Since my last post I’ve spent 5 days in New Orleans, followed by 3 days in Austin.  I returned home Tuesday night and have been completely exhausted ever since!  I haven’t been on a bike since Saturday.  And, in 2 days I’ll be riding the Breathless Agony ride.  Yikes.

I was able to stay in ketosis during my travels, but had a strange experience after returning from Austin.  Even though I was very careful with my food, my ketosis levels were very low the day after I got home (.4).  The levels continued to fall to .2 the next morning, and I was not even in ketosis last night when I did a final test.  The only difference was the consumption of some “Life Change Fat Burners” capsules that my aunt gave me.  The ingredients included Choline, Inositol, Lecithin, L-Methionine, Phosphatidyl  Serine.

Based on some limited research online, it appears that L-Methionine may have been the culprit.  See Toxicity of Methionine in Humans and an excellent blog post, https://fatboymuscleman.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/how-to-keep-yourself-out-of-ketosis/ for more information.

Lesson learned:  Never take supplements without doing the research FIRST!  (Head slap.)

Tonight I’m in New Orleans and will be here until Thursday.  Tomorrow many of the wonderful people I work with will arrive for Director’s meetings, and on Tuesday the whole ElderCounsel team will arrive for our company retreat.  I’m very excited to be here, but packing sure was a challenge!

I’m determined to stay in ketosis this week, which meant packing a lot of my own stuff, and hoping for a little luck when eating out.  There are certain things I don’t want to be without, in particular, coffee blended with butter!  So, I packed the following:

Blender, kettle to boil water, ground coffee beans, french press, cooler, Super Starch snack bars, Atkins shakes, coconut oil, tea bags, lots of nuts, and all of the supplements I take daily:

Thank you to my wonderful friend and colleague, Melissa, who took time today to find me grass-fed butter and heavy cream!  I should be set now, even if there’s not much for me to eat in the catered meals.

We’ll be working outside most of Wednesday helping to repair homes that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina.  No, that’s not a typo.  There are still many homes that have not yet been rebuilt.  I was here in 2011 for an ElderCounsel retreat and was amazed by how much work there was to do.  Now, 4 years later, there is still so much to be done.  The ElderCounsel team will be out in full force doing our part Wednesday!

Now if I could just find a bike to ride…

Staying in ketosis is hard enough when you’re at home and can fix all of your own meals.  This week I had a short trip for a speaking engagement in Louisville, KY.  I was only gone one night, but I still worried about my meals, especially given the long flights to Louisville from Orange County, CA.  It was a good “training trip” for future trips I have coming up that are much longer.

I woke up at 4:15 am Thursday morning so I would have time to make my regular breakfast, and coffee blended with butter and MCT oil.  It’s a good thing I did because besides some nuts, that was all I was able to eat until dinner.  I was asked to dinner by a group, but thankfully we went to a farm-to-table restaurant where all of the food was from a 100 mile radius from farmers who owned the restaurant.   I had “bone marrow butter” for the first time, which accompanied my steak.  The name freaked me out a little, but it wasn’t bad and I was grateful for the extra fat.  I passed on the au gratin potatoes and had extra arugula salad instead.

Unfortunately I was hungry a few hours later when I got to my hotel room!  I had packed coconut oil and tea bags with me, and that definitely saved me both that night and today as I’m traveling home.  Last night I had a cup of tea with half and half and a spoonful of coconut oil and that satisfied my hunger enough for me to get to sleep.  And coconut oil was no problem to get through security.

Breakfast this morning consisted of some of the worst scrambled eggs I’ve ever had, and a piece of sausage that was not much better! Needless to say I was hungry about an hour later.  I was able to grab a hamburger and steamed broccoli for lunch, though (Chili’s did not bat an eye at my order).  On my flight home tonight, I had some cheese, almonds with some dried apricot, and a cup of coffee with coconut oil and cream, and that took the edge off.   I will make sure to travel with coconut oil and tea bags in the future!  It’s much easier than trying to travel with butter…

I am almost home and looking forward to a nice ketogenic meal with my husband and a long bike ride tomorrow!