Cod Fillets with Basil

Posted on February 6, 2010 by lowcarbconfidential

My wife made this simple recipe the other day and I was impressed enough to record it here:

  • 1/2 lb. cod fillet
  • 1 tsp. olive oil
  • 1 tsp. lemon juice
  • 1/4 tsp. dried basil, crushed
  • 1/8 tsp. black pepper
  • Dash salt
  • 2 plum tomatoes, cored and cut crosswise into thin slices
  • 2 tsp. grated Parmesan cheese

Pat fish dry and cut into 2 serving pieces. Combine oil and lemon juice in a baking dish. Add fish and turn to coat both sides. Sprinkle with basil, pepper and salt. Overlap tomatoes in even layer on fish and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Cover with foil and bake at 400 degrees, about 10 to 15 minutes or until fish just begins to flake when tested with a fork.

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I’d Go for the Cake

Posted on January 31, 2010 by lowcarbconfidential

I’ve been way busy with work – and my commitment to losing weight has suffered for it.

I have long work-days filled with an extraordinary amount of details to remember – and often need to improv on what I know as meetings are called on a whim and I have to go in cold without prep – sometimes talking to ideas that are not mine that I only saw when the Powerpoint slide was shown in the meeting.

This is all day, every day. While I don’t consider myself a genius, somehow I seem to act like a savant and the words just come from somewhere. I walk out of these meetings and colleagues tell me I did great, while I thought I babbled nonsense.

My mind is shot in the evening – and my hour commute does nothing to clear my head. It keeps firing and knocking about like some old cars that I had where you’d turn the thing off and it would continue to fire and cough for as long as it felt like it.

These kind of days don’t help a diet – especially when you live in a house where people love their carbs. I come home, and the diet goes out the window, as it’s easier to grab the available crap food than it is to start cooking. Read more »

Filed under: Articles, Change, External Links, Food, Food Monotony, Goals, Mindset, Personal Journal, cooking, diet, weight loss | 6 Comments »

The Incredible Roasted Kale Recipe

Posted on January 27, 2010 by lowcarbconfidential

Kale?!?

This green, leafy vegetable appears at the top of the list for nutrient density – calorie for calorie, it packs the more nutrients than nearly any other food you can buy. As part of my project to eat less of better foods, I decided to try it – but I don’t know how to eat the stuff.

I had it once, stir-fried. It was really tough and somewhat bitter, if I recall correctly. I could understand why it has so many nutrients – it lies on that same moral continuum of ‘the better it tastes the worse it is for you’ – which is why deep-fried french fries taste so good. Read more »

Filed under: Food, Food Monotony, Goals, Kitchen Experiments, cooking, diet, health, low carb, recipe | 5 Comments »

The Food Monotony Project – Day 6 Update

Posted on January 24, 2010 by lowcarbconfidential

A screenshot from the iPhone app ‘Lose It’

I started what I’m calling the Food Monotony Project on Tuesday, Jan 19, and since that day I’ve eaten mostly to plan. The thinking behind this goes back to a blog post I wrote in July of 2008. I forget a lot of my posts, but the points in this one kept rattling about in my head -I kept thinking: maybe I should try out these ideas for real.

Only took me like a year and a half to get around to it.

This past week, eating during the day was some combo of Atkins shakes and bars. The evenings were mostly bologna on a slice of low carb bread. The calories from Tuesday through Thursday were below my budget of 1,683 (more on that number in a minute). Monday through Thursday worked because I ate my evening ration (hard to call it a ‘meal’) and took a nicotine lozenge right after. Friday was a blowout – way too much food in the evening – simply because I forgot the ‘lozenge after eating in the evening’ rule.

No matter – Saturday morning showed me 6 lbs down since Tuesday – and the application I am using to count calories – Lose It (see screenshot above) – tracks calories by the day and week – which put Friday night into perspective by showing me that – for the week, I was right on track – the previous few days of being below my calorie budget added up to the amount I overate on Friday.

I’m not exactly thrilled to count calories, but eating fewer foods, and foods that are easier to measure, make the task suck less. In reality I am counting carbs first, but watching my calories as well. And – except for Friday, I’ve been able to keep those carbs, on average, in the low 20s. Read more »

Filed under: Apps, Atkins, Change, Exercise, Food, Food Monotony, Induction, Nicotine, cooking, diet, health, iPhone, low carb, recipe, weight loss | 4 Comments »

The Food Monotony Project

Posted on January 20, 2010 by lowcarbconfidential

Earlier in the year, I bemoaned my lack of weight loss and set a goal for the year of losing 40 lbs. – then did nothing to try to reach that goal. There’s been a number of life changes at work and at home that have put the pressure on and lately, I’ve felt that actually just getting through the day is achievement enough. This happens to all of us – it’s nothing to feel sorry for yourself about, or to dwell on unnecessarily, but instead you brace oneself for a bumpy ride, hold on to your seat, and wait till things smooth out, which they usually do eventually.

During this time, the thoughts about what to do different this time led me back to something I rejected long ago, as well as something I wrote on 2 years ago. The first thought was on a post about food monotony, that is, food as a utility. It’s a notion I had that part of the problem about dieting is that you replace one food obsession – eating too much – with another type – eating the correct types and quantities. I speculated that just thinking about food less might be many naturally thin people’s way of keeping slim. Read more »

Filed under: Atkins, Change, Food, Goals, Hunger, Induction, Mindset, Nicotine, Personal Journal, Self-Experimentation, Starting on Low Carb, diet, low carb, weight loss | 4 Comments »

Top 10 Posts of 2009

Posted on January 2, 2010 by lowcarbconfidential

Looking back can be interesting, if kept to a minimum, so I thought it might be interesting to see what were the most popular posts of 2009. Here goes. Read more »

Filed under: Crock Pot, Food, Induction, Kitchen Experiments, Megamas, Starting on Low Carb, Supplements, cooking, dessert, diet, drink, irvingia, low carb, recipe | 1 Comment »

A New Start for 2010 and Taking a Long View

Posted on January 1, 2010 by lowcarbconfidential

I bet a lot of you are in the same position: 2009 just didn’t go as planned.

As mentioned previously, I am pretty much in the same place I was last year, despite all of my efforts. I can’t live the year in some parallel version where I didn’t expend the effort – I might have ended up back at 265 – the weight I was when I started low carb.

This morning I zeroed out the data in my iPhone Weightbot application for the past year, and put in today’s weight: 214.6 lbs.

As I stated my goal is 174, I got 40 lbs to lose in 2010.

In 2009 I was in a rush – and I ended up in the same place. I want to take a different tack – the long approach. Read more »

Filed under: Change, Food, Goals, Mindset, diet, drink, low carb | 4 Comments »

The Year of Treading Water – And Hopes for 2010

Posted on December 31, 2009 by lowcarbconfidential

For a lot of people, this was a pretty crappy year. In comparison, I have little to complain about.

Regarding weight, I did not gain a lot  – but I didn’t lose what I wanted to lose either. I pretty much am where I was at the same time last year. I can console myself that at least I’m more or less at my married weight, and my wife didn’t get ‘more than she bargained for’, but there’s 40 lbs I wanted to drop this year and they didn’t drop.

While I’m a big believer in personal responsibility, in this particular instance, I am going to blame the year 2009 for any and all shortcomings in achieving my weight loss goals.

Tonight I say good riddance to 2009 and tell it: “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out the door.”

Having scapegoated 2009, I can start fresh in 2010 with new resolve and new goals. I spent some time writing them down in detail – I believe in writing down specific goals in a manner that states them as if they’ve already happened.

I have a number of goals, but the one regarding my weight is as follows:

I am 174 lbs on December 31, 2010.

If you don’t make New Year’s resolutions, you might want to try something like the above. What usually happens is people make some pronouncement on New Year’s eve, then blow it on New Year’s day – and forget their resolution.

If you make a resolution like mine, what you do on any given day doesn’t matter. It’s what you do the whole year that matters. If you resolve to get serious on your low carb diet, then have cake on New Year’s day, there’s still 364 days to make up for that.

Happy New Year’s – and here’s wishing you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2010.

Filed under: Goals, Personal Journal, low carb | 2 Comments »

Vacation

Posted on December 13, 2009 by lowcarbconfidential

I’m outta here come Wednesday. I’ve been busy as all get out trying to do all the things that needed to be done beforehand.

(This is nothing compared to what my long-suffering wife has gone through making all the arrangements and so much more.)

We’re going to an island in a Caribbean, and I have packed my Atkins bars as well as my 4C drink mix. While there’s no doubt I’ll indulge, I’ll try to do so judiciously – and scarf down the bars when the meal is not worth the carbs.

We’ll be back after Xmas, and perhaps I’ll have something interesting to relate (and low carb related) from the trip.

Happy Holidays.

Filed under: Personal Journal | Leave a Comment »

Sodastream Seltzer Maker – 6 Month Review

Posted on December 5, 2009 by lowcarbconfidential

In July, I wrote about the SodaStream seltzer maker and my first impressions on it. I liked it then, but many things we have tend to become ‘just another thing’ over time and you sort of feel cheated because it’s not what you thought it would be like. (Ladies, many of you might feel this way toward you husbands).

Anyway, snarky comments aside, I’ve owned the Sodastream soda maker for about 6 months now and it still delights me. It’s great to have soda when I want it. It’s great to be able to flavor it as needed. It’s great to take a bottle that has gone flat, top it off, give it some squirts of CO2 and have nice bubbly soda. Read more »

Filed under: External Links, Food, Personal Journal, drink, recommended products | Tagged: | 12 Comments »

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