Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Tuesday

If I am doing the math correctly, I completed a fast of just over 30 hours yesterday afternoon, when I finally got a few hunger pangs and felt it was safe to eat.  It was a complete breeze (possibly aided by illness, I admit, but still easy).  Funnily enough, one of my colleagues at work was fasting prior to surgery yesterday, sucking down Gatorade and apparently struggling hard with starvation.  I didn't tell him - it didn't seem fair - and I tend to think people would look at me as some sort of freak for doing IF anyway.

The fast was of no help with weight loss - not that I am trying to lose any more weight - I was at 148.0 this morning.  No idea why, and I don't really care much.  If I spend the rest of my life at 150 or slightly below, I will be a healthy and happy camper.  And that's all I really care about.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Back to the Grind - Monday

Thanksgiving was lovely - sunny, low-mid 60s, relaxing.  We ate well.  And on the trip back, got a case of some sort of food poisoning.  Nasty stomach ache all day yesterday and lingering into this morning, although a dose of liquid Pepto-Bismol seems to be helping.  The upshot?  I've been fasting, with the exception of 2 chocolate-covered peanuts, a can of diet Red Bull, and some Rolaids, since breakfast yesterday (I ate some scrambled eggs in order to take some Advil).  I'm not hungry now, and food is still not very appetizing, so I guess I'll fast until dinner tonight.

So, let's see.  We had several breakfasts of scrambled eggs and meat (most of them fell into that category, actually), I don't think I ate lunch at all, Thanksgiving dinner was as described in the previous entry (fresh turkey cooked unstuffed with butter poured under the breast skin came out perfect), and I had a small popcorn when we went to see the Harry Potter movie (it is amazing to me how that seems like plenty now - I used to finish a large popcorn routinely, although I don't believe I ever did a refill).  Weight this morning was 147.4, so I didn't gain a thing over the holiday weekend, even with the pie and potatoes and stuffing.

Lee is now asking me if I'm done losing weight.  I'm not sure what he's asking - hopefully it's just a question of wardrobe replacement being done, rather than "are you going to go back to eating pasta and cookies now?", because the answer to the latter is "Hell, no!"

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

T (for Thanksgiving) minus two days

My one meal yesterday consisted of pot roast, potatoes and carrots, salad, and a bit of gravy.  Followed by the last of the low-carb, no-gluten cheesecake.  And some bits of cheese and chocolate.  Weird how that last sentence appears in a lot of my eating-log entries.  I do eat low-carb, but not very clean from a paleo standpoint, I think.  I should be snacking on berries or something - or not snacking at all (better plan - but it's an old habit!)

147.8 this morning - still working off the weekend's excesses.  I had a bunch of turkey sausage links for breakfast, after looking into their fat-protein-carb ratios and realizing that they're pretty similar to eggs.  I figure they'll hold me until I can grab something at the airport this afternoon.

Thanksgiving plans include turkey (of course), corn-bread stuffing, mashed potatoes with rice-flour-roux gravy, and no-holds-barred pumpkin pie (I cannot bring myself to screw with the Cooks Illustrated fool-proof pie crust, so we're biting the bullet on that one).  Probably some other vegetable or a salad in there somewhere.  So I'll probably come out of it up a pound or two, and have to knuckle down to make them go away afterward.  The nice thing is that I know now how to make them go away afterward.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Monday before Thanksgiving

Nutritionally, kind of an ugh weekend.  And, apparently, nearly a lost one - perhaps that's related.  In any event, I can't remember whether it was Friday or Saturday that I got the munchies for carbs, sort of, and ended up with Grandma Smith's chile (made it with way too much onion!) for dinner, followed by a bag of microwave popcorn covered with ersatz butter-flavored stuff.  I think that was Saturday, which means that on Friday I had Mexican for dinner - cheese enchiladas smothered in green chile.  Phew - I hate it when I can't remember things.

Yesterday was better - I woke up with the taste of onions in my mouth (definitely had the chile on Saturday) and skipped breakfast because I couldn't think of anything that would make that taste go away.  Had 3 hotdogs for lunch, and various bits of cheese or nuts as snacks.  Fed Mom and Dad for dinner, which was flank steak with a red wine/stock reduction sauce, butternut squash with blue cheese and pecans, a salad, and some experimental gluten free amaretto cheese cake for dessert.  The experiment was a success - ground almonds, sugar (only a little) and butter make a perfectly acceptable cheesecake crust, and the cheesecake recipe (which I reduced the sugar component of, and had some cornstarch in it) was really good.  I have a leftover piece that will be part of my dinner tonight, probably along with leftover flank steak and maybe some leftover turkey.

I am at 148.0 this morning - no surprise after some of that eating, and also no surprise given cyclical events.  I'm fasting today because I woke up with a stomach that basically told me not to eat - and I've learned to listen.

One other thing - apparently my rather snotty excursus on the salt water about a week ago has caused at least my parents to re-think it; it sounds like they probably won't be re-ordering it, I'm glad to hear.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Friday

Broke yesterday's fast with meat from one of those convenience deli roast turkey breast things at the grocery store (good stuff) and gravy made with a roux of butter and sweet white rice flour.  Much more gravy-like than the potato starch option, although the thickening properties again appear to way outpace wheat flour.  Tasted good and the texture was about right - maybe not as silky smooth as a flour-based roux, but perfectly acceptable.  So that's what we'll be using at Thanksgiving.

The fast has not completely settled my stomach, it appears this morning.  Bother.  I'm not sure what I got into, but I figure I'll keep eating pretty clean and it'll go away eventually - and if it doesn't, I'll call the doctor.  I had some more turkey for breakfast - cold with salt and pepper, essentially the middle of a post-Thanksgiving breakfast turkey sandwich.  It was very lean and the skin was roasted to unchewability, so I don't know how long it will last this morning.

Down to 145.8 this morning - not intentionally.  One day I'll track my caloric intake and see if maybe I'm eating way too little or something.  In addition to turkey and gravy yesterday, I had some chocolate almonds and some Kerrygold cheese and some cheese spread on pecans, none of which is low-calorie or low-fat.  On the other hand, all my day's eating did take place between 6 and 9 pm, so the overall quantity had to be somewhat constrained.  I eat when I'm hungry (unless deliberately fasting) and I eat until I'm not hungry - seems like the right thing to do as maintenance.

Thought about buying some strawberries last night, but absolutely none of them had any fragrance, meaning that they'd taste like nothing without added sugar.  So I didn't.


Thursday, November 18, 2010

Thursday

Had quite a dinner last night - a burger topped with melted swiss, bacon (pre-cooked bacon crisps up pretty well on the cold side of a 2-level gas grill), and the remains of the guacamole I bought last week, which stayed surprisingly un-oxidized in just a plastic tub with a lid.  I am not entirely sure I'd do that again; the guac is always spicier than I expect and sort of negates the bacon and swiss - maybe just sliced or mashed avocado would be better with those two.  Nonetheless, it was pretty good.  I also had some leftover mashed potatoes (BOB Evans, not Dave, by the way) - and so did the dogs; the leftovers were bigger than I'd remembered.  But I had the munchies last night, and ended up committing a venial dietary sin: I ate two very stale Girl Scout Samoas.  And they weren't bad.  After that, I didn't want any more, and will probably dispose of the remains in the trash on Monday - they're so stale that they're all stuck together in stacks; two was the smallest stack, or I'd have had only one.

So far, my sin has not caught up with me (and 2 cookies had only 18 grams of carbs, so really, they weren't that bad - but they did have flour).  I was still 146.4 this morning.  I am, however fasting today; my stomach has not taken kindly to something I've eaten since the beginning of the week and I would like to let it rest a bit.

The trash company is collecting non-perishable food through much of the next month, which is a bit of a quandary.  So much of non-perishable food is carb-heavy, and I'd rather not poison the poor.  Tuna comes to mind, and maybe canned beef stew, things like that.  I plan on doing some shopping toward that food drive this weekend and hope to find some alternatives that are healthier than pasta-based stuff-in-boxes.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Wednesday

Well, that was a revelation.  Over the weekend, I'd done the waist and hip measurements for body fat percentage, and it came out at 24.2% - below my "good enough" goal of 25%.  Last night I had a massage (this does link up), and was laying there (what else is there to do in a massage?) trying to work out what 24.2% fat meant my lean body mass was - and I came close, at 111-112 pounds.  This morning, I thought I check to see how much lean mass I'd lost in all this eating, and dragged out a spreadsheet I'd been keeping my measurements in over the summer.  A quick calculation, and now I know.  In June, when I first did the measurements, I had a lean body mass of 111.45 pounds.  Today, I have a lean body mass of 111.27 pounds.  So that means that I've lost, in the past 5 months, something slightly less than 1/5 of a pound of lean body mass.  That's astonishing.

Oh, one other milestone passed this morning, even though I wasn't aiming for it - as of today, I have lost exactly 45 pounds from when I got fed up with my weight after the cruise in April.  I am at 146.4 this morning.  And based on the body fat calculations, every last one of those 45 pounds was fat.  

Every. Last. One.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Tuesday

Had a bit of experimental food for dinner last night - made beef gravy for mashed potatoes (Dave Evans - I think that's the name - refrigerated ones; reasonably recognizable ingredients, no wheat or sugar, and butter listed before the Franken-oils in the list) with beef stock, potato starch, and various flavorings (onion, garlic, S&P).  I had that with a grilled sirloin-tip grassfed steak (which I have to admit I overcooked - 8 minutes per side was a lot too much).  Some observations:
  • Potato starch is significantly better at thickening than the equivalent quantity of flour
  • The resulting gravy (once I thinned it back out some more and turned the heat way down!) was translucent, rather like Chinese-food sauces (cornstarch-thickened). 
  • It tasted really good, however.
Since I would prefer to have the gravy at Thanksgiving look more like gravy than oyster sauce, I'm thinking I want to add some heavy cream to the mix (and finish it with butter before serving, but I might have done that no matter what the ingredients were).  I may still make some trial poultry gravy with chicken stock or broth (depending on what's open in the fridge that day) and a sweet white rice flour/butter roux, for comparison.  Or maybe some poultry potato-starch and cream gravy.  I'm very glad I thought to do the research this week, so that I have time to try things out before serving the result to my family.

146.8 this morning, and cramps threatening but not materializing overnight - over the past months, I have learned that stretching in certain ways while asleep brings that condition to a way-too-abrupt end.

FWIW, I am still rather fascinated by how slender and petite I appear in mirrors these days.  I assume that I'll get used to it eventually; I hope so, anyway, because I'd hate for anyone to catch me admiring the results of nearly 45 pounds' weight loss. 

Another useful note: my sleep is so much better these days.  It's just more useful or effective or something.  I know that I dream way more than I used to, and I can say (without remembering specifics) that my dreams are more coherent and narrative-oriented than they used to be.  And I tend to wake up after about 8 hours' sleep, rested and able to get up and do things (not that I always want to get up at that point).  Even last week, when I was fighting the onset of Standard Time, I did sleep well.  Why that should have anything whatsoever to do with my food choices is beyond me, but there it is.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Monday

With a weekend entirely to myself and a not-terribly-taxing list of "to do" items, I actually ate really well.  Burger patty with guacamole and cheese for lunch on Saturday, steak and sweet potato for dinner, snacks on Sunday in lieu of breakfast or lunch (cheese and nuts, mostly), and beef stew with potatoes, carrots, celery, and onion, thickened with potato starch, for dinner.  I also had some coconut water thinned with Perrier (not nearly as good as I'd hoped; it went from tasting like melted caramels to tasting a good bit like dust) on Saturday to see if I could get the cramps to stay away.  And it does seem to have helped.  I'll probably have the other half can tonight in some form.

I'm down to 146.6 today, and I did a body-fat measurement yesterday and it came out at 24.2%.  The pants I made this weekend, based on the identical pattern I'd used a few weeks ago, with the same alterations, feel very roomy, all of a sudden.  I really don't want to keep altering or making new clothes, so I guess I'll add in more potatoes and corn tortillas and see if that slows things down.  Given that I'm not really losing buckets o' weight - 0.6 pounds over the last 3-4 weeks, net, I think - and given that my bodyfat is diminishing, I figure that this is just more of the body composition changes promised with this way of eating. 

Elizabeth had more confirmation yesterday that wheat is not her friend.  Had a breadstick at Olive Garden, on a fairly empty stomach, and it reacted almost immediately.  I'm glad we finally figured it out, but wish we'd tried this years ago - she probably would have been present at more of her junior and senior years of high school if we had.  Which brings me, in a round-about way, to the potato starch.  I was searching the celiac/gluten-free websites for non-wheat gravy thickeners, and potato starch, sweet white rice flour, and arrowroot came up.  I bought the first two on Saturday while shopping (never did find the arrowroot), to try out for Thanksgiving gravy.  I used the potato starch as thickener for the stew yesterday, mixed with cold water in a slurry and then added to my portion before eating, and it was perfect, so for now, I won't worry about the rice flour, which is touted as something one can make a reasonably decent roux with.  I'm thinking that with either of these, creamed chip beef on mashed potatoes can re-enter our diets - yeah!  That's such a family comfort food, and I've sort of been missing it.  And I know that Elizabeth has chip beef in her freezer.  I'll do some experimenting - maybe one night this week - and hope to bring her a recipe that works when I go out there next week.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Later, Friday

I have been stricken with a horrid case of boredom munchies.  Keeping it to things like very dark chocolate and nuts (altho' some are peanuts, which are not so good), but eating a lot this afternoon.  Ugh.

Friday

I detect a pattern.  On Friday, I weigh X.  Over the weekend, I commit some sort of dietary solecism, such as my chips-and-salsa binge last Sunday.  On Monday, sanity reasserts itself, and I eat properly all week, and, come the next Friday, I weigh X again.  And so it was this week.  147.2 this morning, with feet and ankles much closer to normal.  And an upcoming weekend with - I hope - fewer opportunities to sin.  But we shall see.

About a week ago, my sister posted on Facebook that she was in high hopes that the salt water had improved her lipids and thyroid numbers.  I heard from my parents last night that it hadn't done anything (I am not surprised).  I did finally have a minor rant about the salt water in the presence of someone other than Lee or Elizabeth; I think my father is of my opinion on it, but Mom is shelling out the $130/month for the snake oil and was a bit taken aback at my using terms like "placebo effect".  Oh, well.  I also went off on the subject of statins for women - because, with bad lipids (according to CW, anyway), my sister is on one.  She shouldn't be.  If she has thyroid issues, she should be on thyroid supplements.  And she should be eating to cure the metabolic syndrome that she's had for a fairly long time - I can think back 10 years to stories about her blood sugar being suddenly low and turning her into a minor ogre.  And, since she knows basically what we've been doing and dismissed it a while back as "not sustainable", I don't think there's much I can do for her.  Which is sad.

Got a grassfed sirloin tip steak in the fridge defrosting for dinner - planning on that and a sweet potato, both with lots of pastured butter.  I actually managed to produce an egg-and-bacon breakfast this morning, yeah!  Getting the timing right so that things can sort of cook unattended while I get ready for the day is tough, though.  But worth it - that is more satiating than most anything else I might eat in the morning.


Thursday, November 11, 2010

Well, that's a bit better

Fasting works.  I got rid of quite a bit of the gained water over the course of the evening/night, and have more-visible ankles this morning.  Down by 1.4 pounds, to 148.2 this morning.   I'm not all the way there, though - my shoes are still tight.

Had a good dinner last night - 2 grass-finished hamburgers and zucchini parmesan.  The latter is an adaptation of a pasta recipe well-beloved around my family; for me, at least, it is possible to substitute thin-sliced zucchini ribbons (just using the vegetable peeler) for the pasta - and cooking the "noodles" is much quicker, maybe a minute or two at most.  So it's made by boiling the zucchini noodles with a bit of dried onion, draining them, and then adding butter, sour cream, parmesan cheese, and parsley to the hot pot, making a sauce.  The results are very tasty.

I can taste the most minor difference in the grass-finished beef from the corn-fed, but I actually prefer the grass-finished taste, so far.  I need to read up some more on the benefits, since the price is so much higher.  I like that the fatty acid profile is closer to fish, and think that it's being anti-inflammatory-er is a good thing, but what I don't know is if we are truly suffering from inflammatory things.  And I've read that beef, as a ruminant, somehow negates some of the grain-fed badness, but I haven't learned how, yet.

Unfortunately, the return to sane eating brought the leg cramps back.  I need to find something that will make them go away, without causing the kinds of issues I've been having this week.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Wednesday

I got some of the foot-swelling to go away, but not all of it, by any means.  I wish I knew exactly what I did to trigger it, but I think perhaps the best bet would be to avoid chips and salsa just before flying, from now on.  Anyway, down to 149.6 again this morning, so my feet weigh a pound less than they did yesterday. 

I'm fasting this morning, just to get my system to clear up a bit.  I see a term on the various Paleo/Low-Carb websites occasionally: eating "clean", meaning good meat and vegetables and no refined carbs.  I did not do that this weekend, and I think I'm paying the price now, so a quick fast will do a reset and let me start fresh.

A plug for heavy cream, though: I was out late last night, and got maybe 6 hours of sleep.  Had cream in 2 cups of tea this morning, and feel far less dessicated than I usually do after a late night.  And it tastes so amazingly good!

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Ugh

For reasons that are best known only to itself, my left foot has decided to swell all up today, with my right foot also swollen but a distant second.  Drinking crazy amounts of tea in an effort to spur it to let go.  If it's not back to normal in the morning, even if the nighttime becomes a steady sequences of bathroom trips, I'm fasting tomorrow.

So where would this have come from?  Some thoughts: plane flights in jeans, always good for some foot swelling; chips-and-salsa at the airport, full of salt and carbs (what was I thinking???); dinner yesterday, including 46g of pork-and-beans carbs and 7g of V8 carbs and added salt to taste.  Those would be my prime culprits, I guess.

Gosh - I hope the tea/liquid consumption works either now or after bedtime; it would be a serious problem if it started to work during an aria of some sort.

Tuesday

Weekend's catching up with me - I don't understand quite why weight gain is on a time delay, but it seems to be.  150.6 this morning, some of it water, judging by the state of my feet (swollen).  I had turkey bacon for breakfast, and needed both peanuts and jerky to get to the end of the day.  A concoction known as "Grandma Smith Chile" for dinner - ground beef, pork and beans, V-8, and chile powder.  It's quite tasty, if it isn't exactly Paleo.  Also some cheese and nuts in the evening.

Today I got up about 10 minutes early and managed to cook some eggs fresh.  I got very quickly tired of the quiches - they go all soggy and are just rather nasty to deal with after a couple of days, so while I'll probably make them again in some form, I won't make enough for a week at one sitting.  Dinner tonight (if I eat it) is either taco salad or something out, depending on the weather and my timing; going to the opera at 7:30.  And it's supposed to snow somewhere, starting this afternoon, so it may be I "rush" home, feed the dogs, and leave again immediately.  I hope not, but if this is the first storm of the season, everyone will drive like life-long Floridians for a day, and it could be ultra-nasty.

Monday, November 8, 2010

November 8th

Had a lovely weekend in Phoenix, and mostly ate well.  I think that Elizabeth's stomach finally convinced her to give up bread for real - we had In-N-Out for lunch Saturday and she had a bun and a near-immediate bout of lower-intestinal distress.  I left her with a bunch of spaghetti sauce (christening the new crock-pot), some cooked ground beef ready for taco salad or stroganoff or chile, and 5 individual foil pans of a family favorite casserole.  The last is a bit suspicious, though, because it uses concentrated cream of celery soup, and I'm not personally sure that it won't set her stomach off - I think it probably has wheat in it.

Anyway, capped off the weekend by eating chips and salsa at the airport - and as a consequence, was up to 149.6 this morning.  And I had leg cramps on Saturday night, despite potatoes at dinner two nights running, which should have kept the carbs at a reasonable level.  Apparently it wasn't enough.

For the record, the Flying Dutchman at In-N-Out is kind of boring - just meat and cheese.  I think I'll go back to protein-style and just eat it with a fork from now on.

Friday, November 5, 2010

That's odd

I kind of carbed up yesterday to keep the leg-cramps at bay: potato chips in the morning (stopped the "bubbly" sensation cold), cashews in mid-afternoon, and the somewhat-low-carb combo from McDonald's for dinner - a bunless double quarter pounder with cheese and a small fries (which, I learned yesterday, have some wheat in them - go figure).  I know the chips were double-digit carb grams, as were the fries, and I think the cashews were up there, too, so I figure I probably topped 60 grams, easily, which is really high for me.  Two results:
  • First, and probably of most short-term importance, I slept the night through with no eruptions to stomp hard on my left foot.  So I achieved my main goal.
  • Second, mysteriously, I was back at 147.2 this morning, so upping the carbs (granted, no obvious sugar involved in any of it), made the last of my water weight disappear - either that, or I lost actual fat and when the water goes, I'll weigh even less. 
Makes me think I have no idea how this juju works.  And I don't, really.  I trust the evidence and synthesis presented in Good Calories, Bad Calories, but even Taubes admits that all he's really done is busted the Lipid Hypothesis; the research isn't out there to tell us what we should be doing, really, except "not that".  I am really looking forward to his new book - I think it shows up in December.  Even if it is just GCBC boiled down for a mass consumer market, it should be a good read.

Weekend away coming up - a trip to Phoenix.  I think I see a protein-style In-N-Out double cheeseburger in my future...

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Thursday

Boy, did I speak too soon.  I could feel leg cramps settling in, as if for the season, starting mid-evening yesterday, while I was watching TV.  Took 2 potassium and a magnesium before bedtime, but they did absolutely nothing.  I think I was out of bed dealing with them maybe only twice, but the cramp in both cases was in my shin - nearly impossible to stretch out, because the position needed invokes the calf cramp.  It seems like the only way to get it to go away is to relax - also very hard to do with your shin cramping up.  So I'm kind of tired this morning, compounded by both dogs getting cold (I guess) at 1 am and whining enough that I let them out of their kennels.  Ugh.

After 3 whole days living alone, I have great sympathy for Biz.  I had forgotten just how hard it is to feed oneself in that situation, and the lack of bread makes it doubly hard.  I had a sirloin burger for dinner last night, grilled, and absolutely plain.  A bit of the usual snacks afterward.  This morning, I could not face the quiche-and-bacon option, so I had more cheese.  "Cheese - it's what's for dinner" around our house right now, anyway.  Me and the Masai - the all-dairy diet.  Except I think they also consume blood.  I'm not into that.

Weight this morning: 148.2.  I really hate it when I have all that pain for nothing.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Wednesday

So far, so good, with upping the tablet potassium and drinking V8 at breakfast.  I had a very low carb day yesterday and not a hint of a cramp overnight.  Breakfast was mini quiches and bacon, snack mid-afternoon was beef jerky, and I basically had cheese in the evening, along with some dark-chocolate almonds.  Not particularly nutritious, and I plan on having meat for dinner tonight.

Down to 148.0 this morning again, with the scale having a hard time deciding between that and 147.8.  However, I really would like to stay put in this general range, with variations for muscle gains and body-comp changes, I think.  Especially having just invested rather a lot of money in new clothes; I'd rather not do that again, especially as I've had to make some of the new clothes. 

I think I will be introducing some of the basic principles from the book, French Women Don't Get Fat into my way of eating as we move forward - the seasonal eating and mindful way of approaching treats, anyway.  Since I'm convinced, from a standpoint of non-expertise, anyway, that our insulin metabolism is really a mechanism to pack on fat for a long winter when the sweets are plentiful (late summer and fall), it seems logical that we should eat plants seasonally - fruits in summer and early fall, root veg and nuts over the winter, leaves in the spring, etc.  It may be a little harder in the vicinity of a supermarket (on the principle that it's summer somewhere, one could ignore seasons inside one), but worth a shot.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Tuesday

I managed a full-day fast yesterday - didn't eat until dinner time, and then it was leftover meat from the day before.  I was very hungry - only hungry, not shaky or weak or lightheaded - by dinner, but I like being able to get the toxins out of my system and let everything rest - I feel better for it afterward.  Had some cheese and nuts-and-cheese-spread, and a bit of dark chocolate after - a reward for doing a fast while having to hear my co-workers bitch about the leftover Halloween chocolates I'd brought in (I wasn't going to eat them, after all!), and having to smell them - I don't really want to eat milk chocolates made with HFCS, but the smell is very tempting.  That said, the dark chocolate (Lindt 85% cacao) was way better.

I took extra potassium and a magnesium at bedtime last night, to ward off any cramp issues.  It seems to have worked, but it's possible that I haven't leached out enough potassium yet to have any leg cramps.  I added V-8 to breakfast as well as 2 potassium tablets, to see if I can keep things at bay for a while longer.  From what I've read, I really don't want to be potassium-deficient.

Down to 148.2 this morning, probably water.  I had a couple of crustless quiches and some precooked bacon for breakfast.  I'm finding that if you nuke the precooked bacon long enough, it's pretty good.  Not fabulous, but edible - and easier for me than turkey bacon when time is tight.  So I think that will work out pretty well.

Monday, November 1, 2010

More Monday

Last post was a bit brief; today's crazy-full of meetings (blecch).  I was only mildly tempted by the Halloween candy last night - and once I got away from the odor of milk chocolate, the temptation dissolved entirely, so I never had any of it, and it's been donated to work today, where I won't eat any of it again.  Fasting today - just want to let my digestive system rest a bit after the weekend.  Not hungry at all, so far (10:30 am).  I fasted breakfast yesterday, but did some snacking in the afternoon - cheese and nuts.  No problems having sufficient energy to plant 200 flower bulbs while in the fast yesterday morning.  I have leftover meat for dinner tonight - gotta love the French "paradox" - we both ordered a mixed grill entree and had steak, chicken, and sausage in a demi-glace that was beyond wonderful - and fully paleo.  So I'm having it some more tonight, minus the demi-glace, unfortunately.  I think that's something I need to learn to make, because it's definitely a "who needs roux-based gravy" item.

Realized last night that I should have got a smaller skirt when ordering some of my new clothes.  This is getting mildly ridiculous, really - I cannot stay the same size for more than about a week, sometimes (others, I stay put just long enough to decide to order new stuff, and then drop a size).  I am hoping that I'm starting to plateau permanently - I don't want to have to go "off the diet" in order not to lose weight!  And I wish I could get other people to realize that this really is not a "diet" in that sense - I keep having to tell everyone that this is just how I eat, now.  Sheesh!

Monday

Ate a lot of carbs over the weekend - La Loma for lunch Saturday and French food (with a bit of bread, mashed potatoes, squash soup, and flourless chocolate cake) for dinner last night.  Results (weightwise) better than I feared - only 148.8 this morning.  Apparently my body likes being in the 140s.  Weird.