Okay, I drank 70 Diet Cokes this last week. And I feel good. I do go to the bathroom a lot, but the exercise is probably good for me. Okay, it’s a bit irritating, like a job to do, drinking 10 Diets, but it’s easier than digging ditches.

My weight is steady, at 168 lbs. I’m assuming my body fat hasn’t moved much either, staying around 10%. My fasting blood sugar, measured in the morning, also seems steady around 80 mg/dL.

Compared to drinking the regular sugared Cokes, drinking Diet Coke is easy. I’m not experiencing the feeling of fullness that I had when I drank the sugared Coke. I also feel that my energy levels are much steadier, and I don’t have the tiredness and carb cravings in the day as when I drank 10 regular Cokes.

On the other hand, the caffeine is really bothering me. Turns out Diet Coke has 10 mg more of caffeine than regular Coke.  42 mg vs 32 mg. But, still it’s only 420 mg of caffeine a day, and depending on the size of the coffees you drink, that could easily be only three or four cups of coffee. I normally drink 4 espressos a day, which actually have less caffeine than regular coffee, but I am still surprised that I’m getting so jittery and dehydrated drinking the Diet Cokes. The first few days last week I was still drinking Diets late in the afternoon, and I had trouble sleeping later.

Dehydrated, too. I worked outdoors at a trade show last week, and between the constant trips to the bathroom, the jitters, and dehydration, I didn’t love the experience. Back in the office now, however, I’m not feeling the dehydration as much, just enough to keep the Diet drinking going, and the bathroom is closer.

I’m maintaining my normal diet, which is generally low-carb, although I did have a couple pretty carby dinners in Nashville last week. Still, that behavior is basically in line with what I consider to be healthy eating; I ate just protein, eggs and sausage, at the hotel for breakfast, and had bunless hot dogs or sausage for lunch.

So, outwardly, not much is changing. I think by this time in the first Cokes experiment I had gained 6 pounds or so. That’s not happening now. But inwardly? Don’t know. I feel good. I gave seven vials of blood for the blood analysis that The Doctors TV Show gave me before I started. We’ll do the same tests after 30 days and see what’s happened inside.

A good friend on Facebook suggested that the Diet Cokes is actually worse for you than the regular Cokes, and I have to confess that, going into this experiment, I don’t agree. I believe that the health problems caused by high insulin levels due to sugar and carb intake are much, much more dangerous than even a chemical-filled menace like Diet Coke. Is water better than Diet Coke? Yes, probably, sure. But if the choice is between Diet and sugar – a billion dollars a minute in U.S. health care costs says that high insulin is very destructive, and Diet Coke doesn’t cause as much, if any, elevated insulin as regular Coke.

Of course there may be other issues, but I would say an unknown possibility far down the road wins over a known, and sure, damage to health right now.

So, here I go, into Week II.  Two more Diet Cokes today, and it’s four o’clock. I have to get to work.

Check out this article in the New York Times, upending one of the biggest dietary ideas of our time: that you need to limit salt to treat your high blood pressure. Turns out, not so much.

Ironically, you actually treat high blood pressure by reducing sugars, and grains. Oops.

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR JANUARY 26, 2015 5:45 AM

A new study suggests that dietary salt may have little or no effect on the risk for heart disease in older adults.

The study, in JAMA Internal Medicine, included 2,642 people, average age 74. Half the participants were women, 62 percent were white and 38 percent were African-American. All were free of heart disease at the start of the study, and researchers followed them for 10 years. They used dietary questionnaires to estimate sodium intake.

The researchers adjusted for sex, race, body mass index and more than two dozen other health and behavioral characteristics. Over a range of sodium intake from less than 1,500 milligrams a day to more than 2,300 (about a teaspoon), there was no significant difference in risk for cardiovascular disease, heart failure or death.

The lead author, Dr. Andreas P. Kalogeropoulos, an assistant professor of medicine at Emory University, acknowledged that estimates of salt intake were based on self-reports, which are not always reliable.

Current guidelines call for sodium intake of less than 1,500 milligrams a day for people older than 51. Dr. Kalogeropoulos said he saw no reason to raise the number.

“We need more prospective evidence in a clinical trial before moving in that direction for older adults,” he said. “By no means are our findings a license to consume more salt.”

So, here’s an example of how to do a low-carb lunch, eating out. In this case, this afternoon, the restaurant was a food truck.

Order a foot-long Polish sausage, apply a bit of mayonnaise and a slice or three of jalapeno, and then don’t eat the bun.

It tasted real good. I was full and satisfied. Homemade mayonnaise usually doesn’t have sugar in it, but store-bought has some. Still, as condiments go, it’s mainly fat and protein.

Mustard works, too. Keep it enjoyable and you’ll keep it going.

I think the food truck guy saw it as a waste of a perfectly-toasted bun.

Here’s an interesting and enjoyable version of a Keto Diet, which features, basically, regular or occasional drinking while being in ketosis. Lose weight and feel, um, tipsy.

But how can drink and stay in ketosis? By drinking only clear hard alcohol like vodka or tequila. I speak for dark liquors personally, I’ve only tried this with vodka. When you drink beer, wine, or a sweetened mixed drink, the carb calories are probably enough to throw you right out of ketosis, so if you want to be in ketosis you can’t drink beer. But you probably guessed that.

But the vodka only “pauses” your ketosis. The methanol in the vodka is converted to usable energy in your liver immediately,  and when it’s used up, the liver goes right back to making ketones out of body fat reserves.

It was kind of amazing the first few times I  tried it, but here’s how it goes: Last night, tested myself after work in heavy ketosis with my ketostix, then had a couple vodka and diet sodas over the evening. Tested myself before bed – out of ketosis. But this morning, I woke up and tested, and I was back in the dark purple heavy ketosis ketostix reading. Pretty cool.

Now there’s NO reason not to go into ketosis regularly.