, this is what you did with it! lol

But right now, I"m taking a break.  I certainly can't and won't claim that my energy levels are anything near pre-diet levels. Just get worn out quickly.  The only reason I'm glad the truck is in the shop and not earning a paycheck at the moment is for fact of this transition from carbs to fat/protein.

I will have tomorrow off, that's a given.  I'll get some of the other stuff I wanted to get done - done.  Well, I might have to go in and get a ride to get the truck, not really sure about that yet.

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End of Sunday. I weighed myself a few minutes ago to get a grasp on my 7 days, but actually, we started on Monday now that I think of it.  Last Sunday we ate a bunch of junk because we knew we weren't going to be doing that again for quite a while if we manage to stay on this diet.  Down to 224 from 227.  I am not losing the higher amounts others have reported because I have not gone into ketosis. I am not cheating on the diet, it's very low carbs, so it's a bit perplexing.  But, there is always tomorrow. 

We also decided to venture off on our own.  Some of these recipes just don't taste that good. There are hundreds if not many  more recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner on the net.  It's simply a matter of finding the ones that have comparable calories and low carbs as what we're doing and that has been done. The menu for the entire upcoming week selected. Not cooked of course, but at least that much.  The misses here is missing bread, turns out there is a version of rolls made out of almond flour that you can make that is low carb. 

This diet may have more fat than I like - but that's how keto works if you ever get into ketosis - but it's still low calorie.  It's probably half the calories I have been consuming up until now. 

Anyway, off to bed. Hopefully work calls tomorrow saying the truck is finished so I can go back to work. 

Diet Day 6.
Saturday morning. 
I pretty much plan on keeping myself busy throughout the day both in and outside of the house.
Plenty to do around here, as we haven't raked the yard in a while and it's full of these things they
call gumballs - they all from the big trees.  I assume it's the tree's version of populating itself. They are nasty.  They have prongs that stick out in every direction and hurt the dog's feet.  They fill up the back yard.

The front yard is covered with acorns.  They have always wanted to take that tree down - the thing is scary frankly It's huge, 80 feet tall anyway, unknown amount of weight but in the tens of tons at least.  One branch broke off of it and did $11k worth of damage to their house.  These old trees don't live forever and poor choice for planting around a home.  But it will cost 3.5k to take it down, the exorbitant cost due to it being right next to power lines.  You'd have to bring a crane in here, literally, to cut that thing down.  one piece at a tame with cables to safely put it on the ground. 

They could recover a portion of the cost by cutting it up, splitting it and selling the wood.  I'm guessing there must be 8 cords of wood at least in there.  At $200 per cord - the going rate around here - that's half the cost of cutting it down.  Okay, they'd have to buy a chainsaw and rent a splitter.  Lots of work, too, but when you are financially strapped, you figure out ways to do things on the cheap and still have good results. Been doing it my entire life.  Tho looking back, I should have taken the steps I took last year much sooner and I would be in very healthy financial shape right now. 

But that's a different subject.

It's the diet I'm focused on right now.  It's not necessarily the easiest thing.  Sometimes I get cravings for sugar and it's hard to resist.  I have some water I got from Walmart that is sweetened with Aspartame that actually tastes like you are consuming a sugary substance. Drinking it sparingly, but it's a go to when the cravings hit.  I'm not a big sugar eater, but obviously the normal diet I have been eating has some sugars in it.  It's sort of like an addiction in itself.

Seems like the headaches I have been waking up to are tapering off. 

Anyway, I have several projects that I will be engaging myself with this weekend. They will kill 2 birds with one stone. First, just to keep my mind off of eating - this is a pretty low caloric intake diet - and 2 - get some exercise. Raking and picking up stuff and digging and such is definitely a good output of energy.  I'm trying to gear myself up for the eventual trip to the gym, a thing I need to start up and get into the habit of again. 

Dieting alone can reduce weight and fat. That's science.  But not near as effectively as with a cardio program and also a weight training program. 

I think it's best to do this in steps. The diet is a very good start and just getting into this habit will take some time.  My morning weight and evening weight are a bit odd.  4 to 5 pound difference I've noticed.  I'm not eating 5 pounds of food, tho I am drinking large quantities of water.  I can only assess it's the water for the weight gain and subsequent weight loss the next morning.  If I go by the morning weight, I'm down around 5 pounds. If I go by evening weight, I"m down a pound.  I'll take any down weight over a slowly increasing weight and fat gain. 

So that's it.  I have a closet to clean out that I was using while they were in Georgia.  Not that much in there but they are waiting on me to clean my stuff out of there to put the pool in there.  I'm not sure the reason it can't go into the storage shed.  She doesn't want bugs and stuff to get into it.  Okay.  Well that's interesting I guess. It's time to take it down, that's what I know for sure. 

I'm clearing out the space where I will put up the greenhouse.  And I'm going to do a lot of raking and cleaning up.  Might be a waste of time since it's fall and the leaves on some of the trees haven't even started falling yet, but again, this is to keep myself busy and distracted.  There are other things I could do to that end, but I am trying not to spend any money except on bills right now because I am having 5 days off, apparently, to get the truck fixed. 

THAT is an untenable situation.  If I had a new truck as they promised at the beginning, I wouldn't be having all of these problems. 

No sense in going into all of that, it is rather annoying. 

One thing I can't complain about with this job is the pay.  Yes I've had to fight for detention pay on several occasions now, but they pay up once they realize their mistakes.  I wasn't keeping track of it until I noticed on a pay stub that I was short something like 15 hours of detention and now? I keep track of all of it.

Anyway, I've made almost double this year already than what I made at Ferguson for an entire year.  There's still 5 paychecks left to go in this year so I'll likely be  close to double and half what I made there.  It's one thing I am considering in attempting to decide whether to stay or go with their new rules after the company was merged with another one and brought under a newly formed parent company.  I'm pretty sure most drivers won't be getting any safety bonuses now, which is bunk.  No accidents, no moving violations, no warnings or tickets for roadside checks? THAT is what it should be based on.

Not some nefarious data sent via Quaalcomm that shows you going 2 miles an hour over the company speed limit because you went down a hill "too fast" at 67mph.  That's just purely ridiculous and in my view, obviously a sign that they just want to cut costs by making up outrageous rules that mostly no-one is going to keep. I honestly don't care how fast the truck goes down the other side as long as it isn't going too far over the speed limit, it makes up for time lost going 45mph going UP that same hill. Sounds minuscule but when you are climbing up and down hills all day long, it adds up. 

So, without safety bonuses every quarter? I dunno, I need a summary of how many I got before this new rule and how much it adds up to.  Oh, it's right on my pay stub.  It wasn't that much anyway.  Kind of lame actually, I got much more in one lump sum at my previous employer than several of them here, but then again, my previous employer wasn't paying me jack squat so there is that little point to take into consideration.  I know companies that give out thousands of dollars a year in safety bonuses based on the real criteria I listed above. 

But I'm seeing all kinds of new job opportunities being posted locally now. As the driver shortage continues, the rate for drivers pay is going up with it, whether it's mileage pay, hourly pay, percentage of haul pay -etc., lots of ways they can formulate your pay.  I'm not joyfully happy with this current company but I'm not upset, mad and aggravated with it either, such as I was with previous one when they brought in that a-hole manager with the temper problem and dumped him on us, knowing he was going to be an issue from the outset.  His manager didn't care and I frankly hope that particular store goes under because of it.  The only criteria they looked at was his job performance, not whether he is true management material. 

No sense in going into all of that and bringing up bad memories. Anyway, there are irritations, I'll call them, with current company such as the trouble it is to get them to fix things.  The truck is in the shop and the freaking thing can stay in the shop until all of it is fixed.  That's my assessment, tho if it sits in there too long I"ll be dumped into a temp truck, a thing a very much dislike. I've got my truck set up the way I want it.  They could give us a bigger sleeper tho.  It's not like we need the room for the trailers. There is at least 5 feet between the back of the sleeper and the front of the trailer, a couple more feet of space would be very nice considering how much time is spent in them.  That's another thing, this company outruns a truck's usefulness, by hundreds of thousands of miles worth. Whereas many or even most major trucking companies get rid of trucks after 300k, 350k, 400k miles, this one seems to have no limits.  Mine is at 655k and it's doing the stuff that trucks with mega miles do. Things start failing.  That's why major trucking companies get rid of them. They can't afford a bunch of trucks with a lot of down time.  And this one can? No, they are promising to buy something like 1,500 new trucks in the next coming months. 

I won't hold my breath considering the promises they made when I came on board and the fact that a recent news report I read says that orders for trucks are up so high that manufacturers are having trouble filling the orders.  We're in a booming economy, dunno how long it will last, but we are in "high times" right now and one should take advantage of it if one can.  My friends I live with, wish they could find something better locally.  They just aren't getting paid that much money and they really struggle with bills and trying to make ends meet.  Not a slam on them, really if I were their age and had to do this all over I would definitely get into college - even if student loans, finding a career that is in high demand and pays well - or get into a trade school. 

As for my desire to try and get a business degree, I may just dump that notion.  It's just not worth that much money this late in life.  2 year degree, minimum puts me at almost 56 years old and then you start at the bottom if you go into management.  Tho that isn't my goal, my goal was get some real business knowledge and  education to learn how to run a business. 

Day 5 on diet.
About 1,200 calories on the menu today, all low carb/no carb stuff.  I finally saw a change in the keto strip tester to the first stage of ketosis.  I read that exercise helps and so I was digging up dirt and hauling it around front. That's pretty good exercise.  I checked after doing that and that's what set it off.  But it needs to go to the dark purple range to really have fat burning going on.  I wore myself out - really great lack of energy so far - but I'm going back out there in a few and doing some more of that.   

Day 4 of diet.
Woke up with worse headache than yesterday. 
Whatever is cleaning out of my system - I'm detoxing as well - it's not really all that fun. I'm glad I had yesterday off and today.  By virtue of a broke down truck. 
When it's going to be done, no clue.  It always depends on how long it takes for them to get to it and then to start attempting to figure out all the problems it's having.  I'm not really interested in driving it again until all of it is fixed, done and over with.

Then again, I can't be off too many days or my paychecks suffer, obviously. Still, right now, this diet is kicking my butt and I'm glad to be home doing much of nothing.

The upward spiral of weight gain has been stemmed, apparently.  I actually lost a pound since yesterday. I took my weight after eating and having my coffee so I wouldn't be deceiving myself lol.  There's some high fat stuff in this diet but it's not that much calories when adding them all up for a day. 

Okay.  Just "negotiated" the movie channels at the other house here.  I told them I was going to get rid of them because it's too expensive - it adds $54 per month to the bill.  Dunno how I got $63 last time but that's what it is.  So they had the option of either antying up for those movie channels or having them eliminated.  Well, 2 of them are there all the time. Rene and this other disabled dude who is on all kinds of medication.  He mostly sleeps from what I'm told. 

They want to keep the channels and are willing to pay the extra to keep them on.  That takes me below what the total rent receipts are for the house - which is a good thing because gas use is going to go up and electric use will go up slightly.  Taylor told me the electricity would go up, but I had to disagree. Donny was literally there, all the time, running a computer and large screen TV literally 24 hours a day.  This new disabled guy doesn't run it all the time and the other new guy is hardly ever there. 

The 3rd one is basically using it as a place where he can have his daughter over on his appointed time with her.  You know, divorced and all of that wonderfulness?  The great thing is currently I'm going to be paying nothing for that house, whereas I had been paying over $200 per month in exchange for Rene watching the dogs.  This deal just got a whole lot sweeter for me.  And so far it appears they are all getting along.  All of them have my text number so if there is an issue they can get a hold of me directly, of which I encouraged them to do if there happens to be a problem. 

Day 3 of diet.
Rather spartan breakfast considering 2 very tiny pancakes made out of well I dunno what they are made out of. They were good, but tiny and a couple pieces of bacon.  Oh and  a cup of coffee is allowed. Actually I couple probably drink as much coffee as I want, but I have been slowly scaling back on that in the last couple of months.  Not a diet thing, just trying to cut back to a moderate amount.  I get into this phase where I"m drinking 3 pots of coffee a day and that's just too much.  I'm down to 2 sometimes 3 cups a day which isn't even a pot of coffee.

Of course, i didn't say anything about quitting coffee altogether lol.

I weighed myself pre diet, I figure I'll weigh again after 7 days and see if there is any change.  Everyone that has done this diet say they have lost at least 5 pounds the first week.  I guess that's nice but to lose 35 pounds is going to take an extended period of time, it doesn't happen overnight and I don't have the mindset that it is going to happen quickly  We can talk about that in 6 months if we're still doing it.  I can foresee some "failings" at Thanksgiving and whenever I go back to Phoenix, I'm just going to put the diet on the shelf for those 2 things and not feel bad about it at all.

I have to say that I kind of threw Taylor for a loop when I started talking about the need to buy new clothing.  She's like, wait I didn't think about that!  Meh, she undoubtedly has clothing from the past when she was thinner.  I should have kept my mouth shut, lol, but I was thinking out loud.  I want to get back down to 32 waist as I had all of my adult life until this fat started piling on. I'm in 35's right now.

No smoked meats for a while.  Not even any point to cooking that much meat, this isn't really a protein diet, it's a mostly fat diet with some protein and almost no carbs.  Unfortunately, Taylor is having a problem staying away from the soda.  She had one the first night.  I didn't want to "lecture" her, but to get into ketosis carbs must be kept at a bare minimum. An entire soda probably will throw that off. Like 25 carbs in a can, that's too much.

________________________

Okay, trip to Walmart.  This house has no blender and several recipes are calling for a blender.  You can improvise without one, but why bother.  You can get a blender for $30.  Got ingredients to make smoothies - like very low carb versions of maybe around 3 to 5 carbs worth.  Do one of those here and there.  And some detox tea since I haven't really detoxed in a long time.

Oh and rye grass seed cause it is on sale and there are bald patches where grass should be growing.  It's the time of year to plant that kind of grass anyway.

Ok, this diet is a bit time consuming cooking these dishes.  Tomorrow won't be any better cooking for tomorrow's meal and likely making Friday dinner in advance.  Oh and Friday lunch.

Anyway, I went ahead and ordered a low priced greenhouse that had rave reviews.  It comes ready to put up and not needing a lot of set up time.  It will be a place to hang out for me anyway and enough room for dogs to be in there as well plus a lot of potted plants and of course the pond.  Minimal outlay for enjoyable relaxing.  I don't want to spend too much money on stuff here, but I will spend some for the things I like as along as it's agreeable with them, which they have no problem with it. The back yard is in a shambles.  It's way too time consuming to continuously rake it up.  Acorns, leaves, dead branches, gumballs (round things that have spikes in them), the junk falls year round, constantly.  The kicker is that none of those trees are on their property, it's all neighbors trees.

I suppose they could get a tree person to cut the limbs back that are hanging over their property but that would cost a fortune. These trees are 75 to 100 feet tall.  I love trees, not in love with these particular variety of trees.  I'd much rather have to deal with pine needles and pine cones than all of this nonsense.  Anyway I won't have to deal with all that junk falling into the pond for fall and winter, as I'm putting the thing up as soon as it comes in - and I have at least a day off to do it with.

Umm, started that last post and totally forgot about it, got busy with getting ready to leave for Brownsville.
We're on day 2 of the diet, well eating is over with for today.
It's really not a bad diet. It's certainly not starvation though it adds up to lower calories than what I've been normally eating at around 1,200 to 1,500 calories per day.
I don't eat much sugar to begin with so a sweet tooth isn't really my problem.
Just eating too much calories at meals, eating truckstop food, not getting enough exercise, but mostly needing to get my eating, what I'm eating to be specific, under control.

Fortunately, the other 2 here are full fledged into this even tho James has no need for dieting.  It's a good thing to be supportive of your wife in such endeavors.  There's absolutely no alcohol on this diet either, even tho some versions allow it.  No beer, no liquor,  no wine.

Anyway, day 2 wasn't bad and tomorrow doesn't look too bad either except spaghetti squash? Stuff looks weird.  Not sure if I'll like it or not, but I get to make the dinner tomorrow.

Oh, the trip. Well, the AC went out on the truck and I just put my foot down today.  Time to fix ALL of this, not just the AC.  They're sending it to the Peterbilt shop tomorrow to fix stuff that the mechanic can't - he doesn't have the software/computer system to do that kind of diagnosing.  So finally get this beeping noise turned down, get the cruise control working, get the blower on the fresh air going again and of course fix the AC. That truck has 655,000 miles on it but's only a 2016, lol.  No, I didn't have anything to do with putting all those miles on it in that short of a period of time. I've put almost 90,000 on it, the rest was a team that must have just done nothing but drive drive drive.

The thing about today was, I was asked to get that trailer back up here as fast as possible, they wanted to have it loaded today.  I was like, well, it's going to be at least 2:30 this afternoon before I get it back.  I wasn't wrong, got up at 3:45 am, left at 4:12 from the yard down in Browsnville and showed up at our yard at 2:41 this afternoon.  I find out that they had nixed the order, didn't need it back that fast, I got up early for nothing I definitely could have slept a couple more hours.  Oh well.

I ended sitting with another driver that's been working there for 20 years about all things truck and trucking, not sure how I got so carried away with the time spent, but it was an interesting conversation.  Coming home was to a rather small meal compared to the rest of them, just about a link of sausage, some broccoli and = oh and nothing, we ran out of lettuce hearts and so I had a boiled egg instead.

And looking online, I've found some recipes for smoothies. Like, different kind of smoother than one would think lol, but I"m going to experiment with almond milk, unsweetened yogurt, raspberries and various spices.  I mean, they had spinach version which for a smoothie sounds - not so great. I like spinach, don't get me wrong, but in a smoothie?

Ahh,  a little more looking into this keto diet stuff. It appears that not only do you not eat hardly any carbs at all, you also don't eat that much protein in comparison to fat.  That was what was throwing me off, why am I supposed to eat so much fat filled stuff?  Because, it appears, once you go into ketosis, that's what the body consumes.  Well, we're following the diet and the only straying I've done is a few very small tastes of turkey pepperoni and some cheese.