Eight Pounds of Weight Gain and Holding

My weight has been holding steady at 176 since Saturday, so I seem to be stuck here, or paused here. Maybe this is it, who knows. I’ve got more than two weeks to go.

One of the most curious things has been my fasting blood glucose levels. First, I was surprised to find that it was relatively high before I started the diet. Just on my normal Paleo diet, I had expected to have low glucose readings, but was surprised to find high 90’s, right on the border of pre-diabetes. Then, when I started drinking Cokes, the glucose readings immediately dropped down to low 80’s, a normal reading, and have been gradually going back up since then.

A Paleo friend of mine just bought a glucose monitor and, guess what – his glucose reading was also high 90’s, so he got online and found that it’s actually fairly common for Paleo people to have higher readings when their carb intake is below a certain amount, or after a certain amount of time. I’m not sure I understand the science yet, but it seems to have something to do with a difference between the brain’s need for glycogen while the body is in ketosis, vs muscle and organ needs for glycogen. The brain needs more, and so the level of blood insulin, or apparent insulin resistance, appears to be higher. We’re still investigating, but that could explain the actual drop in glucose levels immediately after I fell so hard off the Paleo Diet.

In regards to the lack of recent weight gain, my wife says that my skinny body is not meant to gain weight, so it doesn’t matter how much sugar I’m eating, I shouldn’t expect to gain more. I think that my body’s refusal to gain more weight over the last four days has to do with the fact that I’m just not eating as much food as I did before I started drinking all this Coke. I’m full all the time, basically. I can go without lunch all together, my dinners are smaller, sometimes I have to really force myself to eat an egg for breakfast after I’ve already had two Cokes.
But I have to start drinking the Cokes early because the last few days it’s been a real challenge to drink all ten by dinner time, and I don’t want to drink them at night because of the caffeine.
So, today I tried hard to get back to the same amount of food I ate before the Cokes. I can’t just drink Cokes all day, right? That can’t be good for you…
Drinking all this soda has made me super aware of all the sugar drinks around me. It seems like everybody I see has a big plastic bottle of some kind of sugar drink in their hands, and I’m like, ugh, I feel you, man…
On the other hand, I’m completely addicted, and craving my first Coke when I get up in the morning.
Tried to run this weekend and failed. Felt too heavy and my legs hurt, so I bailed five minutes in and came home and had a Coke.