[caption id="attachment_9324" align="alignleft" width="300"] Only traces this week[/caption]

In terms of the numbers, it has not been a good week on the diet. This time last week I was 82kg and today I'm 83.3kg, with an additional 200g of fat. I've had a sluggish week and I'm a bit fatigued. I found it really hard at the beginning of the week to get going. I've found this on keto diets before - you need to be able to push yourself out of bed and then you are absolutely fine.

Counterintuitively, you do need to maintain enough calories for the diet to be a success. Perhaps I'm not eating enough. However, a few fellow wise earth travellers have suggested I might be suffering from SAD. Perhaps it's time to get out in the sunlight more or get a SAD lamp.

I had a very small red wine yesterday at the office when they brought the drinks trolley round, but other than that I've not had a drink since Saturday. My diet has been solid - a bulletproof coffee in the morning, a riceless burrito bowl for lunch and then meat or fish with vegetables in the evening. If I've been hungry, I've snacked on peanuts. I have not been in ketosis much this week, just traces of ketones at best.

It circumstances like this where the dieter is tempted to give up. Not me - I had similar problems before in 2012 when I did the diet for the first time. On week 4, nothing seemed to be happening and then a few small adjustments (in that case it was drinking more water), weight loss started to happen very quickly.  Keep calm and carry on.

Today I'm going to take it easy. I had a Bulletproof-style coffee to start the morning and will have something light for lunch. I will escape the house for a quick pint in the early afternoon (please Gentle Reader, do not tell the wife, and I promise to keep your dark secrets too). Later on, I will have a proper cheat meal but I won't be going large today. Here are the statistics: