Monday, January 31, 2011

Interesting

Dr. Harris has posted a really interesting article about fat, here.  A whole new way of looking at fats. (And I'm afraid we eat primarily IRAF and TemPO at our house - too many nuts!).

Monday

An unusual weekend - I lost 2.2 pounds.  144.0 this morning.  And that's fine by me.  We did go to a movie on Saturday, after eating Mexican at a restaurant, so that means a rather large infusion of corn-based carbs then.  I was 144.8 yesterday, which was down a bit from Saturday morning. 

Good dinner last night - pork tenderloin, pan-seared and roasted, baked sweet potatoes, and southern-style green beans, cooked in the pressure cooker (at the end, anyway).  We loaded the sweet potatoes with butter (French butter with sea salt crystals - pretty darn good stuff!) and sour cream, too.  Apart from that, yesterday was a snack-fast day - had some 90% chocolate, some walnuts, and some chocolate almonds, but nothing else after breakfast, which was 6 pieces of turkey bacon.

Today may be an IF day by default - I had breakfast, but I'm supposed to fly to Phoenix at 5:35 tonight, which sort of clobbers the dinner hour.  I may go ahead and take advantage of that and let my stomach rest for the day.

We did try the Mexican stew recipe - and it was fairly awful.  Neither of us is a fan of red-chile enchilada sauce, but the green chile versions in the store all had a lot of franken-food ingredients and flour in them, so I went with the red (which is what the recipe called for).  The spice was hot, and as in all red-chile dishes, burnt-tasting.  After a few bites of it, we opted to go out to dinner - so can we blame Paleo eating for making us eat corn meal and popcorn?  Seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Must have been water

After an egg-and-real-bacon breakfast yesterday, I had 1/4 cup of walnuts and the Lone Star Steakhouse Wedge with steak medallions with a glass of fairly dry chardonnay for dinner.  5 almonds with dark chocolate and 2 slices of cheddar afterwards.  This morning?  145.0.  So either my downward weight trend is also lagging by a couple of days (always possible), or I was all swelled up yesterday for some reason. 

No matter, it's gone now.  Omelet and bacon for breakfast, and we are having the Everyday Paleo Mexican Stew for dinner - it's already in the crock pot.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Friday

A day to celebrate - the scale told Lee this morning that he weighs less than 200 pounds!  Me, the news wasn't so great - up to 146.2, which, considering I ate very well yesterday, must be that lingering after-effect thing I see repeatedly, and have to do with the trail mix and tortilla chips and cashews earlier in the week.

My stomach is unhappy today.  It was a bit achy when we went to be last night, so I slept very poorly.  I probably should have fasted this morning, but since Lee was breakfasting out, I had him cook me real bacon - to which he added eggs (I wasn't clear explaining that I only wanted bacon, so I ate them too).  Not sure why it's complaining this morning; here's yesterday's eating:
  • 2 eggs and 3 strips of turkey bacon
  • 1/4 cup of walnut pieces
  • 3 bratwurst boiled in beer and grilled (surely it wouldn't be any traces of barley in the beer?)
  • Dijon mustard
  • 1/2 glass of Gewurztraminer
  • 1/2 glass of Pinot Noir (we were finishing off some bottles - and I did NOT mix them)
  • Salad with blue cheese dressing and some Feta in it
  • 2 chocolate walnuts
  • Tea (some with cream, some without)
I think that's it - pretty standard fare around our place, and very low carb.  Ah, well.  I'll behave today - maybe go have steak medallions and a wedge for dinner if we don't eat at home - and things will sort themselves out.

I didn't start the Mexican stew from yesterday's link yet - I think we will try it over the weekend, though.  If we do, I'll report back on it.

Oh - and I told Lee that he wasn't to celebrate breaking 200 by having the special party waffles at Village Inn this morning.  He said he knew that.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

This looks way good!

The Everyday Paleo blog blows away the notion that eating or cooking Paleo is at all difficult, with amazing pictures.  Think I need to try out the recipe in this post tomorrow!

Thursday

Started to eat better yesterday; just didn't finish that way.  145.8 this morning as a result.  Easily fixed, though.  Yesterday's breakfast was 1 scrambled egg (we were out), 2 pieces of turkey bacon, and a slice of cheddar cheese to try to add some fat and satiety.  No lunch, but rather a lot of walnuts during the day - I brought them to avoid eating trail mix, and while that worked, I've noticed that having food at my desk generally means I'm going to eat it whether I need it or not.  And I probably didn't need it.  Anyway, dinner was two Stouffer's stuffed peppers, which had 40 grams of carbs between them (I did not read the ingredient list, probably for my sanity more than anything else).  I also had some of the 90% chocolate, a couple of chocolate almonds, and some more cheese - one or two slices of cheddar.  Oh, and a snack-sized bag of cashews. 

A couple of observations: it's nearly always better to cook our own stuff than to rely on convenience foods or restaurants, and I need to find activities to occupy myself with in the evenings; the cashews were more boredom eating, as we sat watching NCIS reruns on TV, than anything to do with actually being hungry.  The night before, we were occupied going through the mail that had accumulated while Lee was gone (things I couldn't deal with) and transferring movies from the Mac to his laptop/USB drive via our in-home LAN.  And I didn't eat anything after dinner that night - because we were busy doing things.  I can find things to do in the evenings - even things to do while sitting in front of the TV - so that's something to start working on.

As for the weight that's been added this week - we're having brats tonight, maybe with some salad or something - and I just won't eat the walnuts today.  A couple of days like that, and it'll go.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Wednesday

Bad eating day yesterday - for part of it at least.  I got hungry around 2:00 and broke down and got some trail mix, which is fairly carb-laden.  Worse, the machine is set up to dispense again if the first bag does not fall, and it didn't, so I ended up with 2 bags of it - and ate them both.  Dinner was okay - sirloin patty with melted cheese and guacamole on it, and a bit of chocolate and some chocolate almonds after.  I think that was it after breakfast.

No change in my weight from that, fortunately - still at 145.2 this morning.  Although I had a gollywhomping leg cramp at about 3 am - launched me out of bed with force, it did.  Once I stomped it back down (and yes, it was my left leg, of course), I went back to sleep and it didn't happen again.  Once was enough, though. 

Lee thinks he's on the brink of being below 200 - I am crossing my fingers that it happens this time.  He's also started reading Taubes' book, which is encouraging. 

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Tuesday

Tired?  It is an effort to type.  I slept last night, but to no avail, I guess - dreamt a lot, and when we finally had to get up and start the day, felt like I was still chained to the bed in some way.  I think I blame carbs - why not?  We had Mexican for dinner yesterday - with tortilla chips and salsa, and enchiladas.  And with the predictable result - I'm at 145.2 this morning.  No worries.  I think we'll have meat for dinner tonight.

Drinking lots of tea this morning - wish I had some cream to go with it; that might help with the energy.  I had a splash in the first cup at home, but none since. 

The article in the paper yesterday - about coconut - was pretty thin stuff.  It discussed coconut water a bit, and warned everyone away from consuming coconut oil, since it wasn't a "heart-healthy monounsaturated fat".  It suggested that perhaps the best thing would be to eat the coconut meat - after all, that has fiber as well as the fats and sugars and whatever else is in a coconut.  Fine, whatever.  I do feel sorry for the general public, though, getting their information from sources as bad as that.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Monday

Lovely weekend - it was in the 70s in Phoenix so I got to wear shorts for a while.  Ate okay - some unfried corn tortillas on Saturday, lots of peanuts and cashews, and a complete order of fries at the airport Chili's on the way home.  So, maybe not so okay.  But I was at 144.4 this morning, which is, I think, roughly where I was on Friday.  My stomach is a bit unhappy with me this morning, though - may have to fast tomorrow if it doesn't settle down.

Back to the routine - we're both home now, so eggs are back on for breakfast.  Had some this morning and they were a nice change.

The paper's "fitness" section (formerly known as the women's pages, I believe) this morning has a big article on coconut.  I didn't have time to read it at breakfast, but the sub-head said something about it being the new superfood.  Interesting.  There is also an article about the science of weight loss in Scientific American (I think it was), but a quick skim of it in an airport bookstore gave me the impression that they thought it still required sacrifice (i.e., being hungry) and lots of support, so I'm guessing it's not about eating real food with lots of fat and protein in it.

Elizabeth has lost rather a lot of weight over the past few weeks - unfortunately, it's probably due to stress and being dizzy/nauseated a lot.  But she and I figure that if she resumes eating "clean" once she's hungry again, she can probably keep the weight off and continue to lose.  We hope so, anyway.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Friday (at least, it had better be)

World's. Longest. Week.

Until the week containing Presidents' Day and our trip to New Orleans to participate in a Mardi Gras krewe, that is.  That will be a two-day workweek that lasts approximately a millennium.  More on planning how to survive that weekend as it gets closer, too.  Anyway, to nutrition.

Fasted with relative ease yesterday, until I got home.  I ended up not eating marinated flank steak; I just did not want to cook.  Instead, I had a slice of cheddar to tide me over, fed the dogs, and went and ate cheese enchiladas with green chile (probably containing flour, absolutely containing seed oils), corn tortilla chips, and salsa.  It tasted quite good - I almost licked the plate, actually, and I finished the chips, which I really shouldn't have.

Came home, finished up the non-dark chocolate assortment (4 of them), ate more cheese and walnuts.  I was on a tear - stress eating, I'm pretty sure.  As a result, I'm at 144.4 this morning, and glad it wasn't worse.  And all things considered, the stress eating wasn't all that bad - think what it could have been - cookies, crackers, lots more sugar and flour, chips (oh, yeah, it did include chips, didn't it?)...  But I guess I need to do a little thinking about how to handle it the next time I need to do it, since I've been a stress eater for a long time.  Probably omit the enchilada run and the chips and salsa, and the milk chocolates, and I'd be okay. 

Read some rather amazing things yesterday about using coconut oil to halt and sometimes reverse the effects of Alzheimer's (also other neurological degradation diseases like epilepsy and MS).  Apparently the Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCTs) in coconut oil are turned directly into ketone bodies by the liver or kidneys.  I think, although none of us is exhibiting signs of any neurological degradation, that we are going to put more coconut in our diets.  Maybe via coconut milk or whole coconuts - I used to love those as a kid.  Or maybe that gives me an excuse to make more of the "paleo candy" I made before Christmas - unsweetened dried coconut in dark chocolate.  There's some good stress-eating food for you.  Yum!

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Thursday

The curse of the 4-day workweek - Tuesday feels like Monday, Wednesday feels like Tuesday, but Thursday feels like it ought to be Friday already, darn it.  And it does. 

I ate lunch yesterday - out with a friend, and had a salad featuring turkey and sliced brie, with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing.  It was good.  Got home later than planned last night, thanks to a rush-hour-only snowstorm (nearly 2 hours for a 20-minute drive), and wasn't in the mood to cook anything, especially anything involving standing outside, as marinated flank steak would have needed.  So I ate cheese - 4 slices of cheddar, 3 chunks of gruyere - and walnuts, and non-dark chocolate.  Too much, I think, especially the junk chocolate.  So I had mild indigestion all night and didn't sleep well - and was up to 143.8 this morning.  I'm doing a fast today to get the mild indigestion to go away, and will try the flank steak again tonight.

I sent a link to Taubes' blog to my friend Beth after our lunch - I hope she'll get into reading him as I think his information would help her, but she has so many health issues, I can't help wondering if it's too late for nutrition to do much good.  I guess it can't hurt, though.  I also heard something on the drive in that was interesting - there has been a sharp increase in SSI enrollments for kids with ADHD in recent years.  I wonder if anyone has correlated that with the existence of the Food Pyramid - can't help thinking there might be a connection.  Oh, and also heard that Wal-Mart is going to be buying packaged food with less fat and sugar in it, in some weird cooperative effort with the First Lady.  Less sugar - okay, that's good.  Less fat - probably not so good, except the fat in "packaged food" products is invariably Franken-fat of some sort, made from grains and seeds.  Seems like we'd all do better for ourselves just to avoid packaged food products entirely.  And except for basic canned goods, I think our diet has pretty much made that shift almost automatically over the course of this year.  Interesting that I didn't really notice.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Wednesday (already)

I ate well yesterday.  Bacon for breakfast - 4 slices, cooked slow for maximum crispiness.  Nothing until dinner, which consisted of about 1/5 pound's worth of mini meatloaves (2 of them, of a total of 11 made from 1 pound of ground bison), and a baked sweet potato with butter on it.  Followed up by a rather large bowl of frozen strawberries, slightly thawed, with heavy cream - that is one wonderful snack, and because they were only partly thawed, it took me the better part of an hour to finish it.  At the end, the mixture of cream and strawberry juice was better than the best strawberry ice cream.  And I would like to say I didn't have any cheese or chocolate, but that wouldn't be true - I had 2 slices of cheddar right before bedtime.  And a couple of cups of tea-and-cream.  Thoroughly satisfying day's eating.  And I lost a pound - I'm down to 143 even today.

Today started with the same breakfast - I can probably eat bacon that way indefinitely.  I think I'm having flank steak, quick-marinated in something, with guacamole on it, for dinner; the steak is left over from making the soup over the weekend.  I have a vacuum powered marinating thing, and since I didn't put anything on the steak this morning, I'll be trying that out this evening.

It's probably bad juju to state this in writing, but I think I'm finally getting adapted enough that the potassium balance is stabilizing.  At least, I'm cramping up far less on days when I've either fasted or gone nearly all-meat.  I bought a couple of containers of coconut water over the weekend, to have around when needed, but I'm crossing my fingers that the need will continue to be much less.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Tuesday

Doesn't feel at all like Tuesday - the blessing (or curse) of the three-day weekend.  I struggled with the munchies yesterday - had half a carton of cottage cheese for breakfast, after doing the grocery shopping (not badly influenced by my lack of food, fortunately), and cottage cheese for me has always been a bit dicey - when I ate it for breakfast regularly, it tended to leave me starving at 10:30.  Anyway, I think I ate 5 chocolates yesterday - all of them from a Christmas present, so not even a little bit low-carb.  4 slices of cheddar cheese, some pecans and cheese spread, 1 mini-meatloaf (I was making them to freeze, and the recipe made 11, so I ate the odd one), a bowl of beef-vegetable soup, loaded with cremini mushrooms and carrots, and a bowl of partly thawed, frozen strawberries with heavy cream poured over them.  The last was in an effort to avoid eating the 5th chocolate, and you can see how well that worked.  They were wonderful that way, though.

I didn't have a lot to do yesterday; I think the munchies were boredom eating more than anything else - and that has always been an issue with me.  Still, looking at the entire list, it could have been much worse.  And I am at 144.0 this morning, so it basically had no significant impact on my weight.  Still a bit swollen and stiff in the joints this morning - I took double salmon oil, which should sort that out.

Back to the bacon this morning - the convenience food of choice for me when I'm by myself.  Which reminds me - I noticed that Readers' Digest has an article this month that, based on the cover photo, is touting eggs and bacon as the thing to eat for weight loss, according to "new science".  We haven't subscribed in a couple of years, and I didn't open it to see what they were getting at, but that's a very promising development!

Monday, January 17, 2011

Monday

Not a workday today, but I feel compelled to report on my status, nonetheless.  Ate with my parents last night - pork roast and potatoes, a smidge of gravy, steamed mixed veg and a salad, and a glass of red wine of some sort, all followed by ice cream with chocolate sauce.  I wasn't inspired to cook yesterday morning, so I think the rest of my day's eating consisted of 3 squares of Gruyere, a lemon-filled fancy chocolate (surprisingly good), and about 1/4 cup of walnut pieces - along with several cups of tea with cream.

The meatballs I made Saturday were actually very good - so much so that I mean to make some mini-meatloaves today to freeze for later meals - also using potato starch instead of the bread crumb panade.  Making those today and also some beef vegetable soup as described a couple of days ago.  That's tonight's dinner.

Despite feeling all bloaty this morning - my fingers are stiff and swollen and my stomach is puffy feeling - I weighed in at 143.8, a new low.  Nice to see the numbers, but I made one pair of pants yesterday from my older pattern and they barely fit - which I am hoping is something to do with feeling bloaty (bloaty causes tightness, not the other way around).  Needless to say, I'm adding rather more to the width of the other pair I have fabric for - I don't really care for clothes that fit that tightly.  Although I have a feeling that Lee will like these rather a lot.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Saturday

Yeah, unusual.  But it's just me, this weekend, so nobody's waiting to leave the house or looking for my help with various projects.  I think this is an accurate list of what I ate yesterday:
tea with cream
vending bag of salted peanuts
2 chunks of Gruyere (probably 1.5 oz)
1/2 cup of walnut pieces
1 square of 90% cacao chocolate
1 cup of Qdoba chicken tortilla soup, without the tortilla strips
1 "medium" bag of movie popcorn

Not exactly prime nutrition, if you ask me.  I'm going to work this weekend on some cooking, to try to improve that.  On the other hand, I can't believe there are more than a handful of calories floating around there, yet I'm up to 144.6 this morning.  Popcorn-digesting water retention, most likely, plus a bit of fat storage from the carbs in the popcorn.

Okay, so I did the nutrition on that day: 69% fat, 13% carbs (37g, 8g sugar), 18% protein. It actually wasn't as bad as I thought - and the calories (poor things, so unimportant, really) were just shy of 1400.  Still, I should be aiming for better food - meat and veg.  And I will, going forward.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Friday

On the brink of a three-day weekend here - it's always nice to look forward to a long stretch of puttering time.  I think I'll cook to freeze, a bit.  I realized yesterday, in re-reading the recipe, that Cooks Illustrated's recipe for "quick" beef-vegetable soup is basically low-carb, verging on paleo.  It has carrots in it, along with mushrooms and onions, and I think not a lot else (well, beef, obviously).  It's also beyond delicious, and I think it would freeze pretty well - and I'm coming home very uninspired to cook these on-my-own days.  I may go to the odd bookstore this weekend after some low-carb cookbooks - see what's out there - and I'm looking forward to the release of the Everyday Paleo cookbook, even though she appears to be higher-carb than I tend to eat.

Yesterday was a prime example of the dangers of "uninspired to cook".  I went out to a Mexican restaurant that Lee doesn't like, but that I believe I've been patronizing (via other branches) since I was in my mid-20s.  Had a 3-stack flat cheese enchilada with green chile - so far, so good, and their green chile appears not to be overburdened with flour; the broth is very translucent.  But I ate a LOT of chips with salsa (and with the leftover green chile and a bit of refried beans...).  So I think that was a pretty carb-loaded meal.  It was quite tasty, though.  And on coming home, I didn't eat anything else until bedtime.

Of course, the carbs at dinner had no impact on my lingering side-effect - leg cramps.  In last night's case, foot cramps.  Some of the symptoms were more like my old-style cramps in my feet, with toes randomly shooting off at weird angles and things, so I'm not entirely sure they were related to my potassium levels.  Nonetheless, I limped into the kitchen (these hurt a lot!) and had some coconut water, and while it didn't sort the issue instantly, they went away pretty quickly and didn't come back.  I really like that stuff!

At the end of all that fun, I got up this morning and weighed 144.4.  I expect it will be more tomorrow, despite a convenience IF day today (didn't feel like getting up early enough to eat).

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Thursday

Still 145.2 this morning.  I think I didn't eat much yesterday, all things considered - 4 slices of bacon for breakfast, nothing until dinnertime, then a taco salad with 1/2 pound of ground bison in it, tea with cream, and about 8 TJs dark chocolate almonds.  Finished off with a couple of pieces of Gruyere.  I might put that into my tracker to see what it comes out to - perfectly satisfying, and I had a lot of energy to go through a bunch of loose paperwork in the office to get it semi-organized, so whatever the calorie count was, was enough.  I do admit to pretty much crashing at 8 pm, though; it was a tough day.  Hunching over the desk gave me a bit of a backache - I'm thinking that my core strength is still lacking.  And I haven't been to the gym lately - it's probably full of resolute people and will be throughout the month.  I guess I could try the crunches at home that I was doing in November, see if that helps.  Anyway, I'm rather tired and achy this morning; probably should have taken 2 salmon oil with breakfast (6 microwaveable pork sausages - not bad at all).

Wearing another new size 10 skirt today.  Probably going out after pants fabric this weekend - to make up the pants from the older pattern I found.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Wednesday

Dinner yesterday did not, after all, involve ground bison - it was still fairly solidly frozen when I got home.  So instead, I had an assortment of cheese - probably not as nutritious as it could have been, but filling.  Cottage cheese, gruyere, and, I think, some cheddar.  I also had a square of 90% cacao chocolate; without looking, I figured it might be lower carb than the 85%.  It's not - and it's fairly intense and bitter for all that.  Good, but I think I like the 85% better.  I also had some cashews, because I had a powerful case of the munchies last night - I needed to be snacking.  Not sure why - I had a bag of potato chips at work yesterday, for a mild treat (frankenoils and all) - they were fabulous in the small quantity served up in a vending machine, but would have been nasty if any larger.  Anyway, I don't think they caused the munchies.

I went to the grocery store last night and got some salad stuff, so I think tonight the ground bison will become part of a paleo taco salad - lettuce, meat, cheese, salsa.  Sounds good - even though the weather here this morning was a balmy zero.

145.2 this morning.  No real surprise there, as I'm eating pretty clean right now.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Tuesday

I sort-of-inadvertently fasted yesterday.  Lee's out of town, with Elizabeth, probably for the week, and with the snowfall over the weekend, I needed a few extra minutes to spend in traffic jams, so I skipped breakfast (it's very hard to cook when it's just me, no matter what way I might be eating).  And because getting to work took something over an hour and ten minutes, I skipped lunch, too - that, and I wasn't really that hungry, thanks to dear old ketosis.  For dinner I had some frozen cooked ground beef I found, reheated, smothered with salsa, "Mexican-blend" cheese, and sour cream, followed by dark chocolate, rather a lot of walnuts, and a couple of slices of cheddar.  It was pretty good, took no time at all, and it caused me to realize that a lot of times, Paleo eating is easier (granted, lacto-Paleo).  The dark chocolate and walnuts went together rather well - I mean to try the walnuts with the Stilton I have in the fridge, and with the Wensleydale with cranberries - haven't opened the latter, yet.  I'm quite grateful that I don't seem to have any problems eating milk products.

I managed to eat something this morning - turns out, if I put real bacon on low when I'm feeding the dogs, and turn it up to 2 when I get out of the shower, by the time I'm dressed, it's perfect.  Useful information, that, so I had 4 pieces for breakfast, and it tasted wonderful.  For dinner tonight, I'm having more "things made with ground beef" (bison, actually), but I don't know what yet - I just stuck a pound of ground bison in the fridge to thaw last night and will do something with it this evening.

145.6 this morning - well below where I was before Christmas.  Actually, below where I was before Thanksgiving (147.8 - I just checked).  So does that mean I can sneer about all the commercials with sad looking women bemoaning "all those holiday treats"?  Damn straight it does.  Thanks to all the Paleo/Low-Carb gurus!!!

Monday, January 10, 2011

Monday

So, what did I weigh on Friday?  I don't think I gained over the weekend, despite buying a "medium" (not!!!) popcorn on Friday and eating most of it.  I'm at 146.6 this morning - was 146.0 on Saturday, 146.2 yesterday, and that with eating generally pretty well all weekend.  I have noticed that carb bombs seem to provoke a delayed weight gain in me - maybe not the next morning, but two days out and beyond, I'll see increases, which doesn't play well with the wallet metaphor in Taubes' new book, at least not exactly. 

Had a pretty good dinner last night - pan-cooked two sirloin patties, then sauteed mushrooms in the drippings (not much; these are pretty lean) and some added ghee.  Topped that off with some merlot and beef stock, which I reduced down a goodish bit and finished with butter.  The dogs got some of the sauce, because it was still too much for one person.  I would definitely do that again - must keep mushrooms available, I guess.

At the movies on Friday (True Grit - amazingly good, by the way), we saw an ad for something heartrending and disgusting all at the same time - A&E's new show, "Heavy".  Apparently, it's "The Biggest Loser" without the contest.  The ad showed these poor people being made to do aerobic exercise and crying about how hard it was to stay on the diet.  My first reaction was to drop my bag of popcorn on the ground and forget I'd bought it, but sense prevailed - unlike the "experts" on that show (from what I could tell in maybe a 5-minute snippet, anyway), I do know how to eat to stay slender, and the popcorn "weight" would be vanquished in due course.  Still, if the weightloss advice those folks are getting is to eat a "sensible low-fat diet" and exercise, I can't help thinking that a 5-year reunion show would find many of them back where they started, or on the way there.

I could be wrong - maybe they've had an endocrinology workup and are eating a sensible low-carb diet with reasonable helpings of healthy saturated fat.  It would be great if that were true - and I tend to doubt that it is.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Friday

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, here we are at Friday having spent the week in a slow weight decline - 147.4 this morning.  Will it hold up over the weekend?  I'd say it looks reasonably promising so far - lunch Saturday is scheduled at the golf course, and I happen to know I can get a green-chile smothered naked burger there that is seriously to die for.  And cottage cheese, making it even better.

And tonight, we are having the pizza thing.  Layers of ground beef/pork with italian spices, mushrooms and black olives, mozzarella, marinara, and pepperoni, repeated and topped with a bit more cheese for good measure.  The ground beef/pork (we went half-and-half) and spices cooking last night had me eating rather a lot - mostly dark chocolate and gruyere.  Surprise.

I actually had 3 meals yesterday; Elizabeth and I had naked burgers at a place near work.  She's still suffering from the dizziness, with a visit to the neurologic ENT guy on Monday.  I hope he can provide some insight; even if it turns out to be something in the auto-immune world, if it can be named, somebody somewhere has dealt with it before and might have some good advice that goes beyond "take meclizine".  And if she needs additional testing at large facilities with more experts, well, she's living in the right place - there's a Mayo branch in Phoenix, somewhere.

Back to the dietary topics: I am still suffering from a bit of digestive upset; cannot imagine what I might have eaten, because we've been keeping it pretty clean.  Standard breakfast; lunch yesterday was a sirloin patty with cheddar, bacon, and guacamole, and some cole slaw (and 3 french fries filched from Elizabeth's plate), and dinner was gyro meat and tzaziki sauce, and a little bit of rice.  I did have a bite-sized piece of biscotti yesterday at some point as well.  I guess I am falling into the "Gluten-severely-restricted January", as opposed to Gluten-free.  Oh, well.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Thursday

Roughly the same today as yesterday - 148.2.  For some reason, after dinner last night, I went on a salt bender.  I ate rather a lot of a can of salted mixed nuts as well as a couple of slices of cheddar cheese.  It didn't do much to me in terms of muscle cramps, fortunately - before bed, I had one in the back of my left knee, which was decidedly uncomfortable as well as hard to figure out how to stretch, but I had some coconut juice and that calmed things down until about 5:30 this morning.

My stomach, however, is not happy just now, and hasn't been since about dinner time, I think - at least, I had vivid dreams last night, which is certainly associated with digestive issues.  Not sure why; here's my eating for yesterday: eggs and turkey bacon for breakfast, walnuts mid-day when hunger struck, two bratwurst, sauerkraut, and green beans for dinner, with a glass of wine (Gewurztraminer), a square of chocolate, and the aforementioned cheese and nuts.  None of that seems likely to raise a fuss, but something has.

Ah, well - onward and upward.  Tonight, we're having a sort of pizza-lasagne dish that I've been mulling over for a while - large slices of pepperoni for the noodles, cheese and pizza sauce and toppings in between.  No idea if it will work or not, but it ought to taste pretty good.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Wednesday

I don't know if we'll get to making Elizabeth's ideas this week or not - it was Mexican food (at her favorite place here) last night; cheese enchiladas smothered in green chile.  Not sure if that violated my gluten-free January pledge or not - the green chile is gravy-like.  But if it was flour, it was worth every second off my lifespan - theirs is the best! 

Apparently it wasn't too carby; the holiday weight continues to slide off.  I was at 148 even this morning.  Took some preventative coconut water at bedtime and didn't have any cramping overnight (that could also have been the corn tortillas); in fact, I slept really well.

The remainder of the day's eating included eggs and turkey bacon for breakfast, a small handful of walnuts around 2, some chips and salsa and part of a margarita, pecans and cheese spread, a corner of a biscotti, and a dark chocolate truffle.  Lee has forbidden me from taking the biscotti to work to get rid of - I suppose that means he'll be eating them.  All the while protesting that he's being very strict about his eating and whining that he's not losing weight, I don't doubt.  His problem at this point.  If the whining gets loud, I will pull Taubes' new book out and hand it to him - not sure what else I can do.  At some point, he is either going to have to commit hard to the necessary changes, or resign himself to being his current weight or fatter, with the attendant diseases of civilization.  If he thinks biscotti are worth that trade-off, he's free to make it.  Me?  I'm a carnivore; the biscotti are definitely not worth it.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Tuesday

Back to the old routine - eggs and bacon (real, yesterday) for breakfast, no lunch (and no snacks yesterday, either), and meat-and-leaves for dinner, followed by - wait for it - a bit of chocolate and cheese.  And walnuts last night as well - we will watch the Food Network in the evenings and I got the munchies.  Anyway, it had the expected result - leg cramps at 1:30 am that had me out of bed to stomp them down, and some weight lost.  I'm down to 149 even today. 

Elizabeth has proposed a couple of dinners that she wants to try making - stuffed pork chops (stuffed with spinach and goat cheese, it sounds like), and a layered casserole that would take the place of pizza - pepperoni slices, sauce, veggies (I'm angling for green peppers and mushrooms, but black olives would also be good) and cheese, layered up rather like lasagna and baked.  The latter has been occupying my mind of late, because I love pizza and not having a way to eat it without carbs and without wheat has been mildly irritating - but one of the things I really love about this way of eating is that I really don't crave any of the things we no longer eat - they look good, and I'm able to acknowledge that they taste good, without needing to have some.  That didn't use to be the case.

A note I forgot to mention from the vacation.  Toward the end, when the weather turned cold, I was able to borrow a pair of sweats from Elizabeth - sweats she wore her sophomore year of high school for swim team. Apart from the fact that they were designed to be hip-huggers, which I don't do, they fit fine - even needed cinching up.  So cool!

Monday, January 3, 2011

More thoughts on holiday eating - and other stuff

Granted, we did not eat particularly well over the past week and a bit, but I don't think we did all that bad, either.  If we weren't having an official holiday meal (those were Christmas Eve, Christmas, and New Year's Eve dinners), the big sins were Godiva dark-chocolate gems (truffle, plain, and caramel), which were definitely not low-carb, cookies, and the sausage balls, which still included a large quantity of gluten-free Bisquick (mostly rice flour and potato starch).  On the good side, we had things like steak and lettuce wedge salad with lots of blue cheese, cheese snacks, beef stick snacks, and heavy cream in the tea/coffee. 

I don't feel, after the holidays, that I want to go "off the diet"; in fact, the cheats were seen as cheats, to be done only in context of the holidays, and most of our normal meals were, actually, normal low-carb/paleo.  When we ate out, I ordered hamburgers or hot dogs without buns, or ate them out of their buns - and on a couple of days, I think we skipped lunch entirely, because we weren't hungry.  So, all things considered, the change has stuck with us and I feel very much at less risk of reverting to the SAD.

Another nice thing this year - no resolutions regarding diet and exercise; simply not needed!

Post-holiday wrap-up (aka Monday)

10 days away from home, mostly in Arizona.  We cooked a lot, but we ate some cheat foods during the week - it was, after all, a holiday.  How did it go?
  • I gained about 4 pounds - 150.4 this morning.  I'm sure some of it is water, but not all of it
  • I had 2 migraines
  • My stomach was a bit churny throughout the week
So, would I do the cheat foods again?  Possibly not.  We ate gluten-free sausage balls (sausage, GF Bisquick, and cheese), twice-baked potatoes, Christmas cookies, panko breadcrumbs (on warm goat cheese), breadsticks, beets (I'm assuming those are pretty carb-laden), pear tart, ice cream, caramel sauce, rather a lot of chocolate, and probably other things that I can't recall.  I can live with temporary weight-gain, because I know how to make it stop and reverse.  I cannot live with the migraines, so if something I ate influenced them, I will find that thing and eliminate it, permanently.

While we were gone, Gary Taubes new book came out - I bought two copies: one for Lee and me, one for Elizabeth - and devoured ours.  What he's done with this one is to distill the key dietary bits out of Good Calories, Bad Calories, eliminating a lot of the history-of-nutrition-science stuff (I loved it, but it would distract from the message in this case), and a lot of the information about other Diseases of Civilization, although he hints at some of that in one of the last chapters.  Anyway, it's clear, concise, and straightforward, and presented with plenty of evidence for the case he's making, and my fingers are crossed that it really takes off.  In an appendix, he presents a weight loss "diet" from Duke University that aligns with the evidence as he's seen it; I mean to copy that out and post it prominently on our fridge, for Lee.  I think a lot of the "don't"s in there will be eye-opening for him.

Anyway, all things considered, a very good Seasons Eatings (spanning clear back to Thanksgiving) - far better than previous years.

Oh - and the size 8 skirt looked fabulous on Friday!