Going Low Carb

"All normal people love meat. If I went to a barbeque and there was no meat, I would say 'Yo Goober! Where's the meat?'. I'm trying to impress people here... You don't win friends with salad.” ~ Homer Simpson


OK, maybe Homer was taking it a little too far.  Salad is great - but the fact remains that most Americans don't eat nearly as much protein as they need.  (Or fat, either, but that's another post.)  American women are the worst of the lot!  A few strips of grilled chicken on a salad is not enough protein for a 130 pound woman.  And salad is not very filling.


I have decided to go rogue on the HCG.  For one thing, I've been gaining weight, and that is not acceptable to me.  Remember, for my height and frame, I should weigh about 135.  I'm at 170 - I've gained back 20 pounds.  Yes, it was emotional eating.  Yes, I kept the weight off for over a year.  I'm not knocking HCG.  But I'm also looking at other options.  Low carb seems to be the way to go.

I've noticed that cookies and chips will pack on pounds rapidly, but ice cream (high protein and fat) does not.  When I did low-carb for a few days, I saw a 5 pound weight loss in just a few days.  When on HCG, I would lose weight faster if I skipped the apple and the Melba toast and ate a ribeye steak (more fat) instead of lean meat. 

So I'm going to begin following a very low carb diet for a couple of weeks.  I'm interested to see how I react to it.  I'm loading up on saturated fats - bacon drippings to cook my eggs in, butter (real butter, not margarine!), whole milk, a tablespoon of coconut oil in my protein shakes, and meat with lots of fat on it. 

Yum.

I will keep everyone posted on my progress!

Struggling

"You've got to say, I think that if I keep working at this and want it badly enough I can have it. It's called perseverance." ~ Lee Iaccoca

I have been struggling with my weight since November, when I was at my lowest weight in years.  It's been going the wrong way on the scale, creeping back up to my high weight.  This is just no ok.  What am I doing wrong?

For one thing, I've been underestimating the amount of food I eat.  Today, I signed up with FitDay.com to start a food diary. I'm good at journaling anything, so hopefully (!) I will start to see where I should be adjusting my diet so my weight comes back down.

My intention is to go with a high fat, high protein, low carb diet.  Lots of natural fats (lard, butter, whole milk, olive oil, coconut oil, etc), not Frankenfats (margarine, shortening, etc), and delicious meats.  All the green veggies I can hold.  And gallons of water.

Given that you can't manage what you don't measure, I decided it was time to start measuring, instead of guessing (and forgetting about the bag of chips I absent-mindedly scarfed down while reading, etc).  I'm also going to include more walking in my plan - when switching tasks, taking a few minutes to walk around the block.  The idea is just to get moving, instead of sitting still for so long.

I am committed to this weight loss. My goal weight is 135, and I plan to get there by the end of the summer.  :)  I can do this! You can, too!

Low Carb

We never repent of having eaten too little. ~Thomas Jefferson, 1825

I've been doing a lot of research lately - partly as a guinea pig - and have come to find that low carb is the way to go.

I've been stuffing myself with fried (yes, fried!) chicken, steak, protein shakes, water, protein bars....and losing weight.  Slowly, so far, but the meat-and-salad diet is what has always worked for me.  (And that's the HCG diet in a nutshell!)

As soon as I have a roll or a biscuit, though, the weight comes back on. 

I am never hungry.  (But really - how much meat can a person really eat?)  Sometimes I want to munch, and then I get an apple or a protein bar, but I am never hungry. 

Protein for Alertness.

Yup, I'm going to tackle some interesting things over the next few days. 

Did you know (I didn't) that the nutrients in your food play a huge role in how well you are able to function at work?  I mean, I knew this *some*, but I just came across some information that really brought it home.

I am a night owl by nature.  My perfect workday starts at noon, with a leisurely morning.  Getting up at 8:30 is early for me.  And I tend to go to bed sometime after the wee hours of the morning.  Because of that, evidently, it is vitally important for me to have a protein rich breakfast - protein helps increase alertness.  Wow - I knew I liked my protein bar after my workout, and I prefer protein to carbs all day long (my body holds carbs right around my middle).  Morning people need their protein later in the day. 

Maybe that's why Tim can function on only 4 hours of sleep a day.  For such a calm person, he's almost frenetic with energy.  He follows a high-protein, carnivorous diet, with no potatoes (he prefers yams anyway), and very little rice or pasta. 

I need lots of sleep - 8 to 10 hours to function well - but I also tend to eat carbs if I'm not thoughtfully eating protein....

Another apple day tomorrow

My sister brought Starnes pit BBQ back from Kentucky.  This is heaven.  Of course, I have to eat it on a sandwich, toasted on my griddle (no butter though) and drenched with their BBQ sauce. 

I'm not sharing.  No.  I haven't gotten Starnes in a couple of years.  This is worth breaking the diet over. 

I'll do an apple day tomorrow to recover. 

Protein, Muscle, and Women

From talking to a lot of women, I've noticed that women are almost scared of protein.  It's like they're afraid of gaining muscle.  Guys love protein.  Ever notice that a man's favorite restaurant is invariably a steak house?  And then women go to a steak house and order -- a salad. 

I'm not knocking salad.  The ones at Texas Road House are delicious.  But don't knock red meat!  It's not evil, bad, or fattening.

Ladies, because of our monthly periods, we need extra iron in our diets.  The tendency to subsist on chicken and salad makes it more difficult for us to replace that iron.  And I don't know about you, but iron pills tend to make me sick to my stomach, my body doesn't absorb it, and they can be hazardous to kids and pets. 

Organ meats such as liver (especially liver) are a great source of iron, but it seems like no one eats them any more.  I love chicken liver, but by the time I bread and fry it (I'm a Southern gal, everything needs to be fried!) it's pretty fattening.  (I also like it tucked into a roasted bird - but it's summer here and I'm not turning on my oven.)  Besides, liver is hard to find in the supermarkets these days.

So I go on to one of my favorite diet meals - STEAK and a vegetable.  Ribeye by far is my favorite.  My iron levels remain good when I eat red meat once or twice a week. 

And today's accountability - weight 156.4 goal 125.0.