Tuesday

Sleep is not going so well, just now.  Sweat a bit, intense crazy dreams, wake up thinking it's nearly morning - 11:32 pm.  My shoulder isn't painful - so maybe that's something.  But, ugh!

147.2 again this morning; fingers swollen and stiff.  Not surprising.  Here's yesterday:

• fat-bomb smoothie
• cheese
• Wendy's double with cheese, no bun
• more cheese (about 3-4 pieces total)
• effing chocolate blueberries (half a box)

Stress much?  Elizabeth has a new dog.  He is sweet and smart and charming, and a holy terror when left alone.  We kept him at our house yesterday, since he barks when in a crate, and she was worried about fellow apartment-dwellers not liking that much.  Crated him in our room, cleaned off most horizontal surfaces, closed all doors, in case he got out of the crate (which was quite secure).  He got out of the crate.  He got out of the room.  He destroyed about half of the house's window treatments, a ceramic pitcher, the glass on a picture in our room, a box or so of dog treats.  Generally created chaos.  We think he was terrified at being alone in the house.  Anyway, I came home to the devastation.  We took him to a vet for an exam and to discuss tranquilizers, and she has a prescription for Prozac.  In the meantime, he's in a crate, that has been fortified with tie-wraps, on the back porch with the other two dogs (which he escaped from once before when left in it without the crate).  I don't think he can get into the house from there, but we know he can get out of the porch, since that's already happened.  Still, that's much less messy than what happened yesterday.  I just ordered new curtains for the living room, at $518 including shipping.  They'll be here just before Thanksgiving.  I think we can re-hang the dining room stuff - need to get new brackets is all.  And we'll be buying blinds at some point.  They're the least critical.  Golly.  So at the end of the day, I was a wreck, and I went for the mindless chocolate consumption.

Here's hoping today will be better.

Monday

Gruesome.

I weighed 144.6 at one point this weekend.  Assuming it was Saturday, because it wasn't yesterday, and it certainly wasn't this morning - 147.2 today.  

Ate like a pig yesterday - chocolate blueberries, M&Ms, potato chips, all sorts of crap.  Stress eating, all of it.  And slept accordingly crappy.

New start today.  Fat bomb smoothie for breakfast, and nothing else until dinner.

Friday

I survived yesterday, but it was somewhat brutal.  My shoulder just ached like crazy until dose number 2 of Advil, in the afternoon.  No idea why.  It feels fine this morning.  I'm under orders to stop doing the exercises if it gets inflamed, and I had every intention of not doing them today, until I woke up and realized it didn't hurt anymore.  So I did them.  Whatever.

Yesterday turned out to be a sort of fast.  I had breakfast, but dinner was a bit, well, odd.  Owing to the gymnastics meet I'd promised to go to, which started at 5, I managed only a piece of cheese at dinner time, and had a bit more later.  145.0 this morning, as a result.  Here's the details:

• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• scrambled eggs
• sausage patties
• cheese (in total, 3 pieces)
• cashews (1 handful)
• walnuts (1 handful)

The second two pieces of cheese and the nuts were consumed at bedtime, basically.  Ketosis is a wonderful thing, I must say.  Apples were on offer, and I didn't even want one.

Sleep was adequate.  I am waking up around 11:30-midnight a lot, thinking that I've had a full night's sleep, but being able to fall back quite quickly.  Not sure what that's about.  And this morning, I woke again at 4, was awake for most of the ensuing hour, and fell asleep during the half-hour of radio we allow ourselves before getting up.  I feel fairly well rested this morning, so I guess it could be worse.

Weekend coming - no idea what I'll be able to accomplish.  But I might turn my dried carrots into carrot powder/flour and attempt a few cupcakes.  Maybe.

Thursday

Don't know why I was so eager for it to be Thursday this week.  Thursday brought snow and traffic snarls this morning and seems likely to deliver more before the day's over.

I achieved ketosis yesterday, for certain.  The fast lasted until dinner was made, and I wasn't all that hungry when I got home, truly.  And my calves are fasciculating, bless them.  Had me launching out of bed last night like a rocket, once - but only once.  Other than that, I slept very well.  And I'm at 146.0 this morning.  So there.

Here's yesterday:

• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• Big-Ass Salad (tm) with roast beef and feta and Greek vinaigrette
• two almond shortbread cookies
• a Ghirardelli chocolate square
• a handful of potato chips
• two chocolate almonds

By the time I hit the bed, I could tell that cramps were imminent, so had the chips (yeah, that's why!).  I don't think they worked all that well.  However, once the one cramp hit and was vanquished, I slept like a log until 5:27, so I don't mind much.  And of course, now I'm really tired and achy.  My shoulder is stiff and tired - I don't know if the exercises are making the muscles being exercised ache, or if they're irritating the ones at the root of the problem, or what, but I wouldn't mind spending a couple of weeks not using my right arm at all.  I think Advil is in my future.

Maybe fasting lunch and dinner today, again for convenience; going to my niece's gymnastics meet directly from work.  Shouldn't be too much of a burden not to eat.  Glad to see 146 again this morning.

Wednesday

This week is crawling!  Every morning I wake up thinking it should at least be Thursday by now, and it's not.  Tomorrow, perhaps...

Ate reasonably well yesterday, although it included Mexican food for dinner.  147.2 this morning.  Here's the scoop:

• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• chips and salsa
• 3 cheese enchiladas with green chile
• iced tea
• one almond shortbread cookie

I think that was it.  Fasting-for-convenience today, and probably another Big-Ass salad (tm) with meat for dinner tonight.

Sleep improved, by the way - back on the Menopause support version of melatonin - not sure what else they put in it, but I'm able to sleep much better with it than with plain melatonin, so I will continue to purchase it.  Shoulder is doing really well.  

Tuesday

Got some sleep last night.  I changed back to the menopause-specific melatonin; don't know if it had to do with that, or if I was just bloody exhausted, but I don't remember much between, say, 10 pm and 3:47 am, when I woke up for a very short time.  I will take it.  More, please!

Eating yesterday was an improvement on the weekend, although no weight was harmed - still 147.8 this morning.  And I'm still pretty swollen up, so figure it will go when that stops.  Here's the breakdown:

• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• cheese
• a chef's salad (turkey, ham, cheese, blue cheese dressing, on lettuce)
• a couple of almond shortbread cookies
• a handful of potato chips
• a handful of cashews

So, as I said, better.  Not perfect, but an improvement.  We also walked before dinner - on the cheese and cashews, as I recall.  I got in a couple of laps past a mile at racewalking pace/form, which seems to have been mostly okay with my shoulder this time.  I ended up doing the shoulder exercises twice yesterday - once in the morning and once after the racewalking, though possibly not soon enough after.  Anyway, my shoulder is a little achy today, but not bad at all - feels more like post-exercise than injury, which is where we want to keep it.  And the rest of me, that was so nasty yesterday, is fine now.  The walk seems to have fixed my lower back and hamstrings.

Onward!

Monday

Not tremendously great weekend.  I did about 2-3 hours of garden cleanup on Saturday, and I'm still feeling the effects, which are painful.  Possibly even a twinge of sciatica - some shooting pains down both hips.  Sleep Saturday was fine, thank heavens, but last night was wretched.  I put some pain-relief cream on my hamstrings, and the capsaicin in it caused them to burn most of the night.  And I wasn't smart enough or awake enough to get up and do anything about it at that time.  It was just rough.  Eating over the weekend was okay - not great, but not horrid.  147.8 this morning, up from 147.4 yesterday, and my fingers are very swollen, so I think it's mostly water/inflammation.  Here's what I can recall of yesterday:

• tea with cream
• menopause supplements only (not working much right now, either)
• an almond shortbread cookie
• two brats with sauerkraut
• a few potato chips
• cheese
• roast beef
• mashed potatoes with gravy (rice-flour roux)
• salad with blue cheese dressing
• peach ice cream
• a couple more almond shortbread cookies
• a glass of Gewurztraminer

I think that was everything.  I mean to get back into ketosis this week and calm things down, so probably a chef's salad or the like tonight for dinner, maybe after a gym trip with Elizabeth.  And no snacks during the day, either - I have beef jerky in the car, but if I get monstrously hungry, I'll go have another cup of tea or bouillon.

The roast was perfect yesterday - I did the dry-brine, slow-oven approach from Cook's Illustrated and got a rosy-pink, tender, delicious result.  So nice to have found a way to do it that works reliably.  The gravy was less wonderful - not sure if the rice flour dampened the flavor or if the lack of drippings was an issue - the liquid was mostly commercial beef stock.  And trial 2 of peach ice cream was a disappointment.  First, it needs the egg yolk (I omitted that this time), and second, peach is just not a very assertive flavor.  The result isn't bad, just a bit bland.  Next up, raspberries or strawberries, I think.  Either in a French vanilla base as fruit, or in a French vanilla base as the main flavor.

And, I think I have enough dried carrots to make flour now.  Crossing my fingers that it works roughly like coconut flour and can be used as a cake base; I will give cupcakes a trial some time over the next week or so.  One egg's worth of batter, however much that might make.