Friday

Yesterday was a minor disaster - or should have been.  After a 3-hour software demo, I started feeling mildly unwell - like a cold coming on again - and went with cravings, ending up consuming a bag of potato chips an one of trail mix before my next meeting.  The whole day was aggravating and stressful, so when we had taco salads for dinner, I added chips (corn tortilla chips).  Finished up the day with pecans and cheese spread.  And yet, this morning, I was 145.6, so maybe it wasn't so bad.

I think I'm eating too many nuts.  I've noticed several blog articles indicating that they may not be so good for us after all - and while I'm not going to forswear them altogether, I am starting to think that they might be contributing to an ongoing digestive issue, so I think I will be cutting back a good bit.  I'm thinking of alternatives for snacking - maybe apples and cheese (also going lightly on the apples), or more meat-and-cheese, or carrots and peppers.  Hopefully those options will provide me with a happier stomach.

That said, I probably am going to tinker with the apricot/pecan bar recipe from last weekend to see if I can come up with something like carrot cake - I think it could be fairly amazing.

Here's the specifics of yesterday's eating:

• scrambled eggs
• turkey bacon
• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• potato chips
• trail mix
• cheese
• taco salad with meat, lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, cheese, and salsa
• corn tortilla chips
• hot tea
• chocolate cherries
• pecans and cheese spread

It's supposed to be cold this weekend, so I foresee some cooking.  Not sure what yet.  I think my mom got me the Make It Paleo cookbook for my birthday, but it's not published for another 2 weeks - looking forward to it, though.  Maybe I'll make the spaghetti sauce I planned on last weekend and never got around to.  Maybe a crustless pumpkin pie (custard).  Fall food.

Thursday

Two restaurant meals yesterday, 145.8 this morning.  Could be worse - and I could have chosen better, a little.  Enchiladas for lunch, a naked "philly" burger for dinner.  Mindless walnut noshing through the evening.  Gotta find a way to stop that, I think.

I'm in a bad mood right now, and on the brink of a 3-hour software demo that I have absolutely no interest in, so I think I'll stop with that for today.

Wednesday

Better sleep last night, at last.  I think the problems over the past few days - maybe over the past week - have been hormonally-driven, or at least related in some way.  At my age, I guess one has to be somewhat resigned to weird surges of stuff that used to be fairly well-behaved, but the doctor told me last spring that mine had died off completely and that I should be done with all this.  They were, apparently, very wrong.  Anyway, things seem to be settling down again, and I'm seeing a pattern to my sleep - I fall asleep pretty soon after lights out, sometimes with the help of audio, sometimes not, and wake briefly around 4:00 am, give or take maybe a half hour.  Then the alarm goes at 5:30 and provides a mostly-gentle reminder that I should consider getting going for the day, and about a half hour later, I stagger up and get going.

Yesterday's eating was fairly crap-tastic.  Had a craving for M&Ms mid-day and did not resist, unfortunately, and had more chocolate in the evening - AND ice cream!  145.2 still this morning, but the scale was considering larger numbers.  Here's the breakdown:

• scrambled eggs
• sausage
• turkey bacon (hmm.  wonder if they're "rewarding" and maybe triggered the M&Ms thing?)
• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• cheese snacks
• M&Ms
• cheese
• chicken breast marinated in commercial salad dressing
• salad with ham and homemade italian dressing
• walnuts
• chocolate cherries
• strawberry ice cream (which, I must admit, was beyond wonderful)

I think that's everything.  Lunch out today, and taco salad, I think, for dinner.  I will try very hard to avoid the machines, but when I get bored and really don't have an outlet for it, it is very hard.  And, unfortunately, that's happening frequently at work these days.

Tuesday

I do hate being tired, and I was hatefully tired yesterday, toward the end of the workday just clinging on by the fingernails, wishing it would end.  Lee went to the gym last night before dinner; we were both supposed to be going, but I just couldn't.  I stayed home, had some cheese and cashews, and got dinner ready.  Here's yesterday's eating:

• scrambled eggs
• pork sausage
• tea with cream
• the usual Monday supplements
• cheese snacks
• two pecan-apricot bars (found a recipe via Robb Wolf's blog, I think)
• more cheese
• pecans, eaten mindlessly
• chocolate covered cherries (about 7 of them over the evening, I believe)
• ribeye steak
• salad with blue cheese dressing
• Omaha steaks potatoes au gratin, which were very weird
• iced tea
• a whole boatload of shredded coconut
  

I think that was it.  145.2 again this morning.  I have two cheese snacks with me at work for snacking emergencies.  My sleep last night was better than the night before, but still not very good - and I dreamed at one point that I sat down and ate my way through about 2/3 of the bag of halloween candy we have in the pantry - stuff I haven't eaten in ages and am not that keen on.  I blame it on the Food Reward Hypothesis - I read a couple of blog articles discussing that yesterday, and while I get what they're saying and tend to agree that the mechanism exists (see me eating either chocolate cherries or cashews), I don't think they're explaining it very well at all; the comments are uniformly befuddled.  Anyway, I figure reading about the hypothesis triggered dreams featuring it, in some way.

I've spent the last two days sneezing.  No idea why.  I don't have a cold, although Sunday night I thought I felt something starting and took 10,000 IUs of Vitamin D to head it off, which worked.  I'm eating in such a way as to prevent or heal leaky gut syndrome, so it shouldn't be allergies, but it sure acts like hay fever - which I don't tend to get.  So I'm stumped.  With luck, it will go away soon.

Monday

I am really not sure how on earth I lost weight over the weekend, but I did - 145.2 this morning.  And I was 147-something yesterday, to boot.  Water, I think - and hormones.  No clear idea of what I ate yesterday - an omelet smothered in hot green chile at one end of the day, and meat loaf and green beans at the other, with a lot of snack-food (nuts, cheese, chocolate-covered fruit) in between, I believe.

Wow - nothing much else to say.  We ate at a French restaurant with friends on Saturday night and I had a great salad, and a chicken-and-stuff dish with sausage and potatoes in it - and Floating Island for dessert, which was so sweet it nearly hurt to swallow.  Tasty, but painful, and I didn't finish it.  Friday I made the mistake of thinking that PF Chang's Orange Peel Beef would be free of flour - they breaded the beef.  Also tasty, but I paid for it in spades on Saturday morning.

We had a pretty restful weekend - which I needed after being just wrung out all week last week.  No idea if it was enough, and last night's sleep was not helpful at all, so I'm a bit worn out this morning.

Ah, well - onward!  Plunge into a new week.

Friday

I am still fighting something that is leaving me exhausted right now - I have no idea what, but it's certainly unhelpful when my night's sleep breaks itself up, waking me at weird intervals 3-4 times for no reason other than my mind thinks it's time to wake up.  So I'm a rag this morning.  Here's yesterday's eating:

• fasted breakfast, just supplements and tea with cream
• cheese snacks (broke the fast at 17 hours)
• potato chips
• a scotch
• chips and guacamole and salsa (not very many)
• burger with bacon, swiss, and avocado on it
• cottage cheese
• pickle spear
• 4 chocolate cherries

I think that's everything.  146.0 this morning.  I have olives and sauerkraut with me for snacking purposes, or lunch, whichever fits better.  Probably doing a movie tonight, for which I'll bring coconut flakes and nuts with me, and avoid the popcorn.  And try not to fall asleep.

I think I'll plan on a fairly rest-centric weekend.  And maybe whatever it is will go away.

Thursday

If this week goes by much slower, it will be in reverse.  I cannot recall the last time we had one that took this long to get to the end!  It doesn't help that the mornings are dark and populated for the past two weeks by a charity fund drive on the radio in the slot normally occupied by an interesting current events talk show; 10 minutes a day begging us to support homeless kids' needs for backpacks or some such thing.  We donate elsewhere, thank you so much, now please shut up and return to our regular programming.  Makes it hard to get going.

146.6 again this morning.  No surprise, considering I seem to be fighting carb cravings at the moment - that, and I'm in a bad mood.  I thought I was done with that sort of thing, dammit; why else did I bother turning 50?  Here's what I can recall of yesterday's eating:

• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• the usual supplements - double fish oil
• tea with cream
• cheese snacks
• M&Ms
• hazel nuts
• giant salad with turkey and blue cheese dressing
• walnuts
• chocolate cherry (only one, I think)
• chocolate mint godiva thing
• cashews out the wazoo
• sauerkraut

Yikes!  This morning, I'm fasting, because we didn't have any bacon defrosted and it was just easier.  I've had my tea and cream, and my usual supplements.  The double fish-oil did seem to work, finally; I'm not as achy as I was yesterday - even including the flu shot, which made my left arm very annoyed.  Another night spent sleeping solidly - woke up for the first time around 4:30, which really isn't all that bad, given that we generally are out cold well before 10 pm.  And I drift in and out for that last hour or so.

I have cheese snacks with me, but I've put them away so I can't see them.  If I can fast all day, I'll eat them on the way home, as a prelude to dinner, which will probably be out somewhere.  I'm looking forward to the weekend - I need some time to get things organized again, and a road trip, however enjoyable, really interferes with the mechanics of life.