Day 21 - Fat Nuclear Bombs
Keto diet blogs are full of recipes for bite-sized hunks of pure frozen fat known as "fat bombs". The recipes vary widely, but the basic formula is the same: a bit of flavor extracts or powders, a bit of erythritol or stevia, mixed with a base of either coconut oil, cream cheese, or solid butter. During my fat fast I described my experience with creamcheese and Truvia (and crushed chocolate, and walnuts, and vanilla extract, and cinnamon . . . whatever I could imagine to add that would mask the hideous taste I had created). Throwing up repeatedly the next morning was enough to turn me off from the idea for a while.
But two weeks have passed. I believe that I am keto-adapted (my breath is much more tolerable but I still seem to be losing weight), but lately I've been feeling extremely cold all the time. It's not an unusual experience while I'm at my icebox office, but even at home in layered sweaters and wool socks I'm shivering with numb fingers and toes. I did a little research, and the keto community seems to agree that this is a sign of fat intake being too low to support heat production. I guessed it was time to bring back the fat bombs.
About 10 original creamcheese-nut clusters remain in my fridge, but frankly, I can't even look at them without feeling queasy. Having just bought 4 sticks of butter, I quickly found this simple butter-based recipe: Cinnamon Butter Bites. I subbed out the small amount of honey for stevia in the raw (having discovered that I am one of a lucky few whose stomach does not like erythritol) and blended everything up according to the instructions to make a cautious 1/4 batch. They smell amazing, sweet and buttery, and look like rich hunks of fudge. After two hours in the freezer I popped them out of their ice tray and took a bite.
The taste is cinnamon sweet tempered with butter, the texture is creamy and melts in your mouth . . . and the second I bite into it, my stomach lurches in a panicked wave of nausea. Like some sort of sweet from the Upside-Down, it's everything you'd want a treat to be and yet somehow so, so wrong. It is it the sugar alcohol my body reacts so badly to? Is it a psychosomatic reaction, manifesting the ingrained cultural revulsion to eating literal chunks of lard? I really don't know, but it's a struggle to choke it down. I bite, chew, and swallow, avoiding letting anything melt into my tastebuds, trying to think about other things. This is supposed to be a treat.
The recipe's comments are all totally positive. 'The recipe is amazing, how do I stop myself from eating them all at once?' Which leads me to question . . . am I messing up these recipes, or do these recipes happen to mess up me? Further research (a.k.a. Reddit) has suggested that nausea can result from jumping right into extremely fatty nuggets like these, especially in the case of coconut oil. Perhaps I should have worked my way up bite by slow bite over the course of the day and tried a bit more tomorrow. I'm also curious to see if this fat bomb triggers the lovely next-day expulsions that my previous attempt did. Tomorrow promises to be exciting.
I have to say, I do think I am a bit warmer.
But two weeks have passed. I believe that I am keto-adapted (my breath is much more tolerable but I still seem to be losing weight), but lately I've been feeling extremely cold all the time. It's not an unusual experience while I'm at my icebox office, but even at home in layered sweaters and wool socks I'm shivering with numb fingers and toes. I did a little research, and the keto community seems to agree that this is a sign of fat intake being too low to support heat production. I guessed it was time to bring back the fat bombs.
About 10 original creamcheese-nut clusters remain in my fridge, but frankly, I can't even look at them without feeling queasy. Having just bought 4 sticks of butter, I quickly found this simple butter-based recipe: Cinnamon Butter Bites. I subbed out the small amount of honey for stevia in the raw (having discovered that I am one of a lucky few whose stomach does not like erythritol) and blended everything up according to the instructions to make a cautious 1/4 batch. They smell amazing, sweet and buttery, and look like rich hunks of fudge. After two hours in the freezer I popped them out of their ice tray and took a bite.
The taste is cinnamon sweet tempered with butter, the texture is creamy and melts in your mouth . . . and the second I bite into it, my stomach lurches in a panicked wave of nausea. Like some sort of sweet from the Upside-Down, it's everything you'd want a treat to be and yet somehow so, so wrong. It is it the sugar alcohol my body reacts so badly to? Is it a psychosomatic reaction, manifesting the ingrained cultural revulsion to eating literal chunks of lard? I really don't know, but it's a struggle to choke it down. I bite, chew, and swallow, avoiding letting anything melt into my tastebuds, trying to think about other things. This is supposed to be a treat.
The recipe's comments are all totally positive. 'The recipe is amazing, how do I stop myself from eating them all at once?' Which leads me to question . . . am I messing up these recipes, or do these recipes happen to mess up me? Further research (a.k.a. Reddit) has suggested that nausea can result from jumping right into extremely fatty nuggets like these, especially in the case of coconut oil. Perhaps I should have worked my way up bite by slow bite over the course of the day and tried a bit more tomorrow. I'm also curious to see if this fat bomb triggers the lovely next-day expulsions that my previous attempt did. Tomorrow promises to be exciting.
I have to say, I do think I am a bit warmer.
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