Food Accountability Post
I remembered something: sugar-free products which are sweetened with chemical crap, like that almond-raisin mix, can cause gas. If you really over-do it, they can cause diarrhea as well. I think maybe I better back away from that stuff for a few days! Otherwise my husband will have to tie a string to my ankle to keep me from floating away, dear me.
Also, I have got to get a bit stern with myself. I’ve been so anxious about my weight that I’ve broken my own rules and been weighing about every other morning or so. This is NO BUENO and must not continue. That way lies madness and we all know it.
So: no chemical snack crap and no scale until Friday morning on schedule. SIGH. Why am I so eager to add insanity into my life? Am I addicted to being anxious and unwell? What an interesting notion.
Breakfast: IF and a big old coconut milk tea.
Lunch: A sausage and some more of the dandelion greens. Here is what I have learned about dandelion greens. They don’t really break down or shrivel up during cooking like, say, spinach. So next time I’ll be sure to chop them up a good bit more.
Dinner: roast beef and garlic-onion-mashed cauliflower. Delicious.
Snacks: Thunderbird Energetica bar which was like a Larabar only flatter. And in this case, mintier. Note: NOT all Thunderbird bars are Paleo-friendly. Read those labels before you buy one. Quite tasty. 1/2 c. regular mixed nuts. Apparently I can NOT make it through a day without nuts. Some cherry tomatoes. Some of that carrot haystack crumble stuff.
Dessert: 5 or 6 pieces of dried apricot
Notes: Looking over this, I think I should have eaten a larger lunch. Clearly I had a real yen to eat in the afternoon.
Grade: A. I felt a bit like eating before lunch time, but I just told myself to hold back and it was okay.
Food Accountability Post
Breakfast: IF. Had 1 cup of tea with coconut milk; fat-burning ftw!
Lunch: 1.5 sausage which I scoffed down in the car on the way downtown.
Dinner: about 7 oz. rare steak, 2 eggs sunny-side up, and a rather scanty portion of steamed mixed veggies at a local diner with my son.
Snacks: 1/4 c nut mix, cherry tomatoes, kale chips. Also I believe I did take in a couple of grapes and a wee tiny sample of veggie chips at Roots market, where I was buying dandelion greens. Oh, I also had a sample of my carrot-chocolate-coconut haystacks that are in the dehydrator right now. They seem okay but they don’t stick together very well. Not quite ready for prime time.
Dessert: 1/3 c. sugar-free chocolate-covered almonds and raisins.
Notes: began to feel quite interested in food around 3:30. But I woofed down the kale chips and ran out of the house with my kids, so it wasn’t too bad. But being in the kitchen, smelling the chili and whatnot cooking, that was a bit rough at times. Also, we have eaten all of the sugar-free ice cream stuff, and I chose to not buy more.
Grade: A. I tried really hard to listen carefully to my body today, and I think I did a good job.
Ongoing Adventures in IF
I have been doing a bit of IF the last couple of weeks for fun and to recover from my Hurricane Sandy-related anxiety-eating episodes. Here’s what I’ve learned. Two weeks is exactly how long I can IF before I start to get side effects! Last night I had to wake up and pee and my sleep was not as deep as it usually is. That’s the IF talking, folks. So now I think I might try mixing it up with a week of IF and a week of regular eating; see if I can enjoy more of the benefits without the annoying side effects.
The timing’s a bit off since now I ought to not IF this coming week, which I had pretty much planned to do as a way of balancing out all the pie and whatnot I plan to stuff in my face at my mom’s. Perhaps I will just eat normally for several days and then IF it on Thursday and Friday or something like that.
And yes I do plan to eat my mom’s pumpkin pie. The wheat, the sugar, the real dairy homemade whipped cream. I will eat it and I will NOT be sorry at all. I will have seconds and maybe another damn piece for breakfast. Because I have been a straight-arrow cave-woman all damn year and this is my mom’s fuckin’ pie already. I won’t get chronic systemic inflammation from 3 or 4 pieces of pie. So that is all settled. I will skip the stuffing, though. It’s not worth it at all.
Still Afraid, It Seems
After all my tough talk, I just had to eat breakfast this morning. A bunch of snacks, too. Such a bundle of fears. It never stops!
Monday Morning Weigh In
Wow, could hardly snatch a moment to post until the afternoon. Meatballs are in the oven, so I can sit for a moment. So the story is, I lost those 4 scary pounds I was so anxious about last week, sliding back down to 134. They really were just a bunch of water, I suppose. Also, I managed it without logging my food or counting my calories. I stuck to the plan I laid out last Monday and it worked fine. Interestingly, one thing I ate more of for some reason was almond butter, but it didn’t gum up the works the way actual nuts seem to do.
So, to recap the primary elements of my current working plan:
- no more than 1/2 cup of unsalted mixed nuts for the whole week. I get a bit more nuts than that because I do usually eat 1 or 2 Rawma bars or Kit’s Organics bars. And as I said, I’m warming up to nut butter lately.
- tons of tea.
- As much IF as I like. I did 4 days last week; would have been 5 but my trainer was messing around with our schedule so I wound up eating a hearty breakfast one day when I otherwise wouldn’t have.
I don’t think I’ll eat a hearty meal on training day this week, though. I don’t think it’s necessary. Because today, I blasted a nice heavy workout on the KBs while fasting. I did multiple sets with the 52.9-lb monster bell and felt like a badass. I didn’t run out of gas at all, although I did get hungry afterward. I might hedge my bet with a Rawma bar, I guess. But I don’t believe a big meal is necessary.
So all in all, it’s turned out to be an awesome Monday. Sweet heavy workout, great weigh-in, had lunch with my sweetie (chicken livers at Nando’s) and bought some more tea. Heck yeah! I only hope the rest of the week can measure up!
Monday Morning Weigh In
Wow. So, between the Hurricane Sandy eat-all-the-things situation and the recent advent of shark week, I am up 4 whole pounds, to 138. That is pretty scary! I was thinking about it while I was out running this morning, looking into my feelings and whatnot. I was interested to see that even this anxiety still did not make me want to get back on MFP and log my food. Is that because I’m avoiding doing what I know needs to be done? Or is it because I know I can handle the situation without doing it? I guess we will find out next Monday. Because I’m going with the feeling and not logging this week. So what will I do, then? I will:
- Do as much IF as I feel like doing. Maybe every day, maybe not.
- Drink a whole lot of water and tea. Fancy-schmancy new OXO tea tumbler!
- Eat more greens and maybe a bit less sweet potato.
- Limit myself to only 1/2 a cup of nuts for the whole week. I will do this by measuring that shit out into a tupperware for myself. 1/2 a cup doesn’t seem like much but I ate nuts freely the last couple weeks and it was NO BUENO on many levels.
- Keep on working out.
- Get to sleep on time for a change.
That’s about it. We’ll see how it works out. If I can’t manage to lose a pound or two this way, I guess I will bite the bullet and unlimber my MFP account again.
And somewhere, hard gainers are sadly wishing they could could pack it on effortlessly like me. DON’T HATE ME CUZ I’M BEAUTIFUL.
New Workout Schedule for Fall
A conversation I was having with weaponxvii crystallized this in my brain: I needed a new, set schedule of workouts for the Fall. P90X is over and done so I need to reorganize! So here’s the plan for now:
Mon: Gym time, work on abs, pull-ups and maybe some squats
Tue: IF, 90 mins yoga at home
Wed: 90 mins yoga at home, workout with MATT doing KBs
Thurs: IF, run 3 miles, yoga class
Fri: run, yoga class, pull-ups
Sat: IF, run
Sun: walk or do easy yoga at home
Of course, naturally I am not adhering to this schedule right now. Yesterday I took it easy all day and today I have a Thai massage to give so no time for 90 minutes of anything. I hope to just take a nice long walk later today. But I am doing my IF at least. I want to see if I can IF just 3 days a week and maybe that way I can get the benefits of leaning out a bit and feeling super-alert without the downside of having to get up and pee 3 times every night.
Monday Morning Weigh In
Whoa, down 2 lbs to 133, deep into new territory! Wow. Very exciting, right? Yeah. So here’s what I did this week:
1. Drank a fuckton of water. I put slices of lemon, sprigs of mint, chunks of watermelon or whatever I had around in the water to make it tasty and I drank it like it was my job.
2. Was not strict about carb intake. I was up to 180 grams per day at least once, and basically just enjoyed all the fruit I wanted. It’s Summer, damn it. I will eat all the fruit I want. So there. But I guess I can drop the attitude because, hey, results don’t lie.
3. Missed 1 day of P90X and got no exercise at all to speak of on Sunday, because of various blah blah blah that occurred blah blah.
4. Started to relax on the IF thing due to a general feeling of wanting to eat. Also Paleo For Women gave me a lot to think about there. IF was fun but I think maybe I am done with it for now. Do it some more later, maybe, or maybe just do it a couple days a week… I dunno. I like it but I can’t stay in it full-time anymore.
So if I had to summarize, I guess I ate a bit more and exercised less… huh. Odd. I keep hearing this idea from various sources and now I see that there’s certainly something to it.
I didn’t really eat more in terms of calories. I actually ate a smidge less in terms of calories. Most days I was under a bit or even quite a bit. But I ate more of what I wanted to eat, which was just a bunch of peaches, cherries and melon. And also very dark chocolate sweetened with stevia.
State of my guts
The jicama homefries came out nice. Jicama is hard as a rock, so I was thrilled to just use my food processor to shred it. (BTW @cookingcaveman you were right. The cheap one from Target has been working so great.) However, they would not crisp up at all in the pan, so I wound up awkwardly transferring the entire wad of stuff to fry on my non-stick electric griddle. That gave them a nice brown-ness. The overall taste of jicama is slightly sweeter than potato, so it was not exactly the same. Also, perhaps due to the lower starch content, although the jicama browned up, it did not exactly get crispy. But whatever. My husband and son both ate it and seemed quite happy, so I call it a WIN. Jicama shall be reappearing on my table and that right soon. Also a win last night: carrots and red bell pepper roasted with some of Penzey’s Tsardust Memories spice mix. I forget exactly what is in that mix but the big players are cinnamon and black pepper.
However, this morning when I woke up, my whole stomach area was just not happy. I can’t even figure out how to express it. It was just sort of full. It just felt stiff. I tried to make myself get ready to do P90X Legs & Back, but my body just said I DON’T THINK SO. After several minutes of debate I went out for a nice long walk instead. And now I’m contemplating yoga but my body is not nuts about this idea either. I’m drinking my Bulletproof tea and hoping for the best. It’s so weird. I don’t feel sick at all. But I don’t feel right, either. I just feel off. Really off. But if I can’t actually do yoga, I might just observe the class instead. I need to do 6 more observations as part of my YTT.
So that’s two days now of odd digestive upset in the morning. I wonder what that is all about? Is my body trying to tell me that it’s time to quit doing IF? Or was it, perhaps, the fact that I ate 164 grams of carbs yesterday, way over my usual allowance? (There was a plantain situation at lunch yesterday, y’see.) I just don’t really know. Anyway, next week I won’t be doing IF Monday through Thursday, while I’m celebrating my anniversary in Vegas with my sweetie. So we’ll see how that feels, I guess.
The idea of not doing yoga today is sort of torturing me. If I don’t feel well enough to do my class, I think I might have to do Restorative yoga later.
Monday Morning Weigh In
So today it was down 1 pound again, back to 135. I’m really enjoying my IF lifestyle, but as a plateau-busting tool, I guess I’m a bit underwhelmed by it. I’ve been doing it for 7 whole weeks now; this here is week 8 now. (My recovery week after section 2 of P90X, w000 yeah.) I haven’t so much busted my plateau, as I have simply ratcheted it down a bit. I was stuck at 138… now I’m stuck at 135. I’m not too upset about it, though, because I can see my body changing. It’ll be fun to post some pics in August when I get done with P90X, and also to take those measurements. Anyone wanna take a bet I can lose 5 pounds in the last 6 months of this year? LOL probably not. But okay, I guess there’s no real rush.
But that does sort of highlight this issue: just how much of my life do I really want to devote to losing 5 pounds? The answer is definitely “not that much more.” I think I’ve reached a decision. I will keep going until I lose that 5 pounds, or until the end of this year, whichever arrives first. At that time, I’m moving on to maintenance, whatever state my weight is in. On January 1 at the latest, I’ll be changing my MFP settings to “maintenance” and officially ending the weight-losing portion of my weight loss journey. Obviously I always have the right to change my mind about this. But this stage of the journey is really starting to feel a bit stale to me, like something I should get ready to let go of. And I would not be surprised if I eventually decide to try to lose some more weight just for fun or whatever. But I can feel it; the time is nearly here for me to let myself move on.
Monday Morning Weigh In
Up again to 138. I can’t lie, that is really frustrating. It’s frustrating because I really tried hard to follow the rules like a good little soldier this week. I was under my calories every day but one, and also under my carbs every day but one. And I only got up to 108 grams of carbs that day. I drank water and tried to get enough sleep, although that was a weak point because my husband was at Origins this weekend so I had trouble getting to bed on time. (This is my issue. It’s like I can’t read a clock if he’s not around. So silly.)
I only have a couple of theories about what is going on. First off, yesterday evening for dinner, we went to a Japanese hibachi joint that opened up downtown. I did not eat any rice or noodles. But the veggies and the shrimp and scallops (all delicious) did have a lot of soy sauce and other mystery sauces on them. So maybe that had some repercussions for me, I dunno.
And also, I’ve been religiously doing what my son refers to as my Peanutty X. So perhaps I am “swole?” I know that supposedly muscles retain water a bit during their recovery. And of course I did endure that massive beat-down on Saturday. So maybe that is the answer here. This is my first recovery week under the P90X system, so it’ll be interesting as always to see what happens on next Monday.
But it’s a mystery, really. A bit discouraging. OTOH, I slipped on my size 6 skirt this morning and it felt really loose. I am starting to look forward to measuring myself again in a couple months. My mind is full of fatalistic thoughts like, “maybe this is just the weight we’re meant to be,” or “see, we can never get to 130.” But I’m having a good time with Peanutty X and actually, oddly enough, a good time with IF. So I think I will just keep on working my program. Isn’t that what they say in AA? It works if you work it. I’m gonna keep on working it and we’ll just see what happens.
Monday Morning Weigh In, Amazing NSV
The weigh-in, not so hot. Gained 2.5 lbs, up to 137.5. OH HELLO AGAIN OLD FRIEND. Very annoying. However, I realized I did feel a certain difference in the experience. I no longer think of myself as someone who weighs 137.5. No, I actually think of myself as somebody who weighs 135 who just ate way too many carbs last week. Which I believe is the truth here. I was playing around with eating more carbs and sure enough, they had their scientifically-proven side effect of water retention. So I’m going to try to be a bit more serious this week with carb intake. Apparently even the magic of IF is not proof against the evil magic of excessive carbs.
BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THAT.
My NSV is this: I went bra shopping with my daughter. We went to one of those bra salons where the lady comes in the stall with you and touches your boobs a whole lot and shoves them around in the cups. And we got new bras… for ME. In actual US sizes! Yes! I’ve been wearing ridiculous, immense, UK-sized bras for so, so, so long now, bras I had to order from the Internet. To actually go to a store right here in my own town and just buy a bra off the shelf? Priceless. And also about $30 cheaper than my Internet bras. I am back in normal-people sizes! And I could not be more thrilled about it, people. Seriously doing the happy dance right now.
Monday Morning Weigh In
Lost weight yet again! Down another pound to 135. MY GOD that is a low weight. If I suck in and haul my boobs out of the way, I can see the outline of my rib cage. Who knew that was down there? Oh, and did I mention that it is shark week? That’s right, bitches. I lost weight while the sharks were on the way and when they arrived too. Intermittent Fasting: it’s what’s for breakfast. Also I seriously did not hold back on eating during my feeding window, and on Saturday I ate waaaaay over my allotment. P90X in the morning and ass-kicking YTT backbend session all afternoon = very hungry blissmanifesto. So yeah. It was actually a pretty fun week in the food department overall. I realize I’m starting to sound like one of those nutty IIFYM guys, but honestly there was a good bit of So Delicious coconut milk ice cream involved. (No sugar added variety, of course.) I wasn’t super-strict about carb intake, either.
On the negative side, the zit situation continues unimproved. I don’t really know what to do about it. I mean, I can’t eliminate dairy or sugar any more than I already have! They are gone. Sugar is a tough one though. Every food made in a commercial establishment seems to have some sugar, and I am not really willing to say that I will never eat in any commercial establishment ever again. So I don’t know what to do about that. But I did get a facial the other day and I will be getting another one soon. Perhaps this will help some. If not, it’ll still be fun.
And if the next step is eliminating more foods? Like maybe nightshades? Then never mind. Because I frickin’ love me some tomatoes, man. If I have to give up tomatoes in order to have no zits… then I might have to just live with zits.
So that’s where I am this morning. Pimply, but quite thin. Got my workout pants on and my sports bra. Get the kids off to school, and then it’s more P90X!
Yet More IF
What time do you stop eating in the evenings?
I stop eating when I have to go upstairs and get ready for bed, pretty much. So usually around 9:00 or 9:30. But I’ll go on eating right up until then. I mean that at 8:45 I may have a bowl of no-sugar-added coconut milk ice cream, and then I may be going up the stairs with a handful of nuts in my little paw. Days when I work out a lot, it’s a bit of an effort to get all my calories in. (What? I have to eat more food? Aw Mom, this sucks!)
I’m aware that some people put quite a bit of effort into timing their nutrients according to various theories. For me, that stuff all falls into the category of “Stuff I Am Not Ready To Work On Yet.” If, for example, I find my progress stalls out somehow, I might look into that; if my current program keeps on working fine, I won’t bother.
In general, that has been my philosophy all along. When eating more fiber and taking a gentle walk around the neighborhood was working, I just did that. Then I needed to do a bit more to make progress, so I started the South Beach diet for about a year. Then I took a bit of a break, and then I started to get serious about yoga… basically I just do the minimum I need to do to move to the next level. I’m never in a hurry about fitness because to me, that road goes on forever and has no finish line.
Further Details on IF… sort of.
OMG!!!! SOOO happy for you! Can you detail your IF process and eating to help show others the light?
Since you ask, I’ll explain further. But there is not really much to explain. I got my info mostly from marksdailyapple.com. I pretty much love Mark Sisson. Although, as I may have mentioned elsewhere, he insists that staying under 100 grams of carbs/day is the key to fast and easy weight loss. I found that to be extremely difficult and also got stuck on a 5-month plateau doing that. So I increased my carbs to around 125-150/day as part of my plateau-busting program.
So the IF. Basically, I skip breakfast and morning snack. I get up at 5:15, deal with my kids and get them off to school and have a big thing of tea and surf a little tumblr. Then I work out, which will be yoga, or running, or lately P90X. I will have more tea or just water.
At 12:00 or so, I then get to eat! And I just eat normally (Paleo style normally) for the rest of the day. I do my best to get all my calories in, because the IF protocol is NOT a calorie-restriction protocol. So sometimes it’s a bit manic and I have to sort of rummage around the kitchen for food that is fairly high-calorie. I recently made some coconut bars that fit the bill pretty well in that department.
That’s actually what I’m enjoying most about the IF process. It’s really changing my whole attitude about food and eating, because now every afternoon I pretty much get to run in my kitchen and shout, W00000 IT IS TIME TO EAT ALL THE THINGS!! And after trying to lose weight and progressively restricting my intake for literally years now, it’s really fun and excellent and freeing to get to do this.
So there it is, my highly-technical IF protocol.
Step 1. Don’t eat in the morning
Step 2. Eat like a Queen in the afternoon and evening.
I hope this helps you and I do encourage you to give it a try if you get stuck on a plateau sometime.
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