February 20, 2011

10:30 AM

Iced Coffee - (coffee, heavy cream, Davinci vanilla syrup)
2 scrambled eggs w/cheddar
4 links breakfast sausage
1 square Chocolove 70%
2  Maria's Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 PM

1 cheese stick
1 slice of Boar's Head ham
diet Coke

5:30 PM

(Things I ate while I fixed dinner:  4 tortilla chips, handful of popcorn, 1 square Chocperfection bar)
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2 pcs steak tips from The Meat House
Cauliflower Mash
Green Beans with butter
1 square Chocolove
1 square Chocoperfection Bar

33 g Net Carbs/1750Calories/126 g fat/105g protein

Have you heard about Low-Carb Conversations??

If you’ve been around the blogosphere lately, or are one of my Facebook friends, you may have noticed some buzz about a new podcast show with this guy named Jimmy Moore.  Well, the rumors are true and I’m happy to announce that I am co-hosting the new “Low-Carb Conversations with Jimmy Moore & Friends” podcast!

Jimmy Moore is a long-time podcaster and a true champion of low-carb living who brings us the twice-weekly “Livin’ La Vida Low Carb” podcast and has interviewed everybody who’s anybody in the low-carb community and beyond.  Along with the show, Jimmy is the consummate blogger who keeps us updated all the time on all things “low-carb.”  One of his recent blog posts was about The Top 10 Podcasts Every Low-Carber Should be Listening To.  As a self-proclaimed podcast addict, I was listening to all 10!  But for a long while I had been thinking that the low-carb community needed a new podcast that was a little friendlier – one that offered advice and encouragement to people just starting out on their journey.  I wrote Jimmy, who knows everybody, and asked him if he knew of anyone who might be interested in partnering with me on such a venture.

Well, to my surprise, Jimmy said he’d been thinking the same thing recently and, long-story-short, we teamed up to start this new podcast!   The rest, as they say, is history!  We have started recording and have a website, a Twitter account, and a Facebook page to get questions from our soon-to-be listeners.  We’ve got lots of “friends” lined up to come on the show and talk about some current events in the health & diet world and to share their stories and have fun with us!  It’s really, really awesome!  (You’ll have to take my word for it for now, as it will be a few weeks until our shows are released).

I hope you’ll keep an eye on our pages and join us when we “go live” and join in the fun and the conversation!  We’re always looking for more friends to share in the fun so email us and let us know that you want to take a turn!!

Low-Carb Super Bowl Eats

As the countdown to the big games occurs, I’m taking a moment to psych myself up for the food awesomeness I’m going to be having later.  I will have to forego some “good” food that my family will be eating, as I’m on this Low-Carb journey alone in this household, but I’ve stacked the deck in my favor.  There has to be SOME benefit to doing the grocery shopping, after all!

My family will have pizza, popcorn, nachos, and ice cream.  In addition, they’ll be eating my choices of Meat House steak tips, Boar’s Head little franks, yellow and red peppers with Laughing Cow cheese washed down with Waist Watcher’s Root Beer with heavy cream.  And if that doesn’t fill me up (actually, I’m full just thinking about it!!), I may give myself the green light for a small scoop of Breyer’s Low Carb ice cream.  Or, I almost forgot that I made Dana Carpender’s Cocoa Peanut Porkies yesterday – YUM!

Seriously, with all that “approved” low-carb eating, why bother with the chips & pizza??

Killing the Diet Coke Demon

Well, as promised (to myself) tomorrow, February 1st, starts my month-long induction challenge.  I have some left-over Low-Carb Orange Chicken that we had for dinner tonight (thanks Kent, for that recipe – AMAZING) and I’ve cooked 2 eggs in butter for breakfast.  I also baked some bacon so may throw a slice or two of that in my cooler too.  That much fat and protein will more than satisfy my hunger, but I will still *want* to eat more, and other things.  One problem with working outside the home is that the environment is not yours to control.  I work in an office building where food is abundant!  Many of my co-workers are doing Weight Watchers but that doesn’t really change the status quo, which is bagels and muffins and cookies and whatever someone concocts in their kitchen that they think is worth sharing.  It’s a friendly bunch, no question, but sometimes I just don’t want to be tempted.

I think the biggest challenge tomorrow (and everyday for the next 28 days) will be the lack of diet Coke.  I am not kidding about this.  I have tried to give it up on several occasions only to cave 4-5 days into it.  Everyday I stop at Cumberland Farms for my “Chill Zone” 32 oz diet Coke.  I drink a ton of water all day…yet that AM diet Coke…..I don’t know.

On my commute this AM I was listening to a podcast (as usual), I think it was Hank’s My Low-Carb Journey with the founders of the Whole9Life, who mentioned that diet soda could cause an insulin response even though it is calorically of no value.  That reinforces my resolve to give it up, but I know this will be my biggest challenge, at least initially.

So cross your fingers for me and stay tuned to see how I make out!  I’d love to see a nice drop in the scale and to conquer the diet Coke demon!!

Induction Self-Challenge

A couple of weeks have gone by since my last post, and in that time I’ve been s-l-o-w-l-e-y reading Gary Taubes’ Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It.  Last night I got to the depressing part.  Gary said, in chapter entitled, “Moderation or Renounce Them Entirely?  Part I”:

“…if you’re not actively losing fat and yet want to be leaner still, the only viable option (short of surgery or the prospect that the pharmaceutical industry will come through with a safe and effective anti-obesity pill) is to eat still fewer carbohydrates, identify and avoid other foods that might stimulate significant insulin secretion – diet sodas, dairy products (cream, for instance), coffee and nuts, among others – and have more patience.”  (emphasis mine)

Gary’s point in this chapter and Part II which followed, as I understood it, is that if you’ve done so much damage to your metabolism as a result of years of abusing your body with sugar and flour, AND you have other hormonal influences at work in your body (not that a 44-year old woman would, ahem!) that it may not be possible to get the hot bod that you might be striving for.  However, in my case, I know I have not given it the old college-try!

Have I been “low-carbing it?”  Yes.  My carb load is about 40-80 net carbs per day which is significantly lower than those that eat a standard American diet (SAD).   And my weight has been steady.  Clearly, this would be a pretty good maintenance level for me.  However, I don’t want to maintain!  I want (need) to lose a good 20 pounds if not 30 to be anywhere close to where I want to be and that’s not going to happen if I don’t apply what I know – apply what I believe.

So, my challenge to self, in an effort to kick-start this process, is to go full-on Induction for the month of February (which is thankfully a short month).   In all honesty, I have not done induction.  I started with about a 30-40 carb level and this was the impetus for my 20 pound loss.  But I have months of evidence that it’s not going to get moving until I take it lower.   Goodbye Flat Out wraps.  Goodbye roasted sweet potatoes.  Goodbye diet Coke.  That one’s going to hurt!

So, I may be doing the ole’ Jimmy Moore plan of eggs and beef for a few weeks but if that’s the way it has to be, so be it.  Let’s see what happens!!

Sweet Tooth

My sweet tooth has been the downfall of every diet I’ve ever been on.  When I was doing the low-fat thing, or Weight Watchers, eating sweet was allowed as long as it was low-fat sweet and there were plenty of options there!  LF chocolate pudding comes to mind (and who couldn’t eat about 4 of those little cups?), 100-calorie packs of cookies, Snackwell’s cookies, and even low-fat brownies.  All of these were “allowed” foods on a low-fat plan but for me, they sent me on a death-spiral into Sugarville each and every time – so that all of my calories were spent on sugar and I would feel like crap.  Crap with no energy, to be more specific. Crap in a sugar-coma!

So now I’m on the low-carb road and am finding that I still crave sweet stuff.  Having been on every side of low-carb in the 7 months that I’ve been on this plan, I now find myself unsure of which way to go.  For a while I did Paleo (October, 2010) where there was no dairy, and the sweetest thing I got to eat was sweet potato & peppers.  And that’s not sweet enough, in my book!  I have eaten Atkin’s bars, artificially sweetened cheese-cake-like desserts, sweetened vanilla ricotta, and Breyer’s Low-Carb ice cream and bars.  I start every morning with a diet Coke and sometimes add some heavy cream into a diet root beer for dessert.  I eat Chocoperfection bars daily, and when I don’t have those, I search out very low-carb, very dark chocolate.

What I struggle with is the question of purity.  Is it better to be low-carb at all costs, artificial sweeteners & all – or is it better to avoid sweets at all costs, stick to “real” food?  And is the diet Coke helping or hurting?  I went off it for 7 days and then went back.  That stuff is like a drug to me.  Sugar is like a drug to me.

I’ll continue to ponder this question for a while, I’m sure.  Stay tuned.

Time for a root beer “float”.

Amy’s Blackberry Style Giveaway

My good friend, and former Paleo co-experimenter, Amy over at superhealthykids.com is giving away 2 Blackberry Style phones from the Sprint network.  She is CONNECTED!  Go on over to check out her site and good luck!