Eat like a king...

I eat like a king for breakfast, like a prince for lunch and like a pauper for dinner. Who knows how long that saying has been around, but I just heard it and it is working for me.

I used to have steel cut oats for breakfast; I've traded that for 30 grams of protein. Okay, 26 grams or two of my homemade turkey sausages. I have my oatmeal for dinner now. The protein easily carries me through the morning. I might have a mid-morning snack of an orange or apple, but only eat it because I should, not because I'm hungry. A cup of cottage cheese for breakfast will work too. Or three eggs and two pre-made turkey sausages. It's a lot of food! Thank you Dr. Oz for this tip.

I record Dr. Oz everyday and skip through the show when I get home and pick up the info which applies to me. I didn't need the episode on depression and shock therapy, but watch anything on weight loss. I knew protein was my best choice for breakfast and he merely reinforced it and gave me the push I needed. 

I am down 10.6 lbs since Jan. 2.

On track

Well, I survived the cleanse. And I feel pretty good. So, I had this amazing biscuit our kitchen produced. It was light, buttery, a touch of chived and it was still warm. It rocked. Until the pain started. A week without gluten and the first taste set me off. I felt as if I had swallowed a basketball. A spinning, bouncing basketball. I guess I have to stay away from gluten. Or at least cut waaaaay back.

That said, I spent today prepping foods for the upcoming week. I mixed up a batch of meatballs and a couple of pounds of turkey sausage. Mixed, baked and into the freezer. I also finished a pot of chicken, split pea soup. It's pretty amazing stuff.

I started the pot on Friday. I put the organic yellow peas to soak before  left for work. When I got home, I drained them and added a quart of homemade chicken stock, some water and pepper. I left it on low while I walked to the produce market to buy more ingredients. I got a call and was told a couple of co-workers were at a local establishment having a cocktail and would I join them. Well, the pot WAS on low... I folded up my Trader Joe's reusable grocery bag and walked the two blocks to the restaurant for a cocktail. The Sazerac was awesome. So was the second one. We were about finished with the second drink when I mentioned my soup. My friends walked to my place and turned off the stove. A third cocktail, a pizza and some wonderful fried Brussels sprouts and I walked home, put the pot in the fridge and let it sit until today. I grated in a yam, added 1/4 cup of Rocky Mountain salad mix from the Spice House and set it on the heat again. It simmered for a couple of hours and I added a cup of diced chicken. I came up with 10 cups of soup.

1 lb split yellow peas soaked overnight
1 qt chicken stock
water
1 5" yam, peeled and grated
1/4 c Rocky Mountain Seasoning from the Spice House
ground pepper to taste
1 cup diced chicken

Rinse soaked peas, add stock and water to cover. Add spices and pepper. Simmer until peas are soft. Add chicken and heat through. At this point, I measured 9 and a half cups of soup so I added a half cup of water to make 10 cups.
1 cup serving equals 202 calories, 1.68 grams of fat, 17.6 grams of protein, 7.5% fat, 32% protein, 60.5% carbohydrates.  Zero gluten.

Freezing

Amazingly enough, I am not hungry. I'm on Day Four of this cleanse and the only side effect is I AM FREEZING MY ASS OFF! The lack of fuel is making me cold. To add insult to injury, we have had three of the coldest days of the season this week. I have had to keep my space heater on all day at work and wear my fleece jacket. It's a swing coat and covers my lap while I am sitting. I made it especially to wear in the office on cold days. Think Snuggie for work. When I get home, I burrow under a throw made of double layers of polar fleece. I had to break the fast a little and have a glass of wine last evening just to warm me up.

On Day Two, I finally got my butt to the health food store for some organic apple juice to mix the sludge powder into. What a difference! Yes, it still gets thick and gelatinous if you don't slam it down, but at least it tastes better. As I haven't had anything as sweet as juice in a long time, I had to mix it 50/50 with water.

The upside is I've dropped 4.5 lbs this week and am kick starting my new plan for 2012. The downside is I missed lunch at work today. We served my favorite Sticky Eggplant! It's so good, rich, salty and absolutely yummy. There was also chicken chow mein and eggrolls. If I can pass that up, I can do anything.

The little things...

There are two things I really miss about living in my house: Laundry and washing the car. I like washing my car and detailing him. I hate doing laundry. Now I have to go to a car wash and it's not the same as getting out the bucket, sponge and car cleaners. I also have to go down the hall to do my laundry. I have to be dressed. There is no more stripping off in front of the washer either. A mild annoyance some days.

Last Saturday I went to do a large load of flannel sheets. I loaded the washer, poured in my detergent, put in my 4 quarters and NOTHING!!! I tried it a second time and NOTHING!!!. I really wanted to get my flannel sheets back on the bed that morning so I unloaded the machine into my basket and headed to the laundromat. I figured if I was going to pay a premium price for a load, I would fill it as far as possible so I loaded up the basket with everything I thought might need washing. OOPS. I threw in my jeans. I normally wash them and then hang them to dry on my retractable line int he bathroom. Can't have them shrinking up too much, you know. OOPS, not only did the load cost $2.50 (on top of the $2 I already wasted) I threw the jeans in the dryer on hot. HOT, as in shrink-them-so-I'll-never-zip-them-up hot. And the dryer is 25 cents for 6 minutes. When I pulled them out I almost cried, figuring they would have to live in the closet for a while until I lost another 10lbs.

This morning, I decided I really needed to wear those jeans no matter what. I'm going to a basketball game right after work tonight and didn't want to go in a suit. I prepared myself for the fight with the zipper. A deep breath and I stepped in. WHAT??? They slipped right over my hips and buttoned without a stretch. The zipper and pockets laid flat. WHAT???? My changes in food plan and healthy eating are paying off.

The Cleanse

I can't believe I'm doing this, lol. I decided to kick start the diet with a cleanse. I was having a hard time for a week: too many days off, too much free time so I ate too much! I do better with a structured day and prescribed mealtimes. So I am drinking this brown, herbal sludge for a week. The longest 5 days in history. I've made it to day three. I broke down and had some oatmeal last evening, but other than that, it's sludge in apple juice and lots of water on the side.
The first day wasn't too bad because one should be able to do anything for one day. It was no worse than a surgery prep. Day two was okay. I was back to work in my structured environment. Today remains to be seen. I'm looking forward to a nice breakfast Saturday morning.
A real benefit of this is the amount of water I'm drinking. It's 2 glasses after each glass of sludge, 5 times a day. With the sludge, I'm getting 15 glasses of fluid each day. It will be a challenge to keep that up when I am done with this. A glass an hour. All day. At least I have only been up twice each night and I'm happy the bathroom is close.
Oh, oh, oh, and I am off my blood pressure medicine!! I'll go back to my doctor at the end of March and see how it's going. Wish me luck. I want to stay off the meds if I can.

Pretty underwear

I love pretty lingerie; however, it does not love me. I was a 36D by the time I was 15. In the 1960s, that was huge and I could only buy white bras. In my 20s, I wandered into a Victoria's Secret to see what they had. I had seen the ads and was looking for something very sexy. They didn't carry anything over a C cup. Within a couple of years, colors, lace and different styles were available. But I was a DD by then and again, one size to large for pretty lingerie. By the 80s, full-figure designers were making their mark and I became a full-figure model. And I could find beautiful lingerie in my size. It was heaven. I had a drawer full of lacy, colorful bras, panties and teddies. And I went up another cup size and was back to beige and white. The colors came to me again. Lane Bryant does a beautiful line with many, many choices. During the year after my husband died, I gained enough weight to  put me one size too large for the color options. I was back to beige again!  Over the past three months I have lost enough weight to go down that one size. The first thing I did was to stock up on colors. While I know I will never be a 36D again, I will also never go back to beige and white! With each loss in circumference, I get more colors to choose from. I think I would be very happy to be a 40DD. I would be back to my modelling weight and have for more lingerie choices. What more could a girl want?

Chow down

My mentor was in town last evening. He comes to San Francisco regularly for business and we try to have dinner when possible. Last evening was one of those wonderful nights. He always challenges me and keeps pushing me to define my dreams and figure out how I'm going to implement them.

Dinner was at Kuleto's on Powell. I started with a Maker's Mark Manhattan. the second Manhattan arrived before my healthy salad of field greens and vinaigrette. I avoided all the other starches with my choice of entree`: petrale sole on a bed of Blue Lake green beans with sun dried tomatoes and a very tangy olive. Yummy! His fried radicchio was amazing, along with the steamed mussels. Another Manhattan. We shared a tiramisu and didn't finish it. And a final Manhattan. Overall, it was a pretty reasonable dinner. Um, except for the four Manhattans. I think I used up my month's allotment for alcohol.

This morning I was up .2 lbs.  .2. I can live with that! I have to be extremely careful for the next week though.

When he asked me what my next goal is I thought about it a moment and told him I am resting this year and enjoying life. I told him about moving from my big house with the yard and all the upkeep to a studio apartment with no responsibilities. How I no longer commute and got 4 more hours of "ME" time back each day. In a year, that is the equivalent of working full-time for 6 months. I'm working on my reading list and designing sweaters to knit. I'm designing yarns and spinning them. I'm walking all over Alameda and meeting new people. I'm enjoying me.

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Tonight I went out and bought a new bathroom scale. It's one of those electronic ones so there is no cheating by putting more weight on one foot and leaning to the side. The weight is what it is.

This was a huge step for me as I have had a hate/hate relationship with the scale for over 40 years. No matter what, the scale has never been my friend. My weight has never correlated to the number on the damned chart. Even at my thinnest, I was 25 lbs. more than the chart said I was supposed to be. It didn't matter that I was a mass of muscle from water-skiing, swimming, soccer, baseball and mowing two acres of hillside with a push mower. There wasn't an ounce of fat to be found, but my doctor thought I should lose 45 lbs. That decree created a downward spiral into yo-yo dieting and self-loathing.

Just knowing I had to get on a scale would cause me to starve myself for a couple of days before I had to step on. Followed by a mild binge after before I could start the diet again.

I have avoided a scale for years. Even my doctor knows better than to ask. And here I am, the proud (?) possessor of a new scale. I'm hoping that my blog and my friends will keep me on track and keep me from going nuts.

Off to a good start...

I slept in this morning. While I was still waking up and before the coffee was ready I remembered a diet software I used to use 15 years ago. It did all the math for me. I could add special foods, keep track of what I ate when and how much I exercised. It graphed everything for me. As an accountant and an MBA, graphing and tracking is exciting to me. A quick Internet search and I found the updated version of that old software. It's almost orgasmic! The additions and improvements to the tracking system are exciting. I downloaded the program for $39.95. A one time fee, no less!

I got myself entered and set up an exercise plan and food program. I have to track fiber, carbs and fats to keep the cholesterol and blood sugar under control. I'm shooting for the 40% carbs, 30%  fats and 30% protein. It will be easy with this program! If I see I am short of fats (might that be an oxymoron?) I can add a little olive oil and bring me into the ratios I want. I LOVE tracking. I know there are going to be days when entering the data is going to be a pain, but I think getting up a half an hour early and planning the day will be the way to go.

I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Happy New Year!

There's a very good reason I have my lab work done on Dec 30 every year: I have 24 hours to mull the results before NYE and resolution time. Well, my results came back and it's not good. My fasting blood sugar crept up 2 points and my cholesterol went up a couple of points too. My health plan put all lab work in emails a couple of years ago and I can track changes and chart them. I looked at a 3 year trend and have to make even more drastic changes.

Here are my resolutions for 2012:

1. Alcohol - 1 glass of wine when with friends, no more than once a week and NO alcohol at my home.
2. At least three dinners of fish per week.
3. To get up to walking 3 miles a day or biking the same
4. To drop 50 lbs.  I'm whispering that one. If I take care of the other three, this ought to follow.

There it is, in writing, on the Internet. Good thing you cannot hear me screaming.