Friday

The main point of Mark's Daily Apple yesterday was that one should ease in to barefoot walking.  I agreed yesterday, and today, after not having done that very well, I agree even more.  I went for a walk at lunch yesterday - my Google maps measured mile route - in my moccasins.  Walked back to the car in them, I think (I might not have - I truly do not recall).  Then, after dinner, walked around the local outlet mall with my daughter - apparently that's another 7/8 of a mile.  But in crocs, not the moccasins.  Walking in crocs is like walking around with memory foam mattresses on your feet that you have to hang onto with your toes.  My calves both cramped up badly as I was getting in the car - took a while before I could coax my heels down to ground level again.

So what did we do after that?  Drank a carton of coconut water, first, then went to the new Denver County Fair and walked around.  This time, I wore the moccasins again - I knew the crocs would be a bad idea.  But the parking lots were lumpy gravel - ouch!  And my left leg (of course) got crabby on me and cramped up for a while.  While I was awake, which is a huge improvement over it's normal behavior.

Legs are a bit tired this morning - and my feet ache.  I think it's from muscle use - and if it is, an ache just behind the ball of my foot is pure perfection - I want those strengthened arches!

Yesterday's eating went like this:

• scrambled eggs
• turkey bacon
• tea with cream
• the usual vitamins (see yesterday)
• stacked cheese enchiladas with pork green chile (flour and 3 corn tortillas certainly involved as well as mystery cooking oil)
• chips and salsa (I think they're corn chips, but the texture is very different from most, so other things could be in there)
• iced tea
• chocolate covered strawberry
• chocolate covered blueberries

I think that's it.  Sleep overnight was pretty good, but I woke abruptly at 4:30 after a vivid and rather disturbing dream, so I probably only got about 7 hours max.  142.0 this morning, so the carbs this week have not been particularly problematic.  That's good to know.  I think excessive sugar is a problem for me, weight-wise, but starchy stuff is less of an issue.  Since there are folks out there reporting that once you go low-carb, you can never go back without becoming somewhat spherical, I have been trying to keep the non-meat/fat items in my diet without tipping the scales much.  And it seems to be working.  Mostly, anyway.

Weekend on the horizon - with two movies, I think - we promised to see Captain America again, and want to see Cowboys and Aliens.  Possibly also a lacrosse game and who knows what else.  Should be fun!

Thursday

Let's see, what did I eat yesterday?

• Scrambled eggs
• bacon
• tea with cream (and seconds, I think)
• gruyere - a total of 4 or 5 pieces throughout the evening
• ribeye
• green beans with bacon and onions
• baked potato with sour cream and butter (I'd ordered a sweet potato, but the lack of sugary crap on it apparently confused the kitchen at the restaurant - I ate it)
• iced tea
• chocolate almonds
• walnuts
• a chocolate cherry

Not bad, all things considered.  With Elizabeth home, we went out for steak for dinner.  I'm still fighting aftereffects of the Chinese food or something, I think - I do like fortune cookies, but apparently they don't care much for me.

Back to 142.2 this morning - I'm holding pretty steady this week, and am a bit waiting for the other shoe to drop, since I haven't been eating as clean as last week.  So far, it's still suspended.

I thought this was a good post - so here are the other things he wanted recorded.
Supplements:

• Mag citrate
• potassium gluconate
• D3 (2000 IU yesterday)
• Salmon oil

No gum or mints
Exercise involved a not-terribly-fast walk of about a mile all told, in three chunks - and in moccasins
I slept like a rock last night
No particular stress

Wednesday

What I ate yesterday - well, crap, mostly. 

• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• a link of turkey sausage
• potato chips
• trail mix
• chinese food without rice (beef with green peppers)
• hot and sour soup, including tofu
• a fortune cookie and a half
• strawberry ice cream
• chocolate blueberries and cherries
• cashews

I'm up to 142.4 this morning - incrementally not all that much, but a week-ish ago, I was down a pound from this.  I hereby resolve to avoid the machines at work today at all costs.

I decided yesterday to start wearing my moccasins between the car and work each day.  It's only a couple of blocks, but it's something - and I really would like to get the benefit (shorter feet) of the strengthened arches from "barefoot" walking.

Tuesday

Seems later in the week than that - not sure why, but it does.  I would like it to be Wednesday, as Elizabeth arrives for a short stay on Wednesday, but it's not - yet.

Yesterday's eating:

• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• tea with cream
• cheese snack
• mini meatloaf made with potato starch
• salad with blue cheese dressing
• ice tea
• chocolate covered fruit of various sorts
• walnuts
• pecans and cheese spread

Still 142.2 this morning, and a little unsettled in the digestive area.  I can't identify anything I've been eating recently that would cause upset, unless it was Saturday's corn-products "binge".  Seems a bit unlikely.

Our dogs love tomatoes - we know this because they beg while we are making salads.  We also know this because I caught one of them red-mouthed at the tomato plants in the back yard last night.  That might explain some rather scanty harvests over the past couple of years.  When that part of the yard was an overgrown butterfly garden and the tomatoes were rather hard to get to, we got lots.  Last year, we sodded the area over, and suddenly, the harvest dwindled.  I thought the practically brand-new garden mix soil had been depleted, but apparently the problem was of animal origin.  So now we know.  And have surrounded those plants with wire mesh.

Monday

Good weekend.  Very productive.  We started Saturday by spraying the driveway with weedkiller and cleaning out the screen porch (lotsa dog hair - that's where they spend their days).  Followed it by doing laundry and making fresh mayo for use in salad dressing (both blue cheese and thousand island), and cutting up the two tiny green peppers my plants have produced so far and drying them.  Pulled the netting off the raspberries and found some plantable containers to try to root strawberry runners in, so I can get them started in a new location, raspberry-free.  Repotted houseplants, mulched the last un-mulched garden bed in the yard (they'd run out).  Polished shoes and other leather goods. Vacuum-sealed steaks for the freezer.  Repaired a missing button on a shirt, and super-glued two others that looked to be on the verge of breaking in half.  Replaced our bedroom curtains - I found some thermal, room-darkening ones this time that make a huge different on the nighttime light levels (granted, they cover only about 2/3 of the window - that's on purpose - but they even seemed to help with the temperature).  I would have made pickles, but didn't think of it until it was starting to get warm in the house - did not want to add to that by boiling anything.

I had huge amounts of rather fidgety energy this weekend.  I'd blame the popcorn (we went to Captain America on Saturday and it was great - and I only had a small popcorn), but I know better.  Not really sure what it was - especially as one of the dogs is still a bit ill - enough to wake us up at 3 am Sunday with a giant cleaning job.  So sleep was not great.

Eating yesterday was just strange.  No breakfast (I wasn't hungry), lunch at 2 pm at the BBQ place - my usual half-pound of smoked turkey and a coleslaw.  Snacking for the rest of the day, mostly on cheese, with a few cashews and chocolate blueberries thrown in.  Dessert - ice cream and the last of the raspberries and blueberries.  Those tiny pots of Haagen-Dasz are the perfect size for us - just enough to be delicious, and not enough to get us in much trouble.  And not too sweet, which is starting to be important - if things are too sweet, you can't taste anything else.

142.2 this morning - given my consumption of garbage over the weekend (in addition to the popcorn, I had corn chips and salsa on Saturday), I think that's just peachy.

Friday

Hmm, what did I eat yesterday?  Something like this, I think:

• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• tea with cream
• beef jerky
• cheese
• chocolate cherries
• tea with cream
• naked cheese steak
• cottage cheese
• pickle spear
• ice tea
• more chocolate cherries

141.8 this morning.  I was hungry a lot yesterday, for some reason; before and after the jerky, and while waiting for dinner, which was extremely late (7 pm) since Lee was doing a golf tournament all afternoon.

My ability to function degraded throughout the day - I just got tireder and tireder - and it didn't help that I had a one-hour meeting as a standee in a standing-room-only situation.  I cannot stand.  Not sure if I can manage to contrive a standing desk situation here at work, but am seriously considering it, since standing for one stupid hour ought to be something any human can do without strain - and it nearly nailed me yesterday.  I ended up going to bed around 8:15 pm last night - didn't fall asleep until some time after 9, but my back was killing me.  It's fine today.

Weekend at home coming up - yeah!  About bloody time; first one in a month, I think.  I suspect I will be spending quality time spraying the driveway for weeds one of the mornings - ugh.  They're horrible, though, with all the rain we've been having, and it has to be done.

The potatoes from last night

Here is the ingredient list:

Potatoes, Milk, Soybean Oil, Bleached Wheat Flour, Water, Contains less than 2% of the following: Corn Flour, Cottonseed Oil, Dextrose, Guar Gum, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Modified Corn Starch, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Onion, Salt, Spices, Sugar, Yeast, Yeast Extract. Contains: Milk, Wheat and Soy.

That's about what I figured.  Nasty little buggers! 

No fire

I meant to mention that we never did find any fire or source of smoke either in our house or around the neighborhood anywhere.  Some lightning going on, but nowhere near.  Weird.  Hope the alarms don't start making a habit of this...

And,... We're back!

To 141.4 again, that is - the golden 50-lb loss number.  I'm still wobbly in places I'd rather not be, but I dearly love that milestone.  And at 5'11", 141.4 is a fine weight.  Lee is still talking about going to the gym (talk, but no action as yet); if and when we do go, I'll work on weights and see if I can't get the composition to shift a bit, but if it doesn't happen, I'm still quite pleased with life as a more-or-less paleo.

Case in point: last night was not exactly sleep conducive.  I drifted off around 10 pm, in a fairly dark room (ambient light mostly from stars, but the odd streetlight contributing).  At 10:13, our smoke alarm went off - took me a bit too long to figure out what it was, but we were both up wandering the house looking for fires or some cause of the noise for a while after that.  While I was awake, I got hungry and had a piece of cheese (and kicked off the install of Lion on my laptop), but was back asleep fairly quickly - and we didn't ever find any cause of the smoke alarms.  At 1:30ish, I started being aware that one of the dogs was ill-at-ease, and within a few minutes, that he was actually rather sick.  I was able to get up, get him outside, clean up his bedding enough for him to go back into his kennel, and go back to sleep again, although it probably took around 30 minutes to do that.  Consequently, when the real alarm went off this morning, I was kind of tired.  But!  I eat Paleo!  Scrambled eggs, bacon, and tea with cream in it for breakfast, and I am fully functional now.  Before we made the switch, that would NEVER have happened.

Here's yesterday's eating:

• scrambled eggs (in bacon grease - we're trying to use up our stash)
• bacon
• tea with cream
• NY strip steak
• "omaha steaks" brand potatoes au gratin - two "scoops"
• ice tea
• chocolate cherries and almonds
• gruyere
• walnuts
• cheddar

Good stuff - although I mean to do a web search for the ingredients in those potatoes - I think they involved bread crumbs somewhere.  And after dinner, I had the energy to deadhead the roses, clean out a bunch of weeds, and prune the raspberry canes back a bit.  Good stuff.

Wednesday

Yesterday's eating:

• tea with cream
• taco salad (grassfed beef, lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, cheese, salsa)
• ice tea
• chocolate cherries and almonds
• cashews
• gruyere

Yes, I pulled an all-day IF.  I was pleasantly hungry by dinner time, and ate the salad pretty darn quick, but it mostly filled me up until later in the evening, when I had the cashews and cheese.  142.2 this morning, not too surprisingly.

I had a lot of energy after dinner last night - despite the fact that it had just rained (I got rather damp and a bit muddy), I pulled bolting lettuce out of the garden, put cucumber vines back into the supports (trying to keep them from a full-garden takeover by going vertical), picked a few of those and a few tomatoes, and harvested another pile of raspberries and a small handful of blueberries.  Then I made another batch of italian salad dressing from a recipe I found on food.com and altered (it had canola oil and Karo-style corn syrup in the original; I substituted light olive oil and a small quantity of actual sugar in my version - and I swapped in apple cider vinegar for the red wine vinegar in the original - to get a bit more zing).  My early taste test was promising; I'm letting it blend for 24 hours before trying it out for real.

Dinner tonight is strip steaks and salad of some sort, and I did have breakfast, so no fasting today.

Tuesday

Here's yesterday's eating:

• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• tea with cream
• A bottle of water on the way to work
• beef jerky (got hungry mid-day; it has soy sauce/wheat in it)
• gruyere cheese (rather a lot)
• sirloin burger patties with TJs green salsa on them
• tomato and cucumber salad with homemade (nasty, unfortunately) italian salad dressing
• ice tea
• chocolate cherries
• walnuts

I think that's it.  I was at 142.8 this morning, which is probably statistically identical to yesterday.  I'm IFing this morning, just 'cause - Lee had to get up and out of the house early, so I told him he could skip cooking breakfast if he wanted, and he did.  Don't know if it will last all day or not - I'm a bit peckish at the moment.  If it gets out of hand, I'll probably have more jerky, since it should, theoretically, be somewhat better for me than trail mix.

Lee mentioned yesterday that he feels like he's lost weight but is not strong.  I'm fine with going to the gym, if he wants to do that, but I would prefer not to be put in the role of making sure he goes (by always being the one to remember that we agreed to do it - that's usually how it works).  But I'll probably end up doing it anyway.  Not tonight - he's going to the golf course to do greens maintenance or something.

I need to find a recipe for italian salad dressing that tastes like Kraft Zesty Italian, but without the soybean oil and other nastiness.  I love tomatoes and cucumbers marinated that way - and don't much care for cucumbers any other way.  The stuff I made for last night was red wine vinegar and EVOO (2 oil to 1 vinegar) with a spice mix intended for green goddess dressing.  Not good - not enough vinegar flavor, to start with, and the spices were bland.  If I find something that works, I will post it - and I'll probably throw the rest of that stuff away.

Monday

Wow - two days away from home, eating in restaurants, and I lost 2.4 pounds!  Nice!  Here's what we ate yesterday, as I recall it:

• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• sliced tomatoes
• tea with cream
• sliced cheddar cheese
• smoked sliced turkey with mustard BBQ sauce
• iced tea
• cole slaw
• raspberries and blueberries with whipped cream (just a bit of sugar and vanilla in it)
• walnuts
• gruyere

Saturday was similar, although I did have lunch on Saturday:

• bacon
• sausage
• strawberries
• cottage cheese
• tea with cream
• wendy's double cheese, no bun (note to self - must explicitly request a fork for this)
• NY Strip steak
• steamed veggies
• salad with blue cheese dressing
• creme brulee

And Friday, I made it through the Harry Potter movie with no popcorn.  Lee bought some milk chocolate covered almonds and I had a few of those, but nothing else.  I was vastly helped in this not eating by the woman in the row in front of us, who had a belly hanging over her jeans that shook much more than a "bowlful of jelly" - it appeared to be filled with a slightly viscous fluid - a bit thicker than water, but not much.  Really disgusting to look at.

We are thinking (early days yet) of doing the Whole 30 program.  For me, it would mean eating at home for nearly all meals, cooking more middle-tier ingredients (like mayo), and swearing off the dairy.  That last thing would be the absolute hardest for me, since I eat cheese so much, and use heavy cream to swap for most of my former-carb calories.  The reason I'm thinking it might help is for Lee - he still suffers from a bad set of allergies and sinus issues, and they are NOT going away with our Archevore/Paleo eating approach.  So if we were to eliminate all inflammatory foods for a month, I'm hoping he could see some improvement in those areas - as well as breaking his plateau a bit.  It's still in the thinking stages yet - I would want to test out some dairy alternatives and he's going to have to get his head around avoiding sweeteners of all sorts for a month - if we get to a solid plan for it and actually do it, I'll definitely report out. 

The garden is starting to produce - and how!  We've picked 3 huge bunches of raspberries - each about twice what comes in those little plastic boxes at the grocery store.  A few blueberries - a good start there, anyway.  And the tomatoes took off while we were gone - we have one ripe one in the kitchen, and lots to follow.  I think I should actually be able to freeze some fresh tomato sauce this year.  And make pickles - 4 cucumbers picked so far, and more to come.  They seem very happy.

Friday

Met a friend for lunch yesterday (a rather rare thing for me, eating lunch) and we went to a summer event here - the gathering of all the mobile lunch trucks in a main park downtown.  I found a paleo truck, more or less: they had grassfed beef burgers and explicitly offered them in a lettuce wrap (fortunately, served in a cardboard thingie with a fork and knife).  O G Burgers, they're called.  It was very tasty, especially after I added sharp cheddar and bacon.

Here's the day's food, listed:

• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• tea with cream
• Perrier
  
• turkey sausage (Lee was hungry yesterday)
• grassfed burger with cheese and bacon
• water
• cheese snack
• chocolate cherries
• cashews
• Qdoba naked burrito, no beans, with shredded beef, sour cream, cheese, salsa, and guacamole

The burrito did have rice, and I ate every scrap of it.  No weight-related bad effects from the rice so far - I'm at 145.0 today.  Had some complex leg cramps last night, though - first in my toes, which I attribute to wearing some toe-constricting shoes and walking a bit yesterday.  As the toes were settling down, my left leg cramped up on the outside of the calf in a jumpy sort of way (I was asleep when this began, I believe), ultimately forcing me to stomp it out.  It didn't hurt, but it was bending my foot in a way no foot should go.  I'm assuming either potassium depletion, dehydration, or both.  Although I know I had water both at lunch and right after it, because it was hot out at lunch - and a Perrier on the drive in to work as well. Took an extra potassium this morning and will drink more water today; one or the other should settle it, I hope.  Because we're headed to Cheyenne tonight, and I KNOW there won't be any grocery stores carrying coconut water up there, so it has to settle down.

We are getting gallons of raspberries right now - the bushes have been loaded.  Also a few blueberries, which is very cool since our soil pH doesn't really support them.  I figure I'll have to do something next year to re-acidify the soil - maybe do a heavy mulch with pine straw or something.  Anyway, we ate some of the raspberries and gave more to my parents.  They're very good.

Headed to Cheyenne for the weekend - not Frontier Days, that's not for a week; Lee has a golf tournament.  I think we'll eat okay - probably hit up several steakhouses.  And do a movie - must see the last Harry Potter.  Undoubtedly with some popcorn, though I will limit it to a small one - I've learned.

Thursday

I am rapidly bidding a fond (not!) farewell to the water - 145.8 this morning.  Lee was down another 2 pounds, so returning to sane eating habits is doing both of us much good.  Here is yesterday's eating:

• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• tea with cream
• pork tenderloin
• green beans with bacon
• iced tea
• chocolate almonds and cherries
• cheese snacks
• walnuts
• more tea with cream

I think that's it, anyway.  We did the pork on the grill, with a spice rub I picked up on vacation - lots of cracked pepper in it (also, unfortunately, turbinado sugar and wheat gluten, according to the ingredients - didn't read them when I bought it).  It was quite tasty.

There are rumors floating around right now that someone is suggesting that obese children be removed from their parents and placed in protective custody somewhere.  I can't help thinking that the foster families will promptly feed them according to government guidelines and be baffled that they are not losing any weight; probably much as their actual parents were.  Notwithstanding the horrible dietary consequences of all this, I am utterly opposed to it - the government should mind its own damn business.  This is yet another one of those days that I wonder just when I fell into the rabbit hole; things are very catty-wampus all over, and there appears to be no likelihood of it getting better.

At least we have our health.  For now, anyway.

Wednesday

Lost nearly 2 pounds of water yesterday - my ankles are more ankle-shaped than they were the whole trip home, but still a bit puffy, so I don't think I'm done yet.  147.0 today.  Lee says he's down 2.2 pounds.  Yesterday's eating:

• Scrambled Eggs
• Bacon
• Tea with cream
• Cheese snacks and sliced cheddar
• Chocolate cherries and almonds (a few)
• Walnuts
• A few cashews
• Braised short ribs with wine sauce (good recipe from the Food Network, adapted for crock pot)
• Berries and cream

I had a lot of energy throughout the day - spent a good chunk of it weeding a garden bed that had been clean when we left, and covered with 3-foot weeds when we returned (lotsa rain while we were gone, apparently).  And today - back to the grind.

Back from Vacation

All in all, I do think we tried to eat well - and mostly succeeded.  But 10 days on the road, eating restaurant food, is murder no matter what.  Lee thinks he drank more beer during this past weekend than he had the entire previous year - I was probably right there with him, although I didn't have as much as he did - but then, I'm not a huge beer fan.  We also ate seafood more often than normal for us - since we were right there with it and it was fresh.  I find that I rather like Red Snapper - and I had some scallops as well that were very good.  Things I can eat here, I think, a bit more frequently.

But there was also the night we arrived and had dinner with a friend at his restaurant - a pizza joint.  Total Fail.  Not much one could do, really.  We ate bread.  And it tasted pretty good.  But man!  The next morning we were both stiff and sore and felt awful - inflammation, I think.  That, and walking around the Naval Academy and the city of Annapolis, probably, with legs more used to sitting than standing.  A whole lotta fish, and the stiffness went away pretty quickly.

We did a lot of meat-based meals, bunless burgers, and the like.  As I said - we ate pretty well.  But Lee says he's up 6 pounds.  And me?  I'm up about 6 - 148.8 this morning (Ugh!!!).  I think some of it is water - I got badly sunburned on Saturday morning and have been really swollen up as a result.  Which reminds me - coconut oil may work for an overcast couple of mid-day hours in Cheyenne, but the sunny day in Virginia Beach totally killed it.  I'm sure I got a lot of Vitamin D, but not in the right way - and I'm still paying.

Cheese and salami in the cooler worked pretty well - except when we had to put the cooler in the car and park it for a few hours - it didn't run during those times.  We brought way too much salami and had to toss it, which was a bummer.  I can say that we avoided buying food from truck stops this trip - and that is a very good thing.  Walnuts were good - and we did hit Trader Joes (anywhere there is one, we go) and got some more dark-chocolate-what-have-yous - probably ate more of those than we should have.

So, back to eating normally again.  Braised short ribs in the crock pot this morning, and I mean to pull a pork tenderloin from the freezer to thaw overnight for tomorrow.

Friday

Very likely no updates next week, since we'll be on the road (yeah!!!).  Here is yesterday's eating:

• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• turkey sausage
• tea with cream
• carnitas street tacos with guacamole (I ate 2 corn tortillas as a part of this)
• a Starbucks "dark chocolate" bar - no idea what all was in it
• Bunless Cheesesteak
• cottage cheese
• the odd french fry
• probably a chocolate or two

We were packing and getting organized last night so things were crazy.  I'm at 143.2 this morning; delayed reaction to the sugar and fries and ice cream, I would tend to guess.  My plan for the next week is to keep the desserts down and stick to the norm (for us) and see how it goes - I think we'll be fine.  The cheese and salami are being packed, and we also have walnuts and some of our dark chocolate nuts and berries, so we can avoid those truck stop food-buying issues.