Day 1 – Tuesday, March 1, 2014 – 225.4
OK – maybe the last month was a ‘test’ – a baseline to see where my problem points were.
It was also a month that saw a decade’s worth of work end for me as it was turned off, and a new system turned on. I sweated the details of this cutover and all the work seems to have paid off so far. Still some kinks to fix, but on the whole I think we’ll come out fine.
I’m going to lay my abysmal performance last month on the diet to that.
There. As if by magic, I am blameless.
Unburdened now from any guilt in my flubbing it for the past 21 days, I can review my spreadsheet and come away with a few observations:
1. I keep trying to prove I can drink and lose weight but I can’t drink and lose weight. Sucks but true. Alcohol is it’s own ‘nutrient’ with 7 calories per gram. Its high in calories and those calories have to be dealt with ASAP by the body. When you are burning those calories, you ain’t burning fat. Alcohol can also trigger hunger for me. If I have a martini out at dinner here and there, that’s fine – but the number of times I have it per month should be less than the fingers on one hand.
2. My chart for last month that showed how many days I ate a given food revealed that I ate about 70 different foods – only half of them I consider to be good for my diet. It also showed I ate way too few different ‘good’ foods, as can be evidenced by my having roast beef 13 times. No wonder I am *sick to death* of roast beef. The chart I made for this month lists over 40 foods that aren’t a problem on a low carb diet. I am going to make a conscious effort to increase variety as I believe this was part of the problem. I am going to try to not eat the same foods more two days in a row – with the exception of cheese and dairy, which I could eat every damn day in all it’s varieties.
3. I am still going to try to steer clear of nightshades – peppers and tomatoes – for the month and see if I notice a difference.
4. I’ve added more veggies to the list. There was a paucity of veggie variety last month – I’m going to try to add more.
5. I have a deep-seated disinclination to throw food away. I am going to have to work on this one because, while noble from a ‘people are starving’ standpoint, it does me no good in the weight department. I am going to make a conscious effort to not eat to clean the plate of empty the container, but consciously leave a little food for the trash. Ugggh – just *writing* that makes me cringe.
6. In my blog I’ve detailed over 150 recipes – most of them relatively fast and simple to make. I’m going to go back and resurrect some and maybe try to make them faster and easier.
7. I’m going to allow myself a few processed crutch foods to help me out. I’ve got the EZ_Sweetz – a true zero-calorie sucralose as a sweetener. Low carb ketchup as a low-brow favorite. Almond milk – a processed food and I am somewhat suspect of ALL processed foods, even those that claim to be healthy – but I love the stuff and it works as a great low carb alternative to milk, which has always been a comfort food for me. And my old friend mayonnaise – high in Omega-6 fats which I avoid, but if it’s the only component of my diet high in Omega-6 I should be OK.
8. I’m not going to measure quantities – at least yet – but just become more aware of them. My food tracking system only counts the eating of a given food as ‘I ate it’ – it doesn’t care if I had a bite or a case. I don’t want to pull out my electronic scale and start weighing stuff, nor do I want to fire up my calorie-counting app just yet.
9. Lastly, I’m going to revive an old habit of keeping a tiny little paper booklet where I kept long-term and short-term goals, my to do list, a shopping list, and things I was waiting for. Despite all the iPhone apps I’ve tried and being surrounded with computers that will happily track this stuff six ways to Sunday, there was something empowering in this little booklet.
Let’s see how THIS goes.
Low Carb Confidential 
These are great goals. I especially like the last one. I finally went back to paper for to-do lists when I heard the get-it-done guy say it was more efficient for many. Hey, don’t give up. You can do this!
I’ll talk about that little book more. I find it really helpful but there’s a lot of technique to how I do it.
Freezing your leftovers can be a good way to cut down on waste ? I hate wasting leftovers too. I usually just throw them into a crockpot and make a sort of “garbage stew”
It’s not a bad idea. Actually, I believe that it’s sort of the way people ate in colonial times: they frequently kept a pot cooking over low heat and threw whatever they could find in the pot and ate from that continuously.
How does your ‘garbage stew’ typically taste?
I think it’s difficult with family leaving food items around. You don’t want to “waste” them but you shouldn’t be eating them, either. You wouldn’t have made that piece of toast for yourself, but finding it, left behind–you just picked it up and ate it. I put all that in the compost bucket. Once it’s “dirty” there’s no way I am going to pull it back out and eat it. (smile)
…so a compost bin for the high carb stuff…and ‘garbage stew’ for the low carb stuff.
I have to think on that one.