Day 2 of Induction

[Tony]

You know, I just realized... I never weighed myself! I guess I'll do that at the gym this evening. Last year when I went through induction, I was still drinking beer, and losing weight. Last night I went to crack open my usual late night beer and decided against it. I think I'll lose even more weight this time. What is everyone's personal experience been with alcohol?

ps. I also had a pretty messed up dream last night... is this related?

[spazzyhilo]

Make sure you weigh yourself before working out, otherwise the sweat sets off the scale.

With alcohol, your body will stop burning the fat to burn the alcohol, then it will resume to burning the fat.

This was something that happened to me that actually felt kind of cool - after 3 weeks of clean induction, drinking nothing but water, excercizing, the whole deal, I took 1 shot of Jagermeister.

Before Atkins I was a pretty heavy drinker, I could drink the best of them under the table, throw up, and drink some more. It took a lot to get me drunk. This one shot of jager, got me drunk in less than 10 mins. I'm talking spinny room, numb face, slurring my words, the works. I could then feel my body process the alcohol, burn it off, then 30 mins later - totally sober. Back to burning fat. It's prolly been the coolest feeling I've ever experienced in a long time.

I haven't had any alcohol since... I'm going to wait a long while again because it was just too cool in my opinion.

[Kent]

Not being a drinker, I can't speak to your first part, but I have seen many reports of more vivid dreams while in Induction. I have to think the brain enjoys the additional blood and oxygen getting to it at night and getting more enthusiastic in its dreaming, or perhaps just longer REM cycles is helping. I know my dreams have gotten a lot more realistic or imaginative since starting Atkins.

[not2late]

Just to add, while your body is busy metabolizing the booze, it's storing away the fat, carbs and protein you've eaten along with the booze until it has a chance to metabolize them. Yep that's right "storing", which is body's code phrase for "storing it away as fat or glycogen". Very counter-productive to your weight loss attempts.

Oh and don't think that if you check your urine for ketones after you've been drinking, you're still "okay" if the stix turn color. The particular ketone body tested for by the ketostix is similar to a by-product of alcohol metabolism and the ketostix can register "positive" for them.