Monday, November 30, 2015

Monday

We ate like pigs for the past 5 days. Pumpkin pie for breakfast, among other things. And I ate the crust, which was gluten free, but definitely carby. 

Thanksgiving dinner itself, unfortunately, wasn't all that great. The turkey was underdone, as were the brussels sprouts. Good mashed potatoes and gravy and cranberry sauce (OJ and maple syrup). And good pie. The pie came out great.

Anyway, I was super happy to see 159.8 this morning, after 161.2 yesterday. And I will be working between now and Mardi Gras to make the number go down some more. 

So, here's yesterday:
  • tea with cream
  • bacon
  • veggies and dip (mostly broccoli, some carrots)
  • an apple
  • cheddar cheese
  • low-carb crust pizza (pepperoni only)
  • 3-5 Hershey's Nuggets
We want to restart walking somehow, but we're working against the darkness right now - at both ends. Not sure what we'll end up doing (maybe it involves a headlamp?)

Sleep was as good as can be expected, given Charlie on the loose most of the week. We were hoping he would sleep quietly in his kennel last night, and he might have, but Anneke wasn't having any of it. She whined; I thought it was him, and let them all out. I woke at 4 this morning after getting to sleep around 10:30ish. Blecch. Trying again tonight, I guess. Maybe we leave Anneke and Roscoe's kennels open.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Tuesday

159.4 this morning. Or 160.2. Depending on how I stood on the scale. Sigh. I don't much like the fact that it does that - I like facts, period.

Oh well. I think I got rid of some of the water from the weekend. That's the takeaway. Here's yesterday:
  • tea with cream
  • the usual supplements
  • eggs scrambled with ham and cheese
  • almonds
  • about 1/2 pound pulled pork with BBQ sauce
  • cole slaw - probably a cup of it
  • cheese
  • a Hershey's Nugget
I feel like there was something else, but cannot think of it. Spent much of the evening cooking - after we got back from dinner, anyway. Made cornbread to be used for stuffing. And I wasn't hungry when we got back, so I know at one point I made the conscious choice not to eat.

I am trying to get back under control. With some success. It helps not to go out to dinner, but going to the BBQ joint isn't too bad.

Sleep last night was good. Until 4:20, when I woke up wondering why the heater had kicked in. Got up, turned it down, and spent the next hour and some trying to figure out what was making it do that. Once I was up, I got an answer. Our thermostat believes that we want it to be AT the temperature at whatever time we have programmed in for the change. So it starts early. Now that I know that, I will program it to get to full temperature about an hour later.

No idea what's on the program for today - work, obviously. After that? Possibly some prep cooking for Thanksgiving - I could make cranberry sauce, for example. Dice celery and onions for stuffing. Pies tomorrow, and yes, that's plural. GF Flour crust; it just needs to be pie. I may also try making some eggnog custards, just to eat. Breakfast Thursday before the race, maybe. And I promised Lee and Elizabeth some more of the Paleo Apple Pie cookies, so that tonight.

I think we are going to the beach tomorrow for a while. Not sure what else. Sun and fresh air are always good.

Monday, November 23, 2015

Monday

Bugger all. I thought I ate fairly well yesterday and ended up gaining over half a pound. 160.4 this morning; 159.8 yesterday. And the holiday season has not started yet. I'm going to need to be vigilant, for sure.

Here's yesterday:
  • tea with cream
  • scrambled eggs
  • bacon
  • a very large apple
  • cheese
  • 2 Hershey's Nuggets
  • 1/3-lb patty of grassfed beef
  • zoodles with butter, sour cream, and parmesan cheese
  • a small handful of cashews
So really a not-bad day, but not good enough to compensate for the past week, I think. I'm not eating mindfully right now, and I need to be.

We had ham with Trader Joe's julienned root vegetables on Saturday night, after a lunch of fish. So unless I'm eating in my sleep or really blanking on a bunch of illicit snacks, I shouldn't be gaining real weight right now.

Okay. I need to get a grip or my dress won't fit in January. I've made a dip for veggies and put it in what I'm calling the "snack drawer" of the new fridge, along with some veggies to dip. I think I need to avoid the nuts - especially peanuts and cashews; almonds are okay - for the most part. I'm less certain about the apples; I know they're pretty big on sugar, and the ones Lee bought are ginormous. Healthy, but I wish I could eat just half. I'll figure it out; last week was a bad week in general with a lot of eating out and making bad choices once there. 

Meat and leaves. Needs to be a theme song for a while.

Friday, November 20, 2015

Friday

Draggy tired this morning. I woke up around 3, I think, but fell back asleep quickly, and woke again at 5 with seriously aching hips. Not sure why, except that the drive home last night was super awful, and in Lee's car, to boot. And Charlie (our youngest dog) was sick and acting weird. Stressful night overall.

158.0 this morning; here's yesterday:
  • tea with cream
  • the usual supplements
  • scrambled eggs
  • bacon (I think)
  • almonds
  • a double Whattaburger, no bun (ground beef with pickles and tomatoes)
  • 2 pieces of cheese
  • lemon jello water
  • 5 Hershey's Nuggets (sigh)
I think that last item was all stress. I was binge-eating them, very mindlessly. The lemon stuff was about finishing the half-lemon left from our tree; we have lots of lemons from the store in the fridge, and others are ripening outside the door right now, so I'm feeling like I need to be getting through the bought ones.

Launching into holiday season starting tonight when Elizabeth arrives for a week! Will be working hard to keep the food sane.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Thursday

Bugger. 158.8 this morning. And I thought I ate well yesterday. Here's the rundown:
  • tea with cream
  • the usual supplements
  • scrambled eggs
  • sausage patties
  • brisket
  • meatballs in a fairly sweet sauce (but not much sauce)
  • green beans 2 different ways
  • corn and cream cheese and chile casserole
  • jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese, wrapped in bacon
  • a chocolate with peanuts in
  • pumpkin pie ice cream
  • 2 teaspoons of dip of various types
  • salad with meat and cheese, blue cheese dressing
  • a handful of peanuts
  • a handful of cashews
  • 2 apple pie cookies
Long list, lots of small bites of stuff. Nothing obviously salty, but I seem to be up some. No idea why. It is what it is. Focusing on the health. Trying not to gain at this point, I think.

Sleep last night was fairly solid, although we had a dog on the bed - Lee was worried that Charlie wasn't feeling well, and might be needing out at some point. He didn't, fortunately. I woke once at 3:15ish, and then for the morning around 5:30. Not bad. More vivid dreams, although I don't recall any of them.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Wednesday

158.2 this morning; more water. My weight doesn't vary by that much day over day for any other reason. I have been a bit more restrained since the weekend, though. Here's yesterday:
  • tea with cream
  • the usual supplements
  • scrambled eggs
  • bacon
  • almonds
  • onion soup
  • salad with "ginger dressing"
  • about 3 T of white rice (some cold - resistant starch?)
  • 3 grilled shrimp
  • a grilled chicken breast with veg (mushrooms, zucchini, onions)
  • 3 of the apple pie cookies from yesterday
  • 1 Hershey's Nugget
We went to a hibachi steakhouse for dinner - a very easy way to eat Paleo, really. Did that, hit the grocery store quickly, and home. Since the apple pie cookies were almond/coconut flour based with palm sugar and not much maple syrup, I suspect they were fairly low carb. Quite tasty, though, and not hard to make. I'd do them again.

Sleep was broken up a lot last night. Leg cramps twice, super vivid dreams. My stomach was a bit upset going to bed, and may have kept me restless. However, I am more alert now than I was yesterday, although I was fairly groggy first thing this morning.

Pot Luck at work for lunch - (it's late) - I had a couple of meatballs, some brisket, green beans and cream cheese corn, jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon, pumpkin pie ice cream, and a chocolate with peanuts. Good stuff, and not too far out of my eating zone. Should be good for a salad for dinner, which was the plan last we discussed it.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Tuesday

159.0 today; water from the weekend's eating is leaving, but the question is, am I actually gaining weight? Hard to tell. Here's yesterday:
  • tea with cream
  • the usual supplements
  • scrambled eggs
  • bacon
  • almonds
  • 2 grassfed burger patties
  • green beans
  • 2 pieces of cheddar
  • 2 "paleo apple pie cookies" - crust of almond/coconut flour, almond butter and regular butter, and egg, with chopped apples, maple syrup, and tapioca on top. Similar to pecan tassies in shape, and quite tasty
  • 1 dark chocolate Hershey's Nugget with almonds
Sleep last night was solid. Fell asleep before 10, I think, and didn't so much as twitch until after 5 am. Vivid dreams. And groggy as all get out this morning. It's cloudy and rainy, so it may be light-based circadian rhythm issues. Don't know.

Monday, November 16, 2015

Monday

Well, bother.

On Saturday night, I got a yen for the chips and dip we'd made last weekend, and there was some of it left, so I - sadly - cleaned out the bag of chip fragments while eating the dip. Lots of salt. I think I was 157.6ish on Saturday morning, maybe less. Sunday morning, 160.2. This  morning, 159.6.

I have a problem. Lee's pretty much abandoned Paleo eating; the only thing he isn't doing is buying bread or doing all his cooking from boxes. But he eats bread at restaurants, he buys chips and eats them, and the house is full of chocolates.

Obviously, I can just not eat this shit. And mostly, I don't. But it makes it harder, because I do have a habit of eating while bored, and the easiest thing to snack on is right there looking me in the eye.

Anyway, I didn't eat well this weekend. Beyond the chips on Saturday, I ate a lot of Hershey's Nuggets. Two at a time, several times through the day. Not good.

I think my only hope for survival at this point is to redefine chips and milk chocolate (any chocolate items that aren't Lindt 85%) as "Not Food". And stick to it. We had veggies (carrots and sugar snap peas) that I could have used with that dip. From now on, if I need a snack, those need to be my go-to items. Note that I'm focusing on the health aspect of things here. Right now, I don't seem to have the razor focus on the subject needed to lose weight.

We are getting a new fridge on Wednesday, with a snack drawer - I guess that's what it is. It is separate from the fridge and freezer, and controlled separately. Meat, cheese, snack veg. Make it as easy as possible to eat right.

Sleep was a mixed bag. Saturday night we had Charlie on the bed - he wouldn't stop whining until we let him out of his crate - and I woke several times - for good at 3:18 am. While I was waiting for it to be morning, I was reading Facebook, and ran into a Dave Asprey post claiming that not needing a lot of sleep is maybe a sign of good health. I hope that's true. I was functional yesterday, but did fall asleep on the couch several times in the evening. And then slept last night straight through until about 4:30, which is much better - although, knowing that I fell asleep right around 10, I think that's only 6.5 hours of sleep. So maybe I'm just in good health?

Friday, November 13, 2015

Friday

Gotta stop letting the dog sleep in our bed. He was fussy last night, for no obvious reason, and we let him join us. He lodged himself in the small of my back, and became stone. No idea how he does it, but he becomes immovable at night. 

So my back and left hip are less than fully happy this morning - not bad, by any means, but tweaked a bit. I think I have been sleeping funny on that hip anyway, and it's turned; I need to stretch out the adductors (I think they are) so it can open the joint up a bit more.

That, and come up with a routine to strengthen my shoulder joints, so they don't get tweaky. Research needed.

158.0 this morning; I think that's down a tiny bit from yesterday. At which I ate:
  • tea with cream
  • the usual supplements
  • scrambled eggs
  • pork sausage patties
  • almonds
  • 3 "street tacos" with corn tortillas, beef, veg, salsa
  • beans - not refried, the loose kind from Mexican places around here
  • some of the spanish rice
  • 2 Hershey's nugget things - one dark, one milk chocolate
  • a handful of cashews
The beans just tasted good last night. No serious after-effects that I can see. Maybe I needed something in them.

Still had calf cramps last night - one real one in my right leg, for a change, and the threat of others. I added potassium to the bedtime magnesium, to see if that would help; it didn't last night, but maybe it will with a bit more in the system.

I'm drinking a lot of tea at the new job; the room we're in is chilly and having something warm is helpful. Leads to more bathroom breaks than I'd been used to, and that may be dehydrating me a bit, dragging electrolytes along. Because I don't think my eating is super ketogenic or anything right now.

Another thought I wanted to capture. I have had 2 periods of super-successful weight loss. In both cases, there was a lot of mental focus on my part. I don't have that right now. I am focused on the health aspects of eating - trying to keep things fairly clean, increasing veg, etc. - but less on keeping the momentum going. Could that be why I'm just bouncing around between 155 and 160 right now? Maybe so. Don't know if I can muster up the focus right now or not, but I'll let that thought simmer for a while.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Thursday

Sheesh.

I should be getting a new computer at work shortly, one where my palm doesn't keep hitting the trackpad while I type. That's happening a lot with what I have at the moment, and while I'm getting better at keeping my palm elevated (didn't we all learn that in piano lessons?), I'm nowhere near perfect, and the results can be disconcerting.

158.0 this morning; here's yesterday:
  • tea with cream
  • the usual supplements
  • scrambled eggs with ham and cheese
  • almonds throughout the day (more than usual, I think)
  • salad with blue cheese dressing
  • a glass of Riesling
  • chicken breast stuffed with swiss cheese, ham, and asparagus, with a white sauce of some sort (definitely flour in there)
  • green beans with pecans
  • a handful of cashews
  • one square of the almond joy cake thingie
  • one Hershey's nugget
That was it. Got veg, so that's good. We tried out another restaurant near the house - and it was pretty good, although the flour in the sauce and I were somewhat incompatible at bedtime.

My sleep pattern at the moment is super odd. I get to sleep easily enough, mostly, this week at least, without audio assistance. I sleep well, and wake, feeling refreshed and ready for the day. At 11 pm. Sometimes even earlier than that. No freaking idea why. I'm able to get back to sleep at that point, thank goodness, but last night, I had leg cramps (yes, the left leg) twice to top it off. Some dreaming, which is good, and I woke up for real around 5 am, I think. Not sure what's up with that 11 pm thing, though.

As for the leg cramps, I'm taking Magnesium at night, and eating tons of nuts, which should have a lot of electrolyte minerals in them. I think I may start increasing the Potassium in the mornings.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Wednesday

I keep thinking it's Thursday for some reason. It's not. I guess it's to do with getting my head around my new job, commuting, and all that, so the things that anchor me to time are a bit off. It will sort itself out shortly, I imagine.

158.2 this morning. Here's yesterday:
  • tea with cream
  • the usual supplements
  • scrambled eggs with ham and cheese
  • almonds throughout the day
  • salad with meat and cheese, with blue cheese dressing
  • two squares of "paleo almond joy bar" - a cake made with coconut and almond flour, coconut milk, eggs, coconut sugar, and dark chocolate chips
  • a handful of cashews
  • a dark chocolate "Hershey's nugget" with almonds
That seems short. But I think that was it. My days are skewing a bit late now that I'm driving for work, and that means we have less time to snack at night.

Sleep was pretty good, although I dreamt a lot. Woke up shortly after 5 am. Driving not terribly stressful, although it's probably adding to the baseline level.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Tuesday

158.8; ate Chinese yesterday. Including fried noodles. I should know better. Slightly upset stomach this morning, as a result, and inflammatory aches and pains. Ugh.

Monday, November 9, 2015

Monday

Mostly great eating weekend. Mostly. Yesterday afternoon/evening kind of sucked. 158.6 this morning after being 157.6 yesterday. Still down from Friday, so I guess that's good.

I don't think I can list out everything I ate after lunchtime yesterday, but it included potato chips and sour cream dip, buttermilk pie (including the crust), and a drink made with moscato and fruit. Also ham and twice-baked potatoes. The real culprit was the chips. I hadn't had chip-and-dip for quite a while, and it was utterly addictive. Just weird. The best thing I'd tasted in years level of addiction. 

The pound gained was almost certainly salt. And some bloating from the piecrust, I'd guess. I wouldn't have had it, but a guest brought it to dinner at our house, so it would have been rude not to eat it.

Sleep Friday and Saturday was pretty good. Last night, less so, owing to a knot in my right shoulder. But I didn't use the radio to fall asleep or to get back to sleep, and woke for good around 5:15, and that was way better than last week.

Drive was less awful than some of the mornings last week. And I'm thinking of getting some audio courses going again, to make the time interesting and useful for me, which should help.

Friday, November 6, 2015

Friday

I'm pretty sure I stepped on the scale this morning, but the memory is vague. 159.0, I think. I was hungry this morning, and that's something. Here's yesterday:
  • tea with cream
  • lemon jello water (starting that again)
  • scrambled eggs
  • bacon
  • the usual supplements
  • almonds - 15-20ish
  • a cup of hot chocolate
  • turkey with gravy
  • green beans
  • mashed sweet potatoes
  • cranberries
  • 2 milk chocolates with almonds
  • a handful of cashews
Not bad, really. Vegetables, reasonable meat, and not a huge number of snacks. The cocoa was mostly because I was freezing and the tea options weren't great.

Driving stress continues to be a bit ugly - the traffic here is horrendous on a good day, and the first week after a time change has been short on good days, apparently. I did get home by 5:30 last night, which was much better than before. I think I just have to accept it as a bad thing and deal; the key will be my attitude, probably.

Sleep last night was great - until 3:40, when I woke for the day. Getting old, that. Lee said that he got up around then for the bathroom, and he's not great at slipping unobtrusively in and out of bed. So that might explain it - and make it hard to solve. I should just get better at falling back asleep in the wee hours.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Thursday

I was wrong - I do have access. 159.0 this morning. Here's yesterday:
  • tea with cream
  • the usual supplements
  • scrambled eggs
  • sausage patties
  • trail mix - cashews, almonds, raisins, m&ms
  • bratwurst
  • sauerkraut
  • Southern-style green beans
  • dark chocolate peanut butter cup
  • handful of cashews
  • 1 milk chocolate with almonds
Sleep was fairly awful; lots of complex leg cramps. I slept in between times, but they were not contiguous, and the waking was abrupt.

Traffic/commuting was fairly awful - I don't think it's going to get much better, so my stress baseline starts there. My task will be to keep things not much worse than that.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Wednesday

Quick update. I seem not to have internet access at my new job, so I'm having to do this at night. So.

159.6 this morning. Down 0.2 pounds from yesterday. Food yesterday was pretty good - egg-and-bacon breakfast, chicken kebab and salad lunch, steak and green beans dinner. A couple of chocolates and a handful of cashews.

Sleep less than great, I'm sorry to say. Choppy Monday night, short last night. Woke for the day at 3:45. Stupid time change. I do hope I'll find I'm used to it soon.

Monday, November 2, 2015

Monday

Bad eating weekend. Candy. Gluten-free pizza. All sorts of nastiness. So be it. 159.6 this morning.

Hopefully, I'm at the end of that trend for a while. Start working from home tomorrow morning. So I'm crossing my fingers that I'm well away from junk food, and busy enough to avoid boredom eating.

Sleep last night was odd. Seems like I woke for good at 2 am, but I don't really remember what was on the radio after that, in any detail, anyway, so it's possible that I did sleep afterwards, for some of it at least. Aches and pains this time - from bad food, in part, and from furniture assembly, which occupied much of Sunday.

Really, that's it. Start fresh today or tomorrow morning at the latest. Go from there.