A recipe and some science

Day 9 and 109 kilos (back on the Ikea scales)

The first thing of note is that my weight appears to have gone back up by a kilo. As I have taken nothing except supplements and water and a "colon cleanser", I can only attribute this to the fact that the chief's scales in Kuala Lumpur are rubbish. More interesting though is the fact that I have therefore lost only 1 kilo since the morning of day six. I say only but I am really looking at it from the perspective of continuation of the last few days. So what's going on I wonder? There has been no cheating and I have at least done some walking every day so I really cannot say why the process has suddenly slowed down. As a result and to see if I can re-invigorate the weight loss, I'll go for a 40 minute bicycle ride today.

Further to yesterday's rant I have copied an entry from one of my favourite web sites - Wikipedia:  

Devilled kidneys is a Victorian British breakfast dish consisting of lamb's kidneys cooked in a mixture of Worcestershire sauce, mushroom ketchup, English mustard powder, butter, cayenne pepper, salt, and black pepper. Mild curry powder may also be used.

I still want to try it - particularly with the curry powder.

Here's a brief picture of what is currently happening to my body in layman-ish terms and as I understand it (which might mean that I'm talking rubbish).  There are also several "cut and pastes" from Wikipedia which explain the unpleasant chemical taste and my appalling breath.

Something called glycogen is manufactured by my liver and muscles and this provides me with my energy. The basic building blocks of glycogen are the foods that I eat on a daily basis. Obviously I am no longer putting food into my body and so it must use a different energy source once the stores of glycogen in my liver have run out.That new source appears when my fat gets broken down to give fatty acids and glycerol. The body then uses the fatty acids in a process called beta-oxidation which is far too complicated to explain but basically it provides a source of energy to replace glycogen. One of the products of beta-oxidation is acetyl-CoA, which can be further used in the Krebs cycle. During prolonged fasting or starvation, acetyl-CoA in the liver is used to produce ketone bodies, leading to a state of ketosis.
The brain cannot use long-chain fatty acids for energy because they are completely albumin-bound and cannot cross the blood-brain barrier. Not all medium-chain fatty acids are bound to albumin. The unbound medium-chain fatty acids are soluble in the blood and can cross the blood-brain barrier.[2] The ketone bodies produced in the liver can also cross the blood-brain barrier. In the brain, these ketone bodies are then incorporated into acetyl-CoA and used in the citric acid cycle.
The ketone body acetoacetate will slowly decarboxylate into acetone, a volatile compound that is both metabolized as an energy source and lost in the breath and urine.
 

God - that was a dull. I'll try not to do it again.

General round up for the day. The food fantasies are beginning to recede now and all is well - this is the easy part and I'm starting to enjoy it now.