The 'Keto' tag, and what's up with that?

This is where my blog is going to start getting a little weird for those of you who follow me simply for my SL news. This is the only actual "blog" I bother keeping up with, with any regularity. So it has to perform double duty as my virtual world blog, and as my real life blog.

I'm considering actually making that fact a bit more official, and actually supporting the multiple threads of my life, using categories.. but for the moment, it's all just in a pile. I hope you all can cope til I get my shit together.

Real life.

In real life, apart from being Transgendered, I'm also overweight. Let's be honest.. I'm fat, obese, whatever word you want to put on it.. I'm overweight to the point that I have to buy clothes from specialty catalog shops. Now of course some of that is because I'm trans, and I'm taller than the average woman.. but mostly it's because I'm like a size 30, aka a 3X, on a good day.

A bunch of my friends.. or more accurately, a bunch of Cheesius's friends that I'm starting to get to know, all seem to be participating in this sort of super-atkins style carb-starving diet called "Keto". Now I'm no expert when it comes to this thing.. but from what I've read, and in talking to my new friend Lyndse (Hiyee!) , I've come to understand that it's basically "don't eat carbs.. no really.. just don't eat carbs.".

Now that sounds simple on it's surface.. but in America where 80% of all processed food is made with High Fructose Corn Syrup, actual Sugar, (sugar is a carb) and/or is made out of some kind of bread, cornstarch, or using a bread type filler.. well that means that most, if not all of those processed foods are off the menu.

I've spent the last few weeks starting to take a look at the things I eat, and the choices I make. I've been in a heavy "survival" mode for a long time, with a heavy reliance on pasta and 'powdered sauce mixes".. which themselves are mostly carbs in the form of cornstarch and other thickeners. From mashed potato flakes, to spaghetti, to Hamburger Helper and turkey sandwiches (bread).. pepsi, sweets, etc... my current diet is a carbohydrate trainwreck.

But as I say, I've been looking at what I eat, and honestly I'm not too happy about it.

I've never been a "dieter" or an "exerciser".. quite honestly I was always the fat weird kid in school. The one who just gave up on running laps in PE, and just walked. I wasn't well liked, I was always picked last, and I found no joy in physical exertion, especially where anyone could see me, and laugh. I sit in front of my computer 12-14 hours a day, then go back to bed. Between unpredictable sleep, and being financially poor, on top of being trans, having social phobias, and so on.. I just don't "go do" anything.

All that said.. I'm not happy with the status quo, and on some levels I want to change it more than I want to ignore it anymore.

In fact, I can place the blame squarely on the shoulders of tumblr, and reddit. The last few weeks, I've seen far too many images flitting by my screen, a near constant barrage of visuals showing people losing weight, people changing themselves through diet.. not the models you see on commercials, but real people with messy bedrooms. Thanks to Melody, my tumblr is a constant stream of 'sissy porn', with it's overt messages about sexuality, and a subversive message that keeps beating against my mental shoreline, that all these transgendered people look better than me, even the ones who don't.

As I'm sidling up to my 40th Birthday next spring.. I'm starting to take stock in my life. I've always been the fat kid, and I'm getting tired of it.

So will I be going on this "Keto" diet? Will I be annoying you with food porn for the no-carbs set? Maybe.

I just am starting to feel that I need to try something. I don't want the rest of my life to be like this, and I don't want to be like this, for the rest of my life.