The post that needs to be written

It is now the waning hours of 7/29 in the United States (that's 29/7 in many other parts of the world).

One of the reasons for my fascination with dates and times and other units of measure stems from just trying to be both accurate and understood. In grade school, it didn't matter as much- if you weren't understood in English, then everyone switched to Polish. That was the sort of neighborhood I grew up in.

Later on, I joined the Air Force, and not only had to contend with cultures, I had to deal with time zones. Jennifer had some related experiences, and we're pretty much both in tune with time zones, measurements and cultures.

So there I was on the morning of the 28th of July, trying to finish one more blog entry for the month. I eventually decided that the last theme for the month of July was going to be "fitness". Specifically personal fitness (i.e. my fitness).

A couple of days ago, I had announced to my SIL Donna that I was joining her on a weight-loss quest. I'm no stranger to this, but I've not tried very hard in the past, either, so this time, I'm starting out with a very concrete, attainable goal: I want to drop ten pounds in four weeks (28 days). Now, most things I've read say one pound per week is perfectly safe and attainable. Conventional wisdom would seem to indicate that 2.5lbs (1kg== 2.2 lbs) per week is safely doable. My biggest concern is whether I'll hit that target.

Now, as all of this is PII (personally identifiable information), I may not be able or willing to share all of the data even after I'm done with the process. However, ... getting back to Donna.

We had had a small text convo about my goals, and she said something to the effect of, "Oh, you're going keto!" To which I replied, "No, I'm going carb restriction." We pretty much agreed to disagree at that point.

After further research, though, I'm fairly certain that my new diet is not "keto". It's merely carb restriction. Keto is actually the addition of fat to replace carbs. At this point, I do not intend to do that.

In fact, for the first week or two, I don't plan on doing much of anything resembling what is conventionally referred to as a "diet," although I understand that anything one ingests is one's "diet."

Like nearly everything else, keto comes in a wide variety of forms, and there is a "bit" of disagreement of the proponents (a.k.a. "True Believers") in each plan as to what actually constitutes keto. In my early research, I was much surprised to learned that keto seems to have started as an epilepsy treatment rather than a weight loss treatment.

But-as far as my goals go- I'm not doing a strict keto regimen. Keto seems to do a direct substitution of fats for carbs, with the goal of training one's body to get accustomed to using fat for energy rather than carbs. My plan doesn't go that far, at least initially, and is really not that structured. I start out sensible rather than radical: elimination of pasta and packaged foods. No chocolate or sweet snacks. More exercise. 

So, basics for a week or two is the final operational plan. We'll see how that goes, and then tweak as necessary. Numbers will be posted on a "need to know" basis.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Say no more, say no more. (Python and data!). :)

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data management and analysis so you don't have to.