Tuesday

Rough sleep last night. The dogs wanted out at midnight, I woke again at 2 am, and took somewhere between 30-60 minutes to get back to sleep. Still, I got back to sleep. Big improvement over last month. Nonetheless, I'm feeling a mite draggy this morning.

160.0 this morning. Here's yesterday:

• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• macadamia nuts (tried to keep it under 20 total - I think I had about 15)
• vegetable beef soup, made with homemade stock
• cheese
• olives

That's a nice short list. Nothing on it but verifiable ingredients, too. And no added sugar - no natural sugar either. All good. But it makes me wonder if the draggy feeling has to do with low-carb flu. I wasn't much more than Trace ketosis at bedtime last night, so I don't think I'm very adapted - nor should I be, the way I've been quaffing sugar of late.

After yesterday, I'd made up my mind to go on a big-ass salad binge once Lee leaves for his trip next week. I told him that, and he saw no reason not to start now. So we will be having big-ass salads at dinner for the next few weeks. I need to spend time figuring out variations, so it doesn't get boring. Club, Cobb, Nicoise, Taco, Greek, etc. Might be useful to check my one Primal Blueprint cookbook for ideas, too.

No breakfast this morning - the dogs had to fast, and it seemed right to be in solidarity with them. Also easier since we wouldn't have to defend our food from them. I grabbed a couple of pieces of cheese on the way out the door, and with that and tea-with-cream, am not terribly hungry.

No exercise yesterday, other than a trip to Costco, which doesn't count. Maybe none today, either. I'm still pretty achy from the weekend, and maybe would benefit from another day of rest.

Monday

Good weekend. Great weather - warm, sunny, calm. I spent a chunk of yesterday on the chaise on the front porch, reading and soaking up sun. Got a minor sunburn on my arm, nothing on my legs. I still find this really interesting, since I used to burn so quickly.

Got a lot of exercise in as well - a walk on Saturday (outdoors!!!) as well as gardening both Saturday and Sunday. I finally got rid of the stiffness from sprinting last week - replaced by garden butt, or variants thereof.  My right knee feels a bit like it lost connective tissue - it seems to want to give a bit going backwards. But that is getting better as time passes.

Slept like a rock last night - well, I woke up briefly at 3 after a dream that was going somewhere I didn't want it to go - and made a conscious decision, in the dream, to get out of it. Kind of weird, actually. Woke up a bit abruptly as one of our dogs peed on the bed for some reason. He's at the vet this morning - and you'd better believe he got tested for blood glucose first. It was fine.

Eating could have been better. 160.4 this morning, which is down from yesterday and up from Friday (at least, I think it is). Yesterday went like this:

• tea with cream
• some supplements - fish oil, turmeric, magnesium, D3
• omelet with ham, cheese, veggies, and green chile (from the looks of it, thickened with corn starch)
• cheese
• strawberries - probably about a pound of them
• a very few cashews
• a bag of Frollicks - essentially, more cheese
• steak
• Southern-style green beans
• salad with blue cheese
• ice cream with cherries, almonds, and chocolate chips (Cold Stone)

That was it. Obviously the ice cream was a mistake - though more in quantity than anything, I guess. I need to get my sugar cravings under control, obviously. The strawberries were an attempt at that - I figured that fruit would be better than candy, as it is, with 2 cups of whole berries (I guess that's a pound) being a whopping 92 calories and 22.1 grams of carbs, with 5.8 of those being fiber. As for the ice cream, Lee likes to go get Cold Stone of a summer night, so I went along and had some. Last year, I stopped having some, but went for the ride, and I will go back to that pattern again.

I am going to start back getting myself into proper ketosis again. I think that I can lose some of this weight if I get hard into it and stay there for a couple of weeks, truly. And once there, it's not hard to stay. Does that mean Fat Fast? It might. I'm trying to decide. Lee will be leaving for New Orleans in about a week (ish), and when it's just me, I can get myself under control, I think. So this week will be working toward ketosis without the true fasting, and next week, once he's on the road, will be the full monty. I think that makes sense.

Friday

Late work night last night - got to bed around midnight. The melatonin saved me, I think, although I don't feel very saved this morning. Tired, achy, stiff (still!), vaguely "off", a mild sore throat. Some of it is lack of sleep. Some of it is eating those damn sugar eggs after dinner last night. Some of it caused me to take 3 vitamin D3 this morning, to fight off anything else it might be.

Anyway, 160.2 this morning. Yeah. Whatever. This seems to be a weight-gain period for me, probably due to stress. While I've stopped using the brainwave app to get to sleep, because it's too damn hard to keep the earphones in, I think I will start/resume using it for the stress reduction program at least on workdays. I was certainly fighting mad last night, and it led to the cashews. I need to stop eating them altogether.

Here's yesterday:

• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• macadamia nuts
• 2 hamburger patties
• 2 zucchinis worth of parmesan zoodles (sour cream, butter, parmesan cheese)
• 4 sugar eggs
• cashews

That's the list. Definitely stress eating, at the end of the day. It could have been worse - I spent part of the evening working on jewelry-making tasks, keeping my hands occupied.

I probably need to do a fat percentage measurement - because my jeans still fit, and unless I'm feeling bloaty (something that's happened more recently, which I ought to give some thought to), so do my other pants and skirts. I've increased my walking speed, which should indicate more muscle mass, but I don't know. 

Should be a good weekend - decent weather both days. I have gardening plans, and I hope I can execute on them. Get some sun and fresh air, and get to what Tom Naughton calls "dog tired satisfied." If I can do that, the weekend will have been a success.

Thursday

At some point this week, Mark Sisson made an offhand remark in his blog that he found sprinting to be really effective for performance improvement or muscle growth or something. So last night, after I found that I wasn't going to be doing my second mile at anything approaching Sunday's pace, I thought I would try a few short sprints - just 1 side of the oval track that we walk indoors on. I did 4 of them, and the 4th was short of the length I'd achieved on the others. I wouldn't say I enjoyed them, but I was surprised at how fast I could run, and how well I had adapted to Vibrams for running, considering I don't run. Didn't think much about it after that.

As of this morning, I can say that sprinting is really effective for something - my hamstrings and quads and ankles are all really stiff, as are a few key core muscles. Crazy.  

158.8 this morning, probably partly because of that stiffness. Here's yesterday:

• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• pulled pork BBQ with cole slaw
• macadamia nuts
• 2 pieces of cheddar cheese
• salad with ham, chicken, cheese, and a vinaigrette dressing (out of blue cheese)
• walnuts
• 2 sugar easter egg candies

That was it. Not too great, really. And obviously, I don't usually eat lunch, so that probably didn't help.

Sleep was kind of meh. Woke up shortly after midnight, again after 1, and then slept until 4:30. I was able to go back to sleep each time, but it was choppy and I didn't have the really long stretch like I've had the rest of the week. I don't know if it was because my legs hurt or what, although I took aspirin at bedtime specifically for that.

On my own this evening. I'll feed the dogs and maybe do a walk outside. For reals, my new Vibrams are supposed to arrive today, so maybe I can try them out.

Wednesday

I'm getting sleep, but I'm so damn sleepy it's nearly criminal. I'm fairly sure that if I were not at work, I could lay my head down where I sit and take a solid 2-hour nap right now. I really do hope this state gets a referendum on sticking to one time zone all year. I will vote for it, even if it means getting up 3 hours before sunrise in early December. Because this transition - both ways - just kills me.

I'm not sure why, but I'm down to 157.8 this morning. Here's yesterday:

• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• scrambled eggs
• turkey sausage
• macadamia nuts
• naked burger with fresh jalapenos and pepper-jack cheese
• sweet potato fries with ketchup
• a chocolate truffle thingie

Maybe that's why - a short list, with no snacks. I spent the evening putting clasps on neck chains while watching TV. Tonight, I could put jump rings on pendants. Or clean the garden out - this weekend is basically St. Patrick's day, so I should be planting peas and lettuce and spinach, but there are dead plants all over from last summer to get out of there first.

No workout yesterday; Lee has PT on Tuesdays and ends up feeling poorly after. No idea what today holds in that area; we're going out to lunch, so maybe a light dinner.

And I meant it about getting sleep - another night of going to sleep shortly after 9 and not so much as twitching until 4. I got back to sleep soon after, as well. Maybe it's the melatonin, but I'm willing to stick with it for a couple of weeks if it will let me get through some of my sleep debt - or in this case, not add to it.

Tuesday

158.2 this morning - must have shed some water yesterday, although I don't recall anything memorable. Whatever. Still pretty sleepy this morning, although last night's sleep came under the heading of continuous. Roughly 10 pm until 4 am, I think, then I tossed a bit, fell back asleep, woke briefly to turn the alarm off, and finally woke at 6:10. I think it works out to 7-1/2 hours. Not bad, really.

Here's yesterday:

• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• scrambled eggs
• turkey sausage
• paleo shepherd's pie (leftover from Saturday)
• macadamia nuts
• cobb salad with chicken, bacon, avocado, blue cheese crumbles, and some sort of vinaigrette
• single-serve Haagen-Dasz strawberry ice cream

A nice short list. I occupied bits of the evening working on jewelry making, which kept me from snacking. And we walked to dinner - first time we've been able to since last fall. It was only 1.3 miles, and slowly, but so nice just to be outside, not freezing, and only having to avoid goose poop, not ice.

In theory, I have a new pair of Vibrams (KSOs this time) arriving tonight. In reality, I don't think so - they only left Illinois yesterday, and have to get through the post office here before delivery. Probably tomorrow, if I were betting. I'm looking forward to them, in hopes that they fit properly for doing races in, so I can wear my Bolder Boulder chip on my shoelaces like everyone else. Also, my Jayas, which fit properly for racing in, are darn near bald on the soles.

I may go outside mid-day today, to get a bit of sun. Just because I can. Don't want to waste it, after all.

Correction

That mile yesterday was 10:01, not 11:01. I'm having serious difficulty believing it myself.