Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Um, Tuesday?

I know.  Four-day workweek, which will probably drag on at least a millennium or two.  But worth it; we had a fabulous three-day weekend.  I puttered for three solid days, and got to see the kid for a while, to boot.  It was all good.

Well, almost.  Due to some over-puttering, I am sore and stiff and swollen and weigh 146.8 (down a pound from yesterday, which was just a scary number).  Painting is the likely culprit - it uses my right arm, which has something wrong with the shoulder - I don't know what, but it wants massages on a very frequent basis these days - and is trying to convince me that "very frequent" is overdue just now.  My shoulders (both) hurt, my thumbs hurt, my neck hurts occasionally, my hamstrings are all tight - I'm "experiencing discomfort", and it's an experience I did not pay for, thank you very much.

Diet had something to do with the weight gain, I'm sure.  We did a movie on Friday, and I brought along walnuts, dark chocolate, and coconut shreds, and it was wonderful.  Worked like a champ.  Saturday, we had hotdogs and potato chips for lunch - too many of the latter, I'm quite sure.  Baseball game and a naked cheeseburger for dinner - without a fork.  Kinda messy.  Sunday I had breakfast (possibly just bacon and cheese and tomatoes), snacks while working (cheese and cashews and chocolate almonds) and Mexican for dinner, followed by more cashews.  And Monday woke up at 147.8.  A lot of it water, but I'm thinking probably not all of it.  So yesterday, I had breakfast - bacon, eggs, and tomatoes (Lee bought tomatoes at Costco and we're scrambling to get through them - fortunately, they're very tasty) - and cheese until dinner time.  Dinner was flank steak and salad with homemade blue cheese dressing (it had soybean oil from the mayo, though; I didn't make my own mayo this time), followed by 2 chocolate almonds and rather a lot of walnuts.

I need to lay off the nuts for a while, I think.  Just sayin'.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Friday

I just want to say that it's a damn good thing I don't believe that we fully understand the mechanics of human weight fluctuation.  I had 4 slices of bacon for breakfast, a bag of beef jerky mid-day, 2 or 3 pieces of cheese before dinner, and chips, salsa, guacamole and a 3-stack cheese enchilada for dinner.  At which I nearly licked my plate.  Followed by 4 chocolate almonds and a chocolate blueberry.

And I'm down half a pound this morning - 144.6.  Which is fine, but Mexican food is not low calorie or low carb, so I really can't explain it.  Can't explain the cookie the other day, either.  Maybe my body is in setpoint defense mode this week or something.

Eggs and turkey sausage links (3) for breakfast this morning, so I should be able to go on without the jerky today.  I think we're going to the movies tonight, though, preceded by dinner at the hibachi place.  This time, I'm bringing my own snacks - dark chocolate, coconut flakes, and walnuts, I think.  That should be "snacky" enough to replace popcorn without having the unfortunate side-effects of the latter.  At least, I hope so.  I might throw in a few raisins or chocolate blueberries and call it a sort of trail mix.

Three day weekend coming up, with the kid in town.  We're going to a baseball game tomorrow night.  Not sure what else, and I hear the weather is dicey, so we may play other activities by ear.  But I'm painting on Sunday - I have had some sort of "project" every year during the radio broadcast of the Indy 500, and that's mine this year (more often than not, it's painting some part of the house; this year it's wrapping up the remodel with the final trim painting).  I hope to get out in the sun at least a little bit.  We've reduced the D3 for the summer from 5000 IU to 2000, assuming that we'll get some naturally.  The weather, however, has not been cooperating much.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Thursday

Sleep or weight loss?  That is the question.  At least, this morning it is.

My right calf launched me out of bed at 12:15 am - so fast that I don't think I was awake until I fell back in bed with the cramp stomped out.  Unfortunately, I was abrupt enough to catch Lee's attention.  He'd been more or less awake since we went to bed, waiting to hear that Elizabeth had reached Albuquerque - she'd promised to text when she got there.  So he asked me if she had - trust me, he would have known, since my phone is set to make noise and was on my bedside table.  I looked to see if somehow I'd missed it, which is how I know it was 12:15.  She hadn't.

So now, I was awake wondering if she would get there okay and imagining the ways she might not.  And wishing that my leg, uncramped though it was, would stop aching and bubbling.  And thinking about whether I was hungry enough to get up and get something.  I didn't.

The text arrived at 1:02, which was about when I'd started falling back asleep.  Figures.  After that, I think I did get to sleep, but it wasn't the quality stuff.  Ugh.

Eating yesterday, after bacon, eggs, and tomatoes, went like this:
  • the innards from a Panera roast beef and cheddar sandwich
  • the potato chips that came with it
  • sadly, 3/4 of the m&m chip cookie that came with it - this was a mistake and made me feel wretched for much of the afternoon
  • a naked "border" burger at C B & Potts - it had jalapenos, bacon, pepperjack cheese, salsa, and guacamole on it - pretty tasty
  • an order of sweet potato fries
  • two chocolate almonds
I was at 145.0 this morning, so the cramp was significant of some weight gone.  But really - I would have preferred the sleep.  Gonna be a long day.  And my ankles and fingers are still swollen.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Wednesday

In addition to the bacon and eggs yesterday morning, I had a bag of beef jerky mid-day and about 4 pieces of cheese, some salami, a chocolate almond or two, and some walnuts.  Down a little - 145.8 this morning.  Fine, whatever.

My stomach is unhappy just now.  Not entirely sure why.  I know the jerky involves soy sauce, which has wheat in it; it could be that, but it started around 9 pm and is still a bit bad, and we're at the 18-hour mark since consumption.  Maybe it was the salami?

Anyway, same-old, same-old this morning - eggs, bacon, and a couple of slices of tomato (they're starting to have actual flavor again, yippee).  I'm in an all-day meeting where lunch is on offer; unless it's cold cuts, I'll probably pass.  Dinner tonight is almost certainly out somewhere; visiting Mom in the hospital after her knee surgery.  I can't say it will definitely fix things, but I do tend to think that eating Paleo will help me avoid such events as I get older.  And that will be a good thing.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Tuesday

Yesterday's eating went like this:
  • 2 scrambled eggs
  • 2 turkey sausage links
  • 2 slices of bacon
  • tea with cream in it
  • 2 small pieces of Gruyere
  • New York Strip steak (probably 1/2 lbish)
  • Salad
  • Dijon vinaigrette dressing
  • 2 chocolate almonds
  • 3 small pieces of Dubliner cheese
And this morning, I wake up and weigh 146.2.  It's an improvement, but seriously?  Why?  Absolutely positively some of it is water - I can feel it and see it in my ankles.  But it doesn't want to go away.  Bother.

That said, I am still wearing a size 10 skirt and sweater this morning, and looked skinny and fit in the windows I passed walking from the car to the office this morning.  So all is not lost.

Probably fasting lunch and dinner today; I'm going to my niece's "continuation" ceremony tonight and leaving soon after I get the dogs fed in order to get there on time.  Not a huge deal, and maybe it will help with the water.

Scrambled eggs and 3 slices of bacon for breakfast this morning, along with tea and cream.  Pretty much the usual.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Monday

Ugh.  It's doing it again.  I don't think we ate that badly over the weekend, but here I am, at 146.6.  That's two and a half pounds gained, for no apparent reason.  I hate that.  Fingers are swollen even now, although my ankles feel more or less normal.  I took 3 Advil and 3 fish oil last night to help with pain in my shoulder (now gone, I might add - it does work on that), but am still, apparently, inflamed.

I'm blaming the cashews, I think.  They are addictively salty, for starters.  They crunch, too.  And I eat them.  9 grams of carbs per 3 tablespoons worth (what a weird way to measure nuts, by the way).  It doesn't seem like much, but I think it might be too much.  That, and I think they could have other anti-nutrients; somewhere a while back, I'd heard that they had to be cooked to destroy toxins.  Rather like wheat, or legumes.

And the heavy cream.  Not that it's bad in itself, but we bought a half-gallon a while back and are dosing up on it to get rid of it before it goes bad.  Since it's UHT pasturized, I think that might be several years out, but I hate to waste it, and it is slowly getting thicker on us.  So I've had several meals of strawberries with heavy cream, and it's possible that I may have hit the tipping point that Stephan Guyenet or Chris Masterjohn was discussing in a recent blog - literally, too much fat pushing weight gain.  Maybe.

Or it could just be wild-ass hormone fluctuations.  Those are very possible these days.

Anyway, we're going to be dietarily strict this week, starting with dinner (because breakfast was fairly huge - and I think that's another place to look for changes we've made since the weight loss slowed/stopped/reversed).  Steak and salad.  Salmon and salad, maybe.  I'm going to get more fish in my diet, and fewer nuts, I think.  I'm not a huge salmon fan, but we have some in the freezer and it should be eaten.

A new week, a new start.  I'll get this figured out.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Friday

I had fries at lunch yesterday.  Hell, I had lunch at all, yesterday.  Still, only a gain of 0.2 pounds from my indulgence - 144.0 this morning.  They tasted amazing.  They would be wholly defensible if only I could find a restaurant with a firm belief in beef tallow for deep frying purposes, right?  Not sure one exists anymore, at least around here.

Red Robin has a salad that was - apart from the almost-certain presence of seed oils - pretty darn lacto-Paleo - the Chicken Caprese salad.  Romaine, a Caesar-like dressing, a chicken breast and some slices of fresh mozzarella, garnished with tomatoes and basil, a balsamic vinegar-based sauce of some sort, and, best of all, crunchy pepperoni strips.  I like me some crunchy pepperoni strips - they were fabulous.  Oh, and black olives in there somewhere.  That's what I had for dinner, and it wasn't bad.  And on top of a couple of pieces of cheese and some walnuts eaten before dinner, quite sufficiently filling.

Strawberries and heavy cream for breakfast.  And bacon.  On a logistical note, it's probably not the best idea on earth to buy really heavy cream (40% fat, per the label) in half-gallon lots for two people.  We've barely made a dent, not for want of trying.  UHT will save us; the stuff will probably last indefinitely.  And it's very tasty stuff, so I don't mind having it forever.  But when it's gone, we're going back to the pint-sized cartons of Organic Valley - maybe two of them at a time.

We'll be fasting dinner tonight, I believe, due to scheduling issues.  Nephew's high school graduation, at 6:30, about an hour's drive from here, meaning we leave from work and pray that rush hour isn't too nasty.  No worries.  I know, based on my calves the other night (none last night!), that I'm still keto-adapted, and a wee fast won't bother me at all.

I'm wearing a new dress for the occasion (weird to be wearing a dress at all, since it's "Jeans Friday"); size 10, bought quickly last night, and almost big for me.  It actually fits fine - the 8 would have been too small.  A 9 (assuming such a bona-fide size existed, and, no, the Junior 9 is really a 10) probably would have been perfect.  So nice to be throwing these numbers around when talking about my clothes!

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Thursday

So I hear on the radio this morning that Southwest has issued an apology to a couple of obese passengers for enforcing their policy a bit too publicly.  The airline has a policy that says that if a passenger is wider than the space between the armrests, he or she has to buy a second seat.

Yeah, Southwest!  Not for the apology; I suppose it was a bit heavy-handed to ask people at the gate what they weighed, or what clothing size they wore, so whatever about that.  For the policy, yeah! 

I think I posted a while back about getting specially selected by an obese passenger as his seatmate because I - and the girl in the window seat, who probably suffered the most - was "the skinniest on the plane".  Nothing like a 2-hour flight on one butt cheek (obviously, it could have been worse - say, a flight to China or India or Oz or something, at 30+ hours).  He should have been subjected to their policy (it was a  Southwest flight; I love them).  And what I did hear on the radio is that they are sticking to their guns on the policy. Phew!  When I first heard the story, I was so afraid they'd have to be PC about it from now on, that I was literally screaming at the radio (another night of semi-crap sleep, and I'm in kind of a bad mood).  But it's all good.

143.8 this morning, after a night of semi-crap sleep, as noted.  I think I know the cause; I strained my lower back cutting out shirt pieces the other day.  I can actually feel back pain today; before this, it was just uncomfortable to sit or lay in any of the common positions (and a few that aren't so common).  Now that it's being more obvious about what the problem is, I can do some stretches and get it to stop.

Strawberries and cream and turkey sausage for breakfast yesterday, a bag of beef jerky mid-day, and taco salad for dinner, surrounded by 2 pieces of Kerrygold Dubliner cheese, three handsful of walnuts, and two chocolate almonds.  One mild leg cramp just as I was drifting off to sleep last night - made me kick, but not severe enough to get me out of bed.  Some fasciculation in the calves this morning.  I took an extra potassium to make it go away.

So, life goes on, I continue to be in control of my weight, and will get my sleep quality reclaimed shortly.  All good stuff, I think.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Wednesday, I think

For reasons I don't fully understand, the blissfully solid sleep of last week has gone away, leaving me with night where I am sort of asleep and sort of not - not awake enough to know I'm awake, but not at all restful.  What the heck - I'll blame grain-based foods.  Could be, certainly.  I don't really know, though.

145.0 this morning; down a bit from yesterday, but only a bit.  We ate out at dinner yesterday - Country Buffet, which is not exactly one of my favorites.  I can find food there, but end up with a really odd assortment every time.  Yesterday it was BBQ summer sausage in a fairly sweet sauce (actually, pretty tasty stuff), green beans, and cooked cabbage for the first course, followed with a sort of taco salad thing ("meat" - I have my suspicions, chile con queso, lettuce, tomato, salsa, sour cream, and cheese) and a piece of salisbury steak (also a bit suspiciously un-meat-like).  And some fudge.  Came home and had a bowl of strawberries with heavy cream (very heavy, I might add; it pours slower than partly-melted ice cream).  A couple of cheese snacks to flesh out the day, and eggs and turkey sausage for breakfast.  So it was a "could be worse" day for eating.

I did have another leg cramp last night.  It woke me up enough to realize that I really didn't want to get out of bed to deal with it, but waiting didn't help much.  I ended up having to stomp it out in the end.  And then went right back to sleep, I think.  But as I said above, it was "sleep", not sufficiently restorative.  Kind of annoying, really.

I think we'll eat at home tonight.  Even if it's another taco salad, since I have nothing whatsoever defrosted or defrosting just now.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Tuesday

Well, that's a bit better - a pound gone and back to 145.2.  I stayed pretty strict yesterday; eggs and (real) bacon for breakfast, two cheese snacks during the day, some cheese (maybe 3 oz) before dinner.  Dinner was ground beef patties and mushrooms sauteed in butter and finished with a beef stock and red wine reduction, and a salad.  and I had 6 chocolate almonds and 3 chocolate blueberries after dinner.  I think that was it.  Could be worse.  I spent the evening sewing, which really helped me avoid boredom eating.

I did have a leg cramp overnight - in my right leg, this time, for what that's worth.  It got me up and stomping rather quickly - no idea what time it was, and I got back to sleep pretty easily afterward.  But ouch!

There's been an increase lately in bloggers being anti-low-carb Paleo over the past 2 weeks or so - both Don Matesz (Primal Wisdom) and Stephan Guyenet (Whole Health Source) have come out with variations on the same theme.  I'm not sure what to make of it; I think Taubes made a very strong case in his books that processed carbs, grains in particular, cause weight gain, or are very closely correlated with it, and my n=1 experience would bear that out.  Guyenet, though, in his post from over the weekend, seems to be saying that, while low-carb works for weight loss, those who lose weight that way are barred from ever eating carbs again, or the weight will all come back.  I can't say that I've seen that - but I can say that eating flour and corn do impact my weight in a bad way.  Potatoes, not so much.  Sweet potatoes appear to be fine.  Other veggies the same.  As well as strawberries, and nuts, for the most part.  The jury is out on rice, but I don't really like rice all that much anyway.

That would lead me to say (again) that we are mammals.  If we eat seasonally, and adopt whole foods rather than things-in-boxes, and avoid grains and grain-based foods as a poor source of energy for what would have been the effort entailed to gather them, we will probably see some weight gain in late summer to help us through the winter when food is less available.  That seems reasonable, and that's a way of eating I can embrace.  It still is pretty low carb by comparison to the SAD.

It will be interesting to see how their arguments develop, and what evidence surfaces.  I think we'll get the proper diet(s) for humans figured out eventually; we may not be there just quite yet.  In the meantime, I'll stick with what I've been doing for the last year, because it's certainly working for me.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Danger, Will ...

I have on a skirt I bought a couple of weeks ago at the Brooks Brothers outlet, because it was a size 10 and a color I'd been looking for to go with one of their sweaters.  All well and good.  Mostly, I wear a 10.

BB runs big, I think.  The skirt is certainly comfortable, but I could probably have handled the 8 just fine, had there been one available.  And I just noticed something on the label.

The word, "Stretch".

Too big, and it stretches?  I hope by day's end, I'm not having to use one hand to keep it from dropping to street level.

Well, that was stupid

Saturday night we ate at our very favorite Mexican restaurant (La Loma) so that Lee could get some green chile applied to his allergies (interestingly enough, he has not had a lot of relief from them even though eating Paleo, which makes me wonder if he has dairy issues.  Not that he'd stop drinking milk for any reason).  I had cheese enchiladas, chips and salsa, and a lot of hot green chile, which absolutely has flour in it.  Bad enough to start with, but then we went to the movies.

And I had a medium popcorn.

I didn't eat all of it - fortunately, as it turns out - but I ate enough.  Gained 2 pounds overnight from our little binge.  Found myself staring at 146.0 yesterday morning.  I stuck with fairly Paleo eating all day yesterday, but it wasn't done toying with me, and I was at 146.2 this morning. 

Popcorn is a treat.  Can't be indulged in regularly.  And certainly not on top of a corn-heavy Mexican dinner.  Like I didn't already know that.

I'm still fighting boredom eating, not too successfully.  What I really need is something to do, so as not to get bored.  The weather was miserable all weekend, so gardening was out.  I did go out and get some fabric yesterday, and have 2 shirts and a dress queued up to make.  That should help.  And if all else fails, I can crochet - I have an afghan about two-thirds finished that I should buckle down and complete this summer.

As for our eating - I have cheese with me today.  I will bring cheese all week.  We will have burger patties and sauteed mushrooms and a salad for dinner tonight, and stick with a meat-and-leaves pattern for a while, until things calm down a bit.  And they will.  Maybe that will help Lee, too; he seems to be stalled again.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Friday

Had Chinese food for dinner last night.  Bad move.  144.4 this morning.

Guess that's about it.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Thursday

That's more like it: 142.8.  Back in familiar territory, that number.  Although,...

Calf cramps have returned.  I think I was out of bed with one twice last night - but interestingly enough, it didn't wake me up all that much, which is why I'm not absolutely certain how many times I had to stomp it out.

I didn't bother increasing the potassium - I figure it'll level out in the near future by itself, once the water weight has gone completely - and my fingers are still a bit puffy, so we may not be done.

No snacking yesterday - yeah!  Had a "classic turkey dinner" thing at Mimi's for dinner, but didn't eat the stuffing.  Or the carrots - I don't much care for cooked carrots.  Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberries, though.  I hoovered right through that lot.  And the broccoli, which is pretty good when covered with turkey gravy.  You know, though, Mimi's is a New Orlean's-themed restaurant - I wish we could get some shrimp remoulade or beef with Marchand de Vin sauce or gumbo or crawfish anything from them.  The food tends to be French seen through the eyes of an American chain.  Probably not so good for us, either. 

Came home, had 3 pieces of Gruyere, and did iPad things in front of the TV until bedtime - we were both a bit uninspired - and it's been raining for the past day or so, making the outdoors at least inhospitable. 

Dogs woke me up about 1 hour into my sleep and I let them out for whatever it was they needed - and realized I was starving.  So I had a couple of chocolate almonds and went back to sleep.  Apparently, that was enough.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Wednesday

Rain overnight and snow this morning - May in Denver, what can I say?  It was only sticking a little - to the grass, fortunately, not the trees.  And it's probably back raining by now.

The mystery hormonal water weight is going away, finally - 143.8 this morning, which is more like what I would have expected after Easter, in a hormone-free world.  I'm okay with this turn of events - as long as it isn't a cycle; I do NOT want to go through another six weeks of hot flashes, thank you very much.  I'm enjoying those full nights of sleep right now - and marveling at how many of them I seem to need, badly, at day's end.  Another Paleo benefit, I guess, and after 20-odd years of insomnia, it still thrills me.

We had a boffo dinner last night - more or less randomly.  Neither of us could identify any specific hungers at dinner time - we just wanted food.  So we drove toward Old Town and Lee noticed that Bella Bistro's parking lot wasn't packed.  I think we have been there once or twice since it opened, and in the very early days.  Since then, it's usually full up and we drive past and go to another restaurant.  Anyway, we have now been there twice or three times.  This time, sitting at the counter where we could watch the chefs at work.  Lee had pork tenderloin with fingerling potatoes and sauteed baby spinach; I had beef shoulder tenders (no idea what cut of meat "beef shoulder" might be, but it was good) with polenta and sauteed broccoli, carrots, and turnips.  We pretty much licked our plates - these after an amazing Caesar salad with truffled cheese on it - and then had dessert.  Mine was gelato in three flavors: strawberry-peppercorn, basil, and cheese-balsamic (I cannot recall the type of cheese, but it's an Italian form of cream cheese with a very common name, dammit).  The basil was a bit odd - think mint-chocolate chip with health-food-store overtones and no chocolate.  The other two were amazing.  Lee had "Italian Snickers Cheesecake".  We rolled out of there and went home.  I wish I could say we had nothing more to eat that night, but one of us had some cashews.

Eggs and Turkey Bacon this morning; no snacks all day (that's the plan), and I'm-not-sure-what for dinner.  Watching the chef last night was inspiring, though - and he was very forthcoming with what things were when we asked, so I have the recipe for the sauce that came with the pork last night - red wine vinegar and sugar in equal parts, simmered down to a syrup, tomato sauce from a can added, and a bit of red wine demiglace to finish it up.  Once I got the list, I realized that what he had was more or less ketchup, just a very gourmet version.  The beef had the red wine demiglace by itself - which was perfect.

It wasn't strictly Paleo, but it wasn't far off, either - you really can eat very well this way.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Tuesday

Yup.  Definitely hormonal.  I can see that this is going to be an interesting time of life.

Down to 145.0 this morning, all of it water.  I was able to restrain my eating better last night as well, though.  After breakfast of turkey bacon and eggs, I abstained from food until dinner time, possibly thanks to a couple of well-timed afternoon meetings.  Dinner was chef's salads with our homemade blue cheese dressing - we finished it off so it wouldn't spoil.  I will so make that again, though; it was really perfect.  A few chocolate almonds, a bowl of strawberries with heavy cream, and maybe a piece of cheese finished the night.

One of our neighbors invited us for a long-term storage food party tomorrow night.  It's kind of intriguing, but I don't think I'll go - the picture on the invitation featured biscuits and other carbs rather prominently - and for sure, they do store well; I'm sure that's why early Man started agriculture.  And in a shortage situation, you bet I'd eat grains.  But everything I've read about emergency food storage includes the idea that you buy what you're willing to eat, with the intention of rotating your stocks over time - and I'm not eating that stuff in any situation short of a crisis, that's for sure.  So, we'll probably pass on that one.

Started today with the rest of the strawberries and cream, and a mix of regular and turkey bacon.  I like them both, but they are definitely very different foods.  I brought a cheese snack with me since we didn't have eggs today - and I have no afternoon meetings.  So I'll save it for heading off the urge to eat something from the machine.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Monday

Ugh.  Swollen from head to toe.  My wedding ring is tight.  My shoes are tight.  My too-big skirt fits better than it used to.  And, worst of all, 146.4 this morning. 

I think it's hormonal.  Menopause not quite done with me, and those hormones have made me swell up like a balloon before - on our big-family cruise a couple of years ago, they gave me cankles - my lower legs swelled up so much that they hurt.  I hope it's all water, but I'm going to be a bit careful with food this week and see if I can get things back to normal.

Did a lot of gardening over the weekend, which also has contributed its mite to the overall inflammation, I think.  On Saturday, I planted 8 tomato plants, 4 bell peppers, 3 cucumbers, and a canteloupe (hope springs eternal).  We ate pretty well all weekend - at home for all of it, for me, at least.  I did have popcorn on Saturday - still not entirely sure why I wanted it so badly, but I did.  Some days you just need to listen to your body.  I'm guessing in this case, it was hormonal carb cravings.

I had a 2-hour massage Saturday afternoon for Mother's Day.  Spent the entire 2 hours talking Paleo with the therapist, who is doing Primal Blueprint.  She had just started, and was astonished at my muscular development, especially when I confessed that we think about the gym a lot, but don't go.  Apparently, the strength gains I thought I'd had from this way of eating are real.  Cool!  And she passed on to me that the Sunflower Market nearest our house sells Elk, which is also cool.  I mean to go check that out one of these days.

We bought a coconut over the weekend and cracked it open yesterday morning.  Our dogs thought it was a new toy and were very excited - but not at all interested in the contents once we got them out.  I used to eat coconut that way as a kid, but don't recall it being as oily as this one was - my hands were covered with coconut oil once I got the meat out of the shell.  I didn't waste it, either - my arms got a good coat of it before we went to work outside.  So no sunburn for me.

Got the front patio all set up for the new season.  I mean to spend a lot of time out there this summer - and that also means that it's about time to switch over to 1000 IU of D3 from the 5000 we've been taking all winter.  Probably do that some time this week.

What else?  It was a very productive weekend.  I also made mayonnaise, from MD Eades' recipe, here.  And turned that into blue cheese dressing, using this recipe.  Absolutely delicious, and no nasty soybean oil.  And I'm making sauerkraut, I hope.  Started that yesterday.  An entire head of cabbage should leave us with rather a lot, I think - but not too much to get through.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Friday

Blew it badly yesterday - I did end up going out at lunchtime to buy small slivers of cheese and got 3 of them, which I ate: Whiskey Cheddar (kind of an odd flavor), Emmenthaler (flavor better than Whiskey Cheddar, but at that point, influenced by it), and that layercake mixture of Cheddar and Stilton, which tasted mostly of the Stilton mold.  Total quantity was probably pushing half a pound, which was more than I needed.  But nothing from the machines yesterday.
Dinner was bratwurst and peas in melted butter, with wine; dessert was a lot of things, and that's where it fell apart on me.  5 chocolate-covered blueberries, 2 chocolate almonds, a square of chocolate by itself.  The end of a bag of tortilla chips (probably 1 serving's worth, all in shards of less than 1" square) with salsa.  Some quantity of walnuts.

Boredom eating.  And I shouldn't be bored - I have things I could be doing.  Instead, I read foreign newspapers on the iPad and played solitaire while watching NCIS re-runs on the USA network.  So I'm going to stop with that for a while.  Start knocking off my "to do" list in the evenings.

I did actually go shopping and got some replacement summer clothes - a new skirt, and some utility multi-colored v-neck t-shirts from the Eddie Bauer outlet.  And with the latter, I realized something - size M is in scarce supply in an outlet store - much scarcer than L or XL, it seems.  Not that I intend to go back to those sizes.

Although, if I can't get the boredom noshing under control, with the post-menopausal weight issue looming (estrogen influences insulin sensitivity, I think it is, so the lack of it hinders processes that would keep one thin), things could get bad.  145.2 again this morning, bother it.

Meat and leaves, baby.  Back to the original pattern.

And I have cheese snacks with me today.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Thursday

That seems to have helped.  I did my utmost to avoid Omega-6 PUFAs all day - probably not perfectly, but as much as possible.  So, eggs and real bacon (some in there, I think) for breakfast, 3 cheddar snacks throughout the day, shrimp and steak and salad and broccoli and about 2 Tbsp of mashed potatoes for dinner, followed by some dark chocolate and 3 hunks of aged gouda.  And I'm down to 144.6 this morning - better, but still swollen up a bit - at my feet and hands.  Will repeat as much as possible today, with a few variations.  For starters, I had turkey sausage for breakfast, which is probably less nutritious than real bacon.  To follow that, I forgot my cheese snacks today, so either I abstain from food until dinner (certainly doable), or I take a hike into the city to find a grocer selling cheese (also doable).  I guess it depends how hungry I am around 11:30 which it is.

Still sleeping like a ton of bricks - woke briefly last night at 2:15, checked the time, put on old radio in a one-hour playlist, and remembered nothing more until the alarm went off at 5:30.  I'll catch up eventually, I imagine.  And it is lovely, now.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Later Wednesday

Don't know the exact significance, and won't until tomorrow, I guess, but I've felt a bit "off" much of today - mildly lightheaded, some excessive grumbling in my stomach, "buzzy".  Maybe it's related to the inflammation and weight issue, maybe not.  And since the workday is nearly over, I think I can safely say that I stuck to my plan and ate only cheese snacks since breakfast.  I'm hopeful that I'm getting my omega-3 to omega-6 ratios more normalized today.

Wednesday

Aargh!  145.8 this morning, after a day's eating that went like this:
  • 2 scrambled eggs
  • 2 slices real bacon
  • heavy cream in my tea
  • 1 vending machine package of beef jerky
  • 3 small chunks of gouda
  • 2 squares of Lindt 85% cacao chocolate
  • rather too many cashews, but probably less than 1 cup
  • taco salad with 1/2 lb grassfed ground beef, shredded cheese, sour cream, and TJ's green salsa
I'm still very sore and achy, and my fingers are swollen up.  Took 2 fish oil and a cucurmin, and 2 advil this morning with breakfast.  I hope that some of that will do something.  This well may be delayed reaction to all those desserts in the week after Easter - they're both going in the trash tonight, by the way.  And I'm cutting out the cashews/walnuts for a while since they're really my significant source of carbs at the moment.  And to foil the vending machines today, I have cheese with me - 3 of the store brand cheddar cheese snacks. 

It will go away.  And if the weight does not, I will get the pain to stop, at least, by focusing on  a better fat ratio.

Oh!  Some very good news this morning - Sunflower Market is advertising grassfed ground beef now!  I'm very stoked!

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Tuesday

Effing hormones - at least, I hope that's what it is.  Ate relatively well yesterday (more details to follow) and hit 145.2 this morning.  My joints ache, so it's water, but it doesn't seem to want to leave.  Took 2 fish oil and a cucurmin (turmeric - why they had to rename it once it hid in a gelcap, I do not know) at breakfast, so I am hopeful that some of it will go away.

For what it's worth, the doc says I'm officially in menopause.  Whether that means I've seen the last of the hot flashes or not, I don't know, so I have two prescriptions for patches to be used if the temperature gets out of control again.  I have not filled them - probably should, just in case.

I am sleeping like the dead right now, and waking up ready for more.  I am guessing that it is my way of paying off the sleep debt incurred between mid-February and Easter (apparently, I gave up bodily temperature control for Lent).  Very glad to be able to sleep like that again, I must say.

Okay, so here is what I ate yesterday:
  • 1.5 scrambled eggs
  • 2 turkey bacon
  • 1.5 links turkey sausage
  • tea with heavy cream
  • a bag of trail mix
  • a bag of Lays original (vending-machine size)
  • an angus beef patty - maybe 1/3 pound?
  • 1 slice cheddar
  • 1/4 cup guacamole
  • a pickle spear
  • 2 tomato slices
  • 1/2? cup cottage cheese
  • 1/12 of an 8" flourless chocolate cake (original recipe involved 1 lb semi-sweet chocolate, 8 eggs, and a stick of butter, I believe, so 1/12 of that)
  • maybe 1 oz aged gouda (I cannot recall if I had this or not)
I put it into my LoseIt calculator to see what it came out to.  I can see some issues:  First, it was 62% fat, 17% carbs, 21% protein, which seems fine.  But the carbs were at 96.4g, which strikes me as higher than I would want to be - well out of the cramp zone.  Second, and this probably doesn't matter much, it was 2195 calories or slightly more - didn't include the cream in the tea, for example.

Okay, I can fix some of that.  Today, for starters, we weren't running out of eggs, so I had 2, with 2 pieces of real bacon.  I solemnly swear that if I hit the vending machine today, it will be for the beef jerky and nothing else, which should back the carbs off a bunch (about 60 of that 96 grams were from the chips and trail mix).

I think it's good to do these exercises occasionally - gives a good picture of what I'm doing, and whether it would be a problem long-term.  Yesterday would be, so I will be making some adjustments going forward.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Monday

Since this is the one place I routinely write things, I will say this about the Osama bin Laden news: he wasn't the kingpin; he was the money.  His death is a symbolic thing - and an important one - but will have little to no impact on the history of the world.  But Yeah, Navy Seals!!  Okay, done.

My stomach is seriously messed up at the moment.  Lee was in Phoenix last week, and I flew down Friday night so as to help him drive back, which we did on Saturday (kind of a long day, that).  My flight was late, so we ended up having dinner at the English pub near Elizabeth's place, around 10 pm, my stomach's time.  Cottage pie - ground beef, veggies, gravy, mashed potatoes.  Probably had flour in the gravy, but otherwise, not too bad.  Breakfast at US Egg - a place that does low-carb very well.  I had the angus burger and eggs, which lasted me right until we got to Gallup, which was around 2 in the afternoon, I think.  Lunch there at McDonald's - the naked double quarter pounder with cheese, and fries (we split a medium, which is really quite large).  Their fries have flour on them - I don't know if that was the root cause of my issues or not - but I had indigestion most of the rest of the day, as well as yesterday, and still don't feel that great today.

I'm up to 145 this morning - not too surprised about it.  At one point on Saturday, my feet were swollen enough to make my toes feel like the fingers of an inflated surgical glove, and I had to pull my jeans legs down a couple of times to keep them from constricting the creases where my hips bend.  Kinda sore and achy, as well.  It will pass, but I figure there are a couple of nasty days ahead until things sort themselves out.  We had pork roast - this recipe from Everyday Paleo put on a whole tenderloin instead of the skewers - for dinner, with a salad, followed by leftover Easter desserts.  It was pretty good, and Lee says he lost 3 pounds yesterday, all water from the trip.

I think I'll have something kinda bland for dinner tonight - and avoid hitting the machines this afternoon, too.  I need to eat a bit cleaner for a while, I think.