cop to it

I stopped doing the low calorie thing 3 days early.  I just couldn't do it anymore.  I felt pretty awesome the day after binging at my aunt's funeral but I just couldn't stomach the same old no fat 500 calories.  I was surprised that I didn't have any carb cravings after the funeral... just fat fat fat fat.  It's all I've craved since day 5 vlcd.  MOAR FAT!

So I gave up... I don't know.  I feel my body sucking up the fat.  I FEEL it.  I also feel like I'm gaining weight... and everyone can hang me and say I didn't follow protocol and its my fault but I'm not sure I believe in hcg any longer.  Actually... as tough as eating crow is (is crow fatty?  Maybe it's not so tough.)... I'm pretty sure that I don't belive in hcg.  I believe that the protocol works though I think it's inefficient and not right for me.

I've been reading many blogs and many forum posts (and not enough physics and calculus books- BAD RORA BAD) and one that I read start to finish is SugarFreeGoodies.  Like many smart people (some might even accuse yours truly of this), the author comes off a little bit abrasive and know-it-all, and her responses to her "test subjects" lack diplomacy in language, BUT she seems like she's onto something (and she's pretty funny and a clear sci-fi geek) and she might just have a working diet coming to fruition soon.  It's worth a read.  It's got me all FREAKED OUT though because it's through her that I learned that hcg supposedly makes you create more fat cells... that's the last fucking thing I need!

Now... for some calming news (for me)... reading all of these various blogs about people with insulin resistance had me thinking about my own weight and metabolism.  I used to think something was really awry with my metabolism because I gained a lot of weight through puberty (about 10-20 lbs a year from 12 to 16) and I thought I was just particularly - as in more than most people unable to deal with sugar because what caused me to drop own to a normal BMI/150lbs completely effortlessly was to stop drinking soda and juice.

Today, I calculated how much sugar and how many calories a day I was ingesting during those formative teen years... want to guess?  ok, I'll tell you... on any given day, just from juice or soda alone- so not counting any other shit I was eating- I took in between 130-200 grams of sugar and between 600 and 1000 calories.  So, honestly, I think my metabolism dealt with that pretty impressively.  Calories in/calories out is pretty imperfect, but let's assume for a minute it's true... I guarantee you I wasn't eating much healthier outside of my juice/pop but let's say that the juice was my ONLY excess caloric intake... 600calories X 364 / 3500 calories to a lb of fat = 62.4 lbs.

Likewise, in adulthood (age 17 to present), where I only on occasion enjoy soda or juice, I've been losing about 1-2lbs a year... doing nada else (and anyone who has had the unfortunate experience of seeing me eat knows I'm into long distance eating and can go eat a LOT) except not drinking anything but seltzer water on a regular basis (other than water water) and I don't eat sugar too regularly.  I'd be lying to ya if I said I hadn't polished off an entire bag of chocolate peanut butter covered Bugles in late July but I try to keep sugar binges to once a month because it does tend to make me iittttccchhhhyyyy.

My theory was that as I continued to cut out sugar and opt for more sugar free things, I was going to slowly lose weight over the course of many years.  I figured, "why not get the weight off first and just maintain it?  why wait?!" so I did hcg... it's too early to say if I'm going to gain it all back, and my period stopped for like two days when I had eaten a little more carbs, but started right back up again so it could just be period emotions- but I feel like I CAN'T STOP EATING now that I'm in p3 (which isn't that abnormal for me to feel even not on a diet) and I feel like I can FEEL my ass getting bigger.  can I?!  I'm paranoid.  I'm neurotic.  All this food and diet research is making me obsessive.  is giving me an eating disorder.  what the fuck to do...

some ponderings

So, as this diet phase comes to its final days (I have only 8 days left), I've been thinking a lot about my future of eating.

This is the first diet where I've had to cook every single meal (okay, minus the two times I ate Taco Bell).  When I did Atkins, I cooked more than usual, but it was also easy to just munch on some deli meat.

At this point, I'm trying to decide what food items I will eat often, eat in moderation, eat rarely, and banish forever.  Months ago, I came to the conclusion that sugar really has no place in my life.  I'm still really young so I can't say what causes me health problems, but I know that just cutting out soda and fruit juice allowed me to go from obese to normal (though, I'd been, in the words of Louis CK's doctor, "cosmetically overweight" for some time).  If sugar allowed my weight to skyrocket as a calorie-burning-machine teenager, I'm sure it's not going to get any better for me.  Granted, I did consume it in large amounts.

I do not see myself getting rid of wheat, assuming I do not show any signs of inheriting my mother's MS.  I do, however, see myself limiting my wheat consumption.  I think it'll be worth the extra cost for some Dreamfields pasta and other lower carb specialties.  I also intend to use low carb options whenever viable alternatives exist- but I'm not going to get all fanatical Atkins about it.  I like bread.  I like pasta.  I like tortillas.  I also like corn, sometimes, but not really...

I don't really like fruit that much.  I could go the rest of my life without ever eating a banana again.  I love strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries though- and hey!  they're low carb- I win.  There are some higher carb veggies that I really, really, really like (love, in some cases), particularly pumpkin, squash, and beets.   AND I INTEND TO CONTINUE TO EAT THEM.

I really like rice but, unless I'm eating out and it's not an option, brown rice is a-okay with me.  I like wild rice too.  So I want to continue to eat rice.

I would fucking die for most cheese.  Would take a bullet to the FACE for a brick of smoked cheddar.  It is non-negotiable.  Dairy stays.  IDGAF about milk though.  Heavy whipping cream is delightful.  I'm from the Midwest, so ranch dressing served with ranch dressing is a meal to me.  It is the greatest dressing, outside of Western, which I just found a SF recipe for.  Fuck yeah, life just got sweeter.

Almost all fast food chains serve unsweetened ice tea, so I'm covered out and about, but I do enjoy the occasional can of "sohda pahp"... don't care for Splenda in general, but will enjoy a few cans of Diet Coke with Splenda or Diet Rite or Diet RC (but probz not Pepsi One because the caffeine content is through the roof and I'm fairly sensitive).

My all time favorite foods and my plans for revamping them are as follows:

• romaine salad with a variety of veggies (especially snap peas when available) topped with ranch dressing and pickled beets hey!  it's already low carb, doesn't require tweeking except that pickled beets have a small amount of HFCS.
• pesto-drenched cheese tortellini will attempt to get by with Dreamfields noodz- pesto drenched.
• chiles rellenos probz shouldn't eat it out but it's VERY doable low carb made at home.
• grilled cheese and tomato soup. low carb bread should handle it and some homemade tomato soup.
• pizza-flavored Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers.  nothing I can do about that shiz.
• vegetarian burritos, filled with avocado, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, rice and beans, topped with some kind of red sauce and covered in melted cheese, served with beans and rice.  occasional treat... This is a meal I refuse to shit on with low carb products and it is also something I usually eat when I'm drunk, anyway.
• random Indian food I get at Trader Joe's, particularly punjab choly and palak paneer- served on rice.  not inherently high-carb, until you get to the rice.  I can't imagine eating palak paneer on cauliflower rice, but I'll try it.
• thai tofu curries on rice.  occasional treat, I guess, unless I prove to have no adverse reaction to rice.  I will try to ask the lady at the local Thai restaurant if she'll consider using a sugar substitute, provided by me, when she makes the curry.
• lasagna, cheesy, cheesy lasagna.  will make at home with Dreamfields.
• tofurkey with wild-rice stuffing and mashed potatoes.  shit's only available once a year anyway.
• Cafe Luigi's New York style "special" pizza (ricotta, tomato, spinach, and fucking LSD or something because it's un-fucking-believable and IDGAF about pizza, generally).  ok, it's a very particular pizza, at a very particular restaurant that is NOWHERE NEAR my home and is not in a neighborhood that I ever need to go to.
• homemade potato salad. When I see it, I'm eating it.
• veggie scrambles on hashbrowns with ketchup.  This is something I order from 24 hour restaurants.  If I have the foresight to bring my own ketchup, I will.  I have an insanely amazing, gourmet sugar-free ketchup recipe.
• pumpkin pie I'll figure something out.

meat is never my favorite food... most meat is take it or leave it for me, apart from chicken breasts, which I generally can't stand.  I like bloody steak (new to me just these last few months!  who am i?!) and I like dark chicken meat (mostly in the form of wings because they want to be covered in ranch and it is my duty as an American to see that they get their wish) but I don't really like meat that much.  A lot of foods on my list above could contain meat but I think it makes them worse.  I do love cheeseburgers and hot dogs though because I am patriotic about being from Chicago and- hey putting ketchup on hot dogs is sacrilege here so no sugar issue there!  By the way, I am patriotic within limits, Chicago-style pizza (deep dish) is kind of gross to me- and I like cheese a lot.  Anyway, I'm going to try to eat more meat to keep carbs low, but if wheat and rice don't give me too much trouble, and all of my issues lie with sugar, I will probably just go back to being a vegetarian like in the old days.  Oh, I do like fish a lot though!

So, if you're at the bottom of this and you read the whole thing, I'm kind of sorry... this is really meant for me to map out what I am and am not willing to live without so that I can plan accordingly with my diet... I can't imagine anyone else would have enjoyed reading that.

onward ho!

so it's day 21... so I've completed 3 weeks of vlcd... WOW.  just 10 more days to go... which also means it's 10 days until my son Oliver turns 3.  Can't wait to make a sugarfree cheesecake!

I'm feeling good about my losses (was 1.2 lbs down this morning- awesome) but I'm not excited about blogging.  I don't really know what's what or why some things happen.  I haven't taken good enough accounts of my meal plans to notice any patterns.  I will say this, I've eaten taco bell twice and lost well the next day both times.  I've been veering from protocol lately... today I had eggs and onions and tomatoes and spinach for lunch and ground beef in spaghetti sauce (sugar free!) for dinner.  Kind of don't care but the spaghetti sauce has olive oil as an ingredient and has 1g of fat.  It was really good.

At this point, I'd like to drop about 4 more lbs... but I'm feeling good where I am.  I don't really care.  I've never been in the 130s as an adult and here I am and I feel... pretty much the same... so there you have it and there it is.

minus 10000

delighting in the little [calorie] things

Normally when I cook, I sort of have this lunch lady slop style of plating food- maybe because the portions are generally so big there's really no room for pretty on the plate.  Since I've been cooking for myself on this diet, though, the smaller amount of food leaves me free to garnish.

the small amount of food doesn't make me a better photographer.

Really, it looks like (size of meal-wise) anything you'd see on a restaurant show/anything with Gordon Ramsay and it looks like the pictures in Cooking Light or other healthy food publications.  Three days ago, I would have said "that's not enough food for anyone" but now it's more than filling.

One trick, I don't do anything but look at my food while I eat it.  No munch and type.  They, whoever those people are, say that this enhances the taste of the food and in turn makes you more satisfied.  I just think it's incredibly boring and it makes me want to stop eating so I can do something else.

The other trick is this Trader Joe's jalapeno hot sauce... it's CRAZY GOOD and I'm not a hot sauce fan in general.  It's not that I don't like spicy things (though generally I don't) but hot sauce just has a weird flavor, maybe from the vinegar.  This stuff tastes good though.  I want to drink it out of the bottle.  It has made the perfect replacement for cocktail sauce in my shrimp and it's sugar-free and zero calories- GET YOU SOME!

Between meals I was munching on Trader Joe's sesame melba rounds.  You can have ONE round twice a day on this diet AND they're like the size of silver dollars AND mine were stale AND they had fat in them which the melba on protocol is not supposed to.  So I switched to these Wasa crackers, they're pretty big and one is both servings for the day so I ate half at lunch today and it was so satisfying.  I'm into that "whole grain" flavor (hamburger buns being the exception) so these are right up my alley.  They have no fat, though they have slightly more carbs than the TJ's sesame melba.  I don't know if I'll eat the other half tonight, I didn't need the melba last night- we shall see.

I bet these taste like cardboard to everyone else.

The people on the HCG boards say that some use it but it is NOT ON PROTOCOL.

Well guess what?  Neither is melba toast because I'm sure you cannot find any melba toast that is exactly the same as it was in the 50s when Simeon's wrote the manuscript and a lot of people use Old London melba toast and that has sugar in it.

I'm good at following policy literally but sometimes you gotta look at the spirit of the policy and sometimes you gotta just throw shit out.