Thursday

Yesterday's fast did not go all that well.  First, I had a banana.  Not bad, of itself.  At lunch, they offered blackened "Cajun style" salmon (salmon being such a big part of Cajun culture - in any event, I don't care for it), so I had an eggless Cobb salad with lots of bacon, and some green beans and carrots in a sauce that tasted of butter (I suspect no cows were involved in providing the flavor, though).  That left me hungry by mid-afternoon (not enough bacon in the salad, I guess), and in mid-afternoon, I was at the airport.  Of all the really horrid places to try to find nutritious food, Reagan National Airport, concourse A must be near the top.  In desperation, I ended up with a "big grab" bag of Lays, and a tin of Godiva dark chocolate "pearls".  Finished the potato chips, and have a few pearls left.  Does that mean the chips were more rewarding than the chocolate?  I'll leave that to others to determine.

No food on the plane (not truly the world's longest flight, but boy, did it feel like it), and had "dinner" on the way home, around 9 pm.  Here's the breakdown:

• banana
• the usual supplements
• tea with half-and-half
• salad with bacon, blue cheese crumbles, and dressing that was probably ranch with soybean or canola oil in
• green beans with carrots in butter-flavored sauce
• way too many potato chips
• dark chocolate
• seltzer with lime
• bison burger with cheddar cheese, no bun
• pickles
• fries with catsup
• iced tea

And I ate all of the fries - no idea if they were tasty or not, I was just tired and hungry at that point, and they were prey.  As a result - 147.0 this morning, and a stomach that is discussing things with me in rather terse terms.

I think we're going to the gym tonight.  No idea what's for dinner, but if I have my druthers, nothing on that list above.

Wednesday

I managed to eat quite well, yesterday, as it turned out.  Surprisingly, the conference lunch offered baked chicken and wedge salads with blue cheese, so I ended up eating 3 meals.  Dinner was out, at a seafood place, and was very manageable, as long as one didn't inquire too closely as to ingredients. Here's the breakdown:

Scrambled eggs
Bacon
Tea with cream
The usual supplements
Baked chicken thigh
Wedge salad with blue cheese crumbles, blue cheese dressing, and bacon
Part of a crab cake
Glass of muscadet
Greek salad, in which I managed to avoid most of the chickpeas
Grilled shrimp
Mashed sweet potatoes
Roast butternut squash
Hazel nuts
Dark chocolate

Seems like a lot of food, but I think it was just that it came in lots of separable parts.  For what it's worth, I had leg cramps over the course of the night, so I think I stayed near ketosis.

I'm debating about a fast this morning.  Woke up with a headache and a stuffy head, so I've upped the vitamin D and fish oil, and had some Advil.  I should probably eat, if for no other reason than to protect my stomach from the last.  But I must say that I'm really not terribly hungry.  Maybe another cup of tea before I decide...

--
"Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it." -- G.K. Chesterton

Tuesday

So far, so good - I think.  No idea what I weigh this morning - the hotel has bathrobes, but no scales.  But I'm eating okay.  Here's yesterday:

IHOP omelet, with ham, cheese, and tomatoes
Olives
Pork osso bucco
Polenta with butternut squash
Various root vegetables
Prosecco
A couple of hazel nuts

This morning, I have had scrambled eggs and bacon so far, and, depending on what's on offer for lunch, will probably fast until dinner.  Tea with half and half when I can - that should help if I do get hungry.

Read an article in USA Today this morning - intensive weight loss counseling of the obese, by their doctors, led to them losing and keeping off an average of 10 pounds.  It stayed off for 2 years.  Based on other information provided in the article, these were people weighing over 200 pounds to start with.  Sure would be nice if the doctors were even a little bit helpful...

--
"Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it." -- G.K. Chesterton

Monday

We ate well enough over the weekend, I think, although Saturday did include a Mexican dinner, and we ended up getting a second basket of chips.  Oops.  Something to work on, I guess - I recall that, when we started this way of eating, we could skip the chips entirely.  Better choices yesterday - as a result I'm at 145.2 this morning.  Here's the breakdown:

Bacon
Paleo banana bread (from Make It Paleo)
Cheese
Ham
Salami
A few potato chips
Dark chocolate
Chocolate almonds
Salad
Dijon vinaigrette
Meat loaf

I think that was it.  Now for a challenge.  I'm in the airport awaiting my flight for a 2-day conference for work, at which both breakfast and lunch will be provided.  Obviously, I will be fasting some of it, though I'm not sure what.  I packed hazel nuts and a Lindt 85% bar, as emergency rations.  At a minimum, it should provoke some interesting conversations with the other 7 people attending from work.  

--
"Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it." -- G.K. Chesterton

Friday

Back to 144.4 this morning; we went out to dinner last night, so I'm not too surprised.  Something about restaurant food seems to do it for me.  Something - in this case, it was the gravy; we both had turkey dinners (potatoes, mixed veg, cornbread dressing and cranberry relish) at Mimi's last night, and I found that steamed carrots with turkey gravy are actually quite good.  Well, tasty - no comment to be made on their inherent merit.

Here's yesterday's eating (other sins involved, come to think of it):

• scrambled eggs
• bacon and sausage (I think it was both)
• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• cheese
• M&Ms (pure emotional eating)
• turkey
• mashed potatoes
• gravy
• carrots and broccoli
• cranberry relish
• chocolate almonds
• walnuts

I don't know where it's coming from, but I woke with another headache today.  I don't think it's stress, although yesterday was a very down day for me - people picking on my kid, worries about the future, stuff of that sort.  I'm still fighting some temperature swings, and today, they feel very much like a fever, although that could just be the presence of the headache.  Took an extra fish oil and some ibuprofen, and I hope that will keep it under control.  But I would very much like it just to go away.

For what it's worth, I am paying for the gravy this morning - a touch of indigestion, to boot.  Just adds to the overall malaise...

Thursday

I felt like I ate vast plates of food last night, and all for naught.  This is interesting, for reasons I'll get to in a minute.  I was at 143.8 this morning, so down more than a pound from yesterday, leg cramps and all - managed to keep a first one from manifesting, but not the second one.  It's weird; I don't think I'm eating that much different from the times when I wasn't cramping up, and yet, a) here they are, and b) I seem to be losing weight again.  Whatever.  I've said before that it's well worth the minor annoyance.

Here's yesterday's eating, as I recall it (meaning I will probably forget something):

• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• sausage
• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• cheese
• leftover flank steak
• bone broth and wine reduction sauce with butter
• two twice-baked potato halves
• Southern-style green beans
• chocolate almonds
• walnuts
• more cheese

Okay, I'm fairly sure that was everything.  All I know is, I got up from the table still feeling hungry, and the walnuts didn't do it for me, so I went for the cheese (Kerrygold Dubliner - I'm reasonably sure it's pastured milk).  And that seemed to help.

So here's why this is interesting.  The potatoes are not considered strict paleo, and probably took me out of zero carb for the day, as did the beans and the chocolate almonds.  I ate the walnuts absolutely mindlessly - just shoveled them in and went back for more.  I would tend to think that their prompting that sort of reaction was a hint that they might be a high-reward food, sort of.  And they did not assuage my hunger, either, leading me to forage for the cheese.  Which I had 4-5 pieces of.  Yesterday, Gary Taubes put out a new blog post in answer to Guyenet's Food Reward Hypothesis, which he says is still bound by conventional wisdom - the old calories-in/calories-out argument of weight.  He seems to be making a good case for his arguments (disclaimer: I tend to be a Taubesian in this fight to start with), and I had a sort of flash while reading it that they may both be describing legitimate phenomena that are more or less orthogonal to each other - the Food Reward stuff pointing to my mindless walnut gorge, in that there may be some foods that act like a drug on the brain, leading to addictive consumption - and the body-rules/hormonal theory of obesity (Taubes' side) pointing to the possibility that some of those highly rewarding foods might be fattening, but that others might not.  And I commented on his post to that end.  Not that he took up my points and replied to them, but I thought I would at least get it out there.  Last night, for me, certainly seemed to lend credence to my thinking (n=1 and all that, obviously).  So it was interesting.

I must be getting old

Two days in a row I forgot a fairly prominent item consumed when listing out my day's eats.  Yesterday, I had a slice of pumpkin tart with pecan crust left over from Sunday's dinner.

Okay, now we're good.